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A Different Demon-Sealing Record - Appendix: Dramatis Personnae

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Hakurei Reimu (博麗 霊夢): The Not-Quite-Fledgling Shrine Maiden of Paradise

Species: human

Age: 14 (b. sometime in October or November, CE 1986/Hakurei 102; birthday is celebrated on November 1)

Ability: The powers inherited from the past Shrine Maidens of Hakurei.

The main playable character in almost every game. She sort of diverged from canon, as written (don't worry, there'll be convergence later). Her birthday is taken from the release month of Highly Responsive to Prayers.

Genjii (玄爺): The Flying Tortoise of Ancient Wisdom

Species: divine spirit (tortoise)

Age: Unknown. Assigned to Hakurei Shrine in CE 1887/Hakurei 3.

Ability: Eidetic memory.

Reimu rode on his back during the PC-98 era since she couldn't fly on her own, though he only had dialogue in Story of Eastern Wonderland. Mostly canon. I made him a divine spirit because I decided it didn't make sense for a youkai to be a loyal servant of the Hakurei Shrine at this stage of the game. This would mean he was originally a living being who achieved divinity before or after his death, but I couldn't work anything about that into this story.

Hara Rika (原 里香): The Fantastical Engineer

Species: human

Age: 19

Ability: Technological and mechanical aptitude.

The stage 1 boss in Story of Eastern Wonderland along with the Flower Tank, and the Extra Stage boss along with a more ridiculous invention. "Hara" comes from Hara Tomio, the head of Japan's tank development department who had a hand in the creation of Japan's first tank, the Type 87 Chi-I medium tank (which wasn't appreciably faster or more impressive than the Flower Tank).

Miyamoto Meira (宮本 明羅): The High-Born Samurai

Species: human

Age: 17 (b. May 21, C.E. 1983/Hakurei 99)

Ability: The power to wield any close-quarters weapon as if she was an expert, for as long as she is touching any part of it.

The stage 2 boss in Story of Eastern Wonderland. "Miyamoto" comes from Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest swordsman in Japanese history. The line "I have come to take the Hakurei" is taken directly from the current translation of the game, and Reimu similarly mistook it for a marriage proposal. (Also, for the record, the ages I've set for Reimu and Meira are the same respective ages as Usagi and Mamoru at the beginning of Sailor Moon. Just saying.)

I gave her the above power because I just thought it would be funny if she had an ability which is completely broken in its own sphere of competence (unless, of course, she encounters a master swordswoman or two), while at the same being totally useless in Gensokyo, since everyone uses danmaku.

Kamishirasawa Keine (上白沢 慧音): The History-Eating Historian

Species: were-hakutaku (human most of the time, transforms into a more monstrous form except for her face under the full moon).

Age: Unknown

Ability: Consuming and hiding history (normal form), creating history (hakutaku form).

The stage 3 boss in Imperishable Night. Mostly canon.

Kawaji Kotohime (川路 小兎姫): The Peacekeeping Youkai-Exterminator

Species: human

Age: 26

Ability: Summoning a glowing silver cloud and creating exploding mines in danmaku. Knowledge of low-tech forensics.

One of the playable characters in Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream. "Kawaji" comes from Kawaji Toshiyoshi, a former samurai who helped develop the Japanese police force during the Meiji Restoration; he died six years before the Great Hakurei Barrier went up. The police uniform is based on that of a photo on Wikipedia of Japanese police officers in 1875, under "Police services of the Empire of Japan".

I decided to make Kotohime sane, competent, and an actual police officer, partly because Gensokyo already has enough weirdos and lunatics running around, but also so that I could introduce two concepts which I kind of felt have been relatively unexplored in canon and fandom: 1. law enforcement in the Human Village — somebody's got to keep out the thieving witches! — and 2. those youkai exterminators with nonzero effectiveness, but who still don't hold a candle to Reimu and Keine; canon mentions in a few places that the Village was originally a settlement of youkai exterminators, but this has never been shown.

Noroiko (呪い子): The Demon of the Deadly Dance

Species: Human-looking "manipulation-of-whatever" youkai

Age: 31

Ability: Manipulation of curses.

The unnamed stage 2 midboss from Story of Eastern Wonderland; "Noroiko" is a nickname invented by fans, which comes from the fact that her bullets look like the kanji "呪" ("noroi"), meaning "curse." The homing-bullet thing can basically happen in the game; everything else, I basically just made up, since everything I just mentioned is literally all there is to know about her. Hooray for "not technically original"-characters!

Kirisame Marisa (霧雨 魔理沙): The Apprentice Human Witch

Species: human

Age: 13 (b.August 15, CE 1986/Hakurei 102)

Ability: Can create a star-shaped spark by snapping her fingers. Miscellaneous witchcraft, optimized for negating anti-youkai countermeasures.

The stage 4 boss in Story of Eastern Wonderland, and playable in nearly every subsequent game. Mostly canon. Most of the non-canon bits are taken up by gayness.

Mima (魅魔)/Kirisame Mima (霧雨 美眞): The Spirit of Self-Made Vengeance

Species: vengeful spirit (dead human)

Age: Lived 42 years, dead 51 years

Ability: Like a magician-youkai, she has the capacity to learn any magic which can be learned or taught.

The second boss of the Hell route in Highly Responsive to Prayers, the final boss in Story of Eastern Wonderland, and a playable character in both Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream and Mystic Square. I want to say 50% canon.

The canon kanji above use characters which roughly mean "charming demon." As part of the name "Kirisame Mima", her given name consists of characters which mean "truth" and "beauty"; I wasn't trying to do anything particularly meaningful with that. This is known as "ateji", kanji chosen for their sound.

Yakumo Ran (八雲 藍): The Nine-Tailed Familiar

Species: kitsune

Age: Unknown, presumably at least 800

Ability: Superior intellect, can perform calculations in her head faster than a contemporary computer in 2001 (jury's out on a 2017 computer).

The Extra Stage boss in Perfect Cherry Blossom. Details in this story are unclear.

Yakumo Yukari (八雲 紫): The Youkai of Boundaries

Species: Human-looking "manipulation-of-whatever" youkai

Age: Unknown

Ability: Creation, manipulation, and nullification of conceptual boundaries.

The Phantasm Stage boss in Perfect Cherry Blossom. Details in this story are unclear.

Other Characters

Hakurei Chiyo (博麗 千代, CE 1971-1999/Hakurei 87-115): Perfect Cherry Blossom's prologue contains an in-universe introduction to Gensokyo attributed to "the 13th Shrine Maiden of Hakurei". There was nothing to indicate that this referred to Reimu — or didn't refer to her, for that matter — but thirteen seemed to be about right for the number of Shrine Maidens before Reimu, so I went with that. (On the other hand, there wasn't room in the chronology for thirteen Shrine Maidens in 115 years if I didn't want 5 years to be the freaking average rather than the lower limit, so I had to move the actual founding of the Shrine to 1829 ...) Anyway, there's also a sort of pre-existing fan-character called "the Previous Generation Hakurei Miko" (先代博麗の巫女, "Sendai Hakurei no Miko"). The deal with Chiyo's name is, the characters for "Chiyo" can also be read as "Sendai" (a similar pun was used with Chihiro/Sen in the movie Spirited Away). Unlike the fan-character, Chiyo wore proper miko attire.

Konngara (age unknown): The final boss of the Hell route in Highly Responsive to Prayers. I repurposed her as the god of the Hakurei Shrine because of reasons.

Hakurei Ichigo (博麗 苺, 1798-1852), Hakurei Niji (博麗 虹, 1828-1868), Hakurei Sanna (博麗 算名, 1841-1887), Hakurei Yonmi (1867-1899): I couldn't come up with anything good for their names, so I just picked a couple of normal names which are number puns: "ichi" (一) means 1, "ni" (二) means 2, "san" (三) means 3, and "yon" (四) means 4. And none of these names' kanji actually have anything to do with numbers.

Kirisame Nakamoto (霧雨 仲基, age 38), Kirisame Ayumu (霧雨 歩夢, age 39): Marisa's parents. "Nakamoto" comes from Tominaga Nakamoto, an eighteenth-century merchant and philosopher from Osaka who practiced a Japanese form of atheism; I just found Tominaga's article in the Wikipedia category "Japanese merchants", read over his philosophy, and decided I'd hit jackpot with regards to the kind of guy who wouldn't allow his daughter to become a witch. "Ayumu" is made of the characters for "walk" and "dream" (夢 is shared by Reimu, Yumemi, etc), signifying that she's not as down-to-earth as Nakamoto. Of the two, Ayumu is slightly more mature, and considerably better at letting things go.

Morichika Rinnosuke (森近 霖之助, age 64): A friend of the Kirisame family. The protagonist of Curiosities of Lotus Asia, and one of the few male characters. Mostly canon. According to a bit that was narrated by Marisa, he was apprenticed to Marisa's father at some point, and she has no idea how this fits in chronologically.

Hara Takumi (原 匠, age 42): Rika's father. His given name literally just means "carpenter." I didn't describe him in much detail, but I based his appearance on one of the characters in the illustration for the Human Village in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense. Yes, that guy is now Rika's dad.

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