Orochimaru

[sunshinehistory]

Country/Village: Rice, Otogakure/Konohagakure
Rank: Village Leader (Otokage), Sannin, Jounin, Konoha Missing-nin
Age at Game Start: 53
Birthday: October 27th

Appearance

Orochimaru is neither tall nor bulky, standing at a level 5’7” and weighing in at 125 lbs. He has very pale skin and golden eyes and a narrow face. He emphasizes this snake-like look with purple makeup around his eyes. He wears blue tomoe earrings in his ears. He has a summoning tattoo on his left arm, that allows him to quickly summon his snakes. He favors purple and black clothing, and wears his black hair loose and long. He has very striking and instantly-recognizable features.

Abilities/Powers

Weapons:
Orochimaru seems to prefer kunai over senbon, and his other physical weapon is Kusanagi, the famous sword of legend. The sword itself he can summon and manipulate with chakra, so that he does not have to be touching it to stab someone with it. (Though they do need to be between him and the sword.) Orochimaru is also skilled with drugs and poisons. I’d like to add that Orochimaru’s main weapon might be a katana, but he is skilled with other weapons as well, most notably the kusarigama and the naginata.

Physical:
Orochimaru is shown to be excellent at taijutsu, beating Sasuke with his two-tomoe Sharingan activated in hand-to-hand. He’s very agile. In fact, he can move his body as if he has no bones, slithering like a snake and able to wrap himself around opponents like a constrictor. Orochimaru can also reattach his body parts, even when sliced in two, and regenerate from any injuries dealt him. It is incredibly hard to actually damage him and nearly impossible to kill him by normal methods. His true physical form, however, is not a human body but that of a giant snake, composed of many smaller snakes; Orochimaru has experimented on himself in order to turn himself into the most powerful being ever. In the manga, by the time Orochimaru attacks Konoha during the Chuunin exams, he has swapped bodies in order to regain the hand Itachi chopped off after he joined the Akatsuki. In Sunshine-verse he did not join the Akatsuki and thus has not body-swapped yet, though he knows the jutsu and is currently tweaking it to better suit his needs.

Jutsu:
Orochimaru’s quest is to learn every single jutsu out there, from smallest to greatest, from common to forbidden. Being a genius and about fifty years old, he’s made great strides toward this. We have seen him using wind jutsu, summoning jutsu (snakes), sealing techniques, bodily transformations, healing techniques, raising the dead, body-swapping, transformation techniques, earth jutsu, clone jutsu, barrier techniques and sage techniques. He can also siphon chakra from an opponent. He can inject an opponent with his own sage chakra and release their sage chakra, though modified and controllable by him. Orochimaru’s immense levels of chakra and aura allow him to use multiple large techniques in battle. (Did I mention he can raise the dead because that’s just freaky.) He can also use the wood controlling techniques of the Senju clan. He can also use some of the same Space-Time jutsu that Obito, Minato, and the Nidaime Hokage use. Please be noted that for most of his summoning jutsu he doesn’t seem to require handseals, nor do most of his regeneration/body transformation techniques.

Personality

Orochimaru in three words: charming, brilliant, and twisted.

Orochimaru is charming, as most of his former teammates hold fond memories of him, and his current shinobi are very loyal to him. He’s described as a genius, focused and intelligent, capable of learning a vast amount of jutsu and other techniques. But he is also frequently described as a twisted individual, cruel and harsh.

Orochimaru is also proud, vain, cunning, remorseless and oddly optimistic. Though he’s disappointed by what his life has given him, he’s looking for something better, something beyond his limitations. He takes great joy and pride in his work, smiling often when things have gone well. His cheerful smile can be alternately mocking or eager, and often bloodthirsty as well; Orochimaru smiles frequently when he’s fighting. He enjoys fighting as a way to test his skills and show off what he’s learned. He wants to learn every jutsu technique in the shinobi world, from the smallest to the greatest, from the most common, to the rare, to the forbidden.

He seems to have no ethical limits on what he’ll do to learn; from willing experiments to kidnapping his fellow shinobi in Konoha. He’s experimented heavily on himself, first and foremost, permanently altering his own appearance; but he’s also modified many of his Sound ninja, and continues to look for a way to improve and eliminate human weakness. His drive to reach the ultimate being is what keeps him going and leads him further down these twisted paths. He will do anything to achieve his goals.

While he has some regrets about the bonds he’s severed, he doesn’t linger on them much. Maudlin musings will only keep him from his goal.

Deep down Orochimaru is afraid of dying, of becoming nothing, of being forgotten. His parents died and left no legacy, and he doesn’t even remember their faces clearly. This is the root of his desire to become the perfect being, that he might live forever and never be forgotten.

History

Orochimaru’s history remains much the same; born in Konoha, orphaned at a young age. He graduated the Academy at six and was taken under the Sandaime’s wing as a student. He learned eagerly everything that was taught to him, and served Konoha well. During the Second Shinobi World War, Orochimaru and his teammates were granted the name “Sannin” after fighting with legendary leader of Ame at the time, Hanzo. It was during this war Orochimaru got the idea of becoming immortal: during a night of drinking among the newly-christened Sannin, where they discussed what they would do after the war, Orochimaru declared that he wanted to learn every technique in the world. The general agreement was that it would take forever to do that, and he’d have to be immortal, like a demon.

When Orochimaru woke up the next morning, rather than throwing the idea away as drunken nonsense, he latched onto it. What if he could become immortal? Why not? Then he wouldn’t be forgotten and nameless like the dead, of which the war had created so many. He’d live on and his knowledge would never fade and he would be remembered.

Tsunade and Jiraiya told him he was crazy for thinking it possible, but Orochimaru just smiled and held onto that idea.

Orochimaru became ANBU and served for a few years in Root. Deep in Konoha’s politics, Orochimaru wanted to become the Sandaime’s successor, to better the village and lead them to a stronger future. But when the Sandaime retired and appointed Minato Namikaze his successor, Orochimaru quit as ANBU, turned in his Leaf headband, killed all but one of his budding experiments, and walked away. He had no more reason to stay in Konoha: he knew his ideas clashed horribly with Minato’s ideals and would not be accepted.

For a little while he roamed as a missing-nin, taking missions everywhere and learning what he could. He worked in Ame for a little while, but declined to join the Akatsuki. Orochimaru traveled, collected scrolls and established loyal contacts in every country and every shinobi village. And at last, he came to the small country called the Land of Rice Paddies. And there he has begun to found his village, Hidden in the Sound, because words can hide so much and tell so little.