Appearance

Physical Description

The eldest child in a family with no sons, Xiayan ate well growing up. Good nutrition has given her some unusual height and muscle - a fitting build for a bodyguard.

Body Features

A lifetime of travel, in protecting her Wupo ward, has left Xiayan tanned and rough-skinned. The blows of her enemies have done for the rest.

Facial Features

High cheekbones and a permanent frown automatically put the lie to her mother's hopeful name for her: "Brilliant Clouds". A near-fatal assailant scarred her face from earlobe to chin.

Identifying Characteristics

Scar, left cheek to chin.

Physical quirks

Slight ache in left knee when it gets cold - an old battle wound.

Mentality

Personal history

Born and raised in a Fengzhu (Phoenix Clan) village, Li Xiayan turned out to be very different from the delicate daughter her mother hoped for. In a household with no sons, she weathered the rage and disappointment of her father with silent defiance.
 
As an unusually tall adolescent, she fell in with a rough gang for some time, holding her own against the boys with brute strength and dirty fighting. She left home at the first opportunity, appending herself to the aunt who disliked her the least, and trying to glean a few magical pointers from the Wupo witch.
 
Her aunt eventually accepted her as her trainee bonded bodyguard, and Xiayan took her place more or less as equals of the lower-caste men behind armor and polearm.
 
Her unlamented departure from their village came earlier than expected, when Xiayan caught her old urchin friends stealing from her aunt's magical stores one night. The elders took a very dim view of "accidental death by repeatedly dragging throat across porcelain shards on the floor", and Xiayan and Wupo hurriedly left their ancestral home.
 
Although Wupo never really warmed to Xiayan, she was nevertheless the closest thing Xiayan had to family, as a teacher and guide. She even deigned to teach Xiayan the basics of her art, though the younger woman would never aspire to any true talent. The two went wherever Wupo's duties took her, and Xiayan proved a canny and dedicated bodyguard - serving with the zeal of one who knows she is a dead woman outside of this duty.
 
Wupo also proved to be dangerously principled. Not content with merely helping superficial village and peasant problems with her art, she often took aim at corrupt chieftains, venal ministers, and false sages in her travels. More than once, Xiayan's quick thinking (or even quicker reflexes) proved crucial to Wupo's survival to preach another day.
 
Xiayan is still not ready to talk about how she was separated from Wupo. What is known is that Xiayan cannot return back to the Phoenix Clan until Wupo is found. And if Wupo is confirmed dead, Xiayan's fate under Phoenix Clan law becomes entirely unambiguous.

Education

Some informal training over a few years with Wupo - allowing Xiayan rudimentary Occultist magical basics.
More formal training in bodyguard martial weapons - mostly Guandao (naginata polearm), but also with single-handed curved blade, clubs, and any other "weapons of happenstance" that a brawler might find.

Failures & Embarrassments

Born female in a village where sons were prized. Moreover, being the eldest child in a sonless household.
 
Becoming apprenticed as bodyguard to her Wupo, and doing the job a bit too zealously, resulting in avoidable deaths of villagers.
 
Failing to protect her Wupo.

Mental Trauma

Picked up a stray dog, which later died trying to protect her. Now she doesn't get close to animals.
 
She's not very trusting of people either, unless she can see their objectives align with hers.

Intellectual Characteristics

Xiayan is not familiar with the local common tongue, being foreign, but she was never talkative to begin with. When she speaks, it's usually in terse combat terms... although she has been known to drop a dry quip now and again.
 
After spending most of her adulthood on the road, Xiayan has developed a strictly pragmatic outlook.

Morality & Philosophy

Xiayan was too low-caste to be concerned with the philosophical questions of the sages. During her travels with Wupo, she mused occasionally upon Wupo's ethically demanding standards... although as a practical matter, Xiayan was usually the one figuring out how to work around them in securing their combined necessities.
 
Now that Wupo has been seized, finding her is top priority, and she is willing to be quite flexible in morals or ethics to achieve this.
 
Should Wupo be permanently lost, it's possible that Xiayan's personal compass may break entirely, as she would no longer have a place in any society and her life would be legally forfeit.

person.sexuality

Asexual and aromantic. Xiayan has heard of this obsession in other people, but finds it irrational and uninteresting. She's also heard that people enjoy tying vines to their ankles and jumping out of trees "for fun" but she's not going to try that anytime soon either.

person.gender_identity

Female, although she does not consider this to be particularly relevant.

Taboos

The body is a gift from one's ancestors - do not desecrate it with tattoos or mutilations. (Likewise, if some enemy combatant has seriously wronged her outside of combat, she may take an extra moment after downing them to lop off a limb or their head, to really make her point.)
 
Never sit with one's back to a doorway, since that's where the assassins come from. (Exception: this is permitted if it's the only way to prevent Wupo from having to sit this way.)
 
The number 4 is unlucky; 6, 8, and 9 are auspicious. Fourteen is right out.
 
Don't speak unless necessary. (Part of this is gender or class based, but mostly due to her being a foreigner with a bad history.)

Known Languages

Fengyu (Phoenix tongue) - fluent though lower class.
 
Common - broken, accented.

Personality

Motivation

Find Wupo. If she's still alive, give her a piece of your mind.
 
If she's dead, give her a piece of your mind anyway, and then Do The Honorable Thing.

Quotes & Catchphrases

"You worry morals, I worry dinner."
 
"I seek Wupo. Like me, but older and kinder."
 
"还有谁?!" ("Who's next?" - in combat)
 
"有什么好呢" ("Don't see what the fuss was all about" - after combat with men, in an aside to her absent father)
 
"You say some interesting things.... after I've had some wine."

Savvies & Ineptitudes

Good at scrounging and searching. Lingustic barriers, but is perceptive about body language - especially from people with dangerous intentions.

Virtues & Personality perks

Good to have next to you in a fight.
 
Knows some crowd control techniques, for when you Really Shouldn't Hurt People Permanently. Specially trained in how to hit people with a nonlethal "warning shot" first (e.g. butt-end of the polearm).

Vices & Personality flaws

If you really make her vindictive, she may spend an extra attack to sever a limb from your corpse just to make a point.

Personality Quirks

In social (noncombat) situations, she tends to let her hair fall across the left side of her face to hide the easily-identifiable scar. In combat, she makes sure you can see it.

Hygiene

Enjoys a good bath, although she grudgingly cultivates the same happy reek that peasants do normally. It tends to keep the troublemakers at arm's length too.

Social

Birthplace

李家镇 Lijiazhen (Li Family Village, Phoenix Clan)

Current Residence

Peripatetic wanderer

Contacts & Relations

Wupo: Xiayan's Last Chance. Her One Redemption. Her Sole Reprieve. Also, her Major Pain In The Neck. Wupo is an aunt of Xiayan - one of the few women who got to leave the village on her mage's missions. Xiayan took on the bodyguard training, usually granted to men, to protect Wupo. Although Wupo was never exactly warm to her, Xiayan found serving her to be a source of meaning, fulfilment, and the legalist stay of impending execution. She doesn't appreciate the capture of her Wupo, and is eager to find the captors and make her true feelings known to them.
 
"White Bearded" Zhao was her first reliable contact in Freeport. He charged dearly for his info, but it was good. She can call in a favor and get a place to sleep and a meal or two. Maybe he'll need a few heads bonked - he usually preys on other Eastern folk trying to do business here.
 
A kind local man - possibly some sort of priest - who helped her with information and didn't ask for payment. She's suspicious of him because somebody who doesn't want payment is playing the long con.
 
A few kid ruffians were impressed by her weaponry arts, and she showed them some moves in downtime. They respond by occasionally telling her gossip, some of which may even be true.
 
She helped a warehouser deal with a theft problem, and in return he gave her some pitch to maintain her armor this far from home. She hasn't had to use it on the main surfaces of her armor yet, but the key joints have needed pitch and have turned black. But better to dishonor the Phoenix Plate than to lose an arm or leg (and dishonor the ancestors - dead as they are).

Honorary & Occupational Titles

Her name initially meant "Brilliant Clouds", but she was more commonly called by the near-homophone 瞎眼 "Blind eye", a nod to her dazzle ability that she learned from Wupo.
 
Wupo herself just called her 保镖 Baobiao - "Bodyguard".

Wealth & Financial state

None

Family Ties

Aside from Wupo, too distant to care.

Religious Views

Part of her family believed in a better life next time round, and also on rejoining your ancestors (hence taking good care of your body).
 
These views have mostly eroded after the amount of death and violence she's seen though.

Hobbies & Pets

At one point, she picked up a stray dog which accompanied her in her travels, keeping watch as she slept. It ultimately died in a fight when it tackled a bandit to protect Xiayan.
 
Although Xiayan would never admit it, the loss of a loyal dog affected her far more deeply than the treacheries of her fellow people, and she hides this with a gruff display of impatience towards pet animals.
 
She has a mild phobia of snakes, which means she's also afraid of dragons. (The Eastern kind, which are like really big snakes. The Western kind, which are like crocodiles with wings attached, she has no irrational fear of... freeing her to analytically arrive at a perfectly rational fear of them instead.)

Speech

Accented and infrequent.