Hikaru Genji

Hikaru Genji

Hikaru Genji is a bard and storyteller that travels and performs with the Unsurpassed Artists of Theatre Magique. He is best known for telling scandalous and hilarious stories centered on the royal courts of the countries of Derkomai, which makes him unpopular with many nobles and royals, but wildly popular among the common people. More than once, his stories have gotten him in trouble with the authorities, forcing him to go into hiding or the Theatre to quickly pack up and leave a location where they were performing. He is a talented mimic and impersonator, and he uses his talent to skewer pompous nobles, unscrupulous merchants, and corrupt officials wherever he goes. Many people say he is either incredibly brave or incredibly foolhardy. Fortunately, the Theatre Magique is popular wherever they perform, and that gives him some protection from the potentially fatal repercussions of his storytelling.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Hikaru Genji is in reasonably good health for a person of his age, but he suffers from some chronic pain from the beatings he took when he was young.

Special abilities

Hikaru Genji is an incredibly talented mimic and impersonator. Besides his ability to impersonate people, he can mimic the sounds of many birds, animals, and everyday sounds. He uses his ability to mimic those things to add color and humor to his stories.

Apparel & Accessories

Hikaru Genji loves hats. He has many outlandish and stylish hats that he uses in his acts. He often changes hats during his performance to signal a change in the character he is playing. Some of the hats he wears in his acts are replicas of the crowns and hats worn by royalty, noblility, and officials which make it clear to his audience who he is impersonating and, usually, lampooning.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Hikaru Genji was born in Sunrise Point in Senyon to a family that hailed long ago from Chessa. His father worked as a handyman at Sunrise Point Castle, which is owned by the Gwanjiyan family. His mother worked at Joy's Wondrous Arcade at the gaming tables. Genji's parents often told him stories of the antics of the noble and wealthy people that they encountered.
Genji was a gregarious youngster - overly so. He had a flair for the dramatic and often entertained his classmates and even his teachers with skits and stories he invented. However, his dramatic personality and apparent inability to focus on classwork - most of which he found intolerably boring - frequently got him into trouble. When he was sixteen years old, he dropped out of school. His parents were furious with him, and declared that if he was not going to attend school, he would have to support himself. They allowed him to stay in his room, but demanded that he pay rent, buy and prepare his own food, wash his own clothes, and take care of himself in every other way.
With no skills with which to support himself, Genji began busking on the Boardwalk near the Arcade, doing skits and telling stories. His flair for drama and ear for a good story soon made him quite popular, and he was making more than enough money to support himself. Grudgingly, his parents came around and began to back him.
His gregarious personality and sense of humor made Genji quite popular among the young ladies, both local girls and visitors. One of the girls that showed particular interest in him was a princess of the Gwanjiyan family. She was pretty and laughed often at his jokes and stories, but being from one of the most prominent families of Senyon, with many imperial consorts and even empresses in their family line, the princess was far, far above his station as an uneducated commoner from a family of lower-class working people. Her family members were determined that the relationship between Genji and the princess be ended immediately.
However, Genji was just as stubborn as he was gregarious, and the princess was also determined to continue seeing him. The more the nobility tried to drive a wedge between them, the more Genji resisted. At first, the two just occasionally saw each other surreptitiously. But as the pressure on him mounted, he struck back in the only way he knew how, short of a physical confrontation he would surely lose - he began telling outlandish stories and performing skits about the Gwanjiyan nobility, based on what he'd heard from his father about the family at Sunrise Point Castle. Though he changed names and locations, there was enough truth in his stories that most people knew who they were about. The Gwanjiyan family lost face among the common people of Sunrise Point, and Genji naively thought he'd won some respect, but he had underestimated the princess's pride in her family, the anger he'd stirred up, and the lengths the Gwanjiyan clan would go to revenge their humiliation.
The day after he'd performed one of his more pointed and sarcastic skits lampooning the Gwanjiyan nobility, the princess furiously approached him. She was dangerously angry with Genji for ridiculing her family. She said it was clear that he didn't really care about her and saw her and her family as a joke. Nothing Genji said consoled her. As she stormed off, she said she never wanted to see him again and warned him that payback was coming.
Hikaru laid low at his parent's house for that day, but he couldn't hide from what came next. When his father and mother arrived home, his father was in a rage, and his mother was weeping. Grabbing the nearest implement at hand, his father began beating him, while his mother screamed at him for being stupid and irresponsible. They had both been fired from their jobs. His father had been humiliated and beaten by the Gwanjiyan guards at the castle. His mother had been summarily dismissed from her job at the Arcade, accused of incompetence and embezzling money. After thrashing him for some time, leaving him with welts and bruises, his father said to him, "Get out. Now. You have 20 minutes to get your things and go. I don't care where. If you think I am being harsh, yes, I am. But if you stay here we will all be killed. Leave Sunrise Point. Do not tell me where you are going. If you leave, we all may survive. Now get out."
At first, his mother protested, but his father was adamant. With nothing else to do, in tears and utterly dejected, Genj gathered his things, his clothes and some food his mother gave him, a bottle for water, a walking stick, and a good knife, and left home forever. He was eighteen years old.
After some time, Hikaru Genji made his way out of Senyon to Daskar. He barely survived the journey by begging, stealing when begging didn't work, and storytelling, though he didn't do that often. The Gwanjiyan sent thugs after him when he fled Sunrise Point. They caught him once on the road to Gulfport and beat him severely. They left him for dead on the side of the road, and it was only through the kindness of some passersby that he survived. While in Gulfport, it took him several weeks to recover enough to continue his journey. He finally was able to get a job doing menial labor on a caravan heading out of Gulfport toward Xosashimuro and on to Daskar.
Once in Daskar, Genji felt safer, but he had essentially nothing. He was barely an adult, with not much education, and his only real skill was storytelling. He'd saved a little money he'd earned working with the caravan, and with that he rented a cheap room in an old house in the Highton district, not too far from Highton Bazaar. He spent most of his time at the Bazaar, listening to gossip, observing the people, and developing stories. Soon, he started setting up on a street corner in the Bazaar to tell his stories. He didn't earn very much, and he struggled to survive, telling stories in the Bazaar and doing odd jobs - deliveries and manual labor. It wasn't glamorous, but he was getting by, and the contacts he made while working provided fresh stories and anecdotes.
After he was more familiar with Daskar and somewhat more established, he began venturing into Middleton Market and telling his stories there. Middleton Market attracted a wealthier and more sophisticated crowd than Highton Bazaar, and it attracted more people. They appreciated his stories and anecdotes, and they had more income to part with, so Genji was bringing in much more money. He was becoming quite popular, which brought more attention from the authorities, not all of whom appreciated his brand of sarcastic, barbed humor and gossipy stories. More than once, someone representing the Tachibana-Larssen Royal Guards warned him about offending the Royal Family of Sudland, and a few times, he was arrested and spent a few days in jail. After being jailed, he would be more discreet with his stories for awhile, but when he was, he would earn far less. The common people loved the salacious stories and humorous anecdotes he told about the royals and nobles of Sudland and Senyon, so he would go back to telling them before long.
Over the years, his time in Daskar felt less and less secure, even as he gained popularity and notoriety. He didn't have to struggle to make ends meet anymore, but he wondered how long he should stay. He was in no way eager to repeat anything like what he'd gone through when he'd been driven from his home in Sunrise Point.
One day, after entertaining a large, appreciative, and generous crowd in Middleton Market, while at the same time being scrutinized by a number of large, unappreciative, and menacing Royal Guards, Genji was approached by some people that said they were members of a troupe called The Unsurpassed Artists of Theatre Magique. Their leader introduced himself as Donatello Genovesi. There was also a very beautiful Half-Elvirim woman named Diaanen Elorialir Alea'athem with them that he couldn't help but notice. Donatello said to him that they were always looking for the best performers to join their troupe. They had seen the crowd he'd attracted, and also the guards observing, and wondered if perhaps he might be willing to join them as they traveled throughout the world to perform. He said they made their home base in Kinsanaile, far from Daskar and the Royal Family's intense scrutiny. Well, what could he say? It sounded like the perfect opportunity, so he agreed on the spot. Since then, Hikaru Genji has told his tales with the Theatre Magique wherever it has traveled, but he uses an assumed name when they are in Senyon. One can't be too careful.

Education

Hikaru Genji was educated, though rather poorly, as a youngster in Sunrise Point. Since then, he as mostly learned through experience, much of it hard-earned.

Employment

Hikaru Genji is a storyteller and comedian with The Unsurpassed Artists of Theatre Magique.

Mental Trauma

Being rejected by his first love as a youngster and subsequently beaten and forced to leave home by his father left emotional scars that in some ways still have not healed, even after 50 years. Genji still feels insecure at times, but maturity and time have mostly healed his wounds.

Intellectual Characteristics

Hikaru Genji is a gregarious extrovert. He loves performing, telling stories and jokes, and revels in the rapt attention and laughter of his audience.

Personality Characteristics

Hygiene

As a performer that is in front of people nearly every day, Hikaru Genji keeps himself and his clothes clean and well groomed.

Hikaru Genji performing in Senyon by Peter Nelson (Zero Sum Games)

Hikaru Genji performing in Senyon

Species

Human

Year of Birth

9092 68 Years old

Current Residence

Kinsanaile

Sex

male

Gender

male

Presentation

male

Eyes

Dark brown, long

Hair

Gray-white

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Lightly tanned

Height

5'9" (175 cm)

Weight

175 lbs. (79 kg)

Aligned Organization

The Unsurpassed Artists of Theatre Magique

Known Languages

Hikaru Genji speaks Sudkou with a Senyon accent fluently and loquaciously, though he reads and writes with some difficulty due to his somewhat meager and indifferent education.