Unknown Armies NPC - Yoshida

An Unknown Armies NPC, based on my character from David Tormsen's playtest game for ¥0, a Japanese Mak Attax successor conspiracy from his upcoming Special Orders sourcebook.

Portable version here.

In uniform.

Yoshida (just Yoshida) is a cleaner from a long line of cleaners. From the Tokyo Subway all the way back to the Koreans speared to death in the ruins of the Great Kanto Quake, Yoshida’s family has bagged the bodies and mopped up the blood, piss and liquified fat. Today, he cleans up after people who kill themselves using trains. Japan averages one a day, so he travels a lot.

You might have guessed that Yoshida is one of the burakumin, the village people. Yes, he also wears a hard hat at work, and has been known to hang out at the YMCA. His brother Yoshioka went into the trash business with a local chivalrous organization. One of the outfits that settles their disputes with grenades. That isn’t Yoshida’s scene.

Yoshida was cleaning up after a jumper when her hand followed him home. Climbed into his pocket and hid. He didn’t find it until he was back at Rose’s, the tachinomi outside the Nagoya station. Crawled up onto the counter and tried to climb into his little bowl of pickled things. Everyone else freaked out. Only he could see the person attached to it. She seemed sad.

Yoshida takes care of dead people. He sorts their bones and scoops their skulls into plastic bags. It doesn’t get more intimate than that, so he wasn’t surprised when they started to talk back to him. The head lost in the storm drain, yelling at him to pull it out. The salaryman wedged under the bogey, who forgot to let his cat out before he stepped off the platform.

¥0 was the logical next step for Yoshida. He can’t serve food - nobody would willingly eat anything his hands had touched. But he can clean up a crime scene, speak to dead people, and go unnoticed where a cabal of twitchy mages would make a scene. He pledged himself to the memory of Betty Kimura because he wanted to help people. Maybe if things weren’t so fucked up, he wouldn’t meet so many of them on the other side.

Personality: A straightforward man who looks for a solution that helps everyone, Yoshida is here to give you what you need, not what you think you want. Normally a man who conceals his true opinions, his inner life exposes itself when he speaks to ghosts. He believes only he can help them, and his responsibility to the abandoned dead overrides any oath of service he’s made in the living world. Someday this will get him in trouble with ¥0.
Rage: People being wasteful. Things are bad enough, don’t throw away what you’ve got.
Noble: Everyone deserves to be listened to. Sometimes that’s all they want.
Fear: Being hit by a train. He’s seen what it does to a person. (Violence).
Obsession: Spirits are people too. They’re Yoshida’s responsibility.
Wound Threshold: 50

Cleaner 60%*: Of course I can go unnoticed, notice things, clean up messes (Subs Secrecy, Subs Notice, Protects Violence)
Medium 60%: Yoshida can make spirits visible, allowing him (and others) to see and converse with them. What counts as a “spirit” and whether it’s actually the ghost of a dead person, or something else, is up to the GM.
Blessed of Betty Kimura 30%: Modify die rolls by up to 3% while serving ¥0

Notches	Violence	Unnatural	Helplessness	Isolation	Self
Hardened	2	4	2	4	3
Failed	1	1	0	1	0

At Rose's bar, the Tachinomi outside Nagoya Station

Appearance: Yoshida is large and a bit heavy, with curly hair and oversized soft hands. The rail lines let him get away with a little stubble because his job isn’t exactly public facing, and it’s covered by a mask half the time anyway. When he’s on the job he wears coveralls, and often a hard hat and ear protection when actually working the tracks. Off the job he likes button up shirts with short sleeves and a nice pair of business casual slacks. He never wears jeans because they make him feel fat.

Possessions: Yoshida carries a duffelbag of work stuff (almost) everywhere. He’s got gloves, a respirator, a hard hat, earpro, basic tools, cleaning supplies, spare forensic scrubs, shoe coverings, rope and bungee cord, plastic bags and a couple spare body bags. Experience has taught him that, in a pinch, the bag will stop a knife. He hasn’t tried to stop a sword, and isn’t confident it would help.