I recently started an IRL game with folks local to me at a newly opened gaming shop, Secret Lair at Lake Chelan, in our hometown of Manson, Washington.
For the past many years we’ve played entirely virtual table-top (aka VTT), and so actually getting together around a physical table to sit down is quite a treat. There are real dice to roll! And real figurines to move around a map! And there are real people to talk to, oh my! Okay, 2 out of 3 ain’t too bad. Joking aside, to put in context, it’s been more than 10 years since I spent more than a few minutes in-person with folks outside of my immediate family; the joys and tribulations as both a fully-remote technologist and being autistic – so there is some real anxiety being around other folks, even if we are each other’s peeps. So a part of getting out is just re-normalize myself to being around people, and try to continue to make inroads in our community which I adore so much.
I’m pretty familiar with D&D 5e, and while I did play a bit of 3.5e when that was all the rage, I’ve never played Pathfinder 1e which is based on 3.5e. Our DM is bringing us through an urban fantasy to boot, which is also new to me. As a bit of self-indulgence, I opted to roll with Kensei Magus, or in layman terms, a sword-wielding master who can add magic to their attacks. Think a Japanese swordsman of yore with a bit of Gandalf thrown in for good measure.
And before folks try to correct me, the correct pronunciation is KENsei (剣聖／けん・せい／), not KENsai, regardless of what Paizo Publishing might put in print. Just saying.
The self-indulgence? Well, first I have a black belt in Kendo (Japanese sword-fighting). Second, I speak Japanese sorta fluently (fluently enough to have once worked as a Japanese interpreter in aerospace manufacturing). And finally, I named the character after myself. Self-indulgence in three, indeed!
My character’s name is 和道 (KAZUmichi). You can address me, I mean him, as Kazumichi or Kazu, but don’t call him Kaz. He hates that. And for the record, so do I.
A bit of trivia. I choose the name of Kazumichi for myself when I first lived in Japan some 30 years ago as a bit of an homage to 1) Japan, 2) my Kendo training, and 3) a play on words of my English name. On that last part, an alternative pronunciation is WAdou, which is very close to how Japanese might pronounce my English name as WAdo. If I’m being utterly honest, and I am, I really did not like that pronunciation, especially it’s the same pronunciation for Microsoft Word. As for the first part, the first character 和 generally means “harmony” or “peace”, but a more archaic meaning is Japan(ese). So an archaic understanding of the characters might lead one to interpret to “way of Japan”, which is a fitting auto-appellation for a full-of-himself young American kid living in Japan. 🙂
I will admit that my character was (deeply) inspired the recent Netflix series, Blue-eyed Samurai. If you’ve not watched it, stop reading and go and watch. It’s okay, I’ll wait. See what I mean? An amazing TV series. One of the best in the last few years. And, you’re welcome.
Now given the fact that that I named my character after my Japanese name, I thought there was no reason to not use myself as a reference in the portrait. Granted, I did end up creating a character portrait closer to my IRL age of 50 than my character’s age of 27, but a bit of retcon never hurt anyone, right?
I really wanted to role-play with a familiar as I’ve not done in a quite awhile, and thankfully Pathfinder 1e makes that pretty easy. And when I raw across a Dracula parrot (it’s real, google it), I knew exactly what my familiar would look like. And I decided to name them 闇 or YAmi, which is the Chinese character for absence of light, and resonance with both the benign such as twilight or darkness, but also the more sublime such as Japanese mythology where some gods exist.
Since Kensei can’t use armor or a shield, we need a way to survive first contact with hostiles. We opted to make dump both his strength and charisma stats to ensure both his dexterity and intelligence are at 18 or 17, respectively. In gaming parlance, he’s a lanky DEX(terity) monkey. And while folks might assume he’d wield a katana, as a bit of meta-gaming he’s a master of scimitars in order to leverage Dervish Dancer feat to wreck the game’s action economy. We might be leaning toward role-playing, but it’s hard to resist a bit of Min-Max’ing.
As an artist, I love to share my references as I think too many people, especially other self-taught artists think that references are some kind of sign of weakness, when in fact since time immemorial, references are a staple of every accomplished artist’s toolset. I’m not saying I’m accomplished, I’m just saying references are super important. And that fellow has one hell of a head of hair; color me jealous.
Left is the first version I made, but I really did not like a few elements such as the hair, lack of interesting embellishments, and Kazumichi’s clothing. Again, thank you for references to help find elements to help guide the details. I opted to do a bit of a paint-over to change out the hair, add some details like a Chinese dragon tattoo on the head, and a Chrysanthemum tattoo on the forearm. Kazumichi will not welcome at any Japanese onsen (hot baths) anytime soon; sadly. While I still not entirely stoked about the horns, I opted to put the proverbial pen down and call it complete. Who knows, maybe I come back to in a bit, but I’d rather move to another portrait.
Say hello to all the nice folks, Kazu.
和道と申します。どうぞよろしくお願いいたします。
