The Touhou Original Character Compendium

For appearance, here are some ideas based on my overall impression: f'real Shaolin monk training clothes, a Goth Loli-ish dress like Byakuren(she's sorta also a monk, right), a sorta-Chinese dress like Kasen's dress, or a somewhat contemporary police or military uniform with frills and ribbons.

Also, I'd like to know what type of relationship Yukine would have with Meiling. Brains and Brawn? Rival Dojos? GreenOniOppositeOfGreenOni?

I'll try to look over Yukine's profile and make a comment before tonight, but I just want to say I don't usually do a "Tropes Associated with X" thing because I'm not honestly sure which tropes usually fit my characters. My Trope Fu is quite weak, honestly.

If people want, they can suggest things they think for tropes and see how that works? owo

Usually a stage 4 boss would have 4 spellcards, but Patchouli seems to use 5 in EOSD. I wonder if this has anything to do with 5 elements (not counting the sun and moon signs), and that maybe ZUN was balancing it out so that each element got equal representation?

Would it be too much if Yukine used 6? Like, say, one non-spell (warm-up stretches?) before going straight to a succession of spellcards?

Shaolin monk outfit sounds like a step in the right direction, but something tells me that's not quite it. Maybe it'd be some kind of stereotypical warrior-monk outfit, anyway.

Yukine and Meiling... at some point, they'd have to have a sparring match to compare their strength and technique. At least, when one or both of them are off their guard shifts, anyway.

If there were three protagonists, then each could face four spellcards. Do you have a thought about which ones you'd want to throw at Marisa and Reimu?

edited 28th Nov '10 9:48:14 PM by Durazno

I guess that would give each style an equal share of the spotlight.

Haven't really thought about who gets what, except that Reimu's definitely not getting the Hare and Snake sign spellcards. At least not when she's using homing shots. You can probably guess why.

One big relevant question, of course, is what she's guarding, and under whose orders?

The Scarlet Devil Mansion? She might temporarily replace Meiling, for whatever reason. Alternatively, something to do with the previously-discussed fairy uprising.

(Though most likely, she'd be introduced in a new game along with a set of other new characters...)

Also, spellcards again.

• Ox Sign
  • "Boulder Stance" (E/N) / "Strength of the Mountain" (H/L) — a survival spellcard. Yukine throws boulders at you with increasing pace. She also makes the ground shake, so watch out for falling rocks.
• Sheep Sign
  • "Counting Sheep" (E/N) / "The Flock Protecting the Shepherd" (H/L) — Yukine stands back and summons wave after wave of attacking familiars. They keep shooting at you (infrequently) until they disappear past the bottom of the screen, or until killed.
• Dog Sign
  • "Time-Honored Tradition" (E/N) / "Keeper of the Old Ways" (H/L) — Yukine makes an elaborate pattern with danmaku. Sort of like Lyrica's solo spellcard PCB, or Aya's second one in MOF.

edited 1st Dec '10 3:04:45 AM by KylerThatch

I haven't had time to read over her or post yet(I'm a bit busy with a writing project which I absolutely cannot delay), but I'll try to post something tomorrow. Honest!

For now, could you move Ayu to the bottom of the order for the four profile postings? Right now I'm pretty sure I'll need a lot of the maximum time alloted to create an adequate profile for her.

I sort of like the idea of her guarding a mountain pass beneath a hidden monastery somewhere.

I'd personally go with just a hidden monastery. Maybe Yukine is honor bound to guard it, even though it's very well hidden, a shadow of it's former self, abandoned, etc. A few of those scenarios could also have an impact on her Twelve Forms as she would have to be long lived to be the apprentice of the last known master, be given the basics of the last monks and figure out the rest herself, or be entirely self-taught with whatever texts were left behind.

Also, for future reference, do we need to come up with 16 Spell Cards for our OCs for just Reimu and Marisa or do need need 24 for Reimu, Marisa, and a third character?

No need to come up with huge lists; that's just Yukine's thing. All we need for this poll is some way for their attacks to vary based on who you play as.

edited 2nd Dec '10 11:48:16 AM by Durazno

In Yukine's case, really, it's sort of like 12 spellcards, with the Hard/Lunatic versions being The Same But More, under a different name. Which seems to be the case for most spellcards anyway.

The idea I had for Yukine was that she learned under a number of different masters, the way Aang did in Avatar The Last Airbender. Perhaps even in order, starting with the master of the Rat Style, ending with the master of the Pig Style.

But I like the idea of a hidden (possibly abandoned) monastery, with ancient texts left behind by previous masters of the Twelve Forms. Said text containing not only lessons on the use of all twelve styles in combat, but the unique philosophy inherent in the pursuit of such a path. Where each individual style emphasizes one virtue over another, the Twelve Forms teaches balance and adaptability.

Alright, Let's move this along. Staff Sarges, up next! Durazno, we await your write-up!

In other news,

In other news, having "Aimless" in Amber's title make me want a picture of her dressed in yellow caution tape.

I was serious about this. Someone who gets the joke and can draw, do eet!

SHE IS THE TREES WHOOPS

Real life is bearing down on me at the moment. I'll probably be around to do the writeup late tomorrow.

So, I made a titanic post in the NACIC which is relevant to this thread. Her it is, in all it's glory!

All right, so anyone who frequents the OCC may know that I've got this "Alien sector" of Gensokyo that is the focus of the first game in my Touhou series (and remains a prescence throughought, since Jol'Bihro comes out of retirement and is a Player Character in later games). Well, what I haven't said yet (but have implied) is that the Alien sector predated Gensokyo by several centuries (exact timeframe is unknown, but JB mentions at one point being decended from a prestigious lineage famous for their help in sealing the Saigyou Ayakashi, so they've been around at least as long as Yuyuko's been dead), and that Yukari created it in much the same manner as she created Gensokyo (part of the Watsonian reason why she's a boss in that game).  ^*

^{Doylist reason? Yukari's an extremely major character, and I wanted to reintroduce her ASAP.}

So, I started thinking of this, and Yukari's motives behind it all, and compared this with the Rose ==> Yukari theory I have, and eventually came up with this:

Where do you go when you've go no place to go?

Gensokyo is where.

First, the history of it all. Yukari was on earth, a little over 4000 years ago  ^*

^{(Yes, 4130 was the number I had in mind)}

. She had just finished a harrowing journey, where she gained her proficiency at bending and warping reality to her will. During that journey, she also learned of people who were trapped, and had no place to go, no place to seek refuge. So she decided that, one day, she would make a refuge, not just for them, but for anyone needing a place to go and call home. Flash forward two dozen or so centuries, and she encounters a troupe of aliens from the planet Darwin IV who needed exactly that. So, she started to work on making such a place. It was a bumpy road, but with perserverance (and a friend who could consume the history of any human/alien encounters), she eventually succeded in making a small little world. A little magic artifact made a stable climate similar to the aliens' home planet, and a siutable barrier was created, strong enough to keep humans out, but malleable enough to let plants bugs and other small creatures to go through (Their ark of alien animals was nowhere near comprehensive, and something needed to come in to fill all the vacant ecological niches). Then, the need arose to give the Youkai of the world such refuge, from the advancing knowledge & science of man, and this time, Yukari knew what she was doing. Another barrier was put up around the first one, and within this new barrier, named the Hakurei barrier after a miko who offered to do maintenance on it so Yukari could focus on the other one, Gensokyo was born.

Gensokyo is a refuge. It's a place where people the multiverse over can come when they can't go anywhere else. Or it will be. We're still getting there. Gensokyo is not complete.

In order for Gensoko to be a proper refuge, the people who come must not be in fear of segregation or oppression. We should be able to have Humans be Humans, Youkai be Youkai, Aliens be Aliens, Trolls be Trolls, etc. without there being signifigant prejudice between the races. In order for this to happen, the people of Gensokyo must learn to get along and be accepting of others, even to the point of accepting that members of a species who prey on you aren't demons, and deserve your friendship as much as anyone else. This is the ultamate goal of Gensokyo, and is what Yukari is working for. (Reimu too.) ZUN's series, Touhou as we know it today, is the first step. To get humans and Youkai, in conflict for so long they think it's reguired for the earth to keep turning, to coexist relativley peacefully. And they're well on their way, but not there yet. But eventually they will get there. Then my series kicks in. Regardless of when things are published, my first game takes place chronologically after ZUN's last game. By now, humans and Youkai get along rather well (though incedents still happen often), and Yukari decides to start phase 2: Send in the aliens! Eosapiens (the dominant species of the alien world) are not nearly as fearsome as Youkai, but they're different, and sometimes that which is strange is more frightening than that which is known to be dangerous. So, the two are allowed to interact. But, due to climatological reasons, even if this border were lowered, they wouldn't interact frequently. So Yukari asks a favor of and old friend: Jol'Bihro is a retired incedent solver, and knows the magic to get past the climate issue, so Yukari asks him to come out of retirement, and become active in the affairs of Gensokyo proper. This way, the humans and youkai of Gensokyo get regular interaction with at least one bona-fide alien. Now that peace has been made with the dangerous, can peace be made with the bizzare? That is a recurring motif in my Touhou series.

edited 8th Dec '10 5:27:03 PM by XionGaTaosenai

Sorry, fellows, this is gonna be kind of huge. In fact, feel free to chop this up if it looks like I've tried to cram too much into one profile.

Here we have a trio of young, hard-working half-beasts dispatched by Great Bishamonten to help his local Avatar and lighten Nazrin's workload. They're pretty high on the totem pole in spite of their lowly rank, reporting to Commander Nazrin, who reports to one of the Yaksha Generals, who reports to Bishamonten. The fact that they get to hang out and goof around with Shou confuses this a bit, but they try not to think about it too much.

These three are a unit; they've stuck together for almost three hundred years by now, and can't imagine life without the others close at hand. If you find one, you can probably raise your voice to reach the others.

In appearance, they're bright-eyed and professional in smart military uniforms with little garrison caps. (Agewise, they look... uh... older than Team 9 but younger than Reimu.) In recent months, however, they've grown weary and half-hearted in their duties around the Temple. Nazrin hasn't said anything, but wonders what they could be up to. Of course, we know.

• Jian

Jian is a were-Pixiu, and works as a treasurer and financial adviser to the Myouren Temple. Owing to Gensokyo's simple economy, she doesn't usually have a lot of work to do, so she amuses herself by Scrooge- McDucking through the coffers and playing board games with anyone who will join her. She eats half of every paycheck, but what is there to spend it on in Gensokyo? Food?

• Personality: Mild-mannered and playful, but occasionally petulant. Usually overshadowed by her companions. Secretly, she has a massive crush on Reimu Hakurei, though the exact nature of her feelings are open to interpretation. While she normally doesn't enjoy danmaku combat, she would leap at the chance to test her mettle against the border guardian.
• Appearance: She's an inch or two shorter than the others and kind of chubby, with green eyes and a poofy mane of golden hair. On full moons, she sprouts a tiny pair of golden wings and a single silver antler, her feet turn to hooves and her eyes turn silver.
• Power: She attracts wealth just by existing, especially on full moon nights. This is admittedly redundant with Nazrin and Shou around, and things can actually get dangerous for Gensokyo's economy when she and the avatar have their epic weeklong Go matches. (Shou's power isn't passive, but she forgets herself in the heat of the game.) Byakuren's a little embarrassed by the uptick in donations and is considering sending her on a vacation to the Hakurei Shrine.

• Wu

Wu is a were-Nian and a specialist in small unit tactics. Nazrin initially had no idea what to do with her, but then set her to work training a force of fairies and lesser yaksha for disaster relief and rescue missions. She's meeting with surprising success, but usually ends up doing most of the work herself.

• Personality: She's a bit hard-bitten and unpleasant to most people, an even mix of being afraid to let them close and actually being a jerk. Wu is skittish about loud noises and cold nights, an artifact of some awful incident in her past before she met the others. Now, she utterly despises the kind of vicious beast she used to be. For this reason, our third protagonist*
  Sen Nakano, a character I've entered in a past poll
  pisses her off enough to want some one-on-one time with her. Of course, they'll make up and get drunk sooner or later, but it'll be an intense boss fight in the meantime.
• Appearance: Thin and wiry, with curly silver hair and brown eyes. During the full moon, she gets a lion-like tail and vicious claws, her hair grows out into a proper mane, her eyes turn red and a sharp little pair of horns emerge from her head.
• Power: She claims to have the power to "be ferocious," but whether that's an honest-to-god Gensokyan power or a sarcastic answer to an annoying question is unclear. This hasn't stopped her friends from trying to equivocate it into being useful in increasingly improbable situations.

• Wen

Wen is a were-Luduan and the nominal leader of this little band. Nazrin has perfected the delicate art of working her into negotiations where her talent can come in handy and then yanking her away before her blunt, naive nature can ruin things. Otherwise, she does clerical work for the temple and keeps her fellow sergeants out of trouble... when she's not causing it. Unfortunately, her enthusiasm for truth and justice has landed the three of them in a rough spot.

• Personality: Wen is childish in some ways, but oddly mature in others. Whether her dependability, focus and honesty counteract her naivety, rudeness and recklessness is an open question. In Marisa Kirisame, she sees a human who lies with such confidence that it almost feels like truth. Utterly fascinated, she'll want a closer look.
• Appearance: Tall and skinny, with big blue eyes and straw-colored hair. On a full moon, her hair blooms into a magnificent mane, rough armor spreads down her limbs and a towering horn emerges from the crown of her head. This looks about as ridiculous as you might think, but you probably wouldn't say it to her face.
• Power: As a half-Luduan, she can instantly discern whether one's words are truth or lie, but she has no defense against equivocation and half-truths. It also doesn't tell her when people are mistaken, delusional or about to change their minds. In a place like Gensokyo, this power might be more of a liability than an asset.

You have to admit, Gensokyo looks like a pretty scary place to newcomers. After flipping through the Perfect Memento (apparently missing the "hardly anyone gets eaten" bit), Wen became obsessed with the idea of protecting the weak and downtrodden, and dragged her friends along in a few vigilante forays. These... didn't go well. Just when she was about to give up on the idea, a sinister figure with purple eyes appeared before her and offered her the power to stand up to Gensokyo's greatest monsters!

After a ridiculous sales pitch full of obvious half-truths and ominous predictions, Ms. Wisdom gives them the power to morph into spandex-clad avengers of justice. (This is an extension of their pre-existing ability to transform as half-beasts, apparently.) The costumes are standard Sentai fare, though the helmets let their hair(/magnificent manes) out and have stylized Shiisa mouths around the visors. Wen gets blue and wields a mancatcher, Wu gets red and wields tonfa while Jian gets green and a whip.

Now they patrol Gensokyo every other weekday looking for humans and weak youkai to rescue. It's great fun, but Wu has a bad feeling a whole arrangement. Something about how her old self seems to well up every time she morphs...

You encounter them on patrol, far from Myouren Temple.

You fight all three of them as a midboss until the one that likes (or hates) your PC asks the others to give her some space to work. After the chosen sergeant explains her motivation, a horrifying ZUN-pet laden pastiche of the Power Rangers theme blares and she transforms to fight you with her full might. In the final phase, the other two return and they do something like this.

Then they probably turn up as Extra Midbosses after an Evil Costume Switch, having suffered through Ms. Wisdom's awful plot and probably brainwashed or something. You'll have to save them, of course.

• Notes
  • According to legend, the Pixiu does not have an anus. I dread to see what Danbooru would do with that tidbit.
  • They have not yet met Keine. I have no idea what they would make of each other.
  • Their title is a play on "Four Heavenly Kings," of course. They are not themselves heavenly, except by association.
  • Ms. Wisdom is not Patchouli, but they may be connected. (Okay, they totally are, but I've yammered enough.)

edited 11th Aug '12 9:17:11 PM by Durazno

Let's see... a mancatcher, a tonfa (or a pair), and a whip... how would those combine?

but she has no defense against equivocation and half-truths

^^^ What's NACIC?

New Alternate Character Interpretation Compendium. I assume he means the post referencing Expedition of Xenic Dream.

Does she sense truth, lies, or does it just fail quietly?

It rounds to the nearest and then gives her a solid positive or negative. She doesn't question this.

EDIT: I amend this. On second thought, it'd be funnier if she just heard half-truths as the 100% unvarnished truth.

edited 8th Dec '10 9:06:32 AM by Durazno

Yes, it was. Also, I just slapped the post onto my earlier post near the top.

It's not just about EoXD, but the entire series that follows it.

edited 8th Dec '10 5:28:59 PM by XionGaTaosenai

Spellcards! I won't let a character's discussion pass without touching on spellcards! What would their spellcards look like (either in-universe or in-game, or both)? What kind of theme would the names conform to? And other relevant details!

(As an aside, ever since I learned to implement spellcard patterns, I've started to become persistently curious about designs. Yeah, that ought to explain this post. A bit. Maybe.)

edited 10th Dec '10 9:01:44 AM by KylerThatch

Ahh... yes! Spellcards! Jolly good!

Aside: I'd like to say that I'm not tryin' to stifle suggestions by laying everything out; none of this is set in stone. If there are better ideas on any front, I'd like to hear 'em. (In particular, I could probably make better choices with weapons. There's probably some combination that could create a better proper power weapon finisher.)

• The joint spellcard they try before splitting up is an utter mess. They may be a unit in all other areas, but they're still not used to fighting side by side; as a result, you can watch them to see who's about to shoot and then hide behind the others. They pause to bicker about it after you beat them.

• Jian's spellcards have a money theme, naturally.
  • Magnetic Magnate - her signature spellcard has a whole bunch of coin-themed bullets converging on her from the edges of the screen. There's an Icicle Fall-style safe zone right around her on easy, but on later difficulties she uses her whip to sling green bullets outward.
  • Bear Market - coin-bullets rain down from the top of the screen, leaving only a narrow path that looks like a bit like a line graph. It's not that hard for the number of bullets, especially if you have homing shots.

• Wu acts a bit like her rival (who we haven't met yet), trying to physically invade your space and punch you in the face with bullets.
  • Moonless Night - would it be lame to have her horn in on Mystia's gimmick and use a spellcard based on darkness? It would be especially difficult in this case because you'd have to watch for signs that she's about to lunge at you.
  • Crimson Panic - Wu starts leaping around unpredictably, as though she were trying to flee her own bullets. Not a difficult spellcard, but designed to throw you because this is the only time her movement isn't dictated by where you are on the screen.

• With Wen I simply have no idea. The ability to discern truth from lies doesn't lend itself to spellcard design. I'm thinking one card will have to be a reference to the Emperor's throne or the Forbidden City, though. And maybe a fire-themed spell?

edited 10th Dec '10 1:49:59 PM by Durazno

So, I slapped that .xlr file I mentioned earlier onto megaupload, if anyone wants it.

Please tell me their Ranger outfits come with Scarves of Asskicking and the run-in with the PC involves ROCKPAPERSCISSORS! For their regular outfits, combat or dress uniform? I'd imagine Jian and Wen would usually wear a dress uniform with Wu wanting to be ready to go any time.

Also, do we need to come up with danmaku to go with out spell cards? Right now, I still need to come up with 4 more crystal themed music shout-outs.
 ^{What I have so far, if you really want to know.}

edited 11th Dec '10 12:22:15 AM by SonicGTR

Good point on the uniforms. We'll say that Wen usually wears her full dress uniform, Jian sort of half-wears it (like having the jacket open over a T-shirt) and, as you said, Wu dresses for the field. The caps are a must, though. This is Gensokyo, after all.

Scarves would be badass, but I think they'd get in the way of their manes. Short capes might work.

And you don't have to come up with danmaku in advance, but someone will probably ask you about it. We can all bat ideas around when the time comes, anyway.