Mukade

Mukade is the leader of the game's ninjas, the most formidable ninja you will encounter, and the game's second boss. As a character, he is also quite an enigma. Described by the game text as working for Muro, onscreen he is never referred to by Muro or shown interacting with him.

Facts

Splashscreen before CHAPTER 10 . CAT AND MOUSE...

Appearance

Mukade wears black armor which leaves no exposed skin (as opposed to Ninjas) and speaks through a vocoder.

Mission objective text

Muro's master ninja, Mukade, has removed the Hasegawa records from the data archives! You must find him, and retrieve the Data Disk that holds the clues to your past.

Diary entry

That ninja...why do I react to him this way? He feels familiar and I hate him for it. We're like animals whose territory is threatened. I know when I find him we'll be nothing but claws and fangs. The strangest part is that I'm looking forward to it.

Encounter before fight

Mukade: All you have done by hunting me is force me to fight. You should have let me go.

Konoko: Who are you? Why can I feel you inside me?

Mukade: Does your blood burn when you kill? Mine does.

Konoko: Stop it...

Mukade: We writhe inside as we are torn apart to make way for what we will become. Surrender to it. Let the bliss of oblivion free you of all your doubts and fears...

Konoko: You are one of Muro's thugs, nothing more.

Mukade: We shall see...

Commentary

Hardy LeBel on Mukade's visceral link to Konoko:

More advanced Daodan mutates are hyper-evolved "super predators". All of the aspects of their bodies evolve, including their senses. The "connection" Konoko feels with Mukade is her own evolving senses alerting her that she is on the trail of another Daodan super predator.

Could she keep herself from killing him once she'd established her dominance, or does the predatory nature of the Chrysalis demand that she destroy any and all threats to her existence? That is the question YOU get to answer for yourself in the Omega Vault.

At least that's the way I hoped it would feel!

--source

People with a Daodan Chrysalis inside them are "super predators" of sorts, so they are very aware of each other: imagine a tiger moving into another tiger's hunting grounds. Anybody who has ever been to the zoo can tell you that you always know when the tigers are about to make their entrance: tigers have a very distinctive odor that you can smell for miles.

Konoko's internal lines in that level were meant to show her own predatory response to the threat that Mukade presents. And when she ends up talking to Mukade he tries to get her to admit that she's feeling the "thrill of the hunt" and that the creature she is becoming likes to kill, but she denies it.

Still we all know how that level ends ;^>

--source

Name origin

Entomology

The mukade is a Japanese variety of centipede known for being big and nasty. As you see on the right, "mukade" doesn't have a kanji of its own, instead being written with three pictograms meaning "a hundred feet". So it means "centipede" quite literally.

Its Latin name is Scolopendra japonica; here's a big picture of one. Their length is on average 10 cm (4 in), but they can grow up to 20 cm (8 in).

Random forum comment

Mukade??? They are among the most horrible things on earth. They are giant centipedes that leave huge welts when they bite. And they are fast. I had more than a few in my place. They liked to hang out in my sink drain and they'd come out whenever I turned the tap on.

There are lots of other thrilling comments like that one on quite a lot of forums from people who've lived in Japan. The defunct Takipedia described the mukade's variations this way:

There are hundreds of types of mukade in the family, however the most common mukade in Japan are the tobizu 鳶頭, the aozu 青頭 and the akazu 赤頭. The tobizu has a black body and a distinct red head and yellow legs. It would probably be quite hard to miss one of these beauties crawling along your ceiling.

They are known for being aggressive, attacking not just their prey but each other and anything else that moves. You can find more information about mukade on this bygone blog from an American living in Japan, who mentions being bitten by one while sleeping. (He has not yet died from nighttime mukade attacks and now blogs here.) According to that page, the mukade can "see" you in the dark by sensing your vibrations.

Speaking of vision, many centipedes do not have eyes, and some do not even have photosensitive eyespots, so how do they see at all? Scientists only determined in 2022 that the Chinese red-headed centipede, a close cousin of the mukade, "sees" light by sensing heat. This was not obvious before now because the amount of light that they can sense is well below the amount that should heat them up. Apparently their antennae have a special property that causes them to heat up quickly under light (8° C (14° F) in 10 seconds, in one experiment), and the centipede then responds to that peculiar heat. This mechanism has never been observed in the animal kingdom before and is still under investigation. Whether this form of "vision" is used by the Japanese mukade is not clear at present.

Mythology

A giant version of the mukade was a recurring malevolent creature in Japan's mythology. For example:

About Mukade Daiko

A long time ago a huge centipede, that could wrap itself seven and a half times around Mt. Mikami, appeared. It crawled out of the fields, destroying the rice fields and eating all the fish in the lake and rivers, endangering the people of Yasu. A great warrior, Tawara no Tota Hidesato, was on a journey in the Yasu area. He was asked by the Lake Goddess to defeat the cruel centipede. After a fierce battle, Tota defeated the centipede and the people were safe once again.

From http://hometown.aol.com/delenndax7/trivia2002.html (dead link)

In Japanese Mythology, Oo-Mukade was a terrifying, giant centipede the size of a mountain. It lived in the mountains of Japan near Lake Biwa. The dragon king of the lake asked the famous hero Hidesato (some sources say Tado Tawara) to kill it. The hero fired three arrows at the monster's eye. The third arrow, which was dipped in Hidesato's bodily fluid, killed the monster by penetrating its brain. The dragon king rewarded Hidesato by giving him a "bottomless" bag of rice which fed his family for centuries. The bodily fluid on the arrow is said to have magical properties against centipedes. WHAT WAS THIS BODILY FLUID? Saliva

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