Dahashi Okanishi

Subject: Dahashi Okanishi Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:06 pm

|BASICS|

Name: Dahashi Okanishi, changed it to Kuma Aruego when he was forty.

Age: 55 (post time skip)
Birthplace: Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom
Current Residence: Dark State capital
Rank: bender
Occupation: Blacksmith
Element: fire, earth.
Pets: none
Weapons: he has taken a personal oath never to fight again, but he does keep his great axe from his raiding days.

|OPTIONAL|

Birthday: 27th May 692AO
Blood type: (Your character blood type)

Hobbies: Crafting: Dahashi enjoys using his hands to create things. It can be anything, wood, metal, glass or whatever, he enjoys the simple act of taking something raw and unrefined and imposing his design upon it.

Drinking: The man is a bottomless pit when it comes to alcohol. Training in the art of chugging his drink and keeping it in has made him capable of enduring much drinking before being addled by the substance. He does take care never to get over his considerable limit though, he’s usually a happy drunk but he’d rather not take any chances. His drink of choice is mead (“Just fill my mug with a mighty jug of honey, heart and grain!”).

Smoking: Well second chances or not, you’ve got to enjoy the little things in life.

Quirks:

Has a tendency to hum while he works, and when I say hum I mean humming horribly out of tune which is thankfully covered by the sounds of the forge (thank the gods).

Family: Father Ikkiyamo, a blacksmith for a small Vermillion Empire colony. Deceased.

Mother Nara, an Earth Kingdom soldier, was wounded in battle and was honourably discharged with a decoration for bravery on the battlefield. A skilled swordswoman and fierce fighter despite her injury. Deceased.

Character Theme: Calamity-Miracle of Sound

|APPEARANCE|

Hair: Dahashi possesses a glorious and rather intimidating mane of black hair, streaked with white. His hair proper is more or less straight and falls down to his upper shoulder blades. It is wild, but long enough that its sheer weight keeps it down. When working he usually keeps it tied back in a low ponytail. His long and full beard reaches to his lower chest, flowing smoothly, if haphazardly down.

Eyes: Almond shaped eyes black as coal. Cold and hard when cool, but capable of exploding in raging fire when provoked. His heavy brow makes it look as though he were permanently scowling.

Height: 6’’4’

Clothes: Clothing is not something Dahashi is particularly concerned with. Despite being a very well paid artisan he rarely spends his hard earned coin on such things. His clothing is often made of rough, tough materials, usually grey, brown and black in colour with no particular ornaments or frills. Simple clothes for a simple man. When working he straps on a heavy leather apron, a bandana to keep the sweat out of his eyes and his hair out of the fire and a pair of heavily tinted glasses to protect his eyes from the flames.

Skin: His skin is incredibly thick, but at the same time worn, callused and scarred in multiple places. His face has a multitude of dents in it, and his nose looks like it has been broken at least twice in the past, giving it a bent and crooked look.

Body Type: Hulking. This guy has spent his entire life fighting, forging and otherwise doing physical work. To say he is heavily muscled would be an understatement. A man once broke several fingers by punching him. In his later years, due to his tendency to intake absurd amounts of alcohol (only matched by his ability to withstand pain), he has developed quite the pot belly, and many people are fooled by it and expect it to be a soft pile of fat. They’re wrong. It’s just a relatively thin layer of fat over some hard muscle, so hit at your own risk. His left hand’s ring finger is missing, ripped to shreds while he was using a grind saw. He often jokes that the reason he’s never settled down with a woman by now is that he’s married to his forge, this running joke of his has made him start to refer to his forge as ‘the missus’.

Image:

Big, hairy and ugly:

|CHARACTERISTICS|

Personality: You’d expect an imposing, wild looking slab of a man like Dahashi to be a brute, dangerous and not to be trifled with. Thirty years ago you would have been right, but a man can change a lot in thirty years and nowadays it’s quite a different story than it was in his youth.

The man is jovial to say the least, lending his thunderous laughter to any group who’ll have him. Always merry and always looking at the bright side of life. He sees himself as having been offered a questionably deserved second chance, and as such he is thankful for most everything that comes his way, be it rain, pain, gain or shame. He laughs hard, drinks deep, eats heartily and enjoys the small things in life.

Of course much like anyone else he’s not immune to temper issues; as a matter of fact he is quite prone to them. His patience is limited and that’s where his forge comes in to save the day and keep him on a righteous path. No matter what his frustrations are they will always eventually be hammered away in the roar of the fire and clash of hammer on steel. You could say that he got off the drug that is the thrill of combat and adventure by finding a new drug. Pummelling a piece of hot metal into whatever shape he sees fit. When he’s in a bad mood he’ll take refuge in his workshop, where he has been known to stay for days on end, barely eating and sleeping.

He is fairly polite with strangers, or at least as polite as he knows how to be, but as soon as he gets comfortable around people he becomes much less formal and much more joking. In either situation he always remains friendly. Catching him on a bad day though and you’re far less likely to find him all smiles and cheer and more likely to find him quiet and moody.

Honest as they come Dahashi is frank and wears his heart on his sleeve, if only verbally. His face is stern and much of it is obscured by hair, making it a less than ideal means of conveying expression and while his eyes do communicate some things they are usually very reserved. In other words he will tell you what he thinks rather than have you try to guess what his barely visible expression means. His honesty extends to his business and he always charges a fee he deems to be fair for his services.

Despite his rugged appearance and lack of formal education he is undeniably charismatic, a strong sense of leadership inside of him. In times of old it helped him keep his men in line; nowadays he has few reasons to ever make use of it. In general it helps make people warm up to him and little else. He has a mild distaste for nobles, finding them far too full of themselves for his own taste and he prefers to stick around the common folk.

Cheerful and chipper as he may usually be, deep down he is something of a nihilist. He doesn’t really believe in selfless human kindness and he doesn’t see people as being innately good and moral creatures. He believes that you don’t get to do what he did and see what he did and still believe in those things without fooling yourself. He is willing to believe in people’s ability to overcome their brutish, violent and cruel nature and achieve great things though.

In general his loyalty and trust are tough to earn. Since being released from prison he’s grown wary of people, always fearing relatives of an old victim of his would find him and decide to have their revenge, and while he doesn’t really fear death he isn’t looking forwards to his inevitable passing either. He is always willing to take on commissions for strangers and his policy is that he doesn’t much care what the tools he makes are used for as soon as they leave his shop. He doesn’t ask too many questions of his customers. While he occasionally enjoys the company of others he is a loner by nature. He works and lives alone and that doesn’t bother him in the least.

Dahashi generally enjoys the routine and monotonous days, much preferring them over chaotic and action-packed moments. He likes having a normal life; he outlived and paid dearly for the lust for adventure he once felt. He does hate restraints though; he enjoys his freedom and doing things at his own pace, be it slower or faster than required.

His humour is steeped in sarcasm and self-deprecation. He has no qualms about turning himself into the butt of his own jokes. He also has an impressive collection of bawdy jokes, songs and limericks which he came across in his raiding days. He doesn’t often get to use them given his current position, but he does keep them at hand for when he goes down to the bar, or when he’s hanging out with the soldiers, which he does often.

Personal Strengths:

Exceptional Blacksmith: The son of a blacksmith, he was exposed to metalwork from a young age. His father tried to pass on the family shop to his son, but the kid was more interested in fighting than creating. After Dahashi was caught and locked up he put his father’s lessons to good use, apprenticing under the prison’s military smith and finding that he had a knack for metalwork. When his master passed away he took up the job, and his tireless effort at the forge were rewarded by an early parole and a highly developed skillset. After his release he became a professional blacksmith.

Skilled Bender: Dahashi used to be a violent man. He killed, he stole and he did many more horrible things besides. He trained as a fire bender and mastered it over his time as a raider. Eventually caught he became a blacksmith in prison and started using his fire bending to assist him in his new function. He began to study earth bending after his mother’s death, to honour her memory and he was taught in that discipline by his blacksmithing master. Dahashi is considerably more proficient in fire bending than in earth bending, but to be fair the techniques he uses in his forge are rarely anything impressive or showy, if ever he was to use his bending in combat he could put up a decent fight, but certainly not anything out of the ordinary. His skill in the arts of fire and earth bending are not focused on combat, but on forging.

Brute Strength: His time as an outlaw had kept him fit, but his decades as a blacksmith have built his body into a downright scary mass of muscles. His entire body is as tough as the steel he works. He’s the kind of guy people swerve around when walking in the street.

Personal Weaknesses:

Uneducated: Uneducated, but not necessarily unintelligent. He taught himself to read and write while in prison, but numbers continue to escape his grasp, much to his frustration. He knows little of science or history.

Pacifist: Dahashi does not fight. Ever. Even when provoked and attacked. He will attempt to avoid attempts at his life and block incoming blows, but he will not strike back. After serving in prison for his years as a raider he decided to put down his axe forever. The only thing he allows himself to strike is the metal which he forges. He has only one single caveat to this oath. He is willing to do harm if someone other than himself is at risk of death and only to help that person. In other words if someone is being attacked in front of him he won’t hesitate to put his prodigal strength to the service of the victim.

Rusty: Dahashi used to be a fearsome opponent, capable of taking down scores of lesser men on his own. Used to. His body has forgotten the various complex movements of combat, and he doesn’t have quite the same sort of vigour as he used to. He is still strong and healthy, but he now his body has grown used to the various movements and strategies used to navigate and work the forge, and forgotten the passes and tactics of the battlefield.

Hamartia: Stubbornness: Stubborn as a tiger ox, maybe more. Once he sets his mind to something he’ll see it through no matter what. This trait is particularly dangerous given his dedication to his oath of pacifism.

Personal Hero: he doesn’t much believe in heroes.
Dreams and Ambitions: to live out his days in peace.

Likes: creating, drinking, eating, living, music, smoking, the warmth of the forge, rare metals, spicy food, physical beauty (I mean who doesn’t appreciate a nice piece of eye candy every now and then huh?).

Dislikes: destroying, formal wear events, dancing (seeing him attempt to manoeuvre around a dance floor is the stuff of comedy gold, I assure you), the pompous, those who take themselves too seriously.

Brief History: The first and only son of a blacksmith and a retired Earth Kingdom soldier in a tiny town in the Vermillion Empire’s colonies in the Earth Kingdom, he had a pretty average childhood for a child raised in a modest settlement. The village he grew up in had no school and parents were expected to pass on their craft to their children, and that’s exactly what Dahashi’s father tried to do. He tried to pass on his love of metalwork to his son and while the child absorbed the lessons and showed potential he never put any real effort into his studies. He was much more interested in his mother’s skills and her tales of fierce battles in faraway lands. She was more than happy to sate his curiosity and he learned much from her in the ways of combat.

In small farming villages blacksmiths are some of the most important people. They help maintain tools and to repair various things, plus not many people actually have the skill required. As the son of the blacksmith Dahashi was well known by the villagers. His growing knowledge of martial skills and natural charisma earned him the awe and admiration of many of the village’s children. He was seen as something of a leader by them, and he was often the one leading from the front lines in intrepid raids on the girls’ silly girly games, and on old man’s Karajan’s candy store. He was also the one who grew up fastest though, and the first to shed the idiotic young boys’ games. He was also the first to find his calling, or rather to have it forced upon him.

The village he lived in was plagued by a band of raiders who called themselves the Blue Spears. Every year they’d come to the village and take away one person, man, woman or child, and in exchange for this tribute the raiders left the village alone. Dahashi had been safe because technically his father’s home and smithy were just outside the village boundaries. The boy had seen the raiders a few times though, tough and proud looking men on ostrich-horses. Their leader was an unusually refined bandit, world travelled, well spoken, rich and dangerous. Everything Dahashi wanted to be but never could become due to being stuck in this village.

On the day when the outlaws came to take their tribute Dahashi snuck out of his home and into the village, and when it came the time to pick he rushed forward, volunteering himself. Several of the townsfolk tried to stop him, tried to tell the raiders he wasn’t from the village, but to no avail. They took him by the shoulder, clapped his hands and feet in iron and dragged him off. The rumours around town were that the raiders turned their tributes into more raiders. They were wrong. Every single one of the people they took away they dragged off to their hideout and turned into slaves.

Dahashi spent the next two years as a slave to the raiders he had always hoped to join. For some reason he felt betrayed but more than that he felt foolish. Foolish for feeling betrayed, foolish for being a starry eyed idiotic little kid, and foolish for trusting a man he’d never met. Over time these feeling turned to anger and from anger they turned into pure malice. He began hatching a plan, organising the slaves (of which there were many, taken from various villages) into a group, all the while putting on an act as a resigned, obedient slave.

His fellow prisoners were not easy to convince, most had had their resolve broken, but he persevered. He formed plans, contingencies for his contingencies, a fool proof scheme. They struck while the raiders were away, having to deal only with a skeleton crew of guards. The slaves worked as a single army, overwhelming their captors with their sheer numbers, stealing their weapons and gear. Dahashi killed his first man that day, roasting the guard in his armour with fire bending, but only many years later would he look back in horror at how easily killing had come to him.

When the main raiding force returned to their hideout they found it fortified against them. The prisoners had gotten into the armoury and most were armed, those who were not used their bending. The Blue Spears laid siege against their own stronghold, and were massacred. Out of the forty raiders that attacked, only three left the field of battle with their hearts still pumping.

One group of raiders was killed that day, and another, far more violent one, was born form its ashes. Dahashi, at the age of seventeen, became the leader of the new raiders who took to calling themselves the Burnt Spears, and they began to cut a swathe of raids and horrors that the Blue Spears had never matched. The Burnt Spears were made up of ex-prisoners, men who didn’t know how to hold a weapon, but they made up for that with their ferocity and devotion to their bloodthirsty leader.

At first they hit small settlements, beginning to gain more and more followers they eventually moved on to villages. They pillaged, burnt and killed everything in their path and managed to elude the authorities for three whole years. In those three years they became terrors in the colonies, terrors feared as much as the plague or droughts.

But eventually even Dahashi came to realise that they couldn’t go on like this much longer, and so he called for one last series of raids before they would disband and lie low for a few years. This time they chose to attack a mid-sized town, with walls and a militia. It would be a brutal siege, and it would be glorious, Dahashi fully intended it to be his magnum opus, to become the raider that took an entire city. When they arrived the villagers were too terrified to even organise themselves, but within the walls one woman emboldened the defenders. She was a middle-aged widow who had come to the village four years prior. She whipped the militia into shape and bolstered the town’s defences. When the Burnt Spears came the town was ready for them.

The raiders slammed against the walls again, and again, and again, tirelessly calling for blood while the defenders rained rocks, arrows, fire and death on them. The raiders were not discouraged though and with their mad leader Dahashi leading from the front lines as he always did their fifth strike at the walls was successful. They broke through, burning down the city’s gates and rushed in. Battle ensued as the militia held the line while the citizens fled the city. The streets ran red with blood.

Eventually Dahashi came face to face with the woman who had ruined what was to be his final work. Him fuelled by rage, her by desperation their fight was long, so long it outlasted the conflict between the raiders and the militia ended around them. Both Dahashi and the mysterious woman were in full armour, neither seeing the other’s face, but both equally matched, their fighting style eerily resembled the other’s, but in the end he saw a moment of hesitation in the widow’s movements, she paused for a split second and he took the opportunity to deliver a savage blow to her midsection, wounding her mortally. As she lay bleeding out on the floor she kept repeating a single name.

“Dahashi…”

A horrifying doubt crept through the raider’s wall of blood thirst, madness and anger. He knew that voice. He knew that name. He bent down, removing her helm, and what he found beneath broke him, or rather broken the man he had become in those mines as a slave. His own mother, dying by his hands. His raiders had already dissipated into the city, looking for anything to loot, but he stood there, holding his mother’s hand as she died. In fighting the monster that was the Blue Spears he’d spawned a far worse creature. As the widow died her parting words finished him.

“I forgive you.”

He laid her down, picked up his axe and went to slay the beast he’d created. He spent the day roaming the city, cutting down any raider he found. By the end of it most of his men were dead, the others had managed to escape. His job done he went back to his mother’s corpse, picking it up and leaving the city behind, heading straight for the next town over. There he went straight for the authorities, reporting the massacre of the town, and turning himself in.

He was tried in Ba Sing Se and he pleaded guilty to all charges. By all rights he should have been executed on the spot, but he was given mercy the judge assuming that him turning himself in was a show of a wish for rehabilitation, instead he was sentenced to life imprisonment, a punishment he, at the time, thought worse than death. He was barely a month over twenty years old.

In the prison he was asked what he had been trained to do, other than kill. He thought hard about that question, and ended up with a simple answer. Blacksmithing. He was given a position as the apprentice to the prison smith. The lessons his father had taught him what felt like eons ago came back surprisingly quickly, and he impressed the senior smith with his skill and the speed at which he picked up the finer points of the trade.

When he wasn’t working Dahashi kept himself very busy, he taught himself to read and write, and he began studying earth bending. His mother had been an earth bender, and this was the only way he could think of to try to bring some honour to her memories. He also made a vow never again to use what she had taught him of combat (in other words everything he knew about fighting) to harm another human being ever again.

Reading and writing came easily enough, his cell mate, a grizzled old man with more boils on his face than teeth in his mouth occasionally helped him out, but it was the Earth bending that troubled him. Memories of his mother kept interfering with his learning, preventing him from allowing himself the focus to bend the element to his will.

He would spend twenty years in that jail, working as a blacksmith in the day and practising his bending and his reading and writing in his spare time. About ten years into his sentence his master died and he became the de facto blacksmithing master of the prison. At first a more suitable replacement (that meant a man with cleaner criminal record) was supposed to come within months of the original master’s death, but in that time Dahashi proved his skill and worth, and he was kept on and allowed to get his own apprentice. By then he’d made some great progress on his earth bending and the combination of earth and fire bending in the forge allowed him to work far more rapidly and efficiently than most other blacksmiths.

His sentence was supposed to have been indefinite, but after all his hard work and his obedient and peaceful attitude the justice system saw fit to give him a second chance. They decided to release him on parole, under strict restrictions of course. He was not allowed to leave the Earth Kingdom and if he broke even the smallest, most tenuous of laws he would be shipped back to jail immediately and incarcerated for life with no chance of getting out, ever.

Now Dahashi wasn’t foolish enough to believe that he’d been forgotten, families of his victims would probably look for him, try to get some payback for his past actions. He didn’t feel like ending this second chance he’d been given with a knife sticking out of his back, so he decided to move far away from the Earth Kingdom, to somewhere he’d never been before. The ideal land for this was the Dark Nation. He built a forge and workshop in the outskirts of one of the more remote cities of the land and changed his name to Kuma Aruego, hoping to be forgotten. For the first year a contingent of five guards followed him everywhere to make sure he wasn’t breaking any laws or any bones. The second year that number was reduced to two and the third year they were removed completely. He continued to work his remote forge, and his skill earned him a lot of attention very fast. He found himself moving several times in the following years to complete various special projects for high-profile customers who wanted to watch him work. Part of the reason why Dahashi’s fame as a smith grew so fast was his skill, but another part was his unique style of forging, which utilised both fire and earth bending to assist in various steps. The rapidity of his technique gave the metal he forged a far more vivid pattern and a more precise fit to his pieces.

The first time Dahashi moved from his workshop was at the personal request of a Water Tribe noble who needed a second smith on his estate for a massive project, the forging and shaping of a bronze statue of the man. This took many weeks, but upon completion he returned to his own forge and once again continued his more mundane work. The city he’d built his forge close to was a heavily militarized town which had both a garrison located nearby and a town militia, that and the farmers with their broken tools meant he was rarely out of work, and that was good. Creating with his hands helped him forget what he’d done, and when it failed to do that, well there’s nothing quite like whacking metal with all your strength to vent out your frustration.

Over the course of many requests for a variety of highborn folks he spent much time in the company of nobility, and he failed to be impressed. He’d expected those individuals to be different from the common man such as him, but he quickly found that under the expensive clothes and complicated curtseys they were just as varied and unpredictable as low born men and women. Slowly the initial reverence he’d been showing them began to fade and he started treating them like any other customer. One particular minor noble took offense at Dahashi’s lack of grovelling and hired mercenaries to wreck his shop. And they did, and the big, burly blacksmith did nothing to save himself. He wished he could crush their heads in his hands, but he’d made a vow, and his stubbornness was stronger than his anger and sense of self-preservation. When they began beating him he didn’t move a finger. The only things he managed to save from his crumbling forge when the thugs were done with it were a few tools and his old great axe from his raiding days.

He was 43 by then, grey starting to creep into his black mane of hair, and he had nothing to show for his years now. Just the clothes on his back and the tools in his hands. But he wasn’t sad, he was barely even angry any more. The way he saw it he’d been given a second chance when he deserved nothing and he had no right to be anything other than happy. This was a new opportunity, chance to relocate and find better things elsewhere. And he did, eventually, more on that later. He used what money he had left to buy a new workshop and built a new forge in the Dark State capital. It was there that he started to get a lot of recognition for his skills.

The nobles there had heard of him and his proximity meant more of them could come over to see him. He crafted many pieces for the lowest to the highest of Dark Nation noble families and word of his dedication to his art, his efficiency in the forge and his skill continued to spread. One day he received a very special guest, though he didn’t know it at the time. To him it was just another woman, he guessed a noble by the cut of her clothes, who’d come to ask for another specially commissioned piece. The piece in question was surprisingly specific but at the same time wasn’t so unusual that he spent any more than one idle second giving it any thought. He told the woman to return in a few days; after all he had other commissions to take care of before hers. And so he continued his work and when the lady returned he presented her with her finished piece, a simple steel amulet, neither garish nor ostentatious, but possessing a certain classy, understated beauty and elegance to it. He was personally happy enough with the piece, she paid him, he thanked her for her custom and he fully expected that to be the end of their interaction for the foreseeable future. It wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

The lady returned the next day, much to his confusion. He could only assume she was unsatisfied with his work. That was the only logical reason to explain why she’d return right? Well as it turned out no. She was there to invite him to meet a friend of hers. Bewildered by this turn of events he remained silent through much of the conversation, she must have taken that as him agreeing to her offer as two days later he found himself being dragged off in a carriage.

To say he stood out in his faded workman’s clothes with more holes in them than he could count would be an understatement. He pushed on though, after all he was there, and he might as well meet the man. Maybe it was another eccentric noble who wanted a life-size bronze statue of their crinkly old physique muscled up. It wasn’t. It’s important to add that, while Dahashi had been living in the Dark Nation for some time now he had never really taken any interest in the nation’s royalty. As such when he was presented to Saichi, the royal smith at the time, it was to be expected that he had no clue who the man was. Dahashi’s lack of decorum also showed during his conversation with the man, but that did not seem to faze the older smith. The two talked to great lengths of forging and metalwork, their conversation ending only at night, ‘just in time for dinner’ Saichi pointed out just as Dahashi’s stomach let out a long and rather loud grumble of distress.

Dahashi would visit Saichi several times over the next few weeks, eventually finding out that the old man he’d been having lengthy (and sometimes quite animated and passionate) arguments about metalwork was actually the royal smith. This changed very little between them; Dahashi had lost his instinct to watch himself around nobles a long time ago. The lack of grovelling didn’t seem to bother Saichi in the least and the two continued to meet every once in a while, often over a meal. During such meals he got to meet several of the man’s friends. One of the first he met that way was a woman who introduced herself as Saranade. Rarely had he seen a purer expression of the word alluring. Powerful, mysterious, seductive and fascinating, that was Sarande summed up in a few words. He could tell as soon as he saw her that she could do more than look good in a (backless, he couldn’t but notice) dress, that woman was dangerous. Her pose, the way she walked, it all screamed of lethality. He’d seen many people in his days as a raider try to do what she did by simply being around. She remained quite tight lipped on what she did, but it didn’t take Dahashi long to come to the conclusion that her work was probably neither pleasant nor legal. He didn’t probe though, she was entitled to her secrets, much as he was entitled to his, after all during that meal he remained just as evasive about his own past achievements (which amounted to killing his own mother and spending twenty years in prison by his count). He kept a very clear memory of that woman, and even as he was leaving Saichi’s estate he knew the memory of her wouldn’t leave him any time soon, or at least the feeling of physical vulnerability she induced wouldn’t.

The only other friend of Saichi’s he met who remained in Dahashi’s mind (all the others were boring nobles and politicians) was the very same woman who had placed the order for the amulet and schemed to make the two blacksmiths meet one another. He was properly introduced to her for the first time, learning her name, Arlania Shir, and her occupation, advisor to the Dark Nation royalty. That rung some warning bells. Why had the advisor to the king of the nation commissioned him of all people when she had the royal smith to fill out her orders? Over their many discussions Dahashi had come to admit that Saichi knew his trade very well indeed, and he did not seem frail enough to be incapable of working a forge. It was later that evening, as Dahashi was readying himself to leave, that Arlania approached him outside. She explained to him the situation, and the events of the last few weeks finally made sense to him. As it turned out Saichi was dying and she’d been looking for someone to take up the role of royal smith. He had been one of many smiths in the nation she’d commissioned pieces from, one of few who’d performed well enough to grant further observation, and the one who’d come closest to Saichi’s approval. In short she told him he was to be the next royal smith for the Dark Nation and that he had until Saichi’s death to get his affairs in order. This was all said rather bluntly and he was given little time to respond.

Once again, his bewildered silence must have been taken as a yes, because two years later Arlania returned to his forge. Saichi had succumbed to his illness, and he, Dahashi Okanishi, was to be the new royal smith for the Dark Nation. She made a point to use his real name rather than Kuma Aruego, the one he’d adopted after leaving prison, probably to let him know that she knew who he was and maybe to warn him he would be under observation. Probably both.

He was moved to a large house closer to the castle and instantly grew to hate the place. He much preferred the palace’s forge. As a matter of fact to this day he still refuses to sleep in his own quarters, preferring to sleep right in the workshop. He spends the majority of his time there, not always working. He doesn’t like having to go into the palace proper; he doesn’t feel at ease or in place there, even after a decade of working for the royal family. That may partly be because all of the nobles there tend to give him a wide berth out of a mixture of fear and disgust.

Subject: Re: Dahashi Okanishi Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:46 pm

Approved.