#far off

I'll most probably finish them next month when my new markers arrive :D

Would you like to share something about them!!

Also are they from The Offlands or Far Off? I think I haven't tagged where they are from

ABSOLUTELY. I LOVE THESE NERDS. (And I looveeee the little doodle.. they’re so cuteeeeee)

Ok so, officially these OCs are universe-less, and the reason for that is because they started out as Naruto OCs.. I still want to actually write the original story they were meant for in the Naruto-verse but I love them too much to confine them to such a deeply flawed piece of media that more importantly doesn’t belong to specifically me. I’ve been floating around some ideas for how to insert them into the Distant Lands-verse and if I were to insert them, technically they would be in both Far Off and The Offlands, although you would only actually ever see them in The Offlands.

The reason they would show up in both? Shiryō was canonically reincarnated! Funnily enough, their backstory of that whole piece of lore kind of aligns with Distant Lands super well?? Anyway! This means you get to hear Shiryō’s backstory as explanation!!!!!

So the first time Shiryō ever lived they were in an AFAB body and went by She/Her pronouns (but internally they acknowledged that they didn’t feel like a boy or a girl they just didn’t care how they were referred as or how other people perceived them so they didn’t say anything). Anyway in the segments before they die I’ll refer to them with She/Her.

So she grew up in a world similar to modern earth, although it was still different in some aspects. (Also, to note: in the Naruto-verse version of Shiryō, Naruto the show didn’t exist where she grew up so she goes into canon not knowing any of it). She grew up without a mom (died when she was fairly young) but she still had her dad and older sister. Her dad was a grade A abusive piece of shit, and made life really hard for her and her older sister. Her sister, as soon as she could move out, did and went to college, leaving Shiryō. This was really hard for both of them because they were very close. Shiryō loved her sister dearly and her sister was the same with her. Although there was still some mild bitterness between them, they still stayed pretty close. Shiryō still understood why she did what she did, and her older sister stayed physically close, so she would visit and have Shiryō visit all the time and was willing to buy things Shiryō needed and help out in any way she could. They also texted and called regularly and still relied on each other. Anyway life went on as you could expect from this situation until a couple years later when Shiryō was in her final year of highschool… the apocalypse started!!!! :D

It wasn’t a zombie apocalypse, and was instead these vicious unnamed monsters. Anyway, society does what society does in apocalyptic settings and fucks off and Shiryō escapes her dad and goes to go live with her sister and they fight monsters like badasses for a while. Shiryō honestly loved a lot of the apocalypse, and found extreme joy in fighting and killing the monsters, as she kind of used it as a coping mechanism to deal with a LOT of repressed rage and trauma that she couldn’t otherwise deal with. There spawned her love of the fight.

Anyway main points of her apocalyptic era: her and her sister are really badass for quite a while, a companion of theirs chooses to solidly save her own skin and abandon Shiryō’s sister to die rather than potentially save both of them in a close shave, Shiryō is held back from killing that girl by multiple of their companions and that night the girl flees, Shiryō fights a bunch more, Shiryō lets her dad get mauled by monsters, later that girl who backstabbed earlier runs into them again and Shiryō has the chance to save her from monsters and doesn’t (with the classic power move eye contact), Shiryō gets seriously wounded and escapes the monsters who attacked her but realizes she’s gonna die so she goes to this hidden place in nature that she and her sister used to hang out and lies down in the river cradled by some rocks to die. And then she dies!

Anyway, then Shiryō is reborn. This time it’s in an AMAB body and he’s like ‘wow that’s gender affirming’ and still doesn’t care to correct any pronouns so mostly He/Him except in some certain contexts. (I’ll now be telling you the version of his lore that takes place in the Naruto-verse but like. As if you know nothing about Naruto. I’m in the process of revamping this to be suitable for other universe so some of this might get tweaked later. ALSO don’t take all of this for canon Naruto because he’s not even from the village the main plot takes place in and I’ve done a TON of extra personal worldbuilding including his and his teammates whole clans) He’s born in a world that has countries who’s military power is comprised of ‘ninja’ who basically can fight and use magic bullshit powers through use of ‘chakra’. They complete ‘missions’ for money to sustain themselves and that’s everything from bounty hunting rogue criminals, to weeding someone’s garden, to diplomatic missions, to murdering someone the client doesn’t like (there are different ranks of difficulty). They are incredibly skilled fighters, and also contracted killers so the scale of morally grey is leaning far closer to black than white. Ninja typically reside in ‘hidden villages’ which are basically the military base that trains and hosts ninja and they’re set up as a militaristic dictatorship run by the strongest ninja in the village, the ‘kage’. Anyway Shiryo was born in a hidden village, but specifically one that’s in more of a tourist country. This specific village is “pacifistic” (note the giant air quotes) as in instead of taking missions that involve killing people from other villages and possibly starting wars, they mostly just take normal ‘missions’ from people (all sources of requests fulfilled to make money) which still includes killing and fighting a lot of people just basically they try to keep completely neutral in terms of a war standpoint.

Specifically Shiryō is born to a very large (but not widely known to the ninja world and rather popular with an exclusive clientele) clan of Ninja, the Kurokubi clan. They own a very large and notable Hanamachi (Geisha entertainment district) that brings in an obscenely large amount of money for their clan and the village. In times of war, they’re also the bulk of the village’s defense in case they are attacked, so they are also well skilled as fighters. They are a clan steeped in politics and high appearances and such and have some very distinct traditions. Also to note: a HIGH chunk of their clan are also Geisha, and they go by pretty ancient traditions in that sense, as you’ll often see both men and women in that role. Their clan members tend to have delicate and androgynous features and they aren’t required to disclose the gender of their performers so often clients won’t actually know the gender of the Geisha that’s performing for them. Also, since a lot of their traditions are very dated people can become Maiko and Geisha much much younger. They also just have a whole different culture in this world so some of the stuff will differ from IRL.

Anyway Shiryō was born into this clan and grew up not hiding the fact that he was a child prodigy at all. Why? A) he didn’t really care much and B) after living the most recent years of his life in an apocalypse and killing creatures in life or death situations to blow of steam he was restless as fuck after being reborn. He wanted to learn as much as he possibly could to advance as quickly as possible not only because of curiosity, but also because he was constantly bored asf. He specifically was very skilled with fighting lessons, as he already had a strong basis of a specialized form of street fighting. and because he was super dedicated for it. Because of the family he was born into and such, he also was trained in the art of fighting gracefully and being able to navigate social situations with tact. (Before growing up in this family he did Not have any form of skill in navigating politics or general social graces. He was kind of a social recluse and hot headed although he liked to take it out on non-humans the most) Anyway eventually he also became an apprentice geisha (maiko) (because he could never take on enough to feel like he could get all of his energy out) so he started to get really good at social graces and such. When he was 6 years old he was capable of killing most average grown men, had learned a bunch of traditional geisha practices, was pretty well educated in politics and he officially became a Maiko (apprentice geisha) (Note this was only because he was bugging the fuck out of his family. He wouldn't start performing alone until he was much older.) Then he went out of the village and met Heike, which means I need to switch tracks and tell you about him first.

Heike lived quite far away in the youngest parts of his childhood. He lived in a solitary clan called the Tenshihai. The Tenshihai were very reclusive, and their clan grounds were hidden inside a mountain that had basically a whole village carved out inside from them. The reason why they were so reclusive is because their clan had a unique trait known as a Dōjutsu. Dōjutsu are basically hereditary magic eyes that grant you special powers. Dōjutsu are not exclusively held by their clan, but each clan's Dōjutsu is different so their specific magic eyes are different than any other magic eyes that may be had by other clans. The specific name of their Dōjutsu is the Shindōgan. The Shindōgan is especially powerful, and like many other clans that held Dōjutsu, they were hunted for their eyes, because with a successful eye transplant, other people can gain their powers through stealing said eyes. They didn't want to be hunted by multiple other villages, so they lived in their mountain and disguised themselves when they left.

Anyway for the next bit of lore I need to give some context: The Shindōgan gave them the power to manipulate chakra in a way that was unique to them. I don't wanna get into the intricacies of chakra so just imagine if it was ether, and they had the ability to manipulate gravitational fields (including ether's). One big difference I must note though: while doing that to give yourself a bunch of ether would give you access to other types of ether, in this instance its just the quantity of power to pull from that it gives you not the types of power you get to use. They still have the same powers just a lot more of it when need-be. But they using their gravitational manipulation can a) sap chakra from other people b) give themselves more and c) make stuff weigh more or less (including themselves, whom they would often have weigh more as weight training and extra force when fighting) (amongst other things.). The other important piece of context is there's this separate type of chakra called 'natural' chakra that most people can't manipulate. You can only safely do this once you've gone through rigorous training and have become a 'sage'. The reason why you can't safely do this is because if you accidentally mess up in manipulating it then you can be turned to stone (or alternatively, if you were being taught by a sage who was a sentient animal rather than a human, you can turn into the animal that was teaching you. So if a 'toad sage' was teaching you to use natural energy and you messed up you could turn into a toad. Sentient animals are usually able to manipulate chakra and can form contracts with people, so in that case they're usually called 'summons'). Anyway the Shindōgan can mess with natural energy so you have to be really careful when learning how to use it.

Anyway, resuming the lore, when Heike was 5 years old an event referred to as 'the calamity' happened within his clan.

The abbreviated version of what happened to the Tenshihai is as follows: One of the Younger/Adolescent clan users with the Shindōgan had only recently gained use of the Dōjutsu. They barely knew how to control it and were supposed to wait until they had proper supervision and time in a place that was a 'right of passage' kind of place. They were really impatient and decided to train their Dōjutsu on their own. They accidentally messed with Natural Energy when attempting to just modify normal chakra and it turned out they had an extremely naturally strong Dōjutsu, to the degree that they got WAY too much natural energy and it caused a natural energy black hole of sorts. It started pulling in natural energy from a far, as well as normal chakra, because yk, so people's chakra was getting pulled from them and they were being weakened, in addition to natural energy being unnaturally pulled through them and turning them to stone. Most of the clan became petrified inside of the mountain, and those who didn't had to stay and do as much damage control as possible to not literally mess up the balance of the world because the pool of natural energy kept getting bigger. This is with the exception of the kids, or rather, kid. Because the kiddo who started the calamity was near where the civilian and domestic districts were, and there was a big meeting that night, so the ninja kids were staying with them, those were the people who got turned to stone first. There were almost 0 civilian survivors and literally the only kid to live was Heike, who was not supposed to be up and about away from there but was breaking the rules and was. They sent Heike out with little explanation, plus a disguise (because their clans Dōjutsu was PRIZED but not that recognizable to people who weren't in with the clan, but that with matching white hair was enough to make them try to give him some sort of protection.) (their image was 'white hair and eyes like angels ashes). They couldn't send other adults out with him because they were needed to stop the calamity from spreading. The end result years later is a wandering Heike, a dispersed natural energy black hole, a bunch of statues imbued with so much natural energy that you can feel it hidden in a mountain cave that echoes the calls of the earth, a bunch of summon-like sage animals running around in and near there, and a couple terminal survivors now pack bonded with these animals, plus like one survivor out there looking for Heike.

Heike wandered for a while as a jaded small child who knew basically nothing about what happened except he had to hide who he was and he was told to never go back to his home because something terrible happened. This is when he encountered Shiryō (who was 8 at this point). Heike had been asking around for places to stay and Shiryō realized that he had a Dōjutsu and also resonated with his general situation and state of mind and decided that this was not a safe way for a five year old that would be easily hunted to live, so he took him back to his village with him. Shiryō and his clan basically raise Heike from this point on (also forgot to mention, Shiryō was orphaned pretty young so he was kind of raised by the collective of the clan), and Heike is always attached to Shiryō by the hip. Shiryō becomes kind of a big brother to him, and likewise gets just as attached (he vows to himself that he would never abandon him no matter how bad things got for him).

When Shiryō is 10 he gets offered to become certified as a fully fledged ninja (aka given a headband, signifying his ninja-hood) by the village, because he is well past the requirements and skill to become a genin (lowest grade of ninja). He turns down the headband to focus on caring for and training Heike (he would have to leave Heike to go on missions without him if he accepted). A year later when Heike is eight, he receives a headband and Shiryō finally accepts his as well. Shiryō and Heike become an unconventional two man team doing various odd-job type missions for a while (accompanied by an older ninja for the outside the village missions because they are currently the lowest rank of ninja (genin)). When Shiryō is 12 he becomes a proper Geisha (which is young, even within their clan but not unheard of due to their extremely dated practices and also the fact that this world is well known for training child soldiers. Such as Shiryō himself. It made standards for things like this somewhat different. If you can kill people you can be an entertainer kind of thing).

Ok!! So they're gonna meet Āiko next which means you get backstory on her!!!

Āiko was raised by her lone mother who was a shrine maiden to an ancient abandoned shrine. Āiko has very little memories of this (her strongest ones are of the lullabies her mother sang her in a language she had never heard anywhere else (guess which one it is)) because said mother died of an illness when she was 3 years old. Remember the sentient animals I talked about? Well a group of them took in Āiko, specifically the Kawauso (Otters. Think like the otter version of Tanuki, so its both a real animal and has a magical Yokai version) who built that river shrine. (Also note, these animals can talk). They taught her how to fight and how to use Chakra and generally navigate the world. She also signed a summoning contract with them to be able to summon them at will to her so they could aid her with whatever she needed (whether it was fighting or some other thing). When Āiko is 10 she leaves her home with the Otters to go integrate with human society at their prodding. She is adept at defending herself at this point but is Not a social butterfly. (She has very little manners in a cold antisocial sort of way but its really just lack of tact). Anyway she starts wandering and then realizes she needs money to do most things, so she starts her job search.

While on the way back from an escort mission, Shiryō (13) and Heike (10) meet Āiko (10) and Āiko essentially asks if they know a good place to get employed. They take her back to their village, and she starts working in the bathhouse (The hot springs there are another giant source of money for their village). Fairly soon after another ninja attempts to assassinate an important guest at the bathhouse, and Āiko (10) kills them. Interrogation specialist ninja are called and Āiko is questioned, and Shiryō and Heikeare brought to answer questions too because they found her and brought her in the first place. After she is questioned and deemed a non-threat for now, they basically want to make her a ninja of their village and come to the decision that she can go on a few missions w/ Shiryō and Heike so they supervise her as a probationary period.

When Āiko is eleven she gets her headband, and starts working with Shiryō and Heike as part of a three man team. And basically they just travel and complete missions and navigate political and war related situations as contracted killers and very close found family! So. That's them!! That's the sillies!!

I have some other tidbits tho. First! Fun facts:

Shiryō physically fights specializing with very pretty war fans. He specializes in wind, lightning, and illusions for Chakra use.

Shiryō has a summoning contract with butterflies (they specialize in illusions.)

Shiryō may have a lot of grace but gets kind of feral during fights because he really gets a lot of thrill from fights

Shiryō looks very similar to another member from his clan who is a) an outcast from his clan (like disowned and unaffiliated but physically related), b) notoriously EXTREMELY strong, like flee on sight strong and c) A traitorous criminal and horrible person who does experiments on literally anyone he sees fit children and all as his fucked up version of science. Shiryō resembling him so closely unnerves a LOT of people, especially people from the village that the guy betrayed and defected from.

Shiryō's name was not initially Shiryō in his first life. That name is just never canonically mentioned because he fully embraces his new name as a part of who he is.

Shiryō wraps his Kimono-esc outfit right over left (the way that is usually reserved for the dead) as a reference to his past life. He refuses to change it no matter how offended other people get about it. The exception is when he's performing Geisha duties and wearing their specific outfits. He puts on a metaphorical mask then so he doesn't feel like it counts. It's a persona of sorts.

Shiryō (the japanese word) when using its normal Kanji means a spirit of the dead, and its generally pretty creepy/ominous, but Shiryō's name is made using odd kanji and pronunciation to make the pronunciation Shiryō but the actual meaning of the kanji used is an obscure way to say 'Samurai' and 'Reality' instead of 'Death' and 'Spirit'. His last name is a play off the Yokai Rokurokubi. (Anyway I tried really hard with the research of all this but PLEASE take the potential correctness of this with a grain of salt. It's very possible I don't make any sense to people who know things.) Anyway it means that a) when people hear his name before seeing it they're kind of freaked out and also like 'do your parents hate you or smth' and when people read it before hearing it they often pronounce it wrong.

Heike's hair is naturally white, but he dyes it black occasionally. Most often, however, you see him with white roots and black tips. It eventually becomes such an iconic look for him that he maintains it and only dyes the ends when re-dyeing.

Heike uses his Shindōgan almost constantly once he's got the hang of it to make himself way more heavy. He uses this both as training and because he fights hand to hand a lot (he actually uses kicks very often in his fighting style though) and so his extra weight puts TONS of force behind his strikes.

Heike specializes In fighting as described above, and fighting using rocks/earth. Also he can 'sense' chakra due to the Shindōgan (its kind of a passive effect), but if there's a lot of ambient chakra he can get a form of sensory overload.

Heike's pupils expand an extreme amount when he uses the Shindōgan

Heike (the name)'s direct translation approximates to ''serene home", but its more well known association is that its the name of an ancient samurai clan. This clan does not exist in this setting, but its a fun tidbit. Tenshihai means 'Angel Ash'

The Dōjutsu name Shindōgan means 'tremor eye'

Āiko specializes in fighting using water, a form of chakra usage called 'sealing' (which is using arrays of symbols you make and imbue with chakra to create all sorts of affects. Think of the 'magic circles' trope, except its different symbols than just circles.), and for physical fighting she usually is more long distance weapons, specifically senbon (war needles, often used to hit pressure points or poison). She can also heal decently.

Āiko wears a mask over her eyes almost constantly. She only takes it off around people she really trusts. (She once told her otter family that she remembered her mother saying the eyes were the key to the soul, and the otters gave her the mask when she left because she was worried about her ability to interact with other humans who could potentially figure her out when she didn't want them to.)

Āiko (the name) usually uses the kanji to mean something approximating 'child of love' but the kanji she uses for her name actually makes it mean 'child of sorrow'. So like a swapped version of Shiryō's situation.

As for the last bit: how I'm thinking of adapting this to be all mine and non-naruto related!

Shiryō: Their pre-death self would have grown up inside of the Far Off world. When she dies, a god who had liked her uses their ether to make her sentience a part of the physical world. Basically using ether to put her sentience in a baby. His clan would be fairly similar (as I created them in the first place) but the military force/fighters would not be ninja, and have a different name (with a different way they generally function). It would also only be one (pretty isolated and dated) island country that would have a military force such as this. I would tweak some other stuff but don't wanna ramble on that too much more.

Heike: I'd make his clan the only clan that has magic eyes, and the Shindōgan (also keeping it because i created them and how they work) was descended from a god who had lived quite a while ago and had made eyes that could work to utilize ether in a specific kind of way, hence their special powers. They're still hunted for their eyes, keeping all that the same. Natural energy doesn't exist in this magic system, so the turning to stone thing was a unique property of that kid's ether rather than whole different form of magic.

Āiko: This was actually kind of something that already existed in this universe (similar to some other aspects I've mentioned as well), but sentient talking animals don't just exist for no reason, they're just a different species descended from gods who didn't decide to take human form and instead took animal form. This meant that Āiko's mother's shrine was a shrine to that original god that took the form of an otter after descending. Āiko's mother spoke (or rather sung) the language which that god did (which was also spoken by a lot of the other gods), so actually Āiko could later find people who knew it to a degree if they were connected to their god ancestry.

I just somehow whipped the motivation to do this out of nowhere, but I NEEDED to show you as soon as I was done so here you are!

This is Arlo!!! They’re a character from Far Off that I haven’t even told you about yet! They’re Seraphina’s roommate and closest friend before she encounters Aysel.

They have a boyfriend who is an information broker who I’ll attempt to send you an ask about next (I also still need to tell you about Seraphina and Aysel and Aysel’s mom and so many other children of mine astfssjjsjshjdjh…)

They’re in college studying astrophysics and biomedical engineering. They also study nanotechnology on their own time, amongst some other topics (really just whatever they’re fixated on at the time). They’re really good at fixing hardware issues in technology and like to make mostly useless or extremely specific to the point of never needing to be used devices as a hobby. It has surprisingly come in handy a number of times.

Their manor of writing is often close to indecipherable for anyone that doesn’t have high specialty level knowledge when they’re writing about anything they’ve studied for a notable amount of time. This is mostly because of their love of using jargon and just general vocabulary that doesn’t usually make it out of the dictionary. They also, especially when writing on paper but also sometimes adapted for typing, use a ridiculous form of shorthand that they created to take notes or record information. They’ve only successfully taught it to one person, their boyfriend, who mostly only uses it for his business needs.

They have an extremely grey moral compass, and often step on some legal toes to do whatever experiments or research, amongst other plights, that they are attempting at the moment.

Their circle of friends, before they become involved in the main plot of far off, is extremely small, not only because of their eccentric interests and habits, but also because they just generally lack the interest or motivation to attempt to interact with people past the bare minimum. People who don’t know them might describe them as aloof. Most people in their classes know they’re one of the smartest people in there, but they only turn in the bare minimum amount of work to get exactly a passing grade in their classes.

They drink this egregious concoction of energy drink and sickeningly sweet other stuff. Kind of like those weird mixture drink trends you’d see as a trend on social media. Think like. A monster energy mixed with a Gatorade mixed with this extremely potently sour and sugary blue raspberry syrup and mango popping boba. Anyone else who has ever tasted it questions how they have teeth rapidly followed up with how they’re still alive.

Their eating habits mostly consist of eating takeout or mooching off of other people. Their favorite food is Tteokbokki. They know all the best food trucks.

Their favorite constellation is Eridanus. They’re afraid of the ocean. They want to learn to paint, but aren’t the best at it yet. They like plants but can’t keep them alive to save their life.

They’re not usually very openly affectionate but if they recognize that one of their friends is touch starved, pretty soon they’ll be like a barnacle that you can’t remove. They’re not actually clingy in their form of physical affection though and more just kind of press or lean against you any time you’re still enough for them to attach themself. They also aren’t big on expressing affection through words and are much more likely to express it through acts of service. They have all of their friends food and drink orders memorized.

Anyway there’s more but that’s all I can think of right now. Enjoy!

(Oh, and here’s the flat colors on a less jarring bg:

)

OOO CONGRATS ON FINISHING ONE!! IM TRYING TO FINISH MINE FOR AF AND I LOST MOTIVATION AFTER MAKING ONE

Okay so after the first read-through of this ask, I just went- ' me??' (Though after the second read, I wouldn't say I'm half as cool as them or like them) But we may be similar in some aspects sooo... that's nice as well!!

The drawing's based on this btw:

Sixth sense kiss: thought it was interesting. Not a fan of boss worker relationship :/ interesting concept.

Teddy and bear: it’s cute.

To the stars and back: it’s good but there’s not enough to form a proper opinion yet.

Perfect Marriage revenge: love to see a girl boss winning.

Be my villain: love awkward dates.

Act like you love me: it’s good, enjoy the humour.

Starcrossed: so pretty, formatted for more page like rather than scrolling so reading it was a bit hard.

Far off: I love these two border officers.

Rooftops and roommates: himbo rights himbo rights himbo rights himbo rights.

Jackson’s diary: SO GOOD. literally right after I thought I was starting to lose interest in high school based media this thing comes stomping in I couldn’t stop reading it it’s so interesting. I didn’t know I was missing a story set in the 80’s with supernatural elements.

Cursed princess club: never have I ever laughed out loud so much reading a WEBTOON. So clever, so heartwarming, once again could not stop reading it. I didn’t think I would adore it this much but it makes me so happy. It does the redeeming of characters really well. It takes time and just because someone is nice now doesn’t erase the past mistakes. So incredibly excited for the second half of the final part.

monday