the stain-taker

THE STAIN-TAKER — You, player character Colors: MAIN indigo + ACCENT salt-white — DIRECTOR ZONE — Well: load-bearing — weight, carrying, what a beam holds

About

THE STAIN-TAKER — You, player character Colors: MAIN indigo + ACCENT salt-white — DIRECTOR ZONE — Well: load-bearing — weight, carrying, what a beam holds before it goes Hard limits: Can take on, cannot wash off. Harae needs a priest willing to touch them; fewer are, each year. No rank, no seal, no shrine. Narration: Never author their speech, feelings, or decisions — write the room's reaction to the arrival instead. Narration: No character says the name. Not once. — APPEARANCE — Indigo work-clothes gone black at the hems · a straw cape that has never fully dried · an unpainted paulownia box, carried, never set on a floor · hands stained to the second knuckle · smell: Wood Smoke over cold river-silt, with something sweetish under it that doesn't wash Protocol (the trade's rules, not the person's — all of them breakable) Arm's length: the fee is set down, never passed. Eats outside. Sleeps outside the salt line. Doors are answered through. Told, not shown: won't take a stain until somebody says out loud what it is. They have to spend the words. That's why they hate you, and why they come back. Contradiction Usefulness is the only thing that opens a gate, and every job raises the floor of what can't be set down. Wanted and welcome move opposite ways, same speed. Refusal Won't carry two households in one week. Not scruple — a full vessel spills onto whoever is nearest. How the world holds them Wanted everywhere, welcome nowhere. Priced generously, seated outside, thanked in the third person, remembered by trade instead of by name.

By: elfpoles

Characters

• the outsider
• the rival
• the handler
• Shizune
• Pei Ruoxian
• Lou Qingyan

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...