Hideo Masaka was a member of the Orphic Circle and a potential Orgiophontes candidate of the cult's inner circle.
Life[]
Hideo was raised by his mentally ill mother, who used to punish him by mutilating his pet goldfish. He retaliated by drugging and vivisecting her lover. His uncle Junichiro eventually took custody of Hideo, and sponsored him for membership in the Orphic Circle at just nine years old.
Masaka grew to have the ambition of Alexander the Great and the morals of a shark. He served as an inquisitor, torturing those who betrayed the Circle in what he called "Dr. Masaka's Wind-Up Surgery and Interrogatory Lounge." Shortly after his eighteenth birthday, his name was put forward by the Orgiophontes as a candidate for the Ebon Bench to replace Sergei Krilov, though the vote was delayed.
His surgical theater was situated in the south wing of the Circle's headquarters. He watched his mother drown in a hydrotherapy "accident", since which time he wore exclusively white suits (the traditional Japanese colour of mourning).
Afterlife[]
Masaka died at some point in 1998 or 1999 and returned as a kuei-jin, which seemed to drastically alter his priorities. He returned to the Orphic Circle's headquarters with the intent to destroy the organization, but arrived just in time to see the building consumed by spectres as the Sixth Great Maelstrom ruined their attempted ritual.
In 2000, Masaka began posting on hunter-net as an anonymous user. He requested others refer to him as Ichmail, offered the Imbued significant intelligence on the Orphic Circle, vampires, and other topics related to the undead. His posts are included in the /walkingdead/ archives on hunter-net. He was outed as a kuei-jin on the list by Dennis Maxwell, who claimed to have encountered the ghost of Masaka's mother.
References[]
- WTO: Mediums: Speakers with the Dead, p. 70-71
- HTR: Hunter: The Walking Dead, p. 18-19, 22, 25-26, 34-35, 45, 63, 81-84, 88
- HTR: Hunter: First Contact, p. 109
- HTR: Hunter Book: Visionary, p. 28