Tao (Xian "Lotus" Gan Feng) Body: 5 Mind: 6 Soul: 7 HP: 70 EP: 105 Attack Combat Value: 7 Defense Combat Value: 5 Total Character Points: 39 (18 Stat, 30 Attribute, +7 Defect, +2 Background, 4 Experience, +10 Skill Exp) Attribute Level Points -------------------------------------------------------------- Appearance 2 2 Combat Mastery 1 2 Damn Healthy! 1 1 Energy Bonus 4 4 Focused Damage (Unarmed) 1 1 Heightened Awareness 1 1 Highly Skilled 2 2 Personal Gear 1 1 Dynamic Sorcery 4 16 Defect Points ------------------------------------------------------ Attack Restriction (Unarmed or Innocent) +1 Easily Distracted (Compulsion) +1 Marked (Chinese Symbols, Ears) +2 Magical Restrictions (Jade Necklace) +1 Skeleton in the Closet (Former Assassin) +1 Unique Defect (Amnesia) +1 Wanted (Former Assassin) +1 * - Do-Gooder: Part of Methryn's "reprogramming" of Xian was a compulsion to do good. She feels the need to help the weak and champion the disadvantaged in her own small way. * - Jade Necklace: Xian's ability to channel is dependent on a jade necklace she wears. The jade is not irreplaceable (any common jade enhanced with a correct ritual will do), but without it she cannot summon mystical energies as easily. Any spell she casts without it is at a +2 penalty. * - Chinese Symbols: As a former Tong assassin, Xian was marked by her former employers. Moreso, as she developed as a Taoist shaman, she was further marked. A band of symbols reading "Let he who defies his betters meet death at my hands" is tattooed around her neck. On the back of her left hand is the symbol for "Fire" in red; on the back of her right, "Metal" in outlined white; on her left breast, "Wood" in blue, on her right breast, "Water" in black, and on her forehead, "Jade" in green. These last five glow whenever she uses a magical power of the appropriate element. * - Ears: Part of her Shinma heritage. Xian's ears are slightly pointed. * - Amnesia: Xian has selective amnesia. Her skills and talents remain intact, but anything she knew about her identity or her past is completely wiped. * - Former Assassin: Xian was formerly, as a child, an assassian for the Black Scarves Tong of southern China. She doesn't remember any of it, but the various Tongs, criminal organizations, and law enforcement agencies of the world (especially Southeast Asia) certainly do. Skill Points = 48 (12 unspent), Skill Paradigm = Cyberpunk Skill (Specialty) Level Skill Points -------------------------------------------------------------------- Acrobatics (Tumbling) 1 4 Artisan (Calligraphy) 1 2 Cultural Arts (Occult) 2 4 Magic (*) 3 15 Performing Arts (Chinese Opera) 1 2 Slight of Hand (Lockpick) 2 4 Unarmed Attack (Punch, Kick) 3 13 Unarmed Defense (Block) 1 4 (*) - Xian's Magic specialties are Destruction, Restoration, Mysticism, and Thaumaturgy Background: Xian Gan Feng was originally the daughter of simple rice farmers in the desolate, abandoned inland areas around the Riverlands area of southern China. She was born in the year of the Tiger, on an auspicious day devoted to Yu Ti, the Personage of Jade who directed Pan Ku's creation. The first sights and sounds she heard were festival celebrations. Thus her parents nicknamed her "Tianyi", or "Heaven's Joy", for her cries turned to laughter soon in the throng of partiers. Unfortunately, with the disasters striking China in the period, even simple rice farming was not enough. Money was needed, and the only way to get it was through the various criminal elements of southeast Asia, the Tongs, Triads, and Yakuza who drifted through the countries, controlling through fear and intimidation the peasantry who'd tilled the land for centuries. Xian's mother was not human. She was one of the Shinma, the spirits of the land and sky that Westerners call "faeries". She fell in love with a human and Xian was the result, but being bound into a body was more strain on her than she could ever have imagined. She died early, and on his own, Xian's father, stricken with grief, was unable to support them. He gave their child to a Tong known for their wealth, the Black Scarves. "She is born under an auspicious sign," he told the gang. "She will bring you luck." The child was spirited away to Hong Kong, and the father given a sizeable sum of money. It did him no good; with his grief and sorrow over their decision adding to his agony over his wife's death, Xian's father killed himself the very next day, hoping his sacrifice would atone for Xian's future crimes. Whether or not their wishes came true is up for debate. Raised by the Tong, Xian displayed immense mental and spiritual gifts. Recognizing her talent, the tong's elders passed on to her the shaman secrets of manipulating the five elements of creation: Fire, Earth, Water, Metal, and Wood. They then formed her into a magical assassin with few equals, indoctrinating her in their own killing methods and combat style. Dubbed "Lotus", by the age of 15 Xian was sent to eliminate those recalcitrant and foolish people who did not realize that an assassin could hide in the shape of a teenage girl. The turning point in Xian's life came when she was required to kill an old man who wasn't paying protection money, in a small book store buried deep in the towering, Blade Runner-style streets of Hong Kong. Sent in alone, she began a spell to kill the man, only to find it countered before she could finish. Any subsequent attack was met with similar dismissal. Frustrated and enraged, she leapt at him, lashing out with raw power, and found herself slumping to the ground as if stabbed the second she came in range of the old man's body. The old man was no normal person, or even a human. Named Methryn, he was a dimension-hopping sorcerer, who had decided to hide deep in the Earth realm to avoid disturbances in his contemplative study of magic. A pacifist by nature who believed in second chances, Methryn looked, through scrying, into the girl's past and saw her tragic history. Wiping her mind of any memories of who she was or where she was from, the mage teleported her to America with nothing but $5000US in cash and the clothes on her back (a black Mandarin gown with gold trim) in the middle of a cornfield. She was luckily found by a farmers with enough moral fibre to pick her up, find out what was wrong (insofar as that was possible), and send her on her way. The only clue Xian has to identity now is the word "Tao", which was sewn into the collar of her dress. Thus this became her new 'name', and she travels the world in the hopes of finding out just what happened to her in the past and who she really is. Part of Methryn's tampering is the ingrained desire to "do good"; thus her journey is, as much for discovery, an inadvertent road to atonement.