Shuten dōji

Name Meaning: "Little drunkard"
Family: son of Orochi; father of Kidōmaru.

Before he was confronted and defeated by Amaterasu, Orochi committed an atrocious crime deep in his underground lair. With a captured human woman, he hoped to beget an heir. The woman was able to escape before the Moon Cave collapsed into rubble, but Orochi's advances had borne fruit and she was now pregnant.

Originally from Taka Pass, the woman had been captured by demons and brought to the Moon Cave. She very much wanted to go home and set off after a brief rest. But nine months after the defeat of Orochi, the land was ravaged by natural disasters. The path to Taka Pass was blocked off and the woman was forced to give birth to her child there in Agata Forest. It was a boy and he seemed normal enough. But soon proved to be very strong and intelligent for a child his age, this gave him some strange looks and dark whispers and his mother finally had enough and moved them away.

She was still hoping for a route to Taka Pass, so their travel took them around. But her son still got negative attention and his mother could take it no longer. She had raised this spawn of evil for six years and, in her mind, it was time to release the burden she had been forced to bear. She left him sleeping one night and vanished. There in the middle of Shinshu Field. Somebody would find him, she knew, though really she hopes he would die before it happened.

The boy was found by Mika and was raised in the Moon Shrine as an apprentice. He was named Shuten dōji due to his love of sake which would put even Susano to shame. During the Kamiki Festival, Shuten decided to put on an oni mask and play pranks on the villagers. He was having a grand time until he found that he could not remove the mask which had fused to his face. He fled before anyone could see what had become of him and found refuge in the Ryoshima coast. There he made friends among the demons and soon discovered that his father had left him quite an inheritance. Not only did he have power and wisdom, but Shutan also had magic...the dark power that Orochi had once used to spread terror across the world. Using this black magic turned him into an oni himself, but it also allowed him to gain a stronghold that was mostly safe from the outside world. Oni Island.

Like Orochi, Shuten had a taste for young women. He instructed his minions to find and capture any maiden that they could get their hands on. Most were eaten, but a selective few were spared because they had struck a demon's fancy. One of these maidens eventually became the mother of Shuten's son, Kidōmaru.

After being abandoned by his own mother, Kidōmaru was found by Mika and trained to be a priest of the Moon Shrine (just like his father before him). He was soon cast out and found the entrance to the Demon Market. The Witch Queen was suspicious of him at first, for she sense power in him that was far greater than her own but decided that he was harmless so long as he did not learn how to master it. Unfortunately for the Witch Queen, Kidōmaru study magic and honed his power in secret. He was able to gain support from other demons and soon made his move. The Witch Queen was a tough adversary but in the end no match for a grandson of Orochi. The Demon Market belonged to Kidōmaru now and it thrived under the new management. The deeds and stories soon attracted the attention of Shuten who quickly realized that this upstart was his own flesh and blood. Father and son met and had a brief fight to test each other's mettle, then they agreed to be allies against the Sun.