Masami

**Masami**, also known as Mess or Mesami, is the Spirit Forger, whose smithing prowess came from her Mania Mutation as someone born in the cursed island of Solisia. One of the "Blessed", Masami was able to leave the island and eventually join the Snake Tong as a smith and artificer. Considering herself an artist, she finds mass production beneath her and has become renowned for her meticulously crafter creations, and her belief that her weapons don't kill people, its the people who use them.

## Background

Masami was born on the chaotic island of Solisia. Her mother was descended from one of the lucky few mutated individuals who largely maintained their sanity and body, passing on this trait to Masami. Although she loved them anyway, her parents weren’t good people, her father being a member of one of the more powerful and vicious gangs, her mother being a mercenary who used her mutation to kill just about anyone for the right pay. They weren’t particularly outstanding parents either as a matter of fact but they did try to keep their dark sides out of the home for their daughter’s sake.

When she was six she discovered her mutation as one of the lucky Solisians, a sort of magical crafting of items and weapons. Using this mutation she made her first useable dagger when she was eight and began to create more weapons for her parents, wanting to support them even in their violent jobs. When she was ten they bought her one of the first game consoles to reach Solisia. It was a bit old by outside standards and she only had one game but it was still a huge Luxury for a Solisian which showed how successful her parents were and it quickly became one of her most prized possessions. As far as life on the island abandoned by the rest of humanity went, things were looking good but this was not to last.

Her parents had been having problems with their relationship and it was approaching the critical level. She began playing her game more and more as it became an escape from the tense family life. Eventually, this reached the breaking point when Masami’s mother started an affair. When he discovered this, Masami’s dad immediately went to confront her. Masami never learned exactly what happened but she can guess and she knows it ended up with her mother dead.

Afterward, this event changed her father. He became more violent and angry. After a brief period of taking it out on his enemies, this began to seep into home life as he started to blame Masami. She could see the darkness in others but never said what drove her mother to that, never told him that she was cheating in the first place, never warned him that he would go too far. More than ever she tried to escape into the world of her videogame, spending entire days alone secluded in her room.

The game she played had a pretty generic story. The good guy goes forth on a quest to kill an evil dragon that corrupts everything around it. Then the land experiences a great time of peace and prosperity. As she played it she began to blur the line between reality and fiction, convincing herself that the evil Draco was real and the source of all malice that she had been given the ability to see. It’s why the Hegemony forced everyone to live underground, why the gangs all killed each other for power, why dad killed mom and then started to abuse her. The reason why the world was so messed up.

She eventually lost this escape too however. Her father became angry that she was avoiding him and ended up smashing the console he got for her years ago. Then to cap things off he ended up dying a few months later in a retaliatory strike from a rival gang, just another life broken down and lost to the violence and corruption that defines Solisia. After this, she turned to arms dealing to make a living. While she hadn’t yet advanced to the same level she’s at now, her works were still highly sought after as some of the best magic weapons outside of the Hegemony. Using the money from her business she was able to buy a way off the island at age 17.

When she landed she found that, while things were indeed better off of Solisia, there was still demand for weapons. So she began a new arms dealing business in the area. Coincidentally this was Snake Tong territory and they soon received word of the individual selling high quality arms in their turf. They approached her with the ultimatum to leave or pay the protection fee. She was intrigued by them and reminded of the gangs back home except here it was evident that they were truly the ones calling the shots. So instead she offered to work for them.

From an outside perspective, it may be odd that she just went right back to her old routine but this is because she was convinced that she had to beat the source of malice at its own game. She’d refine the art of forging and obtain enough malice to create a sword that can kill malice. Then malice would finally stop appearing and the world can heal, if it’s in the name of reaching this goal she’ll help and accept help from anyone. The snakes being a particularly good stockpile of both resources and malice due to their nature as a successful mercenary/organized crime group.

She has integrated fairly well into the Shiai-shi, although anyone who goes to commission a weapon from her is generally warned to be prepared for her strange and sometimes irritating behavior. To most people, Mess is just someone who creates weapons for money and because she likes to. However, Mess herself remembers her goal, one day she’ll make a weapon that can kill gods and transform the world.

## Personality

Although she agreed to work for the Snakes she still refuses to mass produce any items or even craft standard-issue equipment unless major customization is requested. She professes a love for the beauty and elegance of wielding an exquisitely handcrafted weapon instead of “thrashing about mass-produced garbage”. She takes great pride in her work and puts a lot of love and detail into every weapon she makes, not rushing or cutting corners for anyone, even her customers. Due to this trait of hers, she has a distaste for magic that merely copies and creates inferior copies of already existing objects rather than making an item of their own.

Those who’ve commissioned or interacted with Mess can tell you she can be a difficult person. She enjoys putting people off guard with her behavior or pushing the buttons of “goody two shoes” and with her ability to see people’s hidden dark side, it’s easier for her to figure out how to do that than it would be for most people. If she doesn’t like someone or they frustrate her but she has to work with them she’ll only just barely cooperate with them, just enough to make them think they can make progress while still having to fight for every bit of it. She also learned how to have some of the most smug and irritating smiles one has ever seen.

When it comes to taking commissions from less violent individuals she takes this a step further by encouraging them to violence. She does things like offering discounts if they do something bad with it, play on their darkest desires, prod them to raise their irritation, etc. The only exception is that she doesn’t provoke violence between Snakes as that could get her in trouble. She finds her weapons just being used as display pieces or for self-defense to be boring and, as a bonus, if the customer has more malice for her to draw on she can get better results.

Despite her weapons being responsible for the death of many people she doesn’t consider herself a villain for it. In her view she didn’t kill anyone, her customers did. She just makes beautiful weapons when people ask her for them and it’d be a real shame if these handcrafted masterpieces never saw any use so she sometimes gives a little encouragement to the more reluctant customers. How they choose to use it is none of her business, as long as she can make her weapons and ensure they don’t just collect dust somewhere. Occasionally she’ll even go as far as referring to herself as an innocent maiden, although that’s actually just to mess with people.

Coming as a surprise to those who know her well as an instigator and a troll, her house is different. Everything in her house practically screams stereotypical cute girly girl. Whenever people express their surprise at this she likes to mess with them by acting offended that they think she’s not allowed to like cute things just because of her job. If they keep pressing on the matter though and actually imply she can’t like cute things because of other parts of her life she might get genuinely offended.

As soon as she left Solisia, Mess fell in love with the pop culture of the outside world. She splurges most of her commissions on dolls, clothes, stuffed animals, stickers, figurines, various media, etc. She also owns a large number of gaming consoles and videogames, she seems to have a preference for retro and adventure games but also plays other types of games. The sheer amount of decoration and entertainment in her home as well as on her person is excessive even by her own admission but hey she’s gotta spend her money on something.

Even though she’s the only person she knows who can see malice and considers it her duty to create a weapon that can kill malice, she doesn’t actually see herself as the “hero”. In her mind, she’s more like the NPC that gives the protagonist a unique item they need to complete the main storyline. Part of this comes from deep down perceiving herself as weak in comparison to the great evil that she’s tasked herself with helping to kill. Because of this, in addition to wanting to craft the “sacred sword that will defeat evil,” she also wants to find a hero worthy of wielding it. After all, she’s not someone who wields weapons, just the one who makes them.

## Abilities

**Spirit Forging**

Mess is amongst the blessed from the island of Solisia and spirit forging is the special ability she was born with.  A unique ability coming from the mutation to her mana lobe. Similar to many spirits she is capable of drawing out energy from the soul and mind of humans. Unlike most that use the soul as fuel however she cannot consume the entirety of a person’s consciousness and life force. Instead she is able to perceive human malice as a dark aura around the individual, through physical contact she can interact with this energy by drawing out the malice and dark emotions such as frustration, fear, or jealousy. The process of having malice taken out often leaves the individual exhausted and placid but in Mess’s words “malice is the easiest energy for a human to replenish, no contest” and there are no long-term effects. Although this ability to fully recover technically doesn’t extend to humans who are no longer alive, evil spirits that consist only of grudges can be completely destroyed and converted to energy by Mess if she so desires. She considers such beings to be the purest source of malice due to being made entirely out of malice. Once she has the energy she differs even further from spirits in that it is not used to fuel herself but rather she then turns it into physical material which she can use to craft items of various effects and great power. A sword that can produce and wrap itself in intense flames that burn especially hot against beings that can be considered demons, gas bombs that inflict homicidal rage upon everyone in their range, a dagger sharper than any mundane blade that can pierce through most defenses and be disguised as a bracelet, etc.

### Items and Creations

Mess has created many weapons and armor but of particular note is a personal project known as *God Slayer* to herself and anyone who bothers to ask. God Slayer is her project to create a weapon that can even kill gods and slay malice. While the project isn’t even close to being at god killing levels it does consist of equipment that’s still a rank above the items she usually makes, some of them can even be considered artifacts. The only one people see on a regular basis is a mark on her chest meant to resemble the growths from early Solisian mania corruption, it can massively increase Mess’s physical abilities going beyond the level of most other magical enhancements. Some of her favorites include self-propelling nails that relentlessly track a chosen target until they’ve pinned the target down with a spell that’s not easily broken even by powerful opponents and a sword that removes the need to touch people to take their malice, instead being able to drain it from nearby sources and use it for various purpose such as increasing the reach of the sword, giving it such power that few defenses could stop, or blasting it out in destructive beams.