[hider=Huang Lanfen - Gu Practitioner]
[center]
[h2]Huang Lanfen[/h2]

[img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fc/db/84/fcdb84cdec124347357e8e39c903673d.jpg[/img]

“My patience can only last so long. I’m dying to get this started.”
[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell][h3][color=D6D6D6]Magus Profile[/color][/h3][color=black][sup]__________________________________________________________[/sup][/color]
[color=819FB2][color=D6D6D6][b]Full-Name:[/b][/color] Huang Lanfen

[color=D6D6D6][b]Aliases:[/b][/color] N/A

[color=D6D6D6][b]Gender:[/b][/color] Female

[color=D6D6D6][b]Age:[/b][/color][/color] 38

[hider=Heritage][color=D6D6D6][b]Crest:[/b][/color] N/A

[color=D6D6D6][b]Family:[/b][/color] Huang

[color=D6D6D6][b]Species:[/b][/color] Human

[color=D6D6D6][b]Specialties:[/b][/color] Gu, Curses, Formal Craft

[color=D6D6D6][b]Character Objectives:[/b][/color] To increase the wealth and power of her family[/hider][/cell]

[cell][h3][color=D6D6D6]Legend[/color][/h3][color=black][sup]__________________________________________________________[/sup][/color]
[color=819FB2][color=D6D6D6][b]Country:[/b][/color] China

[color=D6D6D6][b]Nationality:[/b][/color] Chinese

[color=D6D6D6][b]Affiliations:[/b][/color] None besides her family

[color=D6D6D6][b]Rank:[/b][/color] 

[color=D6D6D6][b]Alignment:[/b][/color] Neutral Evil
[hider=Further details]Lanfen is not held back by morality; she is someone who is perfectly willing to kill others by the dozen if it furthers her goals even a little. She is driven by greed and has a cruel streak that, while it doesn’t push her to inflict unnecessary suffering, does mean she enjoys what suffering she does inflict.[/hider][/color][/cell][/row][/table]

[table][row][/row][row][cell][h3][color=D6D6D6]Stats[/color][/h3][color=black][sup]__________________________________________________________[/sup][/color]
[color=819FB2][color=D6D6D6][b]Magic Circuit Switch:[/b][/color] The image of a snake coiling around a rat

[color=D6D6D6][b]Number of Magic Circuits:[/b][/color] A

[color=D6D6D6][b]Quality of Magic Circuits:[/b][/color] C

[color=D6D6D6][b]Mana:[/b][/color] B

[color=D6D6D6][b]Elemental Affinity:[/b][/color] Fire and Earth

[color=D6D6D6][b]Origin:[/b][/color] Accumulation
[/color][/cell]
[cell]
[h3][color=D6D6D6]Abilities[/color][/h3][color=black][sup]__________________________________________________________[/sup][/color]
[color=819FB2][hider=General Magecraft]
Although she has never attended the Clocktower, Lanfen is as versed in the basics of General Magecraft as any graduate of the Clocktower would be, having received a comprehensive education from her family. Aside from this she has a strong foundation in formal craft and cursing technique, both of which are geared towards working with her family’s specialty of Gu magecraft.
[/hider]

[hider=Personal Magecraft]
Gu magecraft utilises the practice of sealing several venomous creatures, such as spiders, scorpions, snakes and so on, in a container and waiting for them to devour each other; the poisons and grudges of those creatures are concentrated into the surviving creature and this creature is then used as a source of power or as a charm to perform various acts. The creature can either be used in its entirety or its poison can be extracted and used instead, depending on how much power is required.

As a type of magecraft that is very well suited to cultivating magical energy into containers, which can then be used by any Magus and not just the one who cultivated it, Gu magecraft has a good synergy with Formal Craft. The magical energy produced through Gu is also inherently negative, meaning it is well suited for use in cursing techniques; Gu practitioners often use their art either to accumulate wealth, usually at the expense of others, or as a means of enacting revenge and are well acquainted with curses as a result.
[/hider]

[hider=Mystic Codes]
Concealing Umbrella – A mystic code capable of concealing the magical energies of a person by creating a weak effect not dissimilar to a bounded field. The effect does not reach very far, covering the person holding it and perhaps a couple of others standing in close proximity. The effect is more easily bypassed than that of a bounded field, but it works well at preventing detection from those who are not actively looking to find someone.

Magic Opium Pipe – A pipe used in order to spread poisonous vapours over a wide area. When packed with a form of solidified Gu poison and lit the smoke produced by this pipe can be controlled and directed by the Magus holding the pipe.

A dozen minor Gu creatures – While the Huang family may possess an extraordinarily powerful Gu creature, every Gu practitioner should regularly cultivate a number of their own creatures for their own use so as not to be tied to one location and so as not to be dependent on others. Lanfen has in her possession twelve minor Gu creatures that she keeps with her at all times to act as fuel for her magecraft when her family’s creature is not readily available. They are strong enough as to be able to shapeshift into different animals and Lanfen likes to have them take the form of blood-red butterflies, but they are able to take on more subtle forms if need be.
[/hider]

[hider=Superior Gu Creature]
The ancient familiar cultivated by the Huang family over the course of centuries; originally an ordinary creature, it has been fed enough grudges that it has become something much more. On the level of a Monstrous Beast, its original form is no longer known, being able to shapeshift as any well-developed Gu creation can, but it often takes on the guise of an abnormally large snake of some kind. Capable of producing powerful magical venoms that fuel the Gu magecraft her family uses, it is also a formidable beast in its own right having been the focus on her families efforts for centuries and having accumulated tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of grudges.
[/hider]

[/color] [/cell][/row][/table]

[color=819FB2]
[center][color=D6D6D6][h2][b]Personality[/b][/h2][/color][color=black][sup]__________________________________________________________[/sup][/color][/center]
Lanfen is a patient and methodical person, someone who understands the value of taking their time to ensure things are done properly, but this is due to a surplus of restraint rather than being her natural state; it is against her base nature to hold herself back and to take things slow but these are the values that she was taught and she has enough self-control to abide by them.

She is greedy, naturally avaricious and covetous, but not so much as to let it affect her actions. She is one to set her sights high and always aim for the biggest reward possible, but is able to let an opportunity pass if pursuing it would put herself at risk.

There is a cruel streak running through her that shows itself on occasion. Lanfen does not actively seek to do harm to others, but if she must harm others to reach her goal then she will not hesitate to do so and will even do so with a hint of eagerness at times. There is a mocking note to her personality that she is not always able to hide.

[center][color=D6D6D6][h2][b]Background[/b][/h2][/color][color=black][sup]__________________________________________________________[/sup][/color][/center]
The Huang family has existed in some form or another for over 1000 years, although anti-sorcery purges and changes to the political climate in China mean that they have undergone several transitions during that time. Hailing from Southern China they are a group of Gu practitioners who used their abilities to quickly acquire a vast amount of wealth and power, using curses and poisons to eliminate rivals or prominent individuals and claim their fortunes as their own. However, such growth attracted attention and during one of China’s many purges of Gu practitioners and witches they were discovered and nearly eradicated; their work was destroyed, their members nearly wiped out and their fortune lost. Some of the family managed to survive, by luck or by design, and were able to rebuild from the ground up.

This story repeated itself several times; a swift rise and an even more abrupt fall as Gu practitioners were hunted and eradicated by whoever was in power at the time and all eyes turned towards those families who had no good explanation for where or how they had obtained what they had. All progress lost and all fortune scattered as the Huang’s were left to pick up the pieces and start again. Hard lessons were learnt along the way and a subtler, more careful approach was adopted; a slower accumulation of wealth, less obvious grabs for power and a lot of care given to staying in the shadows and giving people no reason to notice them.

They learned the hard way that growing too fast tends to attract attention and all the power in the world meant nothing when the might of the Emperor was directed against them. Patience and a slow and steady solidifying of their foothold would mean that they would outlast any Emperor that sought to eradicate them, or any other threat for that matter. The last purge they fell victim to was 400 years ago and because of their new approach they were one of the last groups of Gu practitioners to be discovered, giving them the time they needed to hide and secure most of their assets and even avoid the destruction of the most powerful of the Gu creatures that they had been cultivating over the last 200 years, preventing the loss of their magecraft.

This is the Huang family as Lanfen was born into it; careful, methodical and subdued. They yearned for the wealth and power they once achieved at their height, though they were not lacking in either, but restrained themselves and focused on slowly and steadily cultivating both in a manner that would benefit future generations more than themselves. Always with an eye to the future, the Huang family grows and grows and grows without exposing themselves to the world at large. Even so, they could not resist the allure of the Holy Grail War; they know they are taking a risk in sending a representative and exposing themselves, but what they stand to gain if they claim the Grail is potentially greater than what they might lose. After all, it’s not like they haven’t rebuilt themselves several times before and the loss of a single Magus is hardly comparable to the purges of the past.

[center][color=D6D6D6][h2][b]Miscellaneous [/b][/h2][/color][color=black][sup]__________________________________________________________[/sup][/color][/center]
Huang Lanfen’s Command Seal takes the form of a coiled snake split into three sections; the head, the main body and the tail, each with a small gap separating it from the next section.
[/color]

[/hider]