Kyoko Shinsegawa

One of the gaijin took an interest in Kyoko from the moment he saw her, and it proved her ultimate damnation. A visiting envoy to the Bishamon uji, Friedrich Kreizer represented Clan Tremere in a doomed attempt to establish a chantry in Kyoto, Japan. For decades, the Warlocks had held a fascination with the feng shui magic possessed by the geomancers of the Kuei-jin. Claiming to be an expert on “matters of the cultures Oriental,” Kreizer negotiated a diplomatic commission with the mysterious Kindred of the East. As truth revealed, however, Kreizer had little knowledge of the ways of the Kuei-jin. His true intentions remain a mystery — was he ignorant and overconfident, or did he simply seek an escape from the intrigues of Vienna? Whatever the case, Kreizer met young Kyoko at a traveler’s hostel in a Japanese fishing village shortly after he arrived in Kyoto. Her beauty, exotic as it was to the traveling European, captivated him, and the last pages of his journals suggest that she ignited “mortal passions long unknown to [his] dead heart.” Kreizer’s ignorance of Kuei-jin custom led to his inevitable demise, and a detachment of assassins attacked him before he had a chance to make a disastrous introduction. As he staggered back to the hostel from the fishing pier where his assailants had done their deed, he fought off the ravages of hunger frenzy just long enough… …to lose control at the sight of Kyoko putting out his evening meal. She thought it strange that this pale-skinned guest never ate his rice and prawns, but she brought them each night as was her duty. On that last fateful night, however, the guest lurched into his room, spattered in blood with tatters of flesh dangling from his body, and fell upon her. Kyoko felt her vision dim and her extremities grow cold as the monster tore open her body and gorged himself on her hot blood. She fought back desperately, but the monster was too strong for her even its weakened state. In one final, willful act, however, she managed to drive a wooden spoon through the creature’s heart before blacking out. Kyoko awoke minutes later to the sound of her father screaming. She found her face covered with her own blood and that of the creature that lay paralyzed on the straw tick beside her. With a speed fueled by terror, Kyoko fetched her father’s grain flail from the stockroom and struck the creature’s head from its body, whereupon the demon crumbled to greasy ash. Defiled by the monster, Kyoko fled into the night, leaving behind every shred of safety and security she had known. She had heard of the Demon People before, though, and she had learned from an itinerant sorcerer how to contact them. She walked into the forest, knelt by the river and sang, scattering a handful of spices on the water’s surface. Before long, the Scaled Monk joined her by the riverbank and told her what she had become. CHAPTER TWO 77 “You are now the daughter of the Devil,” he told her. “You will bring only misfortune with you and leave only tragedy in your wake.” “But what can I do, Scaled Monk?” Kyoko cried. “Shall I end this new life?” “No,” the monk replied. “That is not your choice to make. What you must do, flower of the blood-waters, is travel to the lands of the demons who made you. Whether to the west or the east, you must flee, and while there, slake your thirst on the life of the devil-kings.” And so Kyoko fled, booking midnight passage on a ship headed to San Francisco with money stolen from the village’s coffers. Since arriving on the shores of America, Kyoko has learned English and German (which she recognized from the monster’s private journal), and she has aligned herself with a small cabal of Tremere (knowledge of which she also gleaned from Kreizer’s diary). She can barely bring herself to practice the corrupt magic of the westerners, however, and she has chosen a route in line with the Scaled Monk’s words instead: Kyoko has become the Scourge of San Francisco, under appointment by Prince Vannevar Thomas. Kyoko knows that she works for the same devils who made her, yet she fulfills her destiny in the only way she can — by destroying those weak enough to fall before her sword and flail. A recent influx of Asian Kuei-jin has set her longing for the past that was so brutally taken from her, but she knows the Demon People of her old home would not hesitate to strike her down. And so, Kyoko faces a nightly unlife of struggle; she has become the rock upon which petty anarchs and thin-blooded Kindred alike break themselves in their flight from the Kuei-jin in the south.

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