Koharu Hanamori - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Koharu Hanamori

Nickname

None

Race (Grade)

Human (E)

Class

Psychic

Height

5'3"

Birthday

Goldenleaf 24, 1269

Age

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Birthsign

The Harvest Sphinx

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Koharu Hanamori on a balcony above a Pan'Che temple town, hiding a yawn behind her sleeve

Appearance

Koharu is thirty-eight and looks perhaps twenty-one, as E-grade humans tend to. She is a small, soft-featured woman with fair skin, an easy blush, and a great deal of long, bright pink hair that falls well past her shoulders, with a heavy fringe that is forever getting into her eyes. Those eyes are a clear sea green, wide and attentive, and they give the impression that she is listening even when nobody is speaking. She dresses for comfort before anything else: an enormous lavender knitted cardigan with sleeves that swallow her hands, a moss-green top, and blue shorts spotted with white polka dots that look suspiciously like something meant to be slept in. She generally looks as though she has just woken up, which is ironic, because she almost never has.

Unique Characteristics

Koharu can step into the dreams of anyone sleeping nearby. She has been able to do it since she was a small child, and for years she assumed everyone could. These days she asks first, and she will not cross into a dream she has not been invited into. Inside one, she can find her way through a nightmare, soothe a troubled sleeper, and occasionally bring back a memory its owner buried on purpose.

She has a habit of hiding the lower half of her face behind an oversized sleeve whenever she yawns, blushes, or is paid a sincere compliment. Since the last of those undoes her completely, she spends a surprising amount of time behind the sleeve. The faint shadows under her eyes are permanent: for all her skill with other people's sleep, Koharu suffers from chronic insomnia. She claims she has spent so long tending other people's dreams that she has forgotten how to enjoy her own.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Keeps every secret she meets inside a dream
Gentle and patient with frightened sleepers of any age
Far sharper than her cheerful manner lets on
Walks away from money that asks her to betray a client
Makes a stranger feel at home within one cup of tea

Challenging Traits

Tends everyone's sleep but her own; chronic insomniac
Hopelessly flustered by any sincere compliment
Reads your vulnerabilities faster than you'd like
Hides her own fears behind tea, sweets, and good cheer
Will not bend her rules for anyone, however powerful

Dreams belong to their dreamers. I only carry the lantern.

My village said dreams are letters from the soul. Having read a great many of them, I can tell you most souls have dreadful handwriting.

Yes, the dreamweaver can't sleep. I have heard every version of that joke, usually at about four in the morning.

Likes

Sweet rice cakes, preferably still warm
Ridiculous knitted sweaters, the sillier the better
Paper lanterns, soft cushions, and a quiet room
A client who wakes up smiling and can't say why
Tea brewed slowly and shared without hurry

Dislikes

Anyone who treats a sleeper's dreams as evidence
Being ordered to pry where she was not invited
Sincere compliments (she never knows what to do)
The hour before dawn, when she is still wide awake
A nightmare that keeps coming back to the same child

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Background & History

Letters from the Soul

Koharu Hanamori was born on Goldenleaf 24, 1269, in Kasumidani, a small village high in the Jade Mountains north of Pan'Che, where the elders taught that dreams are letters from the soul, written in a language the waking mind has forgotten. As a child she could enter the dreams of anyone sleeping nearby, and she assumed that everyone else could too. Her parents discovered the gift when she began casually describing conversations the neighbors had held in their sleep, including a few rather embarrassing romantic fantasies. She was promptly forbidden from discussing other people's dreams at the dinner table, and she learned to keep her discoveries to herself.

Twenty Years of Other People's Sleep

While she was still a girl, a traveling oneiromancer passing through the village recognized what she was and took her on as an apprentice. Koharu spent the next twenty years studying the peculiar geography of the dreaming mind. She learned how to find her way through a nightmare, how to soothe a troubled sleeper without waking them, and, on rare occasions, how to retrieve a memory that its owner had deliberately buried. She also learned the first rule of her teacher's trade, which she has kept ever since: a dreamweaver is a guest.

The Position She Walked Away From

Her skill eventually earned her a lucrative position in the household of one of Pan'Che's great Daimyo families, soothing the sleep of people with a great deal on their consciences. It ended the day she was ordered to slip into the dreams of a political rival and bring back something compromising. Koharu refused, gave up the position, and left. She insists that dreams belong to their dreamers, a conviction that has earned her considerable respect among her clients, and the occasional threat from powerful people who would prefer otherwise.

More Than Repairing Buildings

Since then Koharu has traveled, looking for a permanent home. She is drawn to communities that have endured a great deal of suffering, because she believes that healing a city's spirit takes more than repairing its buildings. She arrived in Silmarithil early in Harvestide of 1307. It is a town that once took in Uiran refugees and made citizens of them, and it has since opened its doors to people who fled the fall of Gelderai and the dead in the Geldergreen. Many of them sleep badly. It is also a town lit almost entirely by lanterns, which she took as a sign. For now she sees sleepers by appointment in a rented room above a Hearthmarket tea house. She says, a little sheepishly, that the Elderwood is the first forest she has ever met that seems to be dreaming.

Beneath a Black Sun

There is one thing Koharu has told almost no one. Recently she has begun meeting the same figure in the dreams of people who have never met one another: a faceless individual standing beneath a black sun, whispering that the dreamers are being watched. Then, only a few nights ago, the figure appeared in her own dreams for the first time. When she woke, someone had written the words "WE SEE YOU TOO" on the inside of her bedroom window.

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Goals & Aspirations

The Pillow Lantern

Koharu wants to open a modest establishment called The Pillow Lantern: part tea house, part sleeping parlor, part therapeutic sanctuary. Visitors would recline on comfortable cushions beneath enchanted paper lanterns while she guided them through restful dreams, helping soldiers face their battlefield memories, widows find some measure of closure, and frightened children get the better of a recurring nightmare. She is looking for the right building, somewhere quiet and close to water, and she has already formed strong opinions about the local Glowmorrow Sage, whose dried blossoms go into Silmarithil's calming teas.

Who Is Watching the Dreamers

Koharu does not know who the figure beneath the black sun is, why it appears to strangers who share nothing but sleep, or how someone reached the inside of her window without waking a woman who is almost never asleep. She intends to find out. She would very much prefer to do it before the figure turns up in the dreams of anyone she is treating in Silmarithil.

One Full Night

It is her greatest personal embarrassment that an accomplished dreamweaver cannot sleep. Somewhere on her list, beneath the parlor and the faceless stranger, is a smaller and more private ambition: to lie down, close her eyes, and stay asleep until morning, in a dream that belongs to nobody but her.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Silmarithil

Role

Dreamweaver

ATTENTION!

Koharu Hanamori is an E-grade human dreamweaver, and she is not a fighter in any sense that involves being awake. Her strength lies in the sleeping mind: she can enter the dreams of anyone sleeping nearby, walk a nightmare back to its source, and occasionally return with a memory its owner buried on purpose. She understands what frightens people faster than they would like, and she is considerably sharper than the pink hair and the silly sweaters suggest. She is also scrupulous. She will not enter a dream uninvited, she will not repeat what she finds there, and she has already walked away from one fortune rather than spy on a sleeper for a noble patron. Do not ask her to. Powerful people have threatened her over that rule before, and it has not moved. Two smaller cautions: a sincere compliment will leave her unable to finish a sentence, and if her lamp is still lit before dawn, it is because she has not slept.