1) What's the character's name/aliases?
As a human, her name is Hiroe Matsudaira. As a fox, she's gone by many names, including Bó Huì ("plentiful wisdom") in China, and Kuukoku Jinja no Zenko ("the good fox of the Lonely River shrine") in Japan.

2) How did you come up with the name(s)?
"Hiroe" is an at least somewhat traditional sort of name, befitting her modern-but-also-classy-and-traditional parents, and the Matsudaira family has ties to the Japanese nobility and even the imperial family. Bó Huì uses the same characters in one of the kanji spellings of the Japanese name Hiroe.

Zenko refers to a beneficent fox spirit, whereas a kuko is a more troublemaking fox, so Kuukoku Jinja ("lone river shrine" or "abandoned valley shrine") is sort of a pun-name for the shrine where she lived for many years.

3) Stats (height, weight, hair, eyes, etc)
Hiroe is slightly on the tall side for Japanese girls at 5'6" and weighing 120lbs, with long black hair and light brown eyes.

4) How did you pick your character's PB?
...mostly just by looking around for pretty girls with the right sort of hair, the right sort of figure, and the right sort of expressions.

5) What is your character's premise?
"What if fox girl except literally a fox-spirit trapped in the body of a girl?"

6) How has that changed, if at all?
Not very much, and mostly just by delving into how the concept ties into the traditions about foxes, and exploring what that means for her perspective and relationships to humans in her life, e.g. her human parents.

7) Loud or quiet? Passive or aggressive? Submissive or dominant?
Medium? She's too poised and well-mannered to usually be loud, exactly, but she's also far too willful and self-governed to exactly be quiet. She often plays at passivity and submission, and will often sit back and wait to see how things play out before acting, all else being equal. She really isn't shy, though, and she can be very aggressive when there's something she wants decisively, even if it's just to satisfy the impulse to flirt.

8) Does your character have any particular musical talents/tastes?
Over the years, Zenko had dabbled with a few classical instruments, especially those considered appropriate for women. Hiroe has, as well, but she hasn't really learned much that Zenko wasn't already good at.

9) Is your character a specific archetype?
Zenko, being a good fox spirit, is essentially a Sacred Trickster. She sort of trolls everyone, both prompting them to lighten up about things that are silly and pointing out the things that aren't okay but are taken for granted, testing people and ideas by poking at them. She also punishes the wicked, reflecting a mockery of their wrongdoing, wielding irony and satire as weapons against evil.

10) What are your character's hobbies, if any?
Besides her school-affiliated sports, Hiroe has dabbled in a little bit of martial arts and music, although modern science and technology intrigue her, and even if she doesn't completely get it (and constructs some often very weird analogies), she likes to learn about whatever humans have been learning recently.

Of course, she also turns into a fox-girl at night and fights crime, if that counts.

11) Does your character have any favorite foods?
She can't really say no to fried tofu, and always appreciates good sake. She also loves all things chocolate, among other luxuries that she has special opportunities to enjoy while in a human body.

12) Does your character watch/participate in any particular sports?
Hiroe's something of a track and field star at her school, and she's generally very athletic. She also considers flirting an Olympic sport.

13) Is your character fluent in more than one language?
Mostly Japanese, as well as Mandarin Chinese, English, some Dutch, and a bit of Portugese.

14) Does your character have a preferred mode of transportation?
Running and/or leaping, when possible. She likes fast trains, also, but finds airplanes all kinds of uncomfortable.

15) Does your character have any pets?
Not really. She does like to visit the Zao fox village in Miyagi prefecture, but they're more extended family, in a sense...

16) What is your character's current occupation?
High-school student and part-time superhero.

17) What occupation(s) has your character had in the past?
Being a good fox, mainly the "servant of Inari" thing--some mix of divine messenger and divine meddler. Although she'd worked with humans before, they tended not to trust foxes enough to want to keep one around indefinitely.

18) Describe your characters fashion sense. Do they have a favorite article of clothing?
Chic and flirty. Hiroe likes to be classy while still drawing attention, and she's generally very happy to bask in flattery and admiration, especially if it leans to some top-shelf flirting. She almost always tends toward skirts (for freedom of movement, swishiness, and minimal constriction of her tails in case she has to deploy them for whatever reason) and blouses, when no special requirements are placed on her.

As Zenko, her "superhero costume," so to speak, is sort of a sexier version of a Shinto shrine maiden's vestments--both an opportunity for her to look good and troll people, and a satire of several human hangups.

19) Does your character have any favorite TV shows/movies?
She does love storytelling, but between centuries of pre-audiovisual storytelling experience and her own ability to create illusions, she rarely gets completely engrossed in TV shows and movies. Generally speaking, she does sometimes enjoy historical dramas, especially the more accurate ones (for the nostalgia), and far-flung science fiction stories (for speculation), but stories in modern settings tend to fall flat for her.

20) Does your character have any habits/addictions?
Teasing, trolling, and game-playing.

21) Does your character suffer from any long-term illnesses?
Only if kitsunetsuki counts.

22) Does your character have a best friend or someone they're especially close to?
Hiroe does tend to cultivate a lot of friends, but there's really no one exceptionally close, and certainly not close enough to reveal what she is.

23) Describe your character's upbringing.
Hiroe's upbringing was fairly typical for an upper-middle-class side-branch of a historically important Japanese family. She was raised on notions of respect and a practical acceptance of the modern world counterbalanced by a sense of nostalgia for the past. Overall it was a fairly good balance of modernity and tradition. She was raised to be a proper young lady (even if she was always a bit too spirited for her own good), expected to study hard, pick up some good ladylike pastimes, and so on.

Of course, since she's also a 500-year-old fox, her response to her upbringing as a human was strongly colored by her centuries of prior experience. While she appreciates notions of station and nobility, she also knew already from experience about the brutality that enforced that structure from which the nobility benefited. "Growing up" as Hiroe, she took her "upbringing" more as a guidebook to how humans seem themselves, their pasts, their ancestors, and a series of lessons in how to play at being human.

24) Does your character have any particular religious beliefs?
As a loyal servant of Inari, her beliefs are broadly Shinto. However, given her personal connection to the spirits and kami, her take on Shinto isn't not necessarily identical to a human perspective on Shinto. In particular she believes strongly in the notion of piety--not necessarily blind obedience, but some sort of respect for station, perspective, and age.

25) Does your character have a favorite place?
She is very fond of the Zao fox village. She also likes anything reminiscent of the now-defunct shrine where she lived for many years, and Inari shrines in general, although she generally keeps that sort of thing to herself to avoid raising suspicions. Sacred and very old places in general, especially those which make some effort to welcome spirits, are the ones she usually feels most at home in.

Player's Name: Paul

Characters Played Here: The Doctor (Eleventh), Alric Caelegart

Character: Hiroe Matsudaira (also the fox of the Lonely River Shrine, aka Kuukoku Jinja no Zenko, although it's also a pun on kuko being a category of fox spirit)

Series/Canon: Original Character

World Description: The world Hiroe comes from is essentially like the real world--except that many facets of ancient mythology are real, or at least have a real counterpart, even if if the myths aren't entirely accurate. Spirits exist, and there are many spirits well adapted to living in modern settings, whereas others are less so; some can fake human form to hide out, whereas others live within objects, but many are forced to retreat into ever-reducing wild areas or take shelter within shrines. Although they have powers humans don't, spirits have to be careful not to reveal themselves to humans, or they can suffer the consequences at the hands of priests, or overzealous onmyouji and other sort of sorcerers out either to protect humans from the "monsters" or looking to enslave spirits for their own uses. Ushio to Tora and the Monogatari series are good references for this sort of setting in general.

History: For a few centuries, a fox lived at one of the many Inari shrines in the Edo area, well before it became known as Tokyo. The shrine developed a local reputation as a good place to go with maladies, to pray to Inari for health and pay respects to the foxes, Inari's servants--and a bad place to cause trouble. However, the shrine's fame never spread very far, remaining something of a local secret. This was fine by the fox of the Lonely River shrine.

However, times changed; the fox had always ignored the goings-on of the human world as much as she could. It was all rather dull and more or less a lot of the same nonsense--downtrodden peasants looking for help, which she was always happy to provide, and great figures of the day vying for power over one another. She was most aggravated when this constant bickering led to the commoners or priests especially suffering, or when it later brought flames down from the sky, causing serious damage even to the Lonely River shrine.

It was only a few decades later when she learned of a true outrage: the shrine was to be closed. She had been somewhat mollified when after the firebombing, repairs had been arranged--but it seemed that, somehow, since that time, some basic degree of piety had been lost. Laws which had protected the shrines had eroded, the economy had turned sour, and the Lonely River shrine just wasn't "important enough" to be saved. It was infuriating, but also a direct, personal threat: she knew well that a spirit, especially a fox spirit, wandering about among humans was asking for trouble even in a more respectful era, and she couldn't very well allow herself to become homeless. Everything had become modern and strange while she wasn't looking, and she no longer even knew enough about a human's day-to-day life to disguise herself convincingly. The fox of the shrine worried over the matter for a time, until a fortuitous solution presented itself.

A young couple--the man holding a junior station in the government, and a descendent of the vaunted Matsudaira clan itself--came to the shrine, among the many who visited in the last days before it was due to be closed. This couple had been having difficulty conceiving a child, and prayed for Inari's blessings to rectify that situation. To the fox, this was the perfect solution to two problems at once: it was, perhaps, time she learn more about humans, who had so dominated the world, and what better way to learn about humans than to grow up as one?

Kitsunetsuki, or fox-possession, was nothing new--but to grant the blessing of fertility, and then possess the unborn child within days of conception, was something else entirely. The fox had only planned to learn about humanity while also laying claim on two well-to-do, highly protective guardians; and the couple would get a child to raise, just as they'd asked for, so everyone got what they wanted. Nine months later, the fox-in-human's-clothing was born, and the new parents named their daughter Hiroe. The girl was perfectly human in appearance and even in aura, so long as her fox powers remained dormant, but revealing certain traits when drawing on her true nature--however, she also had a physical, human body, meaning she could no longer change her shape freely.

Expecting she would gradually revert more to the fox as her human body grew old, she set herself to learning voraciously about humans while the opportunity presented itself. To her surprise, however, not only did it take some time to master the underdeveloped infant human brain and muscles--but she even found herself developing real affection for her human "parents," and decided even before she mastered speech once more (at an astonishingly young age, to her parents and everyone else around her) that she would have to keep her true nature secret from them as long as they lived.

Therefore, Hiroe grew up a relatively normal, if fairly well-to-do and extremely precocious child. She seemed to learn everything with astonishing ease, as though she had done it all before--at least until she started attending grade school and running into things the fox had never known, but between her fox-like wits and her head start on reading and writing, she remained a top student. Even so, having developed a habit of taking her studies a little too casually on subjects she felt were already familiar, she exhibited some bizarre gaps in her understanding regarding modern technology in particular: she learned to text like a pro, like any Japanese kid, but on the subject of how texting worked, she could have all sorts of inventive and completely absurd ideas. Curious about the human world, she began reading about everything she could and experiencing everything human life had to offer, sometimes without heed to the dangers that might be involved.

Personality: Contrary to what one might expect of a fox-possession, since it began at such an early stage of development and continued for so long, there is really no separation between the girl and the fox. Hiroe is Zenko, and Zenko is Hiroe. However, she's reluctant to reveal this, since she assumes someone will get bent out of shape about either the ethics or the implications of her situation, or just go after her because they have a bone to pick with spirits in general. The result is a girl with some 500 years or so of memories and experiences in a traditional Japanese environment, plus another 17 years of childhood and schooling in modern Tokyo.

Hiroe is, as a fox, above all else, innately curious, and a natural troll. Although she takes her service to Inari as seriously as she takes anything, a top priority for her is always having fun at whatever she's doing, whether that means playing pranks, making jokes, or just watching people and commenting for her own amusement. She can't help but poke around at anything mysterious, even if it's not particularly safe, and she has a strong sense of justice--not so much out of moral outrage, in all but the most heinous situations, as a sense of piety. There are things Heaven frowns upon, and people who do that sort of thing ought to be punished; and, in true fox style, the best punishment is having their minds messed with until they regret their wrongdoing. She has a special talent for sophisticated, large-scale multisensory illusions, and doesn't hesitate to use them to make a point if she feels it's called for or that it would be a hoot.

Another typical feature of her fox nature is her tendency toward vanity. This takes many forms, and depends somewhat on whether she's seen as Hiroe or as Zenko. In her persona as a human girl, she takes a great deal of pride in her family's reputation and history, in her parents, in her academic accomplishments, and especially in her appearance and friendships. As the fox, she can be far more scandalous, and will go to much greater lengths to draw people's attention (the better to tease them about it, as well), but is also exceedingly proud of her age, particularly regarding her connections among and experience with the spirits, as well as her service to Inari. In either form, she adores few things more than being adored, and will flirt endlessly, or at least as long as it's flattering to her.

As a fox, Hiroe has a phobic dread of dogs--even small ones will make her rather uncomfortable, but large ones will freak her right out, and can potentially bring on anything from extreme distraction to panic attacks. Contrastingly, she has an abiding love for aburage and good sake (the latter of which is, infuriatingly, hard to get, at her body's age). She also has a fondness for various luxuries she couldn't enjoy with the body of a fox, but can fully delve into with her human body; chocolate in particular she adores, as rich as she can get it, at every opportunity.

As much as her life as Hiroe may have begun as a self-interested ploy, she has actually developed a quite sincere affection for her human parents. As much as she keeps her true nature secret for her own protection, she's no less motivated by a dread that the truth would hurt them, lead them to reject her, or both. On some level, this biases all her relationships with humans: as popular as she is at school, she has a swarm of friends, but no really entirely close confidant. There's simply no one she's met to whom she feels she can completely open up, one of a very few points of emotional vulnerability.

Why do you think your character would work in this setting?

It's about time for Hiroe to go off to college, anyway--and where better to learn more about adult humans and how they interact with the strange and unexpected than in a peculiar setting like New Dodge? Besides, it's such a strange offer, how could she really refuse?

What will your character do for work? Probably at the chocolatier or cafe.

Inventory: Nothing really special--mostly just clothes, jewelry, some books. As Zenko, she can create her own costumes, after all, so anything she brings will be relatively mundane, for use as Hiroe.

Samples:

Third-Person Sample:
Hiroe--or as she called herself when engaging in more mystical activities, Kuukoku Jinja no Zenko--landed soundlessly on a rooftop. Nearly weightless as she was, she could have walked as casually on water or the leaves of a tree. As usual, she wore a traditional fox-spirit mask that revealed her lips (the better to tease and to smile impishly) with a shrine maiden's costume modified to be more revealing, bordering on scandalous. She was, after all, a fox, and knew of no such thing as too much attention. Her tails--five of them--and her ears showed, as well, black-furred to match her long hair, with silvery-white tips.

As soon as she had arrived, she'd sensed something peculiar afoot in this strange town. It wasn't the technology that got her attention. She was used to seeing a mix of things she understood well enough to use, and those that made no sense to her at all, and had only a vague sense that there was something anachronistic about New Dodge. She was far more interested in the scent and the presence of something not human--many somethings not human, in fact--but no sign of a conflict going on. The publicly known presence of magic was only more reason for her to be cautious about how she investigated; but she definitely had to find out what the non-humans were up to, here. In particular, whether they were somehow abusing the humans in secret, or had somehow found a way to settle in and be accepted by them. Either way, she simply had to know, whether it meant she had to stop them, or to learn their secret.

Of course, there was no reason she couldn't enjoy the investigation, and combining a little spying with a little playful questioning could be a great diversion while she was hanging around this "New Dodge."

First-Person Sample:
Network post from the TDM.