Bestiary

Kiro Yamazaki

For what seemed like the longest time, ill fortune plagued Yamazaki. The fall in Japanese markets, cata­ strophically unsuccessful negotiations with Asian vam­ pires, his failure to secure any of the Cambodian Killing Fields for experimentation, and the lack of results from Project Odyssey all signaled a death knell for the Japanese business magnate. He saw his colleagues Kiker and Stern fall to the wayside and could see his doom fast approaching.

Then Project Aeneid experienced a massive success and plucked his ass out of the fire at the last possible moment.

At the start of the twenty-first century, Yamazaki arranged with the American government to incarcerate suspected terrorists in private Pentex facilities. Project Aeneid had focused on binding Mind Feeder Banes to psychic hosts, but had met repeated failure. Yamazaki had the prisoners exposed to Mind Feeders. The Banes flourished when attached to many of the inmates, powered by their heightened emotions of fear, pain, and anger. Through a series of grueling, and at times catastrophic, experiments, Project Odyssey’s telepaths developed a psychic symbiosis with the Bane-bonded fanatics, but their powers became increasingly uncontrollable as a psychic infection spread throughout both the prisoners and psychics via their linked minds.

Harold Zettler intervened, providing a spiritually active drug that allowed the psychics to regain control. The vampire was impressed with Yamazaki’s results. After some further experiments, Yamazaki discovered that the Banes would spread through people who shared the im­ pulse to live, die, and kill for a cause — a very useful tool for Pentex. Yamazaki now stands strong. He’s got prisons full of fanatical psychics at his command, and is working on a way to apply Project Aeneid to American ‘patriots’ who are already hopelessly addicted to Magadon’s drugs and the booze made by King Distilleries.

Despite his recent successes, Yamazaki needs to fur­ ther secure his position — especially the ongoing need for Project Odyssey, his plan to recruit and train psychics of all types. He is now looking into ways to use Project Aeneid to infect Garou with Banes through a psychic connection, and has been pushing the Board to give permission to proceed. Zettler has confided in Yamazaki that if his plan succeeds, the vampire will grant Yamazaki immortality. Kiro is however keen to follow Culliford’s path, and is attempting to curry favor with the old man in an effort to meet with the same Wyrm entity that granted him immortality rather than becoming a vampire.