Mako Murakami

Mako Murakami was the eldest son of the shogun of Tottori Castle, and was the gensui rikugun taisho of Lord Miro. He was an average-looking Yetoman, though at one point in his mid-twenties, his eyes changed from brown to an eerie flat grey colour; he used to have the long hair befitting the style of a prince but he roughly chopped it off after essentially disowning his family, after which he maintained it in an uneven, spiky state as a statement. His skills with a blade were well beyond average and he was known for a time as the best swordsman in the country. His fighting style and sword were both somewhat unique in Yeto, reflective of the many years he spent training with the Hobgoblin Army where he was highly ranked despite not being a hobgoblin himself.
Mako's personality was jarring: his moods always fluctuated wildly, he had little to no filter on his words, and he acted with little to no regard for others and much regard for his own amusement. Between his birthright, his skills in battle and his reputation for being savage, remorseless and unpredictable, he was feared throughout the country by those who crossed paths with him. He had a marked tendency to present himself as an idiot: easily entertained by minutia, annoying, demanding and impervious to social standards. Only those who knew him well, of which there were precious few, understood that he was actually rather intelligent and insightful and his facade of lackadaisy was a calculated front that served to augment the perception of his vicious madness.
Mako was well-known to be long-time friends with Osamu Miro. He enjoyed sport hunting, tumbling, yoga and annoying people. For reasons that he cited as "avoiding assassination attempts", Mako trained himself to get by on short naps scattered throughout the day as opposed to sleeping for full nights.
== Childhood ==
Father: Tadashi Murakami. Tadashi was the shogun of Tottori, a quiet person that avoided conflict almost pathologically. It is a common rumour that he developed his spineless nature as a defense from his wife.
Mother: Kasumi Murakami. Kasumi was wed to Tadashi at a very young age. She was a bitter, extremely paranoid woman whose aggression and superstition only increased with age. Her absolute hatred for her husband was clearly obvious to observers, though Tadashi himself seemed to ignore it. She had a violent temper that she would take out on passerby as well as plainly obvious delusions of persecution.
Younger Brother: Haru. Haru was very quiet and mild, though he developed an entitled, whiney personality from his mother's doting, as well as an extreme dislike of conflict and unpleasantness. While he was married, he had no children and rarely associated with his wife who lived apart from him. It was a common rumour that Haru wasn’t Tadashi’s son; Tadashi never believed that, but Kasumi knew for a fact that Haru was fathered by someone else. 
Mako was born into the uncomfortable position of child to his parents. Kasumi was bitter, resentful and spiteful towards Tadashi, and was no fond mother to Mako as a result. She was married off when she was only 11 and by the time she was 12, she was pregnant with Mako. He became an embodiment of her hatred of Tadashi: he forced himself on her and ruined her childhood by making her have an unruly and obstinate child that looks like him. Whether this was a condition that affected her mental health decline over the years was unclear but few would argue it. 
Mako was born with a confrontational personality and energy to spare, as well as the hereditary imbalance in his temper and impulse control that ran rampant through his inbred family tree. Attempts to train those out of him in his youth were largely unsuccessful and his mother's open hostility and disdain for him did not help temper his anti-social tendencies. It became markedly worse with the birth of Haru who, unlike Mako, was heavily favoured and pampered from birth onwards by Kasumi. As Mako reached his teenage years, he became increasingly resentful towards his family: to his mother for her favouritism and scorn, to his father for being weak and avoidant, and to his brother for being coddled and entitled. He would lash out at them and anyone else who happened to aggravate him and his reputation for being unpredictable and cruel became almost as well-known as his mother's. When he was 13, he killed a servant for some transgression, cementing the local populaces' fear of him.
Tadashi, in the early years of Mako's life, had a reasonable professional relationship with Yoshinori Miro. As the years passed and Yoshinori’s mental decline became increasingly apparent, he started visiting less and less; social visits stopped and became only the requisite business-required meetings. Mako, for his part, got along well with Osamu (and very few others), so for a while they only visited Miyagi his behest and when that became a struggle, he just started visiting himself.
When Mako reached the appropriate age, his mother made a conscious and vocal decision to not arrange his marriage with anyone. His father never contested the decision, leaving Mako a comparatively old bachelor. He knew he was being slighted but between his ever-shifting moods and general misanthropy, he never found it worth bothering about.
At the age of 15, Mako joined the local army as he had already shown prodigious skill with a sword and found combat to be the most amusing thing. However, it became very apparent that he was ill-suited for it as he could not take his superiors seriously and people were alternately frightened or frustrated with him, making the whole arrangement unpleasant. At 16, he decided that he wanted real training, from 'real' soldiers. He informed his parents that he was going to train with the hobgoblins, to which he received both indifference and support in his decision to leave the house and die. He convinced Osamu to join him and the two crossed the border into the Hobgoblin Province, where they were begrudgingly accepted. They trained for 8 years and both men worked their way up the ranks admirably, gaining respect from the hobgoblins. 
When he returned to Tottori, Mako had become a very accomplished swordsman: a young master of a strange sword style developed by the hobgoblins. He did not bother with the local army any further; compared to the hobgoblin army, everything in Yeto was untrained. However, he did throw himself into studies in policy and economics as preparation for his eventual appointment as shogun of Tottori. He had mellowed after his years abroad, able to maintain self-control to a better degree, but still resented his family openly and enjoyed tormenting the servants for his amusement.
At the age of 26, Tadashi announced that Haru, not Mako, would succeed him as shogun to the cheers of the populace. Whether it was due to Kasumi's forceful insistence or Tadashi's own ideas, Mako was infuriated and betrayed by the announcement. Within the year, Osamu announced that Mako was officially his gensui rikugun taisho. 
== The Unity War ==
As gensui, Mako led the successful assaults on Hikon and Niigata Castle in Lord Miro's name. He was met by Raito Kamun and his aides while staying in Niigata while was occupying the castle. He met them again when they were deposited in Hobgoblin High Command by Ko, after which he traveled with them for a short period until the missing Junko Wakahisa was found. He fought next to the adventurers during both fights against Raito, and accompanied Caelan and Broken Tusk when they searched for willing sacrifices for the final ritual.
When Caelan died as a result of Raito's betrayal, Mako felt loss for what may have been the first and last time in his life, as he had taken a liking to the man in what little time he had known him. He took time out to repatriate Caelan's body, and pulled what strings were needed to complete Caelan's goal: ending the centuries of tension between his people and the Hobgoblin Army. A statue of Mako was erected in Gaivoutna to mark his contribution to ending the war.
Following his storied victories as a gensui in the Unity War, Mako took Sakura Yamada, Raito's sister and the woman he had widowed when he devastated Niigata Castle, as his wife. He had three children, though he was a negligent father at best. When Osamu Miro abdicated and disappeared, he vanished with him, following him to Hell so as to become a devil that could continue to serve him.Category:Character