The Evadinja
Ebon Flow
Ebon Flow is known by many outside the Evadinja as a pleasant and calm master and the leader of the Evadinja. His demeanor is stern, but he isn't afraid to smile when appropriate. His graceful counterattack style is one of the more feared in the ninja factions and his techniques are known especially for their brutal effectiveness against the average pirate. He is, the very embodiment of the ninja way of life. Calm on the outside with a perfect smooth mastery of his skills.
Ebon Flow's students know a significantly different man from the public image. Ebon's staunch anti-pirate stance is well-known even outside the Evaidnja dojos, but few outside them know about his constant frustration on the matter. Ever since the technique for Water-walking (a trump card against the Pirates' ship combat) became common and public knowledge, Ebon has tightened up his rules on associating with outsiders. Ninjas under his direct tutelage are discouraged from sometimes associating with even other ninja factions, much less Wanderers and, god forbid, Pirates. Ebon Flow sees the current war as a matter of a loss in the Ninja's moral fiber and adherence to tradition as much as a tactical and manpower issue. He was also one of the first people to support the new war after the loss of the Takara.
Furthermore, Ebon Flow has opened a hostile attitude to the newly founded Shoninja and thinks of them as Pirate Sympathizers with their attitudes toward combat and discipline. This extends, as well, to allies to the young faction. While some see the newer styles of the Rokinja and Equinja as a natural evolution of the times and a necessary weapon against the pirates, Ebon Flow sees it as an infection of the anathema Shoninja philosophy corrupting the youth of the Ninja nations.
Master Ebon is also known for being very strict with even his most beloved students. As one of the older ninja masters still alive, Ebon has trained directly with some of the current leaders of the other ninja factions and very few of them speak of their time training with him fondly. Plenty call him way too traditional. His stance on female ninjas as combatants has certainly raised a few eyebrows even in the oldest ninja councils. At the very least, a female student training under Ebon Flow has doubtless earned some level of respect and impressed the aging master.
Still, tradition sometimes gets results, and Ebon Flow keeps his position as the leader of the Evadinja by merit of his skills, not his political alliances, and if there's any ninja constantly on the front line of the war instead of in the council chambers, it is him. There are also ninja who stand by Ebon Flow's more traditional stances and believe certain ninja need to play more traditional roles and refuse to even listen to the practitioners of the new Ninja styles that have cropped up in the past couple of decades.
Any pirate dumb enough to cross the aging Evadinja master would be better off saying goodbye to his loved ones, rather than trying to avoid the inevitable hurricane of vengeance.
The Oldest Ninja Profession
While the modern school of the Evadinja have been around only about 50 years, the Evadinja themselves are consider, along with the Hitinja, to be the two oldest schools amongst the ninja, dating back to even before the Dojo system. This is, perhaps, because the Evadinja fighting style embodies the core of the Ninja philosophy; agility, technique, stealth, honor, and tradition. In a way, every faction owes some of its technique to the Evadinja and branches off from it in some way.
Because of this, the Evadinja tend to hold a lot of political sway. Evadinja are respected as a more "pure" ninja and are thought of as a more noble class of ninja. Getting apprenticed to the Evadinja is considered an honor. On the other hand, Evadinja are held to a much stricter code of ethics and are more likely to be publicly shamed for even a small breach in typical ninja etiquette. This probably explains the number of Evadinja who eventually train under the other Ninja schools in the search for more power and more understanding of their talents.
While the Evadinja school is a bit more strict, its doors are almost always open to their closest ally, the Hitinja faction. However, in recent years, this alliance has waned a bit as some Hitinja leaders have been shown to have sympathies with the newer schools and their new philosophies. Still, the bond between Evadinja and Hitinja has lasted thousands of years and will probably continue to last even after the last Evadinja falls.
In the war, the Evadinja have played many roles and make up a rather large portion of the leaders of the ninja armies. Evadinja make great guards, assassins, and even generals (although, perhaps not as much as their Hitinja contemporaries). Still, there is a good reason the Evadinja is considered the iconic image of what it means to be a ninja.
The Loss of the Great Technique
The Evadinja are known far and wide for being the faction to invent the ninja technique of walking on water. When this technique was introduced, it single-handedly turned the Pirate/Ninja war on its head. Before then, the ninjas had no way to stand against the great Pirate armadas due to their inferior navigation and sailing skills, but the ability to walk on water gave ninjas the ability to hit galleons with surgical strikes that would sink entire crews in the blink of an eye.
...And then someone taught Water-walking to a pirate.
No one knows who it was; It might not even have been a ninja, but somewhere along the line, someone started producing scrolls detailing the techniques of water walking. Their ease of use (despite their importance to the war) made the Evadinja quickly lose their greatest military edge, and it is very much a sore subject with their most dedicated disciples to this very day. It wasn't long before similar scrolls were found on markets for other techniques. All but the most secret of ninja techniques became open domain for the pirates. If anyone ever found out any information on the traitor that betrayed the Evadinja, they would find themselves with the Evadinja forever indebted to them.
Obviously, because of these events, Evadinja are a bit leery to teach their techniques to outsiders, and many claim that this specific instance was the very thing that caused Ebon Flow to go from the happy young man in his youth to stern master he is today.
It is worth noting that while this marked the beginning of Pirates having common access to low-level ninja techniques, that ninjas had had access to low level pirate techniques for centuries before this because of the Pirate tendency to teach anyone willing to buy a powerful pirate a drink.
The Man From Another World
The Dimensional Tango is one of the more exhausting and powerful moves in the Evadinja's arsenal. The ability to teleport instantaneously to a location within sight is one with infinite possibilities. What of the man that invented the technique though?
Dimensional Tango just came to the Evadinja one day, already trained in the ways of combat as a grown man. No ninja village has records of him before his first appearance at the Evadinja main dojo. Initial reaction was to not to trust the strange man that seemed to speak a foreign tongue and have manners and attitudes that no other ninja seemed to have. However, the draw of his special technique to just jump between the folds in spaces proved too tempting to the Evadinja and he was eventually accepted as a member and eventually a full leader of his own dojo.
Dimensional Tango never opened up much to other people, and all but the smallest details of his past and personal life remain a secret.
One day, on a fairly routine recon mission, Dimensional Tango just disappeared. No one knows where he went, but the man has had even less sightings than the great ninja hero Ellipsis. Some say Dimensional Tango left the world itself. Some say he was never of this world to begin with. There's even theories that Dimensional Tango himself was a demon sent from the underworld to give the Ninjas a weapon to continue the fight with the pirates to appease the leader of hell's constant bloodlust.
Unfortunately, the true history of the master and the true form of his technique may be permanently lost to time and space. Any and all attempts to track him down have led to absolutely no leads.