Name: Shin Monshiro
"You want to challenge me? ....You're ten years too early."Number: 6
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Personality: Taciturn and seemingly stoic, Shin often gives the impression of being emotionless, but this is only a cool exterior over his inherently passionate nature. He speaks infrequently, but when he does, he expresses himself clearly and adamantly. With a steely will and unflinching determination, few people can match Shin in his perseverance, loyalty, and bull-headed stubbornness. Shin is not a man of subtlety, and generally prefers actions over words. When Shin feels strongly about something, and he never feels weakly about anything, people are likely to know about it. While not a man to shy away from danger or from violence, Shin is surprisingly pacifistic; he generally prefers solutions wherein no one is killed, and as few people as possible are hurt. Even so, when his options are exhausted, he is not afraid to do what must be done. Shin values his family and comrades above all else, and when these things are threatened, he loses his stony demeanor, and all hell breaks loose.
Abilities: With an inherited affinity for Death, Shin specializes in magics relating to ghosts and other such spirits of the dead. He can commune with the dead and see into the twilight between worlds where they reside. He has a degree of influence over ghosts, and can dissolve that which binds them to the mortal world, allowing them to pass on. He can also summon death spirits and ghosts from the underworld to aid him in battle or to serve as familiars in casting spells. Shin can conjure and manipulate ectoplasm, the substance of death, which can be shaped into a variety of forms to serve as tools, weapons or even small minions. Shin can sense and examine the souls of others, allowing him to read their aura, and can suppress his own aura to the point where he can appear dead to any mortal physician. While it is a lengthy process, Shin can also open Avernian Gates, passages into the underworld, in places where the energies of death accumulate.
Shin also has some degree of skill with the entropic forces of death. He can induce rot and decay in both structures and living things, and can drain the energy out of spells and objects. Even people may have their energy and willpower sapped from them, inflicting them with weakness and exhaustion. He specializes in destroying magical constructs by snuffing out the mana powering them.
Additionally, Shin has some knowledge of the arts of Onmyoudo, and can use their mystic techniques to ward away and bind malign spirits.
Equipment: Shin carries with him a variety of small charms and strange tools that aid his Death magic. His large jacket is lined with pockets where he keeps all of these little curiosities. He also carries around with him a number of toys and candies, for some reason or another. In addition to his collection of weird odds and ends, he also carries several different ofuda for use with his onmyoudou.
History: The son of a Japanese club hostess and an enigmatic English tourist, Shin was an angry and restless boy growing up in inner Tokyo. He was raised in near-poverty and his mother was often too busy with a variety of jobs to pay much attention to him. Shin soon enough became an all-around delinquent, slacking off in school and running with gangs of criminal youths. He was in trouble more often than not, frequently getting into street fights, and participating in vandalism and robberies. While he was distrusted because of his European ancestry that was clearly apparent in his looks, Shin's large size and great strength earned him a degree of strength and popularity among these other troubled youths.
By the time he was of high school age, Shin began to exhibit strange powers. He could drain away someone's energy just by thinking hard about it, and sometimes he could make things (or people) begin to rot at a touch. His powers grew, and so did Shin's exploits, culminating in him accidentally killing another boy in a fight by swarming him with a pack of frenzied ghosts. After this, word spread throughout the magical community of a rogue magi with extremely dangerous powers, and so Shin became the target of the Unlucky Six. Easily tracked down and defeated, an older, wiser member of the Six identified Shin's powers as the Death magic of the Gloamhearth house of magi, an old and well-respected clan of mages, their circle based out of Newcastle. The elder Magi saw Shin for what he was, a confused, frightened boy, rather than a killer, and so took mercy on him and offered him the chance to learn to control his power, rather than take his life.
Shin accepted, and was whisked away to England to learn his ancestral power from his father's family. Shin's acceptance into the clan was difficult, as he was looked unfavorably upon as the bastard son of the house's most ill-favored scion, who had been cast out twenty years before. Given his clearly Japanese looks, initial inability to speak English, delinquent nature and distrust of his "family," Shin's training was extremely difficult to begin with, and at times it seemed that he would not become any sort of Magi at all. However, Shin was determined to not be looked down upon any more, and worked his hardest to learn the arts of Death magic from the Gloamhearth house. In time, his skills increased and blossomed, and he became one of the more powerful members of the house. As his skill flourished, his discipline grew as well, and he learned to control the anger that had grown and poisoned him throughout his younger years.
For years Shin worked diligently with the Gloamhearths' circle, contributing to research and security across Britain, even settling down to a home in London. He became well-respected in both his house and the magical community at large for his knowledge on spectral phenomena. Eventually he was approached by a retiring member of the Citadel Six, the man that had spared his life ten years ago, and was offered his position within the elite core of Magi. Knowing the important role that the Six played in both the magical community and in his own life, Shin readily accepted. He has worked as a voice of reason and source of strength within the Six for a number of years now.
