Marishiten

About
Marishiten is the enigmatic leader of the Marishiten Assassination Brigade and a world renowned assassin.

Very little is known about Marishiten outside of his status as a professional killer, though his distinct armor implies that he may be of JAPANese origin. No records exist of who he is or where he comes from, and it is highly likely that the name "Marishiten" is simply an alias rather than his true identity.

Throughout his career, Marishiten has participated in countless high profile assassination missions, and is personally responsible for the deaths of various influential figures throughout The Continent. During one of these missions, he was hired by several paranoid Zeth nobles to assassinate Miracle Tou, the granddaughter of the legendary witch Mysteria Tou, whose remarkable power and desire for world domination made them perceive her as a threat to their safety. While Marishiten came close to successfully killing Miracle, the young witch was able to gain the upper hand against him with her incredible magical ability, forcing him to retreat and causing him to fail at killing his target for the first time in his life.

During the events of Rance 4.2, Marishiten and his subordinates were hired by the Angel Army to defeat the warrior Rance, who was opposing the organization's attempts at infiltrating Happiness Pharmaceutical. Marishiten only took action after the rest of his comrades had been defeated, where he battled Rance and his group in an effort to restore the damage done to the group from their repeated losses. While he was a powerful enemy, he ultimately lost and was mocked by Rance for being nothing more than a "midboss". While it is possible for him to die in this battle, Marishiten canonically survived his encounter with Rance and is still active at present.

Marishiten makes a brief appearance in Rance IX as a part of Miracle Tou's fantasized elite guard the Twelve Knights which is composed of what Miracle believes to be the twelve strongest men on the Continent. Rance does not remember him, but notes that "There are no good men without any eyebrows" and rejects his place in the group.

Personality and Appearance
Marishiten is a somewhat short man with long black hair swept behind his ears. His most distinct feature is his lack of eyebrows, causing his small eyes to appear to be in a perpetual glare. His clothing consists of red and silver JAPANese-style armor under a long brown coat, along with a flowing red scarf around his neck.

A man of few words, Marishiten rarely speaks, only doing so when it is absolutely necessary for him to, and even then favoring short and direct sentences to communicate with others. He takes great efforts to keep his presence hidden from others, only revealing himself when directly confronting one of his targets. Because of this, he very rarely meets with his employers directly when hired, instead sending one of his subordinates to handle business for him.

Despite his aloof and detached demeanor, Marishiten is extremely dedicated to his job as an assassin, and works hard to ensure that he maintains his title as the world's greatest assassin, handling his work with an incomparable level of precision and focus. Threatening to tarnish the reputation of his group is one of the only things capable of eliciting an emotional reaction from him, causing him to replace his usual detached calm with an uncontrollable rage. This rage proved to be his undoing during his encounter with Rance, as it caused him to expose himself to the warrior in order to confront him directly as opposed to remaining hidden until the ideal opportunity to strike arose.

Marishiten's stoic and mysterious attitude contrasts heavily with the boisterous and comical personalities of his subordinates. Nonetheless, he seems to get along very well with them, to the point of entrusting them with a large number of the group's missions.

Abilities
As the leader of a high profile assassination organization, Marishiten is incredibly skilled. Throughout his career, he has developed a reputation of being the greatest assassin on the Continent, and while the validity of this statement is debatable, there is no doubt that he possesses an amazing level of ability.

Due to being an assassin, his main method of attack is hiding in the shadows and hitting his opponent by surprise. His ability to move through darkness silently and go unnoticed is comparable to an elite Ninja of JAPAN. Even without his stealth, he is a very powerful warrior that is skilled with a sword, capable of putting up a very difficult fight against Rance's party when on his own, up to the point of being a stronger enemy than the Angel Army's leader and the game's final boss Archibald.

While his level cap isn't as high as other elite fighters, Marishiten has made excellent use of it, being one of the only people on the Continent at a level higher than 40, making him one of the strongest people alive presently.

Trivia

 * His name is very likely a reference to the Buddhist Deva Maricia, who is known as Marishi-ten in Japan. In Japan, Maricia is closely associated with the samurai, particularly the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū school of swordsmanship, and is said to grant a warrior invisibility upon completing a chant to them. As Marishiten is both skilled at swordsmanship and moving silently without getting detected, this is a very appropriate name for him.