[color=palevioletred][h3][i]I've come to stack countless style-kills on Bork's NPCs and eat nutrient paste, and I'm all out of nutrient paste...[/i][/h3][/color]

[hider=Xiaolan Dagon, “The Artist of War”]
[center][img]https://qqpublic.qpic.cn/qq_public/0/0-2573686851-F0E34D823CBB8C3C39CD9889A225144A/0?fmt=jpg&size=83&h=531&w=800&ppv=1[/img][/center]
[color=palevioletred][h3]//YOUR SELF[/h3][/color]

[color=palevioletred][b]Name:[/b][/color] Xiaolan Dagon

[color=palevioletred][b]Age:[/b][/color] 25

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

[color=palevioletred][b]Affiliation:[/b][/color]
Having mostly fallen out of grace, Xiaolan has far more enemies than she does allies, but she continues to have a considerable amount of influence among a small circle of independent smugglers, pirates, and guerillas that operate unofficially as cooperative individuals and cells going by the name “Hekatoncheires”. 

[color=palevioletred][b]Appearance:[/b][/color]
Xiaolan’s persona, while it may not quite fit the harrowing description often provided by her enemies, is no less magnanimous and distinct. Most often seen in between an array of bright, multi-layer outfits, Xiaolan also has a habit of wearing colorful scarves and masks, to appear as fashionable as possible. Very rarely is Xiaolan seen without her heart-shaped sunglasses, which only add to her exquisite poker-face. She also has a tendency to wear a traditional conical hat, as it makes her feel just a bit like an ancient general. 

Of Burmese and Japanese descent, Xiaolan has medium length brown hair, often jostled and kept slightly unkempt by wind and action sequences. Her arms, while they appear the same tone as her flesh, have difficult-to-detect lines running along them, giving away the fact that they are ceramic to the close observer.

[color=palevioletred][h3]//YOUR SOUL[/h3][/color]

[color=palevioletred][b]PERSONAL GOAL[/b]: [/color]
With a majority of her assets and close friends lost in the attack at sea, Xiaolan is currently in a state of reacquiring assets that can return her to her former state of glory, mobility, and comfort. Being basically homeless and rather poor save for her strange horde of possessions, Xiaolan has a long way to go. To do so, she intends to act as an independent operator for whatever war—large or small—that interests her in the moment and provides an outlet for her art. As she builds herself, she also seeks greater connections and adversaries that she would consider ‘on her level’. Xiaolan has a rather secret, underlying interest in finding and connecting with her father as well.

[color=palevioletred][b]LIKES[/b]: [/color]
[indent]➟Puzzles
➟Competition
➟Gambling
➟Weapons
➟Old E-Books
➟[i]Warfare[/i] [/indent]

[color=palevioletred][b]DISLIKES[/b]: [/color]
[indent]➟Losing
➟Bad Manners
➟Sharks
➟The Unambitious[/indent]

[color=palevioletred][b]REPUTE[/b]:[/color]
Xiaolan’s reputation is very complex around New Malacca, as the city represents to her an expansive network of enemies and allies, though heavy on the enemies. Known for her prowess in tactics and strategy, crossing her isn’t taken lightly, but most who are familiar with Xiaolan still regard her with an air of mystery. Her motivations are enigmatic, and her network is constantly breaking apart and reassembling. Any outsider or observer who wasn’t careful to observe her might make the mistake to assume she has no network, nothing more than a derelict, but entitled operator who escaped the dangerous life. What remains the most important aspect of Xiaolan Dagon is that she can be a resourceful and helpful ally or a devious and undermining foe.

Xiaolan, among close associates, is known as one of the effective operators that works in close relation to the Hekatoncheires ring. As their power is heavily reliant on the individuals involved, their network is not well documented or accounted for. Among larger factions in New Malacca, Xiaolan’s reputation becomes more dodgy. She’s had more than a few run-ins with Tzu Peace Solutions, who resent her as a nuisance for involvement in undermining piracy and weapons smuggling operations. The Poppy, who her crew once pushed product to, have a subtle animosity for her but maintain a business relationship as long as she has something to offer. The Ambassadors may be aware of Xiaolan as an independent variable and competing operator, but she courteously hasn’t gotten into any trouble with them. Where the mixups start to occur is with Black Yangtze, whose cells were long time family enemies of Dachen Tet Zin, Xiaolan’s father. She, thus, can only consider they have it out for her and prepare accordingly.

[color=palevioletred][b]HEEL:[/b] [i]A Portrait of the Artist as a Surrealist[/i][/color]
Above perhaps all her other desires, Xiaolan can’t escape the elation that arises when she sees the [i]art[/i] in warfare. She revels in conflict, strife, and difficult circumstances, particularly when those circumstances are built on her own pure invention to create unique predicaments. Xiaolan sees herself worshipping aestheticism almost as much as she does warfare itself, and will never miss a chance to turn her conflicts into art pieces built around complex surreal imagery and symbolism that border on absurdity. This arises most often with how she chooses to deal with any problems that arise in her plans. Difficult, spectacular, and eye-catching plans are a favorite of hers, and she’ll forego simplicity at the drop of a hat in favor of glamor and magnanimity, as though Xiaolan is manufacturing her own insanity based on a goalless narrative she’s inventing on the spot out of thin air.

[color=palevioletred][b]CODE:[/b] [i]Artist of War[/i][/color]
Obsessed with the sport involved in tactical strategy, Xiaolan drives herself through life hellbent on laying elaborate plans that challenge her capacity for warfare. This causes her own allegiances to shift rather rapidly as necessary. She relies on honorable warfare and conflict to define herself. To keep up with her interests, she frequently lends her services to other causes, as her own is a more spiritual one, that exists in perpetuity, relying on the chaos of the world around to find any order. While Xiaolan is quite crafty at times, she always respects this game, and never tries to fool anyone into thinking she’s not playing it.


[color=palevioletred][b]QUIRKS:[/b][/color]
[indent] ➟Xiaolan has a habit of talking in lines of poetry whenever she is struck with a moment of intense passion. In other situations, it’s not uncommon for her to provide a sort of “noir”-style narration of the events going on both around her and in her head.

➟As a great advocate for the arts across all disciplines, Xiaolan often leaves a trail of art where she goes to the best of her abilities. Whether this takes the form of AR murals left hovering in city streets or graffiti spray-painted on old brickwork, her depictions are a sure sign of her trail.[/indent]

[color=palevioletred][h3]//YOUR PAST[/h3][/color]

Xiaolan Dagon seemed misplaced from the start of her life, seeing her destiny could only be to realign her circumstances herself and become a weaver of her own fate. She was born on the Japanese mainland of Honshu and cared for by her native mother. Her father was a Burmese sailor that went on to captain a mutinous crew that turned their cargo barge into a veritable war machine for piracy. His time in Japan was not long, as the true profits lay in the South China Sea. Xiaolan, on the other hand, was raised on the eroding edges of the Pacific megalopolis. Upon the Ryukyu Islands, Xiaolan found it harder and harder to assimilate with Japanese corporate society in a meaningful way, but soon found that the underground youth cultures that raced street bikes on the still under-construction megabridges that were meant to link Okinawa with the mainland. 

The action-oriented nature and deeply honorable code of her gang life did not last, however, as Xiaolan’s enthusiasm for the conflicts of such a lifestyle would only compound until harm inevitably came her way. Keen on organizing smaller outfits of her fellow street racers to launch skirmishes along the megabridges against Japanese law enforcement and zaibatsu PMCs, Xiaolan supported the violence in strangely devious and logistical ways. She would provide organizational support, tend to injured gangers, and ensure all combatants were outfitted for any attacks. Their enemies, who tolerated no such gang violence, soon apprehended her crew, which was split up and many of its members were deported despite any claims of residency. 

Xiaolan, as one of the ‘deportees’, was sent on a barge as far from her old enemies as they could manage, and she ended up with a number of other criminals in a ‘free zone’ that functioned more as a labor camp within one of Burma’s growing E-Wastelands. Back in her ethnic homeland, Xiaolan’s will was not perturbed. She got in with crews in the scrap fields and resumed her plotting post-haste. When she and her newfound colleagues had sufficiently gathered enough clandestine resources gutted from old machines, Xiaolan helped structure an attack against the free zone’s enforcers and she and a contingent of fellow exiles escaped into the Andaman sea on a hijacked vessel. 

With the whole world finally at their behest (at least that’s how Xiaolan felt), she and her new crew—taking up a faceless and individualistic operation calling themselves ‘Hekatoncheires’ took up running ‘shipments’ around the SESE FTZ to push onto low level associates of the Poppy. Xiaolan’s insatiable appetite returned, however, at the first sign of prosperity, and their outfit started to gain attention for pushing into New Malacca’s gun running market as well as some ‘incidents of piracy’ as the official records allege. Despite how invincible Xiaolan may have felt, her crew’s mounting list of enemies amongst Tzu Peace Solutions and the Black Yangtze caught up with them. She never saw their attackers’ affiliation, but their small vessel was no match for the war machine that hunted them down. As Xiaolan watched most of her crew slaughtered or toasted by short-range missiles, she was given the fate deserving of any who hoist the black flag.

Thrown into the sea by the unidentified operatives that destroyed her vessel, Xiaolan was condemned to drown. She had lost the art of warfare in her own pursuit of profit and chaos alike, or so she thought. Having given herself to the darkness of the depths as her lungs filled with brine, Xiaolan thought herself dead until she woke up in a daze state in what she could only presume was a submersible, rescued by a diver and salvager who soon became an associate.

With little left to trade, Xiaolan offered her savior access to the only thing she had: her services in the Art of War and her local involvement in the smuggling game. Given a second chance, she has taken to New Malacca to rise once again and pursue her arts, find those who have wronged her, and show them the extent of their failure in warfare.

[color=palevioletred][h3]//YOUR PERSON[/h3][/color]

[color=palevioletred][b]ATTRIBUTES:[/b][/color]

[indent][color=palevioletred][i]➟ Tactician’s Eye[/i][/color]
Xiaolan’s keen sense for planning—particularly coming up with ludicrously complex and unpredictable plans—is almost unmatched. She’s spent her free time study military strategy, intelligence operation, and war philosophy stretching back centuries, and does everything in her power to incorporate those principles to every problem she encounters.

[color=palevioletred][i]➟ Frankenmachinist[/i][/color]
Between her time with street racers in Okinawa and E-waste scrappers in Myanmar, Xiaolan has learned the ins-and-outs of the human body and how it connects to machines. While she fancies herself “the sole practitioner of battlefield-open-heart-surgery”, she’s certainly not the most skilled or qualified to be moving around machine parts or flesh parts in a human body, but she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty and come up with quick solutions by jamming circuit boards inside her [s]victims’[/s] patients’ cybernetics or stapling up any unnecessary wounds with steel wire.

[color=palevioletred][i]➟ Rhetorician’s Dance[/i][/color]
Maintaining at least some degree of elegance, as the old warriors would have hoped of their descendants, Xiaolan is quite adept at the art of smooth talk. With a certain air of charisma and her impeccable fashion sense, she fancies herself hard to deny. Xiaolan considers conversation as much a war as knifing people up on the battlefield, and using manipulation and devious negotiation tactics are not above her.[/indent]

[color=palevioletred][b]BODY MODS:[/b] [/color]
[indent][color=palevioletred][i]➟ Executor’s Manipulator Kit[/i][/color]
Housed in two cybernetic arms, the Executor Kit is considered a larger ‘borg’ conversion, as they come as a set. Both of her sleek metallic arms have a clandestine ceramic skin cover that can break apart at the user's command to reveal a number of telescoping tendrils that emerge from the forearms. On the ends of each of these manipulator ‘tendrils’, the user can graft tools and small tech. Having inherited her Executor Kit from the last thing that her camp in the Burmese E-Wastelands had to a ripper, Xiaolan became the next best at the job. As such, her tendrils are mounted mostly with surgical tools as well as small power tools for basic cybernetic maintenance.

[color=palevioletred][i]➟ “Weaver Wires”[/i][/color]
Fancying herself the ‘architect of her own fate’, Xiaolan’s personal masterpiece augmentation is the replacement she created in the E-Wastelands for each of her hands. On her command, small harpoons housed in the fingers can fire forth based on pulses of CO2. Strong enough to embed themselves in concrete at shorter ranges, the projectiles are attached to larger coils of retractable titanium wire that can be used to ‘weave’ complex shapes of weight-bearing wire. Xiaolan has used the wire for innumerable purposes, but it functions well as an emergency suture, tripwire, and grappling device when the wires are compounded. “Who can’t think of a thousand uses for some simple wire?”

[color=palevioletred][i]➟ Cardiovascular Regulation Unit X — “CRUX Autosanguinator”[/i][/color]
To help provide her some counters to the debilitating effects of her heavy augmentation, which took heavy tolls on her heart, Xiaolan installed the CRUX Autosanguinator. Implanted next to her heart is its main unit, allowing her own heart to remain beating and her cardiovascular system to continue operating in times of extreme duress. While her original heart continues to keep the system pumping, the CRUX insures her bloodstream, removing contaminants, excess viral agents, and other toxins while regulating circulation speed and internal intravenous injections to a certain degree. These minute functions are all done via a liquid metal produced and distributed by the CRUX called NanoSanguine.

NanoSanguine volume in the bloodstream can be dangerous if concentrated too highly in one part of her circulatory system. While NanoSanguine doesn’t travel as fast as thinner blood, this can be beneficial in certain circumstances, such as when a heart stops or begins beating at abnormal rates. As the NanoSanguine moves, it can push blood throughout the body or artificially clot it to an extent (though dangerous). This early model of the CRUX can’t regulate the body independently forever, as it relies on the beating heart to keep it functioning for longer periods.[/indent]

[color=palevioletred][b]EQUIPMENT:[/b][/color]
[indent][color=palevioletred][i]➟ “The War Purse”[/i] [/color]
When preparing for any remotely dangerous operation, Xiaolan is sure to load up her satchel with handfuls of scrap metals, broken electronic components, and chemical compounds to ensure she’s prepared to do her ‘war doctoring’. These are used for improvisational fixes for broken cybernetics or to put together basic devices for operations that require special solutions.

[color=palevioletred][i]➟ “Heads-Up, Hearts-Up” Sunglasses[/i][/color]
Xiaolan’s retro, heart-shaped sunglasses serve as more than just an ultimate fashion accessory. They also have basic AR connectivity that allows Xiaolan a basic heads-up display, real-time measurements, and the ability to infect small instances of the Deep to leave graffiti’d AR signatures in unused space.

[color=palevioletred][i]➟ Clandestine Rebreather[/i][/color]
Beneath her usual inconspicuous—but conspicuously fashionable—patterned maks, Xiaolan sometimes wears a lightweight rebreather that can cycle her breath for a few hours before she begins to suffocate.

[color=palevioletred][i]➟Armaments[/i][/color]
While Xiaolan often prefers to switch up her tools of war depending on the operation, she has a small cache that she likes to go back to. Among her favorites are a classic Burmese Dah sword that isn’t as imposing as it seems, though does well to pass detection since it isn’t ‘souped up’; and her ‘cyber-nunchaku' that electrify at each end with activation. Xiaolan has recently lost her gun, ‘The Big Shooter’ after a night on heavy stims and is still looking for it.

[color=palevioletred][i]➟ “The Whip”[/i][/color]
Feeling naked without a street bike in her possession, Xiaolan hastily ‘repossessed’ a powerful street racing rig from a Tzu Peace Solutions operative who angered her at the bar one night. Xiaolan’s done her best to rig up The Whip with as much modification as she can afford without any money to be worthy of ‘carving it up in these streets’.[/indent]
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