Hidetsugu
Hidetsugu was an ogre o-bakemono, a shaman from Kamigawa. He lived in the Sokenzan mountain range in a cave dwelling named Shinka. He was a master of blood and fire magic, and a devout worshipper of the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos - therefore highly skilled in working with oni demons. He has quite a simple philosophy...everything is doomed to end in chaos, consumed by his master.
Hidetsugu was trying to get a worthy apprentice of his own, in order to have somebody who will continue in his work. However, he was a very stern master and his apprentices had high training mortality rate. After a long time, he found a worthy apprentice in the ex-budoka Kobo.
Hidetsugu was a ruler of his part of Sokenzan, and as such he has an attention of similar rulers of other places. One of them was Boss Uramon from Numai. After causing her losses by eating her people, she sent a task force to eliminate him. Among these people was a kanji mage Toshi Umezawa. The assault was unsuccessful, and Hidetsugu killed all the men except Umezawa. The little kanji mage interested him, and later persuaded him to form a new reckoner gang, the hyozan reckoners, by taking a blood oath. Since that day, Toshi Umezawa and Hidetsugu were blood brothers, bound by oath that in the case of death of one oath-brother compelled the others to exact a total revenge on anybody even remotely responsible.
When Toshi Umezawa came to him asking for help with interpreting the kami portents concerning the hyozan and soratami, the ogre performed a ritual when he made Kobo part of the hyozan and sent his apprentice with Toshi to Jukai, saying that he hopes that the spiritual budokas will help them. However, Toshi and Kobo were later caught (together with Michiko's people) in a battle with [[orochi], and Kobo was killed by the Minamo wizard Choryu. Thanks to Toshi, the wizard was later brought to Hidetsugu and the ogre could have his revenge.
Hidetsugu was enraged. Kobo was his most promising student ever. He punished Choryu by one of the worst means imaginable, burning, poisoning and making him eat himself, all at once. But this was only a beginning. He vowed to exact total revenge on anybody responsible - Choryu's masters in Minamo, their soratami masters from Otawara and even their patron kami. He wanted to enlist a group of yamabushi kami-killers from the local masters. They refused, and Hidetsugu killed them and enslaved eight of their pupils. He made them into eight new hyozan reckoners, silent and deadly. Toshi Umezawa returned with two new recruits as well, to consult further steps with Hidetsugu. The ogre told him about his plans with Minamo. Toshi tried to make him postpone his decision, and even gave him a tile with a powerful captured kami inside - the yuki-onna. Hidetsugu agreed to wait for the agreed time and gave Toshi a similar tile in exchange, one with an oni-dog bound inside.
His oath-brother Toshi Umezawa, however, changed since Kobo's death. He became a worshipper of Myojin of Night's Reach, a kami of darkness and secret. The objectives of Toshi and Hidetsugu started to diverge a bit.
The ogre's temper was not easy to hold in the end. Instead of revenge also on Jukai orochi, he went directly into the academy. There he and his hunters defeated Keiga, the Tide Star, destroyed the Academy and killed almost all people inside, including Hisoka, whose head was bitten off by Hidetsugu himself. He also summoned his patron kami, the All-Consuming Oni of Chaos, to feast on the chaos, death and destruction in the Academy. Toshi arrived with the Taken One, freshly stolen from Konda's castle, just in time to save Michiko and her friends, who came to Minamo to seek a counsel from Hisoka. Then, Toshi Umezawa secretly left the hyozan.
Toshi returned to Minamo to "participate" in the revenge process. Hidetsugu, dissatisfied with Toshi's part in the revenge, took hold of him and showed him another stage of his revenge, when he unleashed his oni army to Otawara, where the demons killed many moonfolk. After a short argument, Toshi froze the ogre's fist and escaped from his grasp, openly declaring a war between the two founding members of the hyozan.
Toshi returned to Minamo with two other hyozan, Marrow-Gnawer and Kiku, to reclaim That Which Was Taken from the academy ruins. Hidetsugu came for him with his remaining hunters and almost killed him. But he decided to show Toshi how he worked his way out of the possible hyozan curse by killing Kiku without spewing a bit of blood - by choking her in his fist. He would kill Kiku and Toshi both, if not for the intervention of Marrow-Gnawer, who misinterpreted his hyozan mark call and stabbed Hidetsugu in the eye, invoking the curse upon himself. During this fight, Hidetsugu unknowingly triggered Kiku's curse bestowed upon her by her mahotsukai masters. The ogre then fought Kiku, Shadow of Black Death, and after a brutal, but not one-sided fight, defeated her. However, Toshi used his momentary distraction and stabbed his remaining eye.
Even blind, Hidetsugu found Toshi when the kanji mage tried to use his blood to make a kanji. After a bitter conversation, he prepared to kill the trickster. But, in the same time, O-Kagachi, drawn to Minamo by the presence of The Taken One, clashed with All-Consuming Oni of Chaos. Toshi pointed this out to Hidetsugu, and the ogre paused in his killing stroke. Much to Hidetsugu's chadring, dismay and anger, the oni overlord was almost effortlessly torn in two by O-Kagachi and fled the stage. This made Hidetsugu completely forget Toshi. He was seething by rage. His patron left his finest apprentice. This cannot be. He asked Toshi for a favor. He wanted Toshi to transport him into the honden of the All-Consuming, saying "if my god don't live up to my expectances, I'll make him suffer." In exchange for helping with The Taken One to Minamo's roof, Toshi grants this last favor to his blood brother. Hidetsugu vanishes into a vortex of sulfur and fire.
After the destruction of O-Kagachi and Konda and the ascension of the Sisters of Flesh and Spirit, the last person to punish is Mochi, the intriguing patron of the soratami. His punishment is Kyodai's gift to Toshi for his help. She opens a gate to the reign of the oni, and Hidetsugu emerges, his eyes restored. Under unknown circumstances, he apparently merged with the All-Consuming into a similar being like the Sisters. Now he releases a wave of the oni's insatiable jaws from his chest, that tear Mochi into pieces and consume him. The last hyozan reckoning is complete, and Hidetsugu returns into his new reign.