Okami

狼 ''An extension of this semantic affinity of the wolf with the dog is its image (in myth and legend) as a protector of mankind— a sort of banken 番犬(watchdog) in the mountains. This watchdog role appears in the benign okuri-okami 送り狼 (sending wolf) stories. “When someone is walking along mountain roads at night sometimes a wolf follows without doing anything. On nearing the house the wolf disappears”. Sometimes the ubiquitous okuri-okami tales also mention the danger of looking back or falling over while being followed by the wolf, acts that may invite the wolf to attack. . . Nonetheless, what is usually stressed is that the wolf’s purpose is not to prey but to protect, to see the lonely human being safely home through the dangerous night-time mountains. The danger of the nocturnal mountains is neutralized by the wolf’s presence. Even today many villagers claim to have had such experiences in their youth.''


 * John Knight


 * Asian Folklore Studies, Volume 56，1997: pg. 136

Description
As Okami: At a hair over six feet in height and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds Okami would be a rather formidable figure in a world which did not include people capable of juggling small moons. As it is he simply appears to be an ordinary human being, albeit one in excellent physical condition. While powerful he moves with an unhindered grace, more reminiscent of a decathlete than a line backer.

Okami wears the formfitting costume traditional to most heroes; dark tan with a deep brown wedge on the torso that widens to cover the shoulders. A tan mask with white lenses covers his face, leaving his short blond hair free to be brushed straight back. On his feet he wears heavy boots of deep brown that protect his shins and on his hands he wears heavy gloves of the same color that extend nearly to his elbow. Plates of hard black plastic along the knuckles of the hands and fingers add to the protection.

As Lazarus: Standing at just over six feet in height and weighing in at a solid two hundred and twenty pounds Lazarus cuts a rather imposing figure for an ordinary man. With broad shoulders and powerful arms he could easily be some sort of professional athlete.

His face is strong, the planes appearing almost chiseled with sharp cheekbones and a square jaw. He wears his blond hair cut short and brushed back from his scalp with a pair of dark glasses covering his eyes at nearly all times. A leather jacket lies over a dark grey t-shirt stretched tight across his powerful chest and on his hands he wears a pair of leather gloves. Worn jeans cover his legs and his feet are clad in boots, the kind one wears for hiking, and over his shoulder is often slung a small duffle bag.

Powers and Skills
The majority of Okami's abilities come from his enhanced physiology. he is stronger, faster, and tougher than all but the most highly trained of human athletes. His senses are super-humanly acute and he is capable of recovering from any non-fatal injury at an incredibly rate. He can run at speeds of up to 30 miles an hour for protracted periods of time and can leap over obstacles fifteen feet tall.

Over his long lifespan he has acquired a wide array of skills. He is an expert Taijutsu, the martial arts style traditionally employed by ninjas and is skilled at moving silently, climbing sheer surfaces, and tumbling. Together with his preference for climbing claws and his idiomatic command of the Japanese language it seems more than likely that at some point he lived in Japan for a span of years and was trained as a ninja, despite his occidental ancestry. The remainder of his skills appear to indicate a background as a soldier or intelligence agent but thus far no records of this activity have been uncovered. Okami's mind seems rather resistant to tampering and access. Whether this is a result of natural mutation, the time he spent living feral, mental discipline or his fractured memories is unclear but most mentalists find him significantly more difficult to affect than a regular human although he is far from immune to psionic abilities.

Okami also carries specialized equipment to help him in his life an adventurer. His costume incorporates a radio transceiver as well as polarizing lenses to help him compensate for his acutely sensitive vision and is woven of advanced materials designed to absorb and deflect attacks. Regeneration is nice but still painful and Okami sees no particular point to subjecting himself to unnecessary pain. Over his hands he wears special gloves which are reinforced with striking plates to add more damage to his punches as well as assisting him in blocking. Retractable claws in the palms of the gloves (shuko) and the soles of his boots (ashiko) assist him with climbing difficult surfaces.

Personality
For nearly a century and a half Lazarus' life has been one of violence, intrigue, and suspicion. While his memories of this life are mostly lost to him they have nonetheless left their marks upon him. Constantly on the run from Wolfguard and other agents of his forgotten past Lazarus lives his life as covertly as possible. He knows that the entire world it interconnected through the computer network and that a fingerprint or a photo in the wrong place can bring his enemies down upon him. Living off the grid is difficult in the midst of the 21st century but a necessity.

Lazarus is far from comfortable in social situations. How do you trust someone when there really are people out to get you? In a world filled with feint and counter-feint, false flags and disinformation, how can you know that what anyone tells you is true? Even worse, those around you don't have to have malicious intent. Simply a wrong word in the wrong place and someone with the purest of motives can have your enemy at your throat.

And if trust is hard to extend how much harder is it to extend the hand of friendship? While his memories may be gone he still carries with him the marks of all those he has lost, whether to violence as in the case of so many comrades in arms or simply to the ravages of time.

Origins
(N.B.: His history prior to 2052 is somewhat speculative. This is his history as currently envisioned but as he discovers more about his background it may be subject to change.)

Old Life
Born over 150 years ago at the dawn of the 20th century the man who would become Lazarus has been many things; husband, father, soldier, thief, ninja, smuggler, spy, and assassin. Gifted with abilities that exceeded those of human beings and a longevity that has kept him close to his physical peak for well over a hundred years he lived a life of danger and adventure, violence and intrigue.

The man who would become Lazarus was born Johan Jaeger in the cold woods of North Dakota in December 1901. With his mutant biology he grew more quickly than the average child. In 1916 as America prepared to enter the first World War he lied about his age and enlisted in the United States army at the age of 15. After basic training he served a year in Europe and recieved a battlefield promotion to corporal until exposure to mustard gas before his mutant healing ability had fully emerged resulted in him being rotated home and nearly discharged from the Army. In 1918, after an apparently miraculous recovery from his mustard gas exposure he was transferred to the 27th Infantry Regiment during the Siberian Intervention due to his experience in cold weather.

His tenacity and fearless tactics during the Siberian Intervention earned him a battlefield promotion to Sargent and the nickname "Volkodav" or "Wolfhound" from the Bolsheviks (a nickname erroneously applied to the 27th Infantry in general). In March of 1920 Johan lead a squad in an attempt to rescue Japanese prisoners from the town of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur. Although less successful than hoped for the squad did manage to free some 50 Japanese civilians and soldiers of the 14th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army. Utilizing guerrilla warfare tactics to fight a rearguard action against the pursuing Red Army units of Yakov Triapitsyn Johan's squad was able to protect the escape of the prisoners.

Among the soldiers saved was Hattori Yamato, the son of a prominent leader of the secretive Iga clan of Japanese ninjas. During the escape from the Red Army the two became friends and after Johan's term of service ended in Hawaii in 1921 he was approached by Yamato. Johan spent the next fifteen years living in Japan as a guest and student of the Iga clan where he was initially given the nickname "Okami-inu", meaning a mongrel half dog and half wolf, after he mangled the translation of "Wolfhound".

Living in the mountains of Japan Johan studied the arts of Ninjutsu and Taijutsu, becoming skilled in the use of blades and shuko. Far and away, however, he became the most skilled in the use of the kusari-fundo, a chain with a weight on both ends. His skill with the weapon became so great that ultimately he used one nearly 10 meters in length whereas the standard length of the weapon is usually only 3 to 4 meters.

With wartime tensions increasing between Japan and China Johan found tension increasing between himself and the Iga clan. His friend Yamato had perished several years previously during a mission to China. Yamato's father was in poor health and not expected to live much longer and Johan's unnatural strength and speed, along with his non-native ancestry, had earned him the enmity of several of the younger members of the clan. In 1936 he elected to return home rather than remain with a family which regarded him increasingly as an outsider.

Returning to America Johan spent several years in New York, falling in with a circle of local adventures and becoming a member of the Empire Club. During a trip home to North Dakota he fell in love with a Chippewa girl named Ominotago. The two were married and in 1941 she gave birth to a daughter named Ayashe.

With Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II in 1941 Johan once again enlisted in the Army, despite the fears of his wife. Deployed to the European theater his skills in covert operations were brought to the attention of higher-ups and he was recruited for the formation of the Office of Strategic Services in 1942 where he served in espionage and intelligence gathering operations.

Near the end of the war Johan was assigned to infiltrate a newly formed German organization, the Wolfhead Project. Though initially successful Johan was betrayed by a member of the Iga clan whom he had feuded with years ago who recognized him. Captured by the Wolfhead Project he was brainwashed and reprogrammed by the infamous Baron Zerstoiten, turned into an assassin and instructor for the agents of Wolfguard.

His memories of his past life were erased and he was given a new set of memories as the son of a wealthy high ranking Nazi who was a member of the then nascent Wolfhead Project. His reprogramming led him to believe he had been enhanced through Wolfhead Project sciences and taken to Japan in to 1930's to be trained as a ninja during his childhood before returning to Germany in order to function as an intelligence agent, saboteur and assassin.

Baro Zerstoiten also took samples of Johan's blood and used it (in addition to the blood of other unidentified metas) to form the Royal Caste of the Wolfguard whom Johan later trained, passing on his own skills and knowledges.

The falsified memories were imperfect, however, and from time to time he would have dreams of his life before Wolfguard; dreams that not only did not agree with the false history he had been given but which did not even seem possible, such as fighting against Red Army Bolshevik's in battles at least five years before he should have even been born. With growing suspicions that something was not right he broke into the records of Wolfguard in 1968 to discover the truth, that he was a captured agent who had been reprogrammed and whose entire life was a lie. Unfortunately those records did not include details of his previous life including such things as the woman and child who sometimes appeared in his dreams. Unable to return to his earlier life he spent the next several decades wandering the world as a thief and smuggler, always on the run from both Wolfguard as well as the CIA (the descendent organization of the OSS).

Death and Rebirth
All of this was wiped away in an instant one cold February in 2052 in the snow covered mountains of Canada. A sniper's bullet, a long fall, a plunge into the raging torrent of an icy river and that life was gone, like footprints in the sand.

He washed up far downstream upon the shores of the river where the waters ran more slowly, the bullet pushed from his skull by his regenerative abilities. Still, the damage was done. Awaking he reverted to his primal nature, living as an animal in the frozen north, his memories of his past life fragmented, only appearing as flashes when he slept; flashes of pain and rage, sorrow and anger.

For five years he lived like that, though he had no concept of time as a human does, living instead in an ever-present now. That far in the wilderness people were few and far between. The rare sightings of him that did occur were dismissed as the over active imaginations of campers who had heard one too many ghost stories about the campfire or hoaxes by people looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

He lived like that until one day in his travels he stumbled across an old man, a Jesuit priest who, dissatisfied with life among men had elected to become a hermit, retiring to a small cabin deep within the wilderness. The priest, noticing the barefooted tracks of another human as he hunted, began to leave bits of food for Johan. First deep within the forest but then gradually closer and closer to the clearing in which his tiny cabin stood. Over the months he was eventually able to coax the savage wildman to take food just outside his cabin while the old man would sit and watch. Stirred by some deep-seated need for companionship Johan began to reciprocate, bringing game he had managed to bring down and setting it outside the old priest's cabin and in time the two formed an odd friendship.

With human contact once again parts of Johan's mind began to once again awake. Language skills came back and social skills returned. Even his sense of identity began to come back though his memories of the past, including his name, remained fragmented. Instead the priest gave him a new name, Lazarus, after the man who was raised from the dead.

Lazarus stayed with the old priest for four years until finally one night the old man passed away peacefully in his sleep. Burying the old man he set out into the world in an attempt to find out who he was.

Surely someone out there must know who he is, but if they are they are keeping it very close to the vest. All electronic records of him seem to have been destroyed and he quickly learned about the dangers of using such systems when a Wolfguard strike team leveled the sheriff's office of a small town when his fingerprints were run.

Now his wanderings have brought him to Colonial Bay, a hub of metahuman and alien activity where he hopes to find someone who will be able to unravel the mystery of his past.

(My thanks to Amber and Azure's player for graciously granting permission to attach my character to her's and for her assistance in some of the finer details of Wolfguard's history.)