Yaijinden

Yaijinden
Biographical information
Homeworld	Earth
Birth	November, 1981
Died
Family	80 genespawn, 1 clonespawn, 1 clone offshoot, 1 wife, 1 also.wife, 1 daughter, also.daughter, 1 also.offspring, 1 waifu
Occupation(s)	Enigmatic Wiseman
Alias	Yaijita, the old man of the mountain, pants-and-sandals, the Widening Gyre, Mr. Jinden
Physical description
Species	Human-oid
Gender	male
Hair color	sandy brown
Eye color	light brown
Height	5'11
Statistics
Weapon(s)
Abilities	command of Mythos sorcery, keen analytical insight, Phenomenal Cosmic Power
Affiliation
First Appearance

[21:56] <Yaijinden> I am NOT. Letting some GODDAMN POCKET DIMENSION. Tell me what I CAN, and CANNOT DO.

Appearance

At a glance, Yaijinden is a Human male in his early thirties, whose slightly-shaggy light-brown hair and Caucasian features suggest an Anglo-German heritage. Most often, he dresses largely in casual Western clothing (shirts and slacks), and almost invariably a pair of replaceable twine sandals. He appears mundane to casual inspection, but powerful senses reveal this for a lie -- as does every time he seriously draws upon his power, when a blue-green spiral ignites within his eyes.

Attitudes

Amidst the Hotel (and the House before it), Yaijinden is akin to a Daoist heyoka, the sacred clown who lives outside the easily-defined boundaries of a social group, defining those boundariesm by transgressing them. While he is still the sort of person who harbors a wicked smile when he speaks truth to power, he has settled down since his Glory Days with the combined seasoning of age, experience, and being a parent.

Psychologically, Yaijinden draws most of his methods, wisdom, and vision from a synthesis of Western existentialist thinkers, woven through philosophical Daoism and expressed in practical Zen methodology. He maintains that life is a dream without inherent purpose, and death merely a transition to what-had-come-before; this does not keep life from being painful, joyous, and/or amusing, each and all of which are all very good reasons to continue living. This understanding of the world engendered a certain detached amusement from the goings-on of the Hotel from his very first days, where he is usually content to watch the world be threatened with cataclysm and spared by the actions of the heroes and miscreants within. There are only a handful of things he treats as Serious Business: the transmission of knowledge for those who seek it, the well-being of his spouses, and the upbringing of his children.

Attributes

Though Yaijinden appears mundane at a glance, he is not normal by any stretch of the imagination. The body he typically inhabits is an almost flawless replica of his Human/khadi body, but differs on several metaphysical levels. As a shintai vessel held together by will and a certain level of concentration, Yaijinden's Human frame conceals and suppresses his power. Any thorough attempt to examine him with superhuman senses yields a mass of contradictory data: he is simultaneously hot and cold, empty and full, sweet and bitter, orange and blue, and stranger contradictions besides; when he genuinely calls upon this power, elements of his body visibly unravel, lit from within by emerald-green light and a mad spiral in his eyes.

Yaijinden claims to be a true (but incomplete) incarnation of the newborn Primordial Otherthing named the Widening Gyre. He speaks of the Gyre as the heir to an ancient, primeval legacy born when the universe was young, when time and space were fluid enough to make the birth of such beings possible; he believes he is the only free Primordial, as all of his elder 'cousins' were imprisoned in the Void in ages long past. As with all Primordial Otherthings, the Widening Gyre is a being of such immensity and magnitude that its will cannot be expressed by a single soul, and each of the several souls it possesses is so large as to have seven subsidiary souls of its own. The souls known to the Hotel are Nenkadu, the River of Spears (Yaijinden's impulses as gatekeeper and initiator), Lia Mendicaria (his love for things that cannot last), and Theshkalai, the Ivory Canyon (that which keeps the secrets of his more mind-twisting powers). Yaijinden has indicated that more exist and more will come to exist in the years to come.

Yaijinden possesses of an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Mythos sorcery and soul-related magic, as well as a vast reservoir of arcane and spiritual power. As with his previous khadi and memetic incarnations, Yaijinden's shintai body is capable of regenerating injuries within moments, even catastrophic damage that would by all means be fatal to lesser beings. Thanks to the validium heart crafted for him by Arx Sylvanran, he can indulge or ignore temporal shenanigans as he sees fit, though his sense of humor tends to lend him to playing along with changes in the cosmos.

Trivia

Origin Stories

In the year 2001, Yaijinden became a khadi, enslaved by a long chain to an entity he refers to alternatively as Annihilation and The End of All Things. His wandering footsteps brought him to Ten'ou House in 2004, where he settled in as the local heyoka. In those days he had little hope for his future, powerless to face his future oppressor; in 2005, however, a series of events spurred by The Actuary liberated his hidden heart.

After a convoluted series of events in 2006 (including being severed from his heart and a period of existence as a mortal human), Yaijinden existed for a time as an embodied, self-cognizant idea. Yaijinden's physiology and psychology was functionally identical to his previous self, save for his claim that he was now "infectious", though this would only impact the greater world several millennia later (see Other Notes, below). This state of being came to an end in 2011 when he chased a impulse of existential dread into the Galaxy Cauldron, seeking insight into who he truly was, and came perilously close to being obliterated. The efforts of Ten'ou House members culminated in his 'rebirth' as the Widening Gyre, though Yaijinden he is quite sure he should by any stretch of the imagination have been irretrievable from the maw of the things that live on the underside of the Cauldron. This lack of continuity as to how they managed to pull him back together remains a source of occasional but tremendous vexation for him.

Relations

Yaijinden proposed spur-of-the-moment marriage to nearly every visitor to Azabu-Juuban until the year 2007. Two of those proposals have led into actual civil union: one to Chibiusa (annulled), and one (still ongoing!) to Mango Kattan. Yaijinden has sired or borne eighty-four children since his arrival in Azabu-Juuban in 2004. He is close-ish to Sakura, whom he will have taken as a student one thousand years in the future-- an experience that will teach her exactly whom she is dealing with. He also tutored Ignis in the ways of Mythos sorcery, knowing full well that she was going to get herself in trouble with it. Before his appearance in Ten'ou House, he had appointed himself the 'Keeper' of Bixia Yuanjin, though both of them consider that relationship concluded. Presently, he is married to Celeste Persephone Kizen and Persephone Celeste Kizen, and the three of them provide parental care for their daughters Faye and Amber and kiddo Riley Gyre.

Other Notes

Before his transformation into a Khadi, Yaijinden was a relatively normal college freshman named Jacob. He was a student at a midwestern university before dire relationship troubles spurred him to a suicidal state of mind, which prompted a near suicide attempt, which then led to the formation of his pact with Annihilation and the departure of his heart from his chest.

In the alternate reality of Earth 1337-B, Yaijinden remains a khadi, but also pens a book trilogy of unmentioned nature which is regarded as classic literature well into the 31st century. For the In most other alternate realities, Yaijinden remains enslaved to the End of All Things as a khadi and becomes a fearsome herald of dangerous, inhuman powers, his name cursed in the same breath it is spoken.

Yaijinden served as the focus of rei.bot's defenders during the Seven Swords crisis of the Clan of the Steel Fist, and bore the three of the seven swords that his side had gathered. This is one of the rare examples of a fight he was interested in participating in, though by his own admission he was there more for the chance to pit himself against rei-bot than fighting for her prime counterpart.

Yaijinden can be summoned with an offering of homemade mashed potatoes and gravy and prior notification of his player. Why? Mashed potatoes and gravy is delicious.

Yaijinden has starred in two Ginga TV-produced television shows. The first, Everybody Loves Yai, is a sitcom that follows the improbable events that plague the life of a charismatic dead man. The second, Yaistar (co-starring Moonstar), is a shonen-oriented giant robot show about a pair of deeply mercenary pilots who are strictly in the monster-fighting business for the money. A 2020 remake of the latter series is underway, where Yaijinden is reprising his role as Keikaku Collapse.

During a week-long Caribbean vacation in the summer of 2007, Yaijinden underwent (and has since recovered from) a bodyectomy in which Dr. Xadium excised a potential alien (ie. his own) presence from his flesh. Several of his organs were reclaimed by sinister science-y types: his brain by Shinji Ikari, his gonads by Mizuno Ami, and other miscellanea by Professor Tomoe. What remained was buried and left behind; over generations their psycho-spiritual rot seeped into the island and tainted the native plant life, creating the first devil fruits of One Piece.

Yaijinden has a captaincy within the Spanish navy due to the seductive invitations of Nightfall's cadre, and is the listed captain of a pleasure yacht named the ESPS This Was A Terrible Idea After All. On a whim, he subsequently infused the boat with a fragment of his power, granting the yacht a proud, austere sapience and the ability to sail through land as though it were water.

Yaijinden and Mango co-own a combination mortician service/dance club named 'Rave to the Grave. The club is 'staffed' and 'populated' with nanotechnologically-preserved animatronically-motile corpses as a cost-cutting measure, including such renowned souls as Dr. Hooey, Jedda Rain, Pinako's body double, and other people that have died in the vicinity of the Hotel without their bodies being claimed by loved ones or family. The club has been burned to the ground on several occasions, and is on its fifth round of staff and dancer corpses.

Yaijinden, the Widening Gyre

First Yaijinden Excellency
Yaijinden wraps himself in apparent disorder and rampant foolishness to mask his preternatural wisdom. The Widening Gyre is slow to anger and quick to laugh at the world. He plays with paradox and logic traps as though they were toys, and cannot help but provoke the high and mighty, for he reviles complacency and rote idolatry of all forms.

Though the Widening Gyre has a definite sense of the way the world is and should be, this sense of design is unnameable and indescribable. Poetry, metaphor, and allegory are his bread and butter, and encouraging self-cultivation is his eternal labor. While he relishes gathering and hoarding information, that knowledge must teach the properly penitent. Yaijinden is a skillful sifu whose lessons scar their principles into the student, tactically transgressing boundaries, and in doing so earning both acclaim and resentment simultaneously.

Yaijinden observes all angles of a situation before he acts, assessing values and beliefs of its movers and shakers, and only then manipulates others by their desires and hatreds to maximum effect. He toys with the wants of others, drawing them to either realize their cravings or consume themselves in hunger, whichever and whatever encourages active participation in their own lives. Even when others pay him back in suffering, the Widening Gyre holds neither grudge nor malice, for he learns from his defeats and becomes greater thereby.

Yaijinden's Excellency may be used to subversively enlighten others, whether through education or by more martial means. His dynamic nature prevents him from using this Excellency to plan for the distant future, and he disdains battle unless that battle involves a closely-held personal ideological stake for either or both sides. Yaijinden also does not cause certain, uninvited harm to the truly innocent. His Excellency may always be used to supplement studies into forgotten mysteries or Things That Should Not Be Known.

Yaijinden Mythos Exultant
Yaijinden turns initial momentum into inevitable, magnificent victory. When the character gains motes from a successful stunt in harmony with First Yaijinden Excellency, he may place one of those motes into an available Overdrive pool.

Yaijinden Ascendancy Mantle
The Widening Gyre embraces internal paradox, not internal contradiction-- the former is a cause for joy, and the latter causes nothing but pain. When the character chooses to suppress any Virtue, they gain a point of Limit. If they suppress their primary Virtue, they gain a second additional point of Limit. The effects of this Charm recede if the character does not possess at least three Virtues rated 3+.

Sorcerous Enlightenment of Yaijinden
Yaijinden stands above and apart from the patterns of Creation even as he stands among them, playing with them as one might play a particularly interesting toy. When he twists its weave, his attention is focused on one object of interest. Spells that have one specific target cost two less Willpower (minimum zero) to cast. Indiscriminate carnage or change is not in his nature; spells that affect or influence geography and geomancy, rather than individuals, cost one additional Willpower.

The Torment of Yaijinden
The Sandal-Hatless is an iconoclast at heart, and this refusal to keep to the steady extends to himself as well. When a Green Sun Prince with the Yaijindani Urge accumulates 10 points of Limit, they suffer the Curse of the Gyre. For a period of (Essence) days, a number of Intimacies equal to the [warlock's highest Virtue] changes from positive to negative (or vis viersa), acquiring new contexts as necessary, and their Motivation undergoes a similar oppositional change. While others may try to change their mind or stay their course, the warlock must resist all such influences with their best social defenses. The warlock must also spend their full attention on pursuing their altered Motivation or Intimacies; should the warlock be unable to do so, they lapse into a semi-catatonic state, unable to take proactive action even to defend themselves from harm. The Partial Control of this Torment allows the warlock to select whether to invert only their Motivation or to invert only their Intimacies.

Unlike other Torments, this madness is not contagious.