ER:Captain Kitaura

From The Heretic Knowledge Vault

Revision as of 22:44, 16 March 2011

An important NPC in the Errant Road free-form on-line role-playing game. Needless to say, he doesn't exist in the Poe-verse.

Captain Kentauro Kitaura, to give him his full name, is a high mucky-muck in the Tsuirakuan Department of Homeland Security, which functions as a combined police force, military, intelligence service, etc., in the city of Kiyoka and probably beyond. He specifically commands the "Public Safety Division" of the department in Kiyoka, which appears to be a police-like function. He enters the story quite early, as the crew at the Veracian mission are trying to figure out what happened to clobber the mission's back wall, and also why the Tsuirakuans don't seem to care about it. Young battlemage Corporal Kristi Yugawa has been sent by Kitaura to retrieve the fried remains of a certain Private Ryono, who met a particularly messy end when the wall came down. (In fact, he wasn't killed by the wall, but rather through lethally inept operation of his Yuuki staff against Grope, who'd been almost accidentally passing overhead during the chaos at the mission.) She invokes his name when Argus and Brother Farley meet her outside the mission, in an encounter that turns out to be eventful for all concerned.

Kitaura is a decidedly unpleasant fellow, with all of the personal warmth of a department-store mannequin and, at least according to rumors passed on by Kristi, a long-standing grudge against Veracians for iniquities dating back to the Mage/Priest Wars. He doesn't like Tsuirakuan exile Argus any better than he likes the Veracians, and finding Argus in cahoots with the people at the mission causes Kitaura to launch a late-night visitor to Argus' hotel room to try to intimidate him into knocking it off. However, this turns out badly (painfully though not fatally so) for the muscle, who discovers that Argus may be a down-and-outer with health issues and a drinking problem now, but he's still a complete badass when it comes to magic.

Later on, however, the worm turns slightly, as the mysterious disappearance of Father Egbert during a seemingly routine warp gate operation creates all manner of uproar (not to mention months' worth of game interactions) and serious loss of face for the Tsuirakuans. Kitaura becomes considerably more conciliatory in his interactions with the mission in an attempt to find out just what happened, and tolerates dealing with the barbarians and the traitor until the mystery of the gate's apparent malfunction is resolved. He was seen gating into Saus with Argus and Brother Miguel from the mission, although he's known to have returned to Kiyoka in the meantime.

Most recently, he has turned up in Rinkaiel, for reasons yet to be disclosed. He leans on PC Rice, who's apparently an expatriate Tsuirakuan from some tiny village in the islands (although she seems unaware of that fact), to become an informant for him regarding visits by other Tsuirakuan expats in Rinkaiel. He's observed (although not overheard) in this encounter by Layla and her family and cohort, who quite understandably wonder what he's up to, since Layla wasn't exactly on the side of law and order back in Kiyoka. Later, in the aftermath of the demise of sifu Dasuke Kinabalu, he has a brief exchange with Layla outside her new vineyard, and another encounter with the inquisitive PC Rhett Courier that doesn't go exactly the way Rhett was expecting. To Layla's considerable surprise, he follows these exchanges with another, more extended session at the Tuirakuan consulate in town during which he more or less treats the Sorensens as valued allies against unidentified adversaries. Later still, he intimidates Layla's friend Galina pertaining to an investigation she was asked to conduct at the Temple of the Divine Dwarf in town. The last shoe quite obviously hasn't dropped here.

An important point is that he's gay, which renders him immune to certain attempts at information gathering by Argus and Sister Rose.