dossier.
basics
NAME Karasu Katou.
ALIASES Crow
AGE Appears to be In their 20's| actual age redacted.
NAMEDAY Unknown.
LANGUAGE(S) Common,Hingan, Doman, Far eastern, Dragon.
RACE Hyur.
GENDER Cis Male.
ORIENTATION bisexual.
STATUS Poly| Multiship character.
FAMILY Plentiful brothers and sisters.
OCCUPATION Shinigami, shrine keeper.
RESIDENCE:Yanxia.
ALIGNMENT Neutral GoodLIKESenjoys the scent of plum blossoms, the sound of rain on paper umbrellas, and the quiet ritual of offerings left in silence; he finds comfort in unread poems, forgotten books, and the gentle weight of moonlight on still water.
DISLIKES loud voices that disrupt quiet spaces, the stench of burning incense offered without sincerity, careless writing that stains paper with wasted meaning, and mirrors.. especially those that reflect more than they should.
physical
EYE COLOR Black or Golden.
HAIR COLOR Dyed blonde.
RACIAL FEATURES Tall, crow like physical features. (Pointed nose, feathers in their hair. Feathered wings behind their human ears.)
MARKINGS Moles, Tattoos.
HEIGHT 8'0''
WEIGHT 350
BUILD Thin, lanky.
AETHERIC SIGNATURE cold, inky presence..like moonlight spilled across wet parchment, threaded with the scent of old paper, rain, and mournful bells. It lingers in the air with a weightless pressure, as though time itself pauses to listen when he draws near.
stats
| STATISTICS | LEVEL (out of 5) |
|---|---|
STRENGTH | ⯁⯁⯁⯁⯁ |
DEXTERITY | ⯁⯁⯁ |
CONSTITUTION | ⯁⯁⯁⬖ |
INTELLIGENCE | ⯁⯁⯁ |
WISDOM | ⯁⯁⯁⬖ |
CHARISMA | ⯁⯁ |
quirks
He dislikes touching water—but adores rain.- Despite his regal composure, Karasu avoids walking through rivers or bathing in still water, saying, “It reflects too much.” Yet he walks in the rain without hesitation, his robes soaking, tail trailing ink behind him, humming old Doman lullabies under his breath. Some say rain is the only time he feels mortal again.
He leaves behind faint ink prints instead of footprints. -Though he walks as if weightless, his bare feet or geta always leave behind faint traces of black calligraphy on the ground—ink-strokes that vanish when no one is looking. The symbols are often fragments of poetry, names, or words from forgotten languages.
He hums lullabies that no living person remembers.- Sometimes, when lost in thought or guiding a soul, Karasu hums softly. The tune is unfamiliar to all but the oldest spirits. Scholars who try to transcribe it find the notes change upon reading, as if the song rewrites itself to fit the listener’s regrets.
characteristics
Positive
Compassionate Protector– Despite his fearsome role as a shinigami, Karasu shows a rare and genuine compassion for lost souls and the living alike. He guides the forgotten gently, offering solace where others bring only fear, and sometimes intervenes to save those caught between life and death.
Wise and Insightful –Karasu’s long existence has granted him profound wisdom. He reads people not just by their words, but by the unspoken truths in their hearts, allowing him to offer counsel that is both deeply empathetic and eerily accurate, often revealing hidden paths or unseen dangers.
Patient and Thoughtful – He rarely rushes into action or judgment. Instead, Karasu observes carefully, weighing every choice with the patience of one who understands the fragile balance between life and death. His measured demeanor often helps de-escalate conflict and brings clarity to chaotic situations.
Loyal to Forgotten Bonds – Though he may seem solitary, Karasu honors promises and memories, especially to those long lost or overlooked by the world. His loyalty to these bonds is unbreakable, making him a steadfast ally to those who have earned his trust, even across lifetimes.
Neutral
Detached Observer – Karasu often maintains an emotional distance from those around him, watching events unfold like a silent witness. He rarely reveals his true feelings, making it hard to know where his loyalties lie or what he truly thinks.
Cryptic Speaker – He speaks in riddles, half-truths, or poetic fragments that leave others guessing. His words often carry hidden meanings, requiring patience and insight to fully understand, sometimes frustrating allies and confounding enemies alike.
Bound by Duty – Karasu’s sense of obligation to the balance between life and death is absolute, sometimes causing him to prioritize the greater cosmic order over individual desires or feelings. This can make him appear cold or impersonal, even when he acts with the best intentions.
Keeper of Secrets –Karasu holds countless secrets—ancient knowledge, forgotten names, and hidden truths—but he shares them sparingly, only when absolutely necessary. This makes him invaluable as an ally but also difficult to fully trust, as his silence can be both protective and isolating.
Negative
Aloof and Distant – Karasu often appears cold and unapproachable, keeping others at arm’s length. His emotional detachment can make it difficult for those around him to connect with or understand him, fostering mistrust or loneliness.
Haunted by Regret – Despite his power, Karasu is weighed down by memories of mistakes and losses from his long life—especially those involving souls he couldn’t save. This regret sometimes clouds his judgment or causes him to hesitate at critical moments.
Reluctant to Trust – Having lived through betrayal and conflict, Karasu is slow to place faith in others. This suspicion can strain alliances and hinder cooperation, as he often expects others to have hidden motives.
Fiercely Proud –Karasu’s status as an emperor and his yokai origins give him a strong pride that resists compromise or admitting weakness. This can lead to clashes with those who challenge his authority or ideals.
lore.
Hooks
The Feather That Shouldn’t Burn– A strange black feather appears in your belongings.. sleek, long, and unnaturally cool to the touch. When thrown into flame, it does not burn. When left behind, it returns. Eventually, it begins pointing, ever so slightly, toward Yanxia… toward something waiting in the mist. A guide? A summons? Or a curse?
The Inkbound Letter – A mysterious sealed letter arrives, addressed in elegant ink, bearing a folded black feather as its wax stamp. Inside is an invitation,no name, no sender, only coordinates and the phrase:"You once let a soul die wrongly. Come balance the scales."When you arrive, you are not alone… and Karasu is waiting with a ledger full of names, one of them your own..
The Emperor’s Missing Memory – A lost tome found in a Doman ruin contains a riddle written in black ink, sealed with the impression of a jeweled finger. The final stanza is missing—ripped clean from the page. Scholars believe it may be a memory Karasu erased from himself. To solve it could reveal his weakness—or awaken a part of him he buried long ago .
The Silent Procession – Villagers in Namai report seeing ghostly figures walking in a line through their rice fields under the blood moon. They leave no footprints, only fading song. Some say it is the work of Karasu, who guides souls that do not belong in this world but others whisper that something is stealing his procession. Karasu may require mortal help to protect the very balance he once guarded alone.
Rumors
“He weeps ink when he dreams.” – Some say the Emperor of the Dead Canopy does not sleep as mortals do, but when he closes his eyes, the air around him thickens with mourning. Drops of black ink fall from his eyes and write the names of the next to die… sometimes even before fate knows it.
“He once stole a kami’s death.” – An old Kojin priest in Isari claims that Karasu intercepted the soul of a sea god whose time had not yet come. The yokai-turned-emperor devoured the kami’s death to prevent a flood that would have swallowed Yanxia. Since then, the kami is said to wander, unable to die bound to Karasu’s mercy.
“He visits the same grave every year—one that no longer exists.” – In the ruins near Namai, some villagers speak of a lone veiled figure seen on the night of the ghost moon, laying silent offerings to an unmarked patch of earth. No stone, no name, no spirit remains but Karasu kneels there all the same, as if mourning someone the world was never meant to remember.
“His tail remembers your sins.” A wandering Raen storyteller insists that each thread of Karasu’s long tail contains the whispered regrets of a soul he has judged. If the tail brushes your skin, it will unravel your deepest secret and if you lie in his presence, it tightens like a noose.
Past
ONE Doma’s haunted mirror
In the misted folds of Yanxia, where the One River flows like a silver blade through ruined rice fields and reed-strewn silence, there once lingered a whisper in the shadow of the Azim Steppe’s southern tail. A yokai, born not of a beast or blade but of abandonment, sorrow, and a discarded oath.Karasu's first form was not wholly crow, nor wholly man, but a scatter of things forgotten: an imperial comb cracked in grief, a length of black ribbon once knotted in a lover’s hair, a prayer-strip never burned. All these coalesced in the shadow of a blighted sakura tree during the Garlean occupation of Doma when a thousand souls died silently and their names were swallowed by the riverbed.TWO Where grief festered, a yokai awakened.The people of southern Yanxia named the apparition Kurō-Karasu, the Black One of the Canopy,for he roosted among the dead trees, voice like flutes carved from bone, tail long as a funeral banner. He fed on memories that slipped loose from the living and bartered them for riddles, dreams, or gentle madness. He never brought death, only echoed it until the night he refused it.Near the burned village of Namai, a spirit-child clung to life beyond her time, caught in a veil-thin space between life and the Raiton no Haka (Graves of Thunder), where lightning spirits judged the dead. Karasu came to steal her final dream but her stubborn waiting, her love for a brother long since passed into Doma's fallen annals, made him pause.THREE Rather than consume her, he sheltered her. Carried her soul through the ghost-wet rice fields, beyond the reach of Goryō yokai and lost doman shades, and delivered her safely to the threshold of the Kugane-shū shrine, where the shinigami watched. This act, at once tiny and tectonic, tore open a ripple in the void. Drawn by this mercy, the Rōnin of Twilight, an exiled shinigami bound to the Phantom Moon, descended upon Karasu not to destroy, but to offer. A compact. A chrysalis. Would he remain carrion-eater? Or would he rise, death-forged, into one who guided souls through Yanxia’s fractured wheel of life?Four Karasu chose transcendence..No longer a mere yokai, Karasu rose as Shinigami Tennō, Emperor of the Dead Canopy, ruling a secret fold of the underworld known in forbidden tongue as Hagoromo-no-Kurai the Twilight Robe of the World. Here, the wind is silent, the cherry trees bloom black, and souls who were never mourned find final ceremony. Even the kami whisper now: "He wears the storm like a crown, and memory like a blade." And though he rules a realm hidden between the rivers of Doma and the moon's reflection, Karasu still walks the roads of Yanxia, veiled and alone, offering riddles to the dying, and lullabies to the lost. They say if you meet him beneath a blood moon, you must answer his question truthfully… Or risk becoming part of his silken tail forever.
Present
ONE Shinigami Tennō of the Dead Canopy, Emperor of the Silent Roads.Now, in the breathless quiet after the storm of Doma’s liberation, while the lands of Yanxia begin to heal beneath red banners and rain-slick rice fields, a shadow remains untouched by the sun. He is no longer whispered about with fear, but with deep, reverent caution. Karasu, the Twilight Sovereign, still walks the liminal edges of the mortal world. Though his dominion, Hagoromo-no-Kurai, lies nestled in a fold of reality few can name between dream and afterlife his presence is felt across the quiet villages and forgotten battlefields of the East. He appears rarely, always veiled, often at dusk. Sometimes upon bridges no longer marked on maps. Sometimes beside funeral pyres or shrines to ancestors whose names no one recalls. Sometimes when a dying man speaks a name that never belonged to him. Though he rules over death, Karasu is not an executioner.TWO He is a curator of endings a shinigami who believes that death is not silence, but composition.Every soul is a verse. Every passing, a stanza. In this way, he conducts the world’s dirge with the poise of a poet-emperor. Even as shinigami politics shift new pacts forming between realms, spirit-wars blooming beyond the reach of mortal sight Karasu remains distant from courtly intrigues. Yet all the lesser shinigami heed his law. When the Yama-no-Okami, the mountain death gods of Othard, rose in rebellion and sought to break the Wheel of Samsara, it was Karasu who stilled them with a whisper and bound them in his cloak of ink. He is said to move between the living and the dead through rifts woven into his tail, which unfurls like a scroll behind him, each strand marked with the true names of those forgotten. He wears a veil , dark and golden spun from the hair of a leviathan yokai once slain in the Void. His voice is soft, but when he speaks, even the Raen ancestors pause to listen.THREE In the mortal realm, Karasu has taken on a new purpose a guide, a riddle-giver, a watcher of balance. He has begun appearing more often, particularly in lands where the flow of aether is damaged or twisted—Garlemald, the ruins of the Burn, and even in Eorzea proper. To some, it is a warning. To others, a quiet offering of protection.He has allies among wandering shrine maidens, moonlit exorcists, and even a curious Doman astrologian who claims to chart the heavens by the arc of Karasu’s tail.But Karasu himself remains alone.Immortal, but burdened with memory. Regal, but rooted in sorrow. He watches the living not with envy, but with an aching tenderness. For all his grandeur, the emperor of the dead canopy is still the yokai born of a broken comb, still the one who stayed with a child too long forgotten. And sometimes, on moonless nights in Yanxia, the villagers say a crow made of shadows leaves a single black feather on their doorstep.They say it means someone is watching over them. —
gallery.
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ooc.
NAMESalem| AGE 30 | PRONOUNSShe/Her | TIME ZONE Pst
LOCATION Dynamis / Maduin
Rules
IC ≠ OOC - I am not my character, and I will never be them. Please understand that the things they say or do do not reflect me as a person.
Character Death- I will never role-play my character’s death. I'm fine with injuries, battles, and bloody conflicts—just don’t take advantage of that kindness.
OOC Drama- I don’t tolerate out-of-character drama. If you bring negativity, you will be blocked. I'm here to write, not deal with petty nonsense. If you're the type to stir things up, please don’t interact with me.
Character Behavior- My character might be rude, controversial, or morally grey—that's part of their story. Again: IC actions do not reflect my OOC views or beliefs.
NSFW Themes- I enjoy writing mature, erotic, or adult themes within character-driven stories. That said, just because my character may be promiscuous doesn't mean I am. I'm here for writing, not anything beyond friendship OOC.
RETCON Policy- I’m open to retcons if something needs to be changed—just communicate with me. Don’t erase things without talking to me first.
OOC
Hi there! I'm 30 years old and have been role-playing in the world of FFXIV for a few years now. I go by all pronouns and genuinely don’t mind which you use, as long as you're respectful.
I’m probably online more than I should be. Outside of role-play, I enjoy Gposing, crafting, running content, and hunting down emotes and mounts.
I’m generally friendly, open, and happy to chat, so don’t hesitate to reach out to me, even outside of RP!
If you’re interested in learning more about my character, feel free to message me OOC. I’m always open to setting up scenes or handing over my Discord for future planning.
