Young Kuzuno, before leaving Kiita

Greetings and salutations!  My name is Kuzuno.  I am a great wizard from the Empire of Daijo, in the far-off Hine region of the world.   Trained as an assassin from a young age, I am a member of an elite and secretive group sworn to uphold the will of the Primordials, or “Kami”, worshiped in Hine.

I was born and raised for much of my life by monks who ran a shrine to the fire Kami, Kōjin.  The monks recognized a special connection to the arcane within me; they said that magic ran through my veins.

I do not know much about my childhood before I was adopted by the monks.  They told me that they found me as a youngling sleeping deep within Kōjin’s shrine on Kiita, one of the larger islands ~35 miles East of Daijo’s capital.  Life in a monastery was hard for a rambunctious pup like myself.  I resentfully learned discipline, but the monks and the monastery walls could not contain me.  Wandering the mountains, I sometimes got lost and did not come home for weeks on end.  When I did make it back to the temple, my patriarchs would try to shame me into following protocol, but I did not care.  When I was twelve, I grew so angry with the monks that I set the mountainside afire during an autumnal festival.  The townsfolk of nearby villages thought that a great demon had seized control of the island and was preparing to unleash its wrath upon them.  Worse yet, they were convinced that the demon had possessed me.  After attempting to clear my name, several monks in the monastery were brutally beaten by an angry mob of villagers.  Ashamed at the havoc I had wrought on my family, I fled Kiita to the capital island of Noshiro.

 Trouble only followed me to Noshiro, however, and I found camaraderie in a gang of thugs under the employ of a criminal family that governed a city on the capital island.  My temper earned me respect but few friends, and I found it difficult to fit in with the other gang members.  Disappointed at all of the hardship I had endured in life and destitute on the streets, I was drawn to a troupe of traveling performers known as the fire-dancers.

 It took a lot of proving and hard work, but I convinced the fire-dancers to let me help them with menial tasks in exchange for food.  Ironically, the work I sought from the fire-dancers was far baser than the work that I had done at the shrine many years before.  Despite my rough edges, the ringmaster of the troupe recognized the magic in me and helped me to develop my connection to the arcane.  After I had fully earned their trust, they ushered me into their secret world.  The ringmaster initiated me into their branch of the Shigo or “whispers”, and my new life began.  The Shigo is a secret society reporting directly to the Shinkan, high priest, of Hine; we work to protect the kami's shrines and ceremonies, ensuring that the people of Hine do not forget the ones who created the world in which they are living.

I have been a part of the Shigo for only 5 years and most of my missions had involved simple espionage tasks, but with the rise of Taiko and his insurrection in the iron wastes of Tetsugenya, my current quest is to end his ambition once and for all.