| Yuki-Onna | |
|---|---|
| The Snow Woman | |
 | |
| Details | |
| Race | Spirit |
| Birthplace | Kamigawa |
| Lifetime | Kami War (the Thaw), presumably still alive |
| Colors | |
 | |
| Sources | |
| Heretic: Betrayers of Kamigawa, Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa | |
The Yuki-Onna (Japanese:
Description
The Yuki-Onna was a pale figure materializing from gloom, small-boned and graceful. Her gleaming white robes dragged along the surface of the snow without disturbing it, and though she came steadily forward her legs did not move. Her head was tilted forward so that her long, lustrous black hair completely concealed her face as it hung almost to the ground. Her eyes were vacant black pools, terrible holes that led to a vast frigid void. She would open her pale lips and let out a ghastly, shrieking cry that stabbed through one's ears. She was a mistress of cold and frost, freezing her victims to the bone by merely touching them. She could appear to her victims as somebody dear to them or greatly desired. The fooled victims left their warm homes and followed her to the open, where she froze them.[1]
History
The yuki-onna was used by Toshiro Umezawa to get rid of Uramon's men led by Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer, who pursued him. Then, by a ritual performed with the reluctant help of Kiku and Marrow, Toshi imprisoned the yuki-onna in a ceramic tile and stole part of her power, which he embedded into a new purple kanji on his forehead.
Toshi later gave the tile to Hidetsugu, who in turn handed it over to Godo, saying that the yuki-onna would help him to eliminate Konda's samurai. Godo released the yuki-onna in his territory of Sokenzan. Appearing as princess Michiko to the Eiganjo troops, she decimated the daimyo's men. But contrary to Hidetsugu's words, her hunger was insatiable and she turned also to Godo's men.
As a part of the soratami's revenge carried out by Uyo's suggestion, Toshi was forced to witness the Yuki-onna's work in Sokenzan and then to go back to Heart of Frost and reverse his spell that imprisoned her. She vanished from Godo's territory and reappeared in the Heart of Frost. He would cancel the spell completely if not for Myojin of Night's Reach intervention, which showed him that he was deluded by the moonfolk. As such, he broke the spell only partially at first, stopping the Yuki-onna for some time, and using her power for the last time to kill Uyo. Then, he broke the final kanji, and the yuki-onna was reinstated in her original realm again.
Story appearances
In-game references
- Represented in: