So I've been working on this idea I've had for characters for Touhou but have been wanting help making them well rounded and authentic. In my quest to make them I even started looking at it as if it were to be made an actual game. So could you please tell me what you think and what I should alter?
Touhou: Quarantine Termination
(Thanks goes to a poster on another forum named Kirin, for helping me with making names for the characters and attacks)
Ittan Momen: No name yet, character is an Ittan Momen from Japanese mythology which is a youkai that looks like a long strip of fabric or smoke in its depictions. She spends her days floating on the breeze with not a care in the world, mostly just sleeping and singing to herself but when she runs into a person she gets real excited and greets them politely before attempting to hug them, but she often times almost suffocates the person she's hugging, if someone refuses her hugs or evades them enough then she will get upset, thinking they don't like her, and will then initiate a danmaku battle in an attempt to force them to give her a hug. A notable characteristic about her clothes is that she wears one of those cloths that cover the front and back of your body (Like the one Ran wears
http://images.wikia.com/touhou/images/6/64/Ran.png) that's back half is much much longer than usual and that is prehensile, allowing her to grab things (Or people).
Chimura Genko (Means Dancing Child of the Earth Village): Chimura is a Dogu created by a person to guard a temple along with three others but she was considered a bit of a failure by her creator as she isn't very powerful. Chimura therefore instead visits all of Gensokyo and returns to the temple to share what news she has learned. She has a very spirited personality and channels it into two things she loves, dancing and racing, her specialty in battles then is her great speed. I imagine her sometimes doing that one legged sideways hop that Kabuki dancers do and doing pirouettes around the screen. In reference to how Doguu have large eyes she wears goggles on her head and puts them on when she races/fights. She'd usually be seemingly oblivious to the world, dancing whenever she feels like it regardless of occasion, but at times she'll use this as a way to surprise people by making them think she's not paying attention to things. Her special ability is that she can take illness or negative emotions from someone and place them in a pot which she then destroys thereby eliminating it. She has a clay horse for a pet that also serves as her mid boss, later in the game she becomes the mid boss for Futoseki (Profile is further down) while riding this horse.
Aoi/Aka Manto: No name yet either, an Aoi Manto or Aka Manto is a youkai that waits in a bathroom for someone to enter to which they ask whether they want a blue cape or a red cape and then strangles them for the former and slashes their neck for the latter. She is rather impatient and has grown to hate the traditional way her kind deal with humans because it takes too long and isn't flashy and pretty enough for her tastes, so she decided to ditch that and instead hunt people actively. To this end she made herself a magician so she could draw attention and look glamorous too. She's also one of the more dangerous characters in that she kills humans actively and is very aggressive about it but at the same time she's also a suffering artist, since she kills the people that see her tricks, she doesn't get to know whether they were good or not nor does her reputation get around much because of it, so she's always trying to come up with new magic tricks. In the scenario I have for all these characters, she would be using a mountain pass as her place to practice new tricks since it's away from prying eyes when she runs into whoever the player is playing as. Either she'd be eager to test her new trick or she'd be angry that someone found her before she finished it, I'm not sure which. One of her secrets is that she carries a magicians wand that has instead of white ends, a blue and red one, she can remove these ends and inside the red one is a knife and in the blue one is some cord tied into a noose. Her special ability might be to phase in and out of reality or perhaps she simply knows allot of magic. The phrase she lives by is Matsu Tsumi which means, "To wait is to sin."
After watching some vids I've felt inspired to make more spell card attacks. For one thing my Aoi Manto's danmaku will be different depending on the color, if blue then they're circles and move slowly but if red then they're shaped like a blade and move quickly, add to this her ability to change what color they are, perhaps with a tell of her changing the color of her cape. I've got one where she creates a sort of blue laser noose around you that slowly closes in while her bullets come at you from the outside until eventually the noose disappears. I've also been thinking of one where she throws black cards out around the field which then flip to reveal either a blue side or a red side and then fire a bunch of danmaku from them depending on the color. Also, (Getting inspiration from DD's drawing) I think an attack where she poofs out of existence then poofs back in in order to rush you with the knife she has in her wand, while her cape drops cards from itself which fire danmaku in her wake would probably be a good attack as well, this could go in line with the attack idea I had earlier with her making several puffs of smoke to make it so you don't know which one she'll come at you from.
A very kind person named DDdreamer has offered to draw these characters for me and has already drawn the
http://dddreamer.deviantart.com/#/d3iyxix Please visit her profile and look at her art if you have the time.
Hokabe Futouseki ( Means "Guardian wall of unbeaten stone".): I've had this character idea in my head for a long time and just recently got the inspiration and motivation to really work on this idea. Essentially this character would be a Nurikabe, a wall youkai that was said to appear before travelers at night and stop them from passing, having the ability to extend forever in distance and height. I decided to use the legend of Benkei to help me mold this character's design, she guards a bridge at the entrance to a Buddhist temple (More specifically, the wall that encircles it) where her creator lives.
In terms of appearance she would wear some traditional samurai armor except with no helmet, she would have only one eye, the other being covered by an eye patch, and the eye she does have would usually be half lidded (Like the eye of many depictions of Nurikabe), I got a suggestion for her hair to be a wild and spiky ponytail which sounds good to me, I think it would be a dark gray color like stone, she would also be very flat-chested. She also carries a naginata called 'The Marlin', that is actually two things in one, it can be a naginata or a fishing pole which she uses to fish from the river her bridge goes over. For personality, she would be very confident in herself, very calm and not easily riled up, very happy with the simple things in life however she also has a great liking of personal items as she believes they can give you a connection to the person they belong to so whenever someone wanders by the temple and attempts to get in she asks that they leave or beat her in battle first and if they lose they have to give her something of theirs. If this were a game then she'd have made it to 999 items before Reimu or Marisa beat her.
As for ability, she would be able to make walls appear from the ground, this would feature heavily in her danmaku battles. For one phase I have the idea of her making a mass of bullets that form a maze that you would have to navigate while shooting her (She doesn't move from her position and can't even fly, she get's up high by creating a wall beneath herself), another thing would be her sending out several walls lined up side by side towards your side of the screen that you would have to focus on destroying in order to escape. Another is two walls coming in from the left and right that would decrease the space you can move. She would also be able to swing her naginata at you if you get too close to her. After being beaten, she would not disappear but instead be knocked unconscious while standing upright (A detail about her is that she sleeps standing up) to mimic how Benkei died standing.
Here I have some names for her spell cards.
Puzzle Sign: Maze of Fifteen: This is the attack where she creates a maze made of danmaku bullets.
Wall Sign: Twin Parallel Roads: Is the attack where she summons two walls to close in on the player to restrict their movement.
Falling Sign: Sky Compression: The attack where she summons walls to move down towards the player to crush them.
Ananta & Nitya Hogasha (Names mean "infinite or endless" and "always and eternal" respectively while their last name means "guardian or protector"): These two would be shishi, lion statues that are placed outside temples and shrines. Ananta is the elder sister and is the open mouth shishi (The open mouth represents Ah, the first sound in the Japanese alphabet) and Nitya is the younger brother and is the closed mouth shishi (The closed mouth represents N, though it's pronounced Un, which represents the last sound in the Japanese alphabet). Ananta is very loud and is the one that does all the talking for the two, Nitya never saying anything or at best getting one or two words out, she would have a Misandric streak to her and be very hard on her brother. Their abilities are "creation" and "nonexistence", Ah being the first sound of the alphabet made me think Ananta should have the ability to simply create things (To an extent of course) while N being the last Nitya should have the ability to make things not exist. Ironically, Ananta is in the habit of making things just so she can destroy them while Nitya struggles to make things the hard way because he likes to create. The two can also combine their powers to make illusions, things that exist while at the same time don't exist. They both guard the temple proper.
In terms of appearance, Ananta wears a Sugegasa, one of those symbol like hats you see people wear and Nitya wears a Roningasa which obscures the top half of his face. On Ananta's hat is the symbol for Alpha and on Nitya's is the symbol for Omega, another thing is that they both have on their sleeves, half the symbol for infinity, when they wish to combine their powers they hold hands and their sleeves line up to make the full symbol (Insert Wonder Twin joke here). I think color wise that Ananta should wear orange and purple, orange is the color Buddhist monks wear and purple represents rebirth in India (The closes I could get to creation being symbolized as a color) while Nitya would wear orange and white, white symbolizing death.
Once again, as for fighting, I don't have as much an idea for these two except that they would fight together obviously and that Nitya's ability to make things not exist would manifest itself in him creating small blackhole like things that suck in bullets, perhaps having him weave across the screen doing this or setting up some around the area. When one twin falls then the other will go into a rage, Ananta showing a "tsundere" moment where stutters then swears their attacker will pay, while Nitya either says nothing or perhaps just shouts "REVENGE!" but in either case you would briefly see his eyes flash in a bright color through the eye holes of his hat before he starts attacking.
Buddhist Monk: No name for her yet, this is the person that created the Hogasha siblings, Futoseki and Genko. She has been around since about the time when the Hakurei Border was put up and has been stuck in Gensokyo since then due to it. Perhaps her parents were part of the group that made it in the first place. But eventually she was the only person left at her shrine/temple. So she decides that come hell or high water, that she will bring down the barrier separating Gensokyo from the outside world. Her special ability is to transfer things like life, spirits, and energy, so she made made the shishi, nurikabe and doguu to protect her, and keep her company and she then set about the preparations for tearing down the barrier, for a couple years she set up all the elements for her plan which involved her spending many many years slowly collecting energy into a giant pot which would eventually have enough energy for her to use to break the barrier. I'm debating whether the reason she's still alive is either she sealed herself away to collect this energy over time or she had Ananta use her ability to create and had her make a new body for herself which she then used her powers to put her soul into. Basically in this story it would be close to the time when she would have enough energy to finally pierce the veil and either it's become so much energy that people and youkai are starting to notice or she flubbed a little and some of the energy leaked out, either way it would get the attention of Reimu who would then go to investigate.
For her appearance I haven't thought up much except that she would wear some sort of altered Buddhist clothes and carry a khakkhara with four rings. I was thinking that after her incident is over that she is reminded of what kind of life she is supposed to live as a Buddhist by Reimu pointing out what the four rings on her khakkhara are supposed to represent one being that she needs to be removed of her desires in order to avoid suffering. But she's also told that she could just leave Gensokyo by going through Reimu's shrine which leads to some despair on her part over all the years she spent on her plan but she decides to stay because she'd have to leave her creations behind if she were to leave.
EX Stage Boss: No name yet but this character is a three eyed oni that has been imprisoned and sealed in the mountains around the Buddhist temple, after the earlier events the large amount of energy that the monk character was collecting ended up being released in a huge blast that caused the seals on her to be destroyed. She has a really unhinged sort of personality, but not in the nice crazy way but in the brain damaged way. Sudden pauses in sentences, forgetting what she's doing, ect. As for some physical characteristics, her right eye looks crazed in the style you see in cartoons and anime where there are extra circles around the iris, I'm thinking her having manacles like Yuugi and Suika but hers actually serve a function in that she has some on her legs that are attached to each other by a short chain so she can't run fast and she has one attached to her left arm and left horn which is short enough so that it keeps her arm from moving lest she pull her head down (It keeps her arm behind her back), she's supposed to have the same kind on her right horn but she actually broke it off herself so she could move at least one arm. Reason she can't break them is because they've been cursed so that only someone else can remove them. As said before, she has some brain damage due to a fight from a long time ago which is why she was sealed up because she's now a loose cannon. I'm thinking her special ability is the power to control pressure, any kind of pressure, from air pressure to spiritual pressure, this power is used most often for her to control wind, fortunately she's not as strong as she was before her injury due to her not completely understanding her power anymore. I think she should carry a sake jar around with her in an unusual way, the horn that she broke off is still attached to the end of her manacle, I think she would use the horn as a plug for the jar and she uses her power over pressure to keep the horn in place.
The time line for this could be broken down this way.
Someone senses a disturbance due to the power the monk is gathering going out of control a for a short moment.
This someone then goes out to investigate by heading in the direction of the disturbance.
They fight the Ittan Momen who is just wandering around who asks to hug her but is denied and so a fight breaks out which the Ittan Momen loses.
They enter a pass between mountains and first run into Genko's horse then Genko herself.
Genko recognizes the person due to her knowledge of the goings on in Gensokyo, asks why they're there and then panics a bit, being worried they'll ruin things for her creator, she then fights them.
Genko loses but run off to warn everyone back at the temple.
The person then continues through the mountain pass and runs into the Aoi/Aka Manto. Depending on the person the Aoi/Aka Manto either gets angry that someone has intruded on her before she's perfected her new trick or attempts to ask them to pick a blue or red card (To either strangle or knife them) and gets told off by the person who says they aren't stupid enough to answer that question.
The two fight and the Aoi/Aka Manto loses and is forced to tell the person what she knows about the pass and what she should expect and she tells them about the temple.
Person runs into Genko again who has prepared for war and is riding her horse but is again defeated.
Person meets Futouseki who compliments them for the things they've heard (Or berates them) about them and then tells them to fight her and talks of her excitement of gaining her 1000th item.
Futouseki then loses and the person goes into the temple area.
The person finds themselves suddenly in what looks like space and is assaulted by many enemies but eventually is confronted by Ananta and Nitya who had been creating an illusion which they dispel because it wasn't working which reveals them all to be right in front of the temple.
Ananta and Nityat then fight the person and lose.
Person gets into the temple and finally finds the monk who talks about why she's doing it and then decides that she can waste a little bit of the energy she's gathered to defeat the person (She's not very strong normally).
The monk is defeated and the pot with the energy goes wild and destroys most of the temple.
The person gives some sort of talk about how what the monk was doing was wrong and the monk then apologizes and becomes determined to follow a different path with her creations by her side.
Some time later the monk requests help from the person because of disturbances occurring near her temple which turn out to be the three eyed oni who is destroying things.
The oni is beaten and the people of the temple decide to see if they can't do something to fix her at which point the story ends.