Lore for the Skull Merchant

CDawnShadow

I do not know a better way to do this, if anyone might know how to get a developer's eyes on this, I would love the assist.

Having seen a lot of the early community feedback about the backstory for the Skull Merchant, Adriana Imai, I wanted to offer something else. I offer the below with freedom for it to be used, altered, or anything else freely and without any claim for anything in return.

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Adriana Imai, The Skull Merchant

Adriana Imai grew from poverty to prosperity on the back of an unflinching work ethic, dedication to her family, and a morality as faulty as the serial killers she would grow to study. Born to a talented mangaka after he moved to Brazil, and an equally artistic mother whom met Seito not long after his arrival in her home country; Adriana’s early years nothing like what might be expected of a future killer-for-hire.

When Seita Imai moved to Brazil it was to experience a new style of life that would give him a unique twist in his work. Something to return home with one day in the hopes he could bring wealth to himself and his family. His first business partner, Belinda Riberio made sure he had a place to work, and a roof over his head. A kindness and charity that started what would become a trend in both their lives. Even after marriage and the birth of their daughter.

Unfortunately, Brazil at their time was not a place where charity brought in money. And kindness was more often met with deception.

During Adriana’s early years, her parents hard work provided just enough to keep her in school. Where she first became interested in various forms of art. She studied the works of Tarsila do Amaral, Alfredo Volpi, and Carmina Mora, and tried her hand at blending all manner of styles with the inspiration she got from her father’s own work in manga. She shared her works with her friends, and offered copies of customized miniature manga to people she knew, promising them one day it would be valuable. That when she became famous, those around her would have a way to benefit too.

What her family and friends saw was their daughter being kind and generous. But what they did not see what the true motivation beginning to grow in the young girl. For Adriana began to see the works of others as competition, something that she not only could do herself, but that she could do better. If an artist could inspire rebellion against an unjust regime, she would spark revolutions. If an artist could become famous in South America, she would become famous the world over. If her father could barely publish enough work to keep them fed, she would become so prolific that no one in her family would ever want for anything ever again.

This drive to be better only grew as Adriana got older. And by the time she in high school she was the top of her grade in every class. When another student excelled, she needed to prove she could do better. When a teacher questioned her, she needed to prove she knew more. And when her art teachers saw her blossoming skills, every constructive critique fueled both her desire to be better and the growing resentment for her “lessers” trying to tell her how to do her thing.

Adriana was set to graduate high school and had been offered a chance to join one of the finest art schools in the country when her family’s luck turned for the worst. The generosity so often met with deception? It reared itself once more when some of their neighbors asked the Imai’s to hide away some presents for their children so that they would not be found before they were meant to be given. These neighbors were members of a local gang, and the presents were not what they had claimed. And just like that, the Imai’s were out of a house, Seita was in jail, and her mother never quite recovered. Everyone they knew believed the Imai’s were aiding a gang that had been terrorizing the community for years. They were ostracized, and Adriana was pulled from school.

This was the first time that Adriana’s ego took the fore, and in a rage one morning she accused her mother of not trying hard enough. Of her father for failing to be the man he should have been. She raged against their generosity to people who abused them, and their failures in her eyes as parents to make sure their daughter had the opportunities she believed she deserved. But she did not leave it at limp words. She swore she would show her mother, and her father, how it was done. How to succeed when everything else had gone wrong.

She poured over her father’s unpublished works, eventually deciding upon one of his darker stories to “fix” and sell. The Skull Merchant became a success, and for many in Brazil and beyond, the idea of a broken prodigy taking up arms against the corrupt rich was a welcome fiction. Within a year Adriana had enough money to pay her father’s way out of jail, and claimed herself the head of the household. But this was not enough. Proving to her parents she was better then them was one thing, but there were others she needed to prove things too.

Her former neighbors were next, the very ones that had betrayed her family and ruined them. Adriana began by studying methods of framing others for crimes online. Her first taste for researching crime instead of art, science and other academic pursuits. When she knew she had a way forward, she put her plan into motion. A drone, cheap but operable, rigged to lead anyone who investigated it right to who she wanted gone. An assassination attempt, failed or not didn’t matter, it got the job done. The government did the rest of the work for her.

Adriana had set out to hurt others better than they had hurt her family. She did not expect it to be as fun as it was though. To feel as good as it did. And though her materials were often lacking, she began to explore ways of pinning her growing interest in crime on others. When she, by chance, stumbled onto the history of famous killers one pair piqued her interest more than most. Not because they were clever, or because they were successful. But because of why they did what they had done. They believed themselves better then everyone else. Smarter. Superior.

But they had been pathetic in Adriana’s eyes. They did not deserve the moniker of “Genius.” She did though. And it did not take long before her love for art, her growing thrill of murder, and her obsession with proving herself everyone’s better would come together in a nightmarish way.

She was 24 when the money from her successful manga series, combined with a budding career as a killer-for-hire put her in a place where she could escape the small pond she saw Brazil as. She left her family behind, leaving them enough money to thrive if they were smart enough to use it well, a parting gift to remind them how much more successful she had been then them. And for the first time in her life, she set foot in Japan. The homeland of her father. Here she would give up on killing criminals and gang members like she had back home, and instead take on the persona of her own idealized creation. The self-insert character that had started her on this path. Branding herself as the “Skull Merchant” she fashioned the weapons used by her titular character, mimicking their crude appearances and designs. But here she changed one thing. She was wealthy by most standards, but she was far from the lofty heights of the targets she had set out for herself. CEOs of powerful businesses. So she needed to make a way to present wealth that she might sell the idea she was greater to them in the only way they cared about. So, inspired by the glittering persona of her favorite manga killer, another “god of death” in her eyes. She made a mask that was both art piece and, at least by the looks of it, a symbol of wealth. With the promise to herself that one day she would replace its jewel crusted exterior with real diamonds.

But that would never come to pass, for Adriana only made it to her third target before her own hubris caught up with her. The ambush began well, she had reached the helicopter pad on her mark’s business tower. She had waited until nightfall undetected for him and his bodyguards to emerge from within. And under the noise of the waiting helicopter she had attacked. And as she plunged her metal claws into the back of this CEO she barely registered the sounds of gunfire. Unlike in her stories, in the real world bullets do not always miss.

Her vision clouded as her body collapsed. She watched her target escape into the copter and soar away. She didn’t even know if he would die from his wounds or not. When the rolling mists of fog crept up the sides of the skyscraper her first thought was to compare it with a scene she’d drawn once.

She snickered, already having blamed this failure on everything but herself. And then the fog took her.