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[hallowedly]

sakurazuka seishirou: veterinarian Clark Kent by day, moonlighting as a hereditary supernatural assassin distraught over Japan's magical future. Psychopath, dessert aficionado, agent of the apocalypse, heir of one half of a centuries-old clan feud and proud (?) one-eyed Tokyo resident.

warnings: Seishirou takes an enthusiastically cold-blooded approach to bloodshed, a manipulative one to interpersonal relationships and an irreverent one to torture; while animal abuse won't feature in play, please know he's redirected magically karmic harm from himself unto pets in the past.


Here for everything / anything & please don't hesitate to opt out if the character makes you uncomfortable!

layout @ shinemagic


CHARACTER

CHARACTER NAME: Sakurazuka Seishirou
CANON: Tokyo Babylon & X/1999
AGE: 33
CANON POINT: right after his regrettable demise in X/1999.
Wiki Link(s): Wikipedia or CLAMP Wikia.

The capsule summary: sociopathic heir of the hereditary supernatural Sakurazukamori assassin clan that acts blood-handed in the shadows for the occult welfare of Japan. We first run into Seishirou in Tokyo Babylon, where he’s playing pretend under a Clark Kent-style veterinarian persona to carry out a one-sided one-year bet positing that not even Seishirou’s best effort to feel emotion for the world’s most pristine person — his prey, the oblivious head of the Sumeragi clan, Subaru — can result in real human connection. Allegedly indifferent to his mark once time runs up, Seishirou relinquishes his façade, ruining Subaru’s life and killling his sister Hokuto along the way. In X/1999, he has been drafted as one of the angels of destruction serving Monou Fuuma’s apocalyptic agenda to uncaringly bring about the end of the world. He dies while confronting Subaru and triggering a backlash spell left by Hokuto, later having his eye post-humously Fedex’d by Fuuma so Subaru can claim it and Seishirou’s title as the next Sakurazukamori — and, critically, live.

SOMNIA-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

1. Dreams are how Sleep chooses you. What might draw your character into Somnia— a wound, a wish, a weakness? Would they follow the dream, or run from it?

Seishirou’s regrettable post-death circumstances, experience with dreamscapes and the afterthought of his apocalyptic mission mean that Somnia will be as much his trial as his well-earned retirement resort. He has nothing to lose, everything to explore, and arguably a new lens through which to view the world — arming him with the curiosity and survival wish to keep Seishirou going. In a way, dreams — a peel of the illusions that Seishirou is entirely too comfortable with — are a fundamentally unreliable foundation to live out the woes and desires of a first life. But they’re a perfectly hospitable platform to pursue even the second chance you don’t particularly know what to do with — and the Sakurazukamori has never seen an opportunity he’s failed to latch onto, fangs and claws ready.

2. Somnia is a slow unraveling—of worlds, and of selves. How does your character respond to fear, transformation, and losing control? Do they fight, adapt, collapse?

Seishirou analyses his circumstances, puzzles out a course of action, optimises its steps, then ruthlessly eliminates obstacles and danger. He is relentless in his pursuit and seems personally irked when things or people behave outside of his predictive patterns. We have yet to see him fully lose control in the classical sense, though glimpses of his reactions to the unexpected suggest he won’t be the happiest camper to lay out marshmallows if the world burns outside of his expected norms. You could argue that his death — and his own strange surprise at it and its implications, for all he’d been previously warned of the magical backlash if he turned on Subaru — is what today’s cool kids might call a “crash-out”: Seishirou losing grips of himself enough to consider another person.

It’s less fighting that comes natural to the Sakurazukamori, more winning: he is steadfast and dogged, because survival, after all, belongs to the fittest. He has no qualms about adapting or using any weapons or tools at his disposal: in Somnia he will be irked by the audacity of losing parts of his natural magic, but not depressively stunted.

One (awkward?) point to make is that Seishirou’s type of practitioner, the onymouji, are raised to commingle magic with mysticism and the divine. While he lacks a worshipping disposition — and treats the Fate-chosen apocalyptic agent of his world as a teenage junior manager, outside of their ice cream dalliances — Seishirou is still likelier than most to want to explore and understand the forces ruling Somnia. His entire life has been devoted to a twisted, body-count-heavy protection of the supernatural: he’ll never say no to shaking an Eldritch hand.

3. Connection is the only constant. What kind of bonds does your character form— fast and burning, slow and wary, deep and desperate? How might that shape their time in this world?

Listless, begrudging, but also curious — Seishirou’s bonds will be an exercise in wary learning of how to interact with a world he now has evidence he can emotionally participate in, while gently juggling his old bad habits of manipulation, weaponization and ready discard of everyone and anything.

Human connection has been sorely missing from the glitz and glam of the Armani-clad Sakurazukamori existence, to such a point that the Seishirou of Tokyo seems almost let down that not even the world’s purest, presumably most lovable person can trigger emotion in him. Certainly, killing his own mother didn’t work the trick. But the endgame of X/1999 puts him at a turning point where he has seemingly kindled feelings — enough so to have consideration and care for another person.

That reckoning point bloodily behind him, Seishirou’s entering Somnia at a time when he needs to both internalize and navigate the transition from soulless predator to (maybe) functional human being — and, like a child, he will be both petulant and inquisitive about the people around him. This is a strange new reality around him, and while he’s no one’s model citizen — and likely to still withdraw behind the paranoid armour of his helpless veterinarian persona — he’s going to want to test out the fresh reach of his tablespoon’s worth of emotional capacity. First, most likely, in what he feels is a controlled environment, where he dictates both the terms of his exposure in the interaction and probably the other person’s survival span. Then, more organically.

Notably, Sumeragi Subaru was the instrument, not end point of Seishirou’s “bet” in Tokyo Babylon. He sought to test whether he could be the kind of person who could entertain feelings and open that pathway to himself, and he ambitiously set himself up against the person his society extolled as his exact opposite — therefore emotionally open, warm, lovable. He stacked the odds heavily on the opposition’s favour to give it — and in a way, himself — the fairest chance of revealing that the latest Sakurazukamori could be more than a weapon. X/1999 proves he may have taken artistic license with the bet’s real outcome, and he can now decipher what that means for him and the person he can be, especially as he has technically been violently retired out of the clan position that defined his life.

At the end of the day, bonds aren’t native to a creature born and bred to kill, but Seishirou has helpfully been humbled enough by his canon point that his middle-aged existential crisis will involve more gentle testing and prickling experimentation than sports cars in Somnia.

4. What are two major forces in your character’s personality that are often in conflict? (Ex: logic vs emotion, power vs guilt, obedience vs rage, etc.)

Inevitably, he’s the battlefield of a squabble between ruthlessness and the fledgling capacity for social connection. The Sakurazukamori are designer workaholics, indoctrinated early in the ways of the clan and killing their (blood-tied) predecessors. Logic, indifference, manipulation and utter disregard for human life are just the office-wear for the consummate professional. Despite that, Seishirou still displays instances of exasperation and irritation, a snobby pride in his practice of onymoudo magic and complete disdain for your (yes, you over there) average Joe’s fumbling efforts to abuse the supernatural.

Despite his ingrained self-discipline and nigh corporate detachment, his steely M.O. cracks to reveal the rare heat of anger and possessiveness, if his prey or birthright are meddled with. He is exquisitely practical about occupational death, but at times disproportionate in the cruelty of his delivery, going to some lengths to humiliate those whose hubris of attempting the supernatural has apparently wronged his professional pride. Seishirou likewise sometimes lets his private relish in cat-and-mouse games draw out his kills, expressing disappointment that his clearly outclassed victims who weren’t particularly set up for success didn’t put up more of a fight. In the end, death is “just business” — but business can be personal.

VESSEL SELECTION

Which Vessel Type are you choosing: Token or Offering? Token!
Choose one OR list three subclass options within your chosen Vessel type that you think would suit them: Illusionist.
Why does this Vessel type feel appropriate for your character? The power set echoes — but doesn’t fully overlap — with half of Seishirou’s skillset and the abilities most formative and pride-bound to the Sakurazukamori. Fundamentally, illusions — although, funnily, less powerful than his canonical rite and invocation-led magic that he’ll be shedding — are Seishriou’s birthright, and their absence would saddle him with a second simultaneous crisis, alongside his private death revelations. He’d be dealt too much of a psychological blow with critical losses on both fronts, and retaining the illusionist background would make him easier to play — though he’s still, alas, likely to sting that the better part of his power has been summarily amputated. Time to grab a blunt object…!

SAMPLES: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08