New York. Late evening. A man sits in a confessional inside a church on some darkened corner of the city.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It's been… a long time… since my last confession… and I've done many… questionable things. Acts of violence… and betrayal. I've killed men… women, and even children. Each time, standing on the edge of the black abyss, as the blood roars in my ears, I try to resist.

Weak. Alone. I fail. And the darkness consumes me as I bask in the glory of the bloodlust. Until I realize… what I have done. And I am… ashamed.

Help me father. Show me a way out. There's so little time. And it would be… so easy."

The man leans back in the darkened confines of the confessional, a gun pressed into the soft flesh under his chin.

"But I can't! I am… a coward! Though I've killed… so many… I can't even kill myself. Please! Save me!"

Footsteps echo through the quiet church as someone approaches the confessional. The man puts away his gun, parts the curtains and steps out. The approaching priest stops his walk, startled. "Can I help you, my son?"

"No Father, I was just leaving."

"Then may the Lord be with you."

As the man heads out into the New York night he whispers a response… "Not tonight, Father."

- "DeathBlow"

Have you ever been hurt so bad, you couldn't hear anything but a high-pitched roar… and then you realized that it was the sound of yourself screaming? There is a world on the other side of pain, full of horror and hopelessness and concentrated suffering. But there's no fear there. What's there to fear when you're in the middle of the worst that could happen? I died once. And I came back… better.
Wait, that's not a good place to start.

Unanswered questions. That's what I've got plenty of. Most of my past is an unanswered question. This is what I know. Or what I think I know. Or what I think I remember. I was born in Hokkaido, Japan. I was born into the remnants of the Yamato Clan. Yes, and those clans are still around to this very day, mostly in the northernmost islands of Japan. My father was Japanese and my mother was of Irish descent. My father was royalty; he was an emperor, Japanese aristocracy. I was a prince in line for the throne. As to how my mother and father came together, I'll never know. I'm not even positive that this is my correct origin. But it's what I've been able to piece together in the past few months.

My memories are suspect. I do not trust them. And most of what I have is mist and fog anyway. I had previously believed that in my late teens I became "enlisted" into an organization called The Order. What I thought they were, at first, was a multi-cultural mafia organization. And I was young, and that thrilled me. To be a part of something like that. But, now, all these years later, I know that The Order is, at its core, a worldwide subversive organization dedicated to global domination. And I now know that several of these organizations exist around the globe. Shadow governments. And they dabble in all kinds of things. And most of those things are things that would keep you up at nights if you knew about them. They are going on all around us all the time and ninety percent of the population has no clue.

The Order took me in and trained me. Brainwashed me. Opened a whole new world for me. Soon I forgot about my family, my ancestry, and my previous history. They trained me to become a killer. They trained me to be an assassin. And oh what an assassin I became. I quickly raced through the ranks. But the ironic thing was that I always carried my own moral code, my own moral compass. I don't know where it came from, how it developed. It was just there. I developed a mantra, and I sold myself on that mantra. "If I must kill, let it be the corrupt, those who deserve to die… the guilty." I kept telling myself that, even when I made it a lie.

And the years went on. I started my enlistment with The Order doing operations in Japan. And it was there where I received my first training in the arts of combat and war. Over the years I traveled all over the globe, killing for The Order. I've killed all races and all nationalities, all stations in life from the very rich to the very poor. I've killed presidents, kings and emperors. I've killed the very young and the very old. Killing became a way of life for me. And still I tried to hold onto my mantra all along.

Many times I killed alone, the silent, stealth assassin. Others I was part of different teams for long periods of time. The first Kill Team I was a part of is the one I remember the least. We were a small group back then. A hand picked cadre of agents from different programs. Vox from Project Nightslide. Cole from a military Black-Ops unit. Jarl from God knows where. There were two others whom I still to this day cannot remember… And me, The Order's top assassin. We were quite the team. Until Jarl snapped… Things got real dicey after that and The Order had to reorganize things. But the job went on. More solo missions and more Teams followed.

And then, one day I met a woman who changed everything for me. She made me see me for what I really was. Both the good and the bad. And I realized that I had thrown away my moral compass somewhere along the line and that my mantra was a lie that I kept telling myself to make what I did seem morally right. And I became disgusted and ashamed with myself.

I decided that my association with The Order needed to come to an end. I started probing into my origins. I desperately wanted to know where I had started, where I had come from, where I had gone wrong and why I had so many blank spots in my memories. Through informants, subterfuge and "midnight dealings" I started to sift through the accumulated silt that was my past.

It has been three months now since I started my investigation on myself and I've discovered that almost everything I believed to be true about my past was a lie. False memories imparted on me by The Order. I'm beginning to believe that there is a lot more to me than I had ever thought. The Order must know this as well. They've caught on to what I'm doing and things have become very confusing and paranoia has become common.

I've been assigned to Kill Team Silent Running for almost a month now. All along I've sensed something out of place with this assignment. I could sense the unease in my team members. I caught their eyes as they quickly looked away, heard secreted whispers among them when they thought I wasn't listening. All along they've been watching me too closely. And then on a mission last night, things came to a head. My brothers tried to retire me. But they underestimated me, and I had to retire them instead.

Now I'm on the run. The first thing I have to do is to get out of this city. The Order has a major base of operations here and sees almost everything that goes on. I've got to get out of this city, then I can decide what to do next. No one knows I'm leaving yet, except Candice. I think I have some time before The Order finds out about Silent Running. I hope so.

I don't know what's out there for me. But I'm about to find out. All that and more. And what I find out might just barely prepare me for what lies ahead in the darkness. For there is no expiation. There is no forgiveness. There is only salvation. And we must provide that for ourselves.

And my dreams as of late are allowing me to sleep less and less. Dreams that contain a montage of images. I see people leaving, but not out of anger. I see other people waiting. I see some glaring and others lurking. And throughout these images, I see myself, strange, hardened, determined, and not a little changed. I see doorways opening to me, which had not previously been open to me… paths which I have put off traveling. They still beckon, and this time, they shall know my intrepid tread. My image seems to change throughout. Countenance, demeanor, all has changed. But when I rise again, my new power will be unmistakable. There will be vigor to it not seen in centuries.

DeepSix Katana Interview part 1

DeepSix Katana Interview part 2

DeepSix Katana Interview part 3

THE STORY (in a nutshell)

What it is about basically, is this guy who has spent the better part of his entire life in the employ of The Order as an assassin. And there has come a time where he has had a change of heart, you might say he's become tired of all the killing. He's been wanting out for years, but only now has managed to pull up the sand to cut loose of The Order. He knows that in doing this, his days are numbered, but it's a chance he's willing to take for what he believes is the survival of his soul.

Being an assassin on the upper tier at The Order has done the player's character a disservice now that he wants out. The Order makes substantial investments in their top assassins, both monetarily and in terms of time. And let's not forget all the dirty information an assassin in such a position gathers over the years on different organizations -- including the organization that he works for. For those reasons and more, The Order simply does not let their top assassins go. Not alive anyway.

So, we have this guy who has just left The Order. He hasn't told anyone except a lover he left behind at the organization he just left, and he plans to disappear quietly into the night and vanish from the face of the earth. At least that's Plan A anyway. And here is about where the player will take over this character, as he is on his way out of New York, which is where The Order is headquartered.

Here is an excerpt from the opening dialogue that starts the game...

"Who am I? ..........That's not really important. A better question would be WHAT am I? An even better question, and one I ask myself often, is how did I get to be here?

I was raised as nobility. Trained as a soldier. And became a killer. I am an assassin. I am an assassin hunted by others of my kind for abandoning my order. Sickened by what I had become, I left my order cursing everything it stood for. My mentors and brothers were not pleased. Now, it seems, I am their betrayer, their Judas. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot escape my past.

But, I am ready for it. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

And I remember, always, the first rule: the weapon is the extension of the flesh, the flesh of the mind, the mind of the soul. For the true warrior to survive in combat, and emerge triumphant, those elements must function in harmony."

Now, by the end of my level the player will come to realize that there is a lot more going on than what they first thought, that the character is WAYYYY more than just an assassin. And this will be news to the CHARACTER as well. Repressed memories and veiled origins can just ruin a man, you know? ;)