[center][h2][u]BIPOC & Older Characters[/u][/h2][/center]
Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour tend to be either underrepresented or else represented in very stereotypical (or ham-fistedly anti-stereotypical) manners within the roleplaying community, though it is somewhat improving nowadays. Trying to be as sensitive towards issues of race an identity as I can while not focusing strictly on those, I aim to introduce diverse characters into the RPGs that I play and run without preaching. They're simply there, as they should be: a normal part of their worlds. 

To some extent, I've also noticed a reticence among the roleplaying community to play characters over thirty as mains. They appear in world as mentors, parents, enemies, and authority figures, but rarely as central PCs. It's almost as if we idealize youth and its possibilities and seem to hold a subconscious belief that life's opportunity, fun, and promise disappear by age thirty. Hence, I also try to tell the continuing stories of people whose stories are already partly written and not necessarily just beginning.

[hr]Redwood and Lysandra are two of three potential characters that I've made for [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/187554-code-vein/ooc]Code Vein[/url], inspired by the game of the same name. Lysandra was always going to be Asian, but I've noticed that people tend to gravitate towards the 'cool' Asian ethnicities: namely Japanese and Korean. I almost made her the latter, but a reference pic was hard to find and gave me some time to think. It was also fun to base her four robotic agents on figures from Vietnamese mythology. As for age, I think that she finds herself at an interesting crossroads. Your late twenties to early thirties are a time when a lot of people start to become ossified in their life patterns, but her disabling injury and move from familiar surroundings have forced her to adjust and grow or else fail as a person. Redwood is just because it'd be cool to have a bit of a more modern druidic-themed character and to have that character be Black instead of Celtic, North American Indigenous, or Nordic.  

[hider=Redwood][hr][hr][center][color=Olivedrab][h1][b] R E D W O O D [/b][/h1][/color][/center][hr][hr]

[color=Olivedrab][B]|  AGE  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]Appears about thirty[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Olivedrab][B]|  APPEARANCE  |[/B][/color]
[hider=Ain't No Anime-Style Pic Here, Folks][center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/38/ff/01/38ff01e7f1d05c43591a17e39dd3c14e.jpg[/img][/center][/hider]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]Redwood's name is a child of his appearance. The first thing that people notice about him is his exceptional height. Very tall and fairly slender, though solid enough, he towers over other people and... well, low ceilings and hanging light fixtures are the bane of his existence while indoors. His skin is dark and somewhat leathery, making him look older than he is, and his hair is dark and curly. If people had to ascribe a human race to him, they'd call him Black. Finally, come his tendrils. Six of them sprout from his upper back, shoulders, and flanks (just below his arms) and it almost feels like a misnomer to describe them as tendrils, since they are unusually thick and strong. Despite his intimidating size, there is a gentleness of appearance and manner to Redwood. His eyes are large, dark, and keen: always watching, sometimes almost unsettlingly but never threateningly. He has a long face with a strong jaw, but fairly soft features. He most often wears either a gentle smile or a slight, determined scowl, but most of his expressions seem somewhat muted. 

In terms of clothing, he wears what used to be basketball shoes, since they're the only ones he's found that'll fit his abnormally large feet. They've been patched, strengthened, and modified so much that they're scarcely recognizable anymore. He wears loose deep green shorts over black leggings that only make it about 2/3 of the way down his shins. His upperwear has been modified with holes for his tendrils. It consists of a green Timberland t-shirt with the logo in the center of his chest. Unusually, the t-shirt actually fits him. The ensemble is completed by the pair of black fingerless cycling gloves that he wears, with tough plastic guards over the knuckles. On colder days, he swaps the shorts for jeans and supplements the t-shirt with a brown leather bomber jacket.

In general, Redwood doesn't see much need to dress all that differently whether he's in combat or out of it, though he sometimes wears a [url=https://www.google.com/search?q=motorcycle+vest+armor&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwju1u33rOb1AhWUqnIEHSGJDeQQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=motorcycle+vest&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQARgCMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDoHCCMQ7wMQJzoECAAQQzoICAAQgAQQsQM6BwgAELEDEENQvaUHWKm9B2DMygdoAXAAeACAAW2IAbMKkgEEMTUuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=iET9Ye7yHJTVytMPoZK2oA4&bih=785&biw=1696&client=firefox-b-d]motorcycle vest[/url], along with elbow and knee pads in the former. His mask is a simple, practical thing: mostly brown leather and a pair of hoses leading to a backpack with an air canister and a few other useful items (like a first aid kit, multi-tool, and a knife) inside.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Olivedrab][B]|  PERSONALITY  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT][i]Helpful - Easygoing - Determined - Judgmental - Ferocious[/i][/INDENT][/color]

[color=Olivedrab][B]|  GROWTH/CAMOUFLAGE  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT][b]Tendrils:[/b] He has six of them and, as mentioned earlier, they are unusually thick and strong, perhaps as a side effect off Redwood's size. At a slow rate, they produce a sticky sap that can inhibit the movement of enemies if well-placed, adhere things to walls, and temporarily seal wounds and prevent blood loss. He uses them for a variety of purposes, their long reach and adhesive sap allowing him to control, impede, and delay enemies when in combat, setting them up for teammates or his own weapons. Enough of his natural adhesive will allow equipment and allies to hang from walls or ceilings, but he does not produce it very quickly and he is too heavy to make use off this ability himself in any case. Redwood also has some medical training and pairs this with his gift to provide emergency care when necessary. When not being used, he often wraps his tendrils around his midsection and over his shoulders.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Olivedrab][B]|  BACKGROUND  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]Redwood's history is largely a mystery and you get the sense that either he would like it to stay that way or perhaps he does not remember it clearly himself. He has mentioned having associated with a small, independent human colony in the past, though he hasn't spoken of why he is no longer there. In general, one gets a sense of goodness and kindness from this sidhe, but purposeful distance, almost as if he fears attachment. The intensity with which he approaches the Lost certainly seems to stand in contrast to his generally laid-back nature.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Olivedrab][B]|  SKILLS / EQUIPMENT |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT][list][*][color=39b54a]🙖[/color] [b]Specialized Combat:[/b] Redwood is quite skilled in mid-range combat, often using his tendrils like an extra set of longer limbs to hold enemies off, strike at them, catch allies, help push off for mighty jumps, and anchor himself against recoil and pushback.
[color=39b54a]🙖[/color] [b]Skewers:[/b] When in combat, Redwood wears sharp steel skewers on the tips of four of his tendrils. These can cut reasonably well, but are specialized in stabbing and pinning. Generally, it takes at least two of them to really hinder and enemy, and all four to definitively hold one down. That sets him up to deliver the coup de grace with...
[color=39b54a]🙖[/color] [b]Fat Mac:[/b] his trusty [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rKHXTsDcco].950 cal rifle[/url]. Cumbersome, deafening, and dangerous, this colossal weapon can deliver a blast capable of piercing walls, concrete or cinder blocks, and vehicles. What it'll do to flesh and blood is... grisly. Lost might be immortal, but they'll be... out of action for a while after eating a round from this monster.
[color=39b54a]🙖[/color] [b]First Aid:[/b] It's almost obligatory for sidhe to be healers, and Redwood is no exception. He carries a kit in his backpack and can deal with all sorts of minor to moderate illnesses and injuries. He can also seal and staunch wounds with his sap.
[color=39b54a]🙖[/color] [b]Kinder Surprise:[/b] These are fragile ceramic vessels that look like large eggs and are kept in a padded container within a side pocket of his backpack. In fact, they are filled with Redwood's sticky sap (collected over an extended period of time) and have a very low-yield contact explosive inside. When they land, they shatter and spray their contents over a roughly two-to-three meter radius.
[color=39b54a]🙖[/color] [b]Intimidation:[/b] It might not be much good against the Lost, but Redwood's towering height and powerful tendrils can definitely lend him an intimidating air when he wants to cow uncooperative types. Generally, he is loath to use this, but if it saves him or his allies a fight, then he will.[/list][/INDENT][/color]

[color=Olivedrab][B]|  LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT][list][*][color=a36209]🙓[/color] [b]Saviour Complex:[/b] Redwood will often try to take on too much at once, put himself in danger, or step in to handle things that other people have under control out of misplaced concern. One gets the sense that he is used to being the protector of those much weaker than him as opposed to a member of a legitimate team, and he may need to be reined in.
[color=a36209]🙓[/color] [b]Limited Stamina:[/b] When going all out, the big guy tires pretty quickly. He is best saved for an opening salvo, critical moments, and a big finishing move, and will almost always need a rest to recuperate if he overexerts himself. Of course, due to his saviour complex, he will rarely be open about this and it usually needs to be inferred.
[color=a36209]🙓[/color] [b]Precious Ammo:[/b] It takes quite a while to replenish his Kinder Surprises when he uses them, so he can sometimes be a bit stingy with those. Similarly, ammunition for Fat Mac is heavy, so he doesn't carry too much at any given time. It's also hard to come by, so he tends to use it sparingly.
[color=a36209]🙓[/color] [b]Boy Scout:[/b] While he can be ferocious in combat against the Lost, he tends to really hold back against other enemies.
[color=a36209]🙓[/color] [b]Pollution:[/b] When exposed to it for extended periods or inn high dosage, this can prove lethal to him. There aren't many places where Redwood can safely remove his mask.[/list][/INDENT][/color]

[color=Olivedrab][b]|  NOTES  |[/b][/color]
[color=darkgray][indent][list][*]I'd love to include some better reference and thematic pics, but it hasn't been easy finding any.
[*]In terms of his combat role, I view him as fairly versatile. To use gaming terminology, he's mostly mid-range crowd control, with some healing and one big occasional nuke. It's tempting to view him as a tank, and he's reasonably tough, but doing so in all but the most desperate of situations would be a mistake.[/list][/indent][/color][/hider]
[hider=Lysandra Tran][hr][hr][center][color=Khaki][h1][b]L Y S A N D R A  T R A N[/b][/h1][/color][/center][hr][hr]

[color=Khaki][B]|  AGE  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]Lysandra is 32 years old.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  APPEARANCE  |[/B][/color]
[hider=A Squishy Human][center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/4e/ce/b4/4eceb4372bd004fd1a8e5202021e0881.jpg[/img][/center][/hider]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]The first (and often only) thing that people remember about Lysandra is her wheelchair. It's a simple, sturdy, lightweight manual chair and, as a paraplegic of four years, she uses it from dawn to dusk in order get around. Otherwise, she's a fairly baseline human: a vaguely pretty Asian woman in her early thirties with tanned skin, dark hair and eyes, and a businesslike bearing. She is not and never has been much for dressing up and would rather dress for functionality and comfort. Layering is a rule to live by. It's easier to take something off than to put it on. To that end, her usual attire consists of a light t-shirt over a sports bra, jeans or leggings, and knee or thigh high socks. She'll usually toss on some flats even though shoes are irrelevant. Sturdy gloves - usually fingerless to allow her to work with touch screens - are more important, as they protect her hands from blisters. On colder days, She'll complete the outfit with a jacket. She has two and both have a striped patch in mint, seafoam green, and white sewn onto them: the flag of the settlement that she used to live in and where her brother still resides. Finally, though she rarely actually [i]wears[/i] it as intended (because that'd be both inconvenient and goofy), is the supergirl medallion that she received from her mother as a girl. It's usually tucked into her bag or a jacket pocket as a kind of good luck charm. She tells herself that she doesn't believe in 'luck'; everything is probability. Yet, on the day when she broke her back, she didn't have it on her. 

As a human, Lysandra doesn't require a mask, and this gives her one less thing to worry about, especially when she goes into the field. Of course, that doesn't happen often anymore. Much to her chagrin, the post-apocalypse isn't very wheelchair accessible. When fieldwork is necessary for research or intel, though, she brings along some sturdy cycling gloves, trades her handbag for a large backpack with seemingly endless pockets, and usually swaps out her indoor wheels for some with thicker, grippier treads, as well as larger front casters. In the past, she'd often wear motorcycle armour, hiking shoes, and athletic leggings with elbow and knee pads. It was all about getting as deep into trouble spots as possible and quickness and durability were paramount. Nowadays, Lysandra usually forgoes anything that could hamper her already-limited mobility unless it clearly and directly helps her get more fieldwork done. Her primary goal is maximizing her returns on those brief outdoor sojourns and minimizing the physical liability that she represents. If enemies ever succeed in actually reaching her, she knows that the jig is pretty much up. Still, she's held onto her body armour, just in case. It's sturdy, lightweight, and can go under her jacket. She still has the knee pads too. Maybe she can't actually [i]feel[/i] a knock to the knee, but it's also not like they'll hamper her movement. Besides, she kind of slips things in behind them. Why oh why do women not get usable pockets in most of their clothing!? [/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  PERSONALITY  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT][i]Daring ~ Unsentimental ~ Hyper-aware ~ Bitter ~ Clever ~ Assertive[/i]

At her worst, Lysandra can come across as a 'bossy know-it-all science lady'. She can seem cutting, acerbic, and pushy. A lot of this, however, is just frustration and barely-suppressed insecurity. The significant gulf between what she knows needs to be done and what she can accomplish on her own is an open wound, regularly picked at by circumstance. The other major factor is simply that she is used to being the smartest person in the room and it grates upon her to entertain other people's stupid ideas when they could be making progress towards their (read: her) goals instead. 

That said, she's a genuinely decent human being beneath it all. Lysandra is an absolute encyclopedia of both general and esoteric knowledge. She is a human calculator, a problem solver, has an amazing eye for detail, and is a natural-born storyteller. She is genuinely one of the most interesting people who you will ever talk to and, on her better days, her cutting wit, self-deprecating humor, and straight-faced delivery can have you - instead of [i]her [/i]- rolling with laughter.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  BACKGROUND  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]Lysandra's mother was an engineer. Her father was a biologist. Both were born before the Great Collapse and were not young parents (forty one and forty, respectively). Her childhood was full of diligent work and research. It was full of movement and stories while on the move. She learned about the world that was: the great open green fields and forests, the safe, cozy homes, and the shining universities: beacons of learning and opportunity. Most of all, however, she accrued skills: she studied the nature of living and unliving things with her father. She learned the wonders of robotics, sensors, computers, and mechanics from her mother. Instead of playing with lego, she handbuilt her first drone when she was seven. The family settled in the midsized and fiercely independent outpost of Fresh Haven. Lysandra and her slightly older brother, Daniel, grew up and their parents aged, so they took on increasingly important roles as scouts, field researchers, and even fighters. In particular, she was stealthy and an excellent scout and climber, with a natural aptitude for surveying and understanding her surroundings, using them to her advantage. 

For all of the world's dangers, her father fell prey to a flu in his 61st year. Daniel, who'd become more of a soldier than his sister, was gone for long periods of time and their mother increasingly withdrew into tinkering with her dwindling supplies. Lysandra, telling herself that her mother's work was valuable in more ways than one, began roving ever further afield in search of parts. She conducted her own research while out there. It was frightening, but challenging. In some ways, it was invigorating, and better than just sitting in some hole waiting to die. She begun to feel as if she could get to the bottom of how and why mistle worked, the role of the Sidhe, and how the Earth might be healed. She begun to feel as if she had some agency in her life. Further she went, scouting ahead with her drones, infrared sensors, and binoculars. She saw and found things that most humans couldn't. She knew a little bit of martial arts and learned more. She taught herself how to shoot. There were close calls - hairbreadth escapes from death - and tense moments. She hid out, she climbed, leapt, and scampered from one safe place to another, and then plunged back into the lab after days or weeks out in the world. Her parents' stories of the years before she was born had instilled in her a wariness towards revenants. Their kind had feasted on humans, once. The only thing needed for them to return to it and become Lost was a short period of time without consuming human blood.

Her mother was in ill health when Lysandra went out that day, but she tried to put aside her worries. At a steady jog, she made quick progress through the well-mapped regions near Fresh Haven, fists clenched around the straps of her backpack and breath wispy and white in the cool air. Perhaps she was preoccupied with thoughts of her family. Perhaps she was just careless, but she ran smack into a pack of Lost. She took one out of the fight with a well-aimed shot to the head, but then there was no option but to do what she did best: run, climb, and hide. She dropped her backpack and took off, through the labyrinth of a ruined city. After what seemed like forever, two more fell off the pace. This was a bad situation - worse than the usual 'bad situations' - but she had escaped many times before and would again. Thirst clawed at her parched throat but one final Lost - a monster of a man - stayed doggedly on her tail. Further up a crumbling building she went, leaping nimbly from sagging staircase to rotting floor to support beam, and he started to falter. The jump is still burned into her memory: over a gap in a staircase. It was the type that you dismiss in your head as a 'ninety percent chance I'll land it'. She'd made ones like it plenty of times before and she doubted her pursuer would be able to follow. She'd be safe. The thing is, if you roll the dice enough times, the odds will catch up to you eventually. The floor had looked solid on the other side but it wasn't. It gave way instantly and Lysandra can still recall with absolute clarity those two seconds where her stomach just folded in on itself in terror. Then she hit.

She was told that a handful of revenants who'd been surveying the area had heard her gunshots. As a gesture of goodwill, they'd rescued her and brought her back to Fresh Haven but, in the weeks and months following that fateful fall, as people kept telling her that she was a 'warrior' and would surely walk again, as she had to relearn how to do basically [i]everything[/i], and as her elderly mother cared for her as if she were still a child, Lysandra began to wish that they hadn't. Mother passed away eight months after the accident and, officially, the strain of having to care for her grown daughter hadn't been a contributing cause. Daniel stepped away from his duties temporarily and she moved into his unit with his family, but it wasn't much more accessible than hers. The entire settlement was built in what had once been a vertical farm crisscrossed with staircases, scaffolds, and prefab walls that had once been her playground but that now meant that she couldn't go much of anywhere without assistance. Wracked with guilt and regret, Lysandra threw herself into her engineering pursuits, sitting in front of a work table for hours each day, hammering away at her mother's machines, digging through the endless piles of scrap that she had accumulated on her sojourns, and constructing drones to map, guard, and scout, water filters to help grow food and provide drink, and devices to supplement her broken body and make her remaining family's lives easier. 

Soon, Daniel could not afford any more time away from his duties and so her nephew, niece, and sister-in-law became her protectors. This, Lysandra could not permit any longer. As she had hoped, she'd rediscovered a sense of purpose - an imperfect one, for it still hurt so much to not be whole - but enough to push her forward once more. This place, however, was holding her back. [i]She [/i]was holding her family back. The revenants had saved her. She had judged them too harshly, she decided, on the basis of childhood fears and stories from people who were no longer alive. She [i]was[/i], though, and saw little point to living for herself alone. There were vanishingly few people with skillsets like hers and, even if she couldn't conduct much of her own fieldwork anymore, her skills were valuable - [i]key[/i], even. With the sort of bold decisiveness that had defined much of her life and a new unsentimentality that she had developed more recently, she bid farewell to Fresh Haven and joined civilization proper. She has been here for three years since, in an uneasy sort of alliance that allows her to shed some of her grating dependency while saddling her with more of a different nature. This arrangement may yet allow her to reach her goals, however: an end which justifies any means.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  SKILLS / EQUIPMENT |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]💡[b]Bigbrain:[/b] Lysandra is just honest-to-goodness [i]smart[/i]. She seems to regularly be a couple of (figurative) steps ahead of everybody else in most situations. She has a wealth of scientific and practical knowledge that can benefit her allies.
💡[b]Mechanically Inclined:[/b] If there's a macguffin needed and anything that could possibly count as a tool, you can count on Lysandra to provide said macguffin, one way or another.
💡[b]Tools of the Trade:[/b] The 'bossy know-it-all science lady' caries a backpack of wonders. It contains a first-aid kit, multipurpose mask, dehydrated food, flashlights, thermal packs, wiring, glue, screwdrivers, pliers, and a dozen other travel-adapted, lightweight, well-machined tools that used to be her mother's. If you need something, chances are that she has it. She can also patch you up pretty well, though she definitely doesn't give much thought to pain management.
💡[b]Crack Shot:[/b] Lysandra knows how to shoot - by [i]God [/i]does she know how to shoot. She can usually calculate things like bullet drop, wind effects, and ricochet angle too. If forced out into the field, she carries one pistol in her bag (or on her lap if - God forbid - she finds herself in a hot zone), and a spare duct-taped to the underside of her wheelchair close to one of her wheels. She can pull it out or fire it unexpectedly with a quick sleight-of-hand when it looks like she's just reaching down to wheel herself.
💡[b]Human Shopping Cart:[/b] It seems like a small thing but, as long as someone's willing to help push her, Lysandra can easily carry a couple hundred pounds worth of equipment, specimens, a bound and gagged prisoner, or even a lazy or injured ally. Revenants don't recover [i]immediately[/i], after all.   
💡[b]The Immortals:[/b] Four robotic helpers serve as Lysandra's agents both when she stays behind and in the uncommon instances when she goes into the field. They can operate either autonomously with limited AI capabilities (results may... vary when used this way) or be controlled one at a time via joystick and VR headset. She's working on a neural interface, but 'working on' is very much the operative term here. Loosely themed after the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Immortals]Four Immortals[/url] from Vietnamese legend, her agents are:[hider=The Immortals][list][*]Mountain Man: A multilegged tumbling and walking robot with a flexible body about the size of a small cat, Mountain Man is able to traverse almost any terrain, slip into small spaces, climb, dig, and perform basic scouting, rescue, delivery, and sample return operations. He has a taser, tranquilizer, and scissors too. 
[*]Marsh Sage: Primarily defensive in nature, Marsh Sage is a blindingly quick, maneuverable, and quiet coaxial quadcopter drone that can lay smokescreens, strobe blinding lights, and dispense nerve, mustard, and other poisonous gases. It is also quite handy for spying and scouting.
[*]Iron Horse: A series of wheels on articulated arms, this is Lysandra's supplementary mobility aid and latches onto her wheelchair. It can propel her, hands-free, at high speeds, stabilize and protect her from recoil or being pushed against her will, clamp itself magnetically to metallic surfaces, and boost her over curbs or flights of one to three steps. It can also act as a bridge, platform, or supply carrier on its own.
[*]Sky Princess: Lysandra's main offensive tool, Sky Princess is a large purple hexacopter drone that can lay down smokescreens, fire paralytic poison darts, release high-frequency sonic blasts that are extremely painful and induce headaches, dizziness, and nausea, and launch micro-rockets similar to the 'Whistling Birds' from Lucasfilm's [i]The Mandalorian[/i].
[*]Unless they don't have to go far, she cannot bring all of these with her at once. For extended missions, the maximum is three or sometimes two. Only Mountain Man and Marsh Sage are small enough to be carried comfortably on her person. Sky Princess can be too, in a pinch.[/list][/hider] [/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]👩‍🦽[b]Headset:[/b] When directly piloting one of the Immortals or her other creations beyond her sightline, Lysandra wears a VR headset linked to the drone's on-board camera. This leaves her detached from her immediate surroundings and vulnerable to attack unless she is safely away from a hot zone (where she knows that she should stay) or has an ally to watch her back.
👩‍🦽[b]No Signal:[/b] Ninety percent of her utility is linked to her Four Immortals. If they stray out of signal range (about 3 miles or 5 kilometers) or their signal is jammed somehow and they're forced to operate autonomously, she is much less effective and - if she is brave/foolish enough to be in a dangerous area - much more vulnerable.
👩‍🦽[b]Limited Charge:[/b] While she carries extra battery packs and a solar panel charger, these can only do so much. Once her Immortals are out of power, they're deadweight until they can get more. The same goes for the offensive ones' ammunition. She has a few refills, but extended missions can be...challenging.
👩‍🦽[b]Obstinate:[/b] Lysandra is used to knowing better. She will often dig in and insist upon the rightness of her opinions and preferred courses of action. She tends to aggressively prioritize her projects and ideas unless yours align with them.
👩‍🦽[b]Fragile:[/b] At the end of the day, for all of the tech that she carries, the 'bossy know-it-all science lady' is human. She is not as physically capable as revenants and sidhe, which is compounded even further by her disability. Lysandra is painfully reminded every time that she watches a revenant recover from either fatal or crippling wounds that she is unable to do so herself. She gets one body to play the game of life with. Whatever happens to it (including death) sticks.
👩‍🦽[b]Paraplegic:[/b] As a paraplegic, Lysandra has no feeling or movement below her waistline. This has the following effects:
[hider=This is Wheel Life][list][*]She needs to use a wheelchair for mobility and, even with its assistance, is severely limited in this regard compared to able-bodied people.
[*]While quite quick over flat ground and in open space, and with excellent stamina on flats or downhills, she is [i]very[/i] terrain dependent. 
[*]Things that we would not even think to consider, such as sand, gravel, curbs, cobblestones, and warped or cracked pavement cause Lysandra significant difficulty. 
[*]Routes have to be carefully planned: shallow downhills maximized, extended or steep uphills and downhills minimized, and obstacles, rough terrain, and climbing avoided.
[*]She is incapable of strafing to the side or jumping. The closest that she can manage to the latter is to pop a wheelie. 
[*]While pushing herself, her hands are occupied, making her unable to move and shoot or move and pilot any of the Immortals.
[*]She has a lower sightline than other people, takes up a larger footprint, and cannot squeeze through small spaces. 
[*]If somehow separated from her wheelchair, Lysandra isn't realistically going much of anywhere on her own.[/list][/hider] [/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][b]|  NOTES  |[/b][/color]
[color=darkgray][indent][list][*]Lysandra is, low key, a huge science fiction nerd, particularly with regards to Star Trek. She gets that from both of her parents. They had a flash drive with old recordings and she used to watch them as a kid. She has, with only slight self-consciousness, told people to 'Live long and prosper'. She also has a soft spot for comics, even though most of them are kind of low brow. She read them as a kid and those were happy times.
[*]She appreciates some good Pho. Seriously, ethnic foods are a dying thing. She's trying to learn how to cook, but... revenants don't really appreciate human food all that much.
[*]She still strongly dislikes having to give her blood up for revenants. For pragmatic reasons, she'll do it, but it's just a reminder of her (and other humans') helplessness compared to them and it rankles. She sees it for what it is: an increasingly unsustainable practice. 
[*]Lysandra's had romance in her life before. She had a couple of boyfriends, years ago in Fresh Haven, but they bored her before long. One, in particular, wanted to settle down, but she has always made it clear that she does not want to have children. Not only would it take time away from her responsibilities as a researcher, she worries that she'd be unable to properly care for them and that bringing a child into a world like this, just to live in constant fear and be food for others, would be grossly irresponsible. She tells herself that she doesn't like children anyways: they're loud, disruptive, and annoying. She'd be lying, though. Secretly, she's a big kid at heart. That was half the reason she used to go gallivanting around the ruined cities, running, jumping, and climbing. 
[*]She loves the animals that nobody else does... except for frogs. She cut far too many of those open as a girl in the name of science to not be unnerved by them now.
[*]I'd love to find a more anime-like reference pic, but... resources are scarce on that front.
[*]Four years on from her accident, Lysandra has more or less adjusted to her altered reality and reached an understanding of what her abilities and limitations are. However, twenty-eight years of life experience before then have hardwired into her an approach of bold, independent action, a boundless curiosity best satiated firsthand, and the self-image of someone who can handle herself and get out of tough scrapes. Rationally, she knows that much of that is no longer practical, but hanging back, being cautious, and letting others do the work still causes occasional moments of dissonance.[/list][/indent][/color][/hider]

Both of these characters are NPCs from [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/187336-the-hourglass-order/ooc]The Hourglass Order[/url], a fantasy magic school/mystery RPG that I'm GMing set in an original world with its own extensive lore. The first, Jomurr, has a fairly important role to play in the story along with his three fellow NPC students, Marlijn, Penny, and Manfred. In a lot of ways, he represents a departure for me: he's young and kind of mouthy. One archetype I've noticed that we don't usually see Black characters filling is the 'snooty noble', so I decided to make him one of those. There's depth there, too, though. He's more than he appears to be. Joshe Intaba is a bit of a wise old master type, but he's also got an irreverent streak to him and isn't in for all of the politics of his office. 

[hider=Jomurr Ikon III][center][h2][u] Jomurr Ikon III [/u][/h2]
[img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1e/98/e5/1e98e56a20c63b636091cd0921c1db7a.jpg[/img][/center]
[b][center] I don't think I'm better than other people. I [i]know[/i] it. [/center][/b]
[hr][hr]
[center][h3][b] 16 | Male | Belzaggic | Noble | 8.26 [/b] [/h3][/center]

[h3][u]P E R S O N A L I T Y            [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ Confident
❖ Competitive
❖ Shameless
❖ Showman
❖ Snobbish[/indent]
Jomurr's a second son and he has complexes. He's powerful, rich, and handsome, but he's a second son. His father is an arch-conservative duke under Emperor Jobanzaggah IV and the mindset has rubbed off on him. To some degree, his snobbishness is reactionary and a response to the threat of the other classes' rise. A lot of it stems from a genuine belief that Dami chose people like him to govern, though. Jomurr looks at himself and rightly perceives that he's better at magic than 99.9% of the population. He's healthy, he's smart (even if it's more due to a good education), he's good-looking, and he's physically capable, perhaps even more so as he gets older. In a sense, he feels as if Ersand'Enise is a battleground where the lesser classes are trying to challenge the nobles' right to rule and that, if they win, the consequences for society will be genuinely disastrous. It is also a place where he can let loose. He can learn and unleash his full potential without restraint or compunction, and he can prove himself the better heir to his father. Zemon's RAS is only 7.82, after all. 

[h3][u]L A N G U A G E S            [/u][/h3]
Belzaggic: native
Avincian: fluent
Joruban: fluent
Perrench: fluent
Revidian: passable
Azjulish: passable

[h3][u]C H A R A C T E R    A P P E A R A N C E            [/u][/h3]
Look at the pic. There's your answer. He dresses in light, loose cloths, like most Belzaggic people. He'd show off his muscles if he had a bunch, but he's still a bit scrawny. Impeccably dressed, though. He just screams 'noble'.

[h3][u]T H E    G I F T            [/u][/h3]
Jomurr is a prodigy with the Gift and has the goal of either becoming an Arch-Zeno someday or returning to his house and usurping his firstborn brother to rule over the Duchy of Zowenga in his stead. Jomurr practices with all schools and knows the fundamentals of all. However, his favourite is Chemical and he's learning Atomic from a Zeno hired to be his tutor. He also has a thing for Kinetic because it's just so damned fun tossing plebs out your castle window with but a flick of your finger. Alas, this school only allows for two specializations. He should have his father talk to the Zenos about that. Arcane is pretty dope too. Binding? Hah! Binding magic isn't used for offense, and who needs healing? You have some pleb to follow you and heal you, of course!

[h3][u]B A C K G R O U N D            [/u][/h3]
Jomurr's a second son and he has complexes. He's powerful, rich, and handsome, but he's a second son. His father is an arch-conservative duke under Emperor Jobanzaggah IV and that mindset has rubbed off on him. To some degree, his snobbishness is performative and a reaction to the perceived threat of the other classes' rise. A lot of it stems from a genuine belief that Dami chose people like him to govern, though. Jomurr looks at himself and rightly perceives that he's better at magic than 99.9% of the population. He's healthy, he's smart (even if it's more due to a good education), he's good-looking, and he's physically capable, perhaps even more so as he gets older. In a sense, he feels as if Ersand'Enise is a battleground where the lesser classes are trying to challenge the nobles' right to rule and that, if they win, the consequences for society will be genuinely disastrous. It is also a place where he can let loose. He can learn and unleash his full potential without restraint or compunction, and he can prove himself the better heir to his father. Zemon's RAS is only 7.82, after all. 

[h3][u]M O T I V A T I O N            [/u][/h3]
"I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was!"
 
In all seriousness, see the above bit on 'background'. Basically, like everyone else, Jomurr's here to become the person he's going to be for the rest of his life. He's also here to flex, though. 

[h3][u]I N V E N T O R Y            [/u][/h3]
Tons of outfits, a coinpurse full of Kizans, Coronas, and some Neskals because that's what all of the cool kids are paying with. There's no bigger flex than rolling up to some merchant, purchasing a papaya, and asking if he can make change for your Great Neskal. Jomurr also carries the signet ring of his house and a Teddy Lion that he sometimes sleeps with.

[h3][u]S T R E N G T H S  &  S K I L L S           [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ Magic prodigy
❖ Quick and athletic
❖ High noble and well-connected. He can pull some strings when he needs to.
❖ Quick with words, usually.
❖ Good liar [/indent]


[h3][u]W E A K N E S S E S  &  F L A W S            [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ Honestly just kind of a jerk
❖ Insecure, deep down
❖ Overconfident
❖ Not quite as quick with words as he thinks he is
❖ Does not handle failure well initially [/indent]

[h3][u]M I S C E L L A N E O U S            [/u][/h3]
Unless they're from Belzagg and/or a high noble from at least a neighbouring region, other students are unlikely to know that Jomurr is a second son.
Colour Code: [color=800080]800080[/color][/hider]
[hider=Joshe Intaba][center][h2][u] Zeno Joshe Intaba [/u][/h2]
[img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/63/ad/3963ad17f9682507c8dc8038ba38c35f.jpg[/img][/center]
[b][center]"A Zeno's business is the Gift... and [i]only[/i] the Gift."[/center][/b]
[hr][hr]
[center][h3][b] 64 | Male | Medrilaner | Noble | 8.86 [/b] [/h3][/center]

[h3][u]D E S C R I P T I O N            [/u][/h3]
Joshe Intaba is a living legend and one of the most powerful mages alive today. Master of the Magical Pentad, Hero of the Nashorn, Warden of the Lantern of Shune-Zept, and Lion of Medrilan, he is in possession of a virtually unparalleled resume as a practitioner of the Gift. Yet, for all of his accomplishments and sublime talent, he is a mere Zeno, as he has been for the past thirty years.

Joshe has never liked politics. He has never cared to play them. He believes strongly that a Zeno should be a practitioner of the magical arts and only the magical arts. To this end, he has refused every honour and promotion that has come his way but a handful that he found to be meaningful. While many have sought to garner his support and use his renown for their own ends, he always replies with a sad, friendly smile and a tired shake of his head. "I am sorry, friend, but it cannot be so. A Zeno's business is the Gift, and only the Gift. I wish you luck." It is said that he sees with far more than just his eyes, and that he sees [i]all[/i]. Many feel themselves judged in his presence and found wanting, but there is never any malice or disdain.

While others have risen further and faster on the strength of their ambitions, Joshe has been content to remain a teacher, researcher, and - in times of trouble - arguably the academy's mightiest weapon. He eschews the ostentatious silks, laces, and jewelry of many of his fellow mages, in favour of a simple dark robe of excellent cut and quality. In his younger years, he was known for his boisterous celebrations, generosity, and many lovers (including the current Zenith, some whisper), yet he is in every way now, a wise and wizened master, if not with a bit of a twinkle in his eye. 

Ironically, his hard stance on the duties of a Zeno and his steadfast dedication to his craft has grown this old Medrilaner a sizable following - one that he has never sought to leverage. The Academy, too, has recognized this. He is considered their foremost active instructor. To be apprenticed to Zeno Intaba is generally considered an honour and a privilege reserved for only the most gifted and promising of students. Yet, such is his cachet that he is given free reign to choose his own pupils, and his choices often raise eyebrows, as do his methods. Yet, none can argue with his results.[/hider]

Both of these character sheets were submitted for the same RPG (which I was really into): [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/165254-oh-my-gods-always-accepting/ic]Oh My Gods[/url]. They were all descendants of deities. Sadly, this one didn't last long. The GM was cool but didn't provide much in the way of guidance or IC worldbuilding so I got kind of lost and never really found a footing. Matthew was kind of an evolved version of my much earlier Rintor: modern world, older, and less edgy. I really wish I'd had the chance to play him. Selena was also older than your average character: approaching middle age and with a family, but she was a badass. I also tried to make her ethnic (Latinx) and religious (Catholic) identities relevant to her character.

[hider=Matthew Roderick-Wright][center]Name: Matthew Roderick-Wright

Gender: Male

Age: 68

Appearance: Matthew is an older man of mixed African American and Caucasian ancestry, still fit and in good shape into his late sixties. He has a full head of thick grey hair, kept close-cropped and professionally short. He often dresses in jeans, a golf shirt - always tucked in - and a comfortable pair of running shoes. He can often be found wearing a US Army pin and sometimes a Chicago Cubs baseball cap.

Sexuality: This is even a question?!

Godly ancestor: Mars

Son/daughter or further removed: Grandson

Relationship with godly ancestor: Matthew grew up knowing of his unique ancestry and sought to live up to it. In the jungles of Vietnam, he was fueled by thoughts of doing this legacy proud. As a soldier, he excelled in waging war and indeed, Mars looked with pride upon this mortal grandson of his. Shying away from the less... martial aspects of his ancestor, he remained in the army following the end of the war, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and commanding an armoured division during Operation Desert Storm. Having retired with full honours a handful of years ago, he decided to pursue his interest in his family history by moving to New Celestia and meeting with Mars for the first time. There was no emotional outpouring - just a heartfelt handshake and a long conversation between two professional military men who shared a deep respect for each other - exactly the way that Matthew had always pictured the encounter.  

Relationship with mortal family: Matthew's parents are long gone, though he is in  occasional contact with his brother Lawrence, who is a corn farmer in southern Illinois. The two of them go to see Cubs games together at least a couple of times per year, and Matthew occasionally dotes on his great nephews and nieces, though he thinks that they're being raised to be soft and indulged and that a bit of discipline would've done them good. He has no wife or children of his own, though he was briefly married to a woman named Costanza in the early eighties. His stepson, Roger, was a disappointment to him, and the two of them do not speak to each other at all. 

Powers: At age 68, Matthew is still absurdly fast and strong, and has 20/20 vision and excellent hearing. He knows his way around multiple types of weapons and can figure out how to best use them instinctively. He is incredibly tough and difficult to injure in spite of his advanced age, and possesses mildly superhuman endurance. He has a natural tactical acumen that extends past the battlefield into virtually any situation involving conflict. Matthew also has a green thumb, but has never really developed this talent. He keeps a nice cactus garden, he supposes. 

Personality: Matthew is a tough, no-nonsense retired veteran and a career military man. While he is deeply socially conservative in most ways, he is a firm backer of civil rights and a quiet but unflinching warrior in the fight against racism. He believes strongly that attitudes help to shape reality and as a result, you will never hear him drop an 'N-bomb' under any circumstances. Matthew has an oldschool sense of honour and duty, but he can also be aggressive and a bit of a bully. He is used to a chain of command and does best when part of one. Matthew will not complain about what he sees as 'petty concerns', nor will he 'stand for any special snowflake bullshit'. As a result, he holds a lot inside, and he's a bit of a lonely man with his share of regrets, standing on his pride and military service as the sun begins to set on his life.

Bio: Matthew and his younger brother Lawrence were born during the baby boom in Chicago to an African-American mother and a mixed-race father who had served with distinction during the second world war but been prevented from rising above the rank of captain due to his race. His parents both worked: his father in a factory, and his mother doing room cleaning at a hotel. Matthew wasn't old enough to remember much of the first phase of the civil rights movement, but he still remembers where he was and what he was doing when he heard about the death of Martin Luther King.

Matthew was an average student during his high school days, but he was an incredible natural athlete, especially as a football running back. Only a fiery and violent disposition and a lack of discipline prevented him from being offered multiple tier one scholarships. In any event, he still ended up playing in the NCAA for a year before the Vietnam War draft was held and he was called to service. Though he considered refusing, like his hero Muhammad Ali, he decided to answer the call in order to honour his father, who had fallen ill and been forced to take a leave of absence from his job. 

In the jungles of Vietnam, Matthew truly came to life for the first time. He was cited for numerous acts of personal bravery well above and beyond the call of duty. He proved to be excellent at sniffing out ambushes ahead of time, thwarting enemy plans, and extricating himself and his fellow soldiers from impossible situations. It wasn't long before the medals, commendations, and promotions came flooding in. Whatever he may have felt about the flimsy justifications for the war, Matthew pushed it all aside. His job was elimination of the enemy in the name of his country, and he carried it out with loyalty and gusto. The conclusion of the war was something that he had seen coming, but at this point, he was already firmly entrenched in the military life. During the relatively conflict-free eighties, (despite the incendiary rhetoric being tossed about between cold war rivals) he made an attempt to settle down with the widow of one of his Vietnam buddies who he'd kept in touch with. However, her teenaged son was a delinquent, and Matthew's attempts to set the boy straight drove a wedge between them and resulted in the marriage failing after only a couple of years.

After that, he dedicated his life to serving his country, and did so as a captain and then a lieutenant colonel in the conflicts of the eighties, nineties, and early twenty-first century. That there was something more than human blood running through his veins, Matthew was certain, and he'd been told the family secret by his father upon his passing from cancer at age 56. Upon his retirement, Matthew decided to pursue this interest all of the way to New Celestia, half expecting it to have been little more than some elaborate last joke of his father's.[/center][/hider]
[hider=Selena Casillas Ochoa]
[center]Name: Selena Casillas Ochoa

Gender: Female

Age: 38

Appearance: Selena is a petite woman with tanned skin, and straight black hair with bangs cut to shoulder length with lazerlike precision. She often wears a full skirt suit in either white or black, with a thin pencil skirt and high heels that add a forbidding click to every step that she takes. He makeup is always perfect and her nails are always painted blood red. On sunny days, she will wear a pair of aviator sunglasses that make it impossible to see her eyes.

Sexuality: straight

Godly ancestor: Thanatos

Son/daughter or further removed: Daughter

Relationship with godly ancestor: It used to be very strained, though it has improved in recent years. 

Relationship with mortal family: Selena's mother died during childbirth, and she was raised by her aunt and uncle as if she were one of their many children. In fact, while growing up, virtually nobody knew that she [i]wasn't[/i] one of theirs. Time and distance have separated them somewhat, though they're still on good terms and she regularly visits on holidays. Of more consequence are her husband, Michael: the son of a minor Chinese water deity, and her daughter Victoria: a synthesis of the two sets of powers. They are her everything.

Powers: Selena has always been deeply uncomfortable with her powers, since she was raised as a devout Catholic and they come from a Greek death god. The most peculiar of these is her apparent age. Though she's approaching forty, she doesn't look a day past her early twenties. Of course, as the offspring of a death god, she possesses the ability to call people into the afterlife with nothing but a touch and intent. In some circumstances, she can also return them to the mortal plane. However, the ability that has made Selena the most uncomfortable is her power over pain and grief. With but a look and a thought, she can inflict immense amounts of it upon people, but conversely can relieve it. She herself can move at will from one plane to the other. Though while she is in the land of the dead, her body remains behind in the living world and is completely vulnerable. Finally, just like her father, she can sprout a pair of ethereal wings from her back and use them to fly. They look almost exactly like angel's wings except for the fact that they're pitch black.

Personality: Selena is a warm and caring individual by upbringing, but it contrasts with the detached and distant yet coolly benevolent nature bequeathed to her by her father. Every day of her life she remains locked in a struggle against that side of herself. Selena can laugh at a good joke, but she's not very good at making any herself. Her marriage has been blessed with genuine passion as well as understanding and a great many common interests. In most ways, Selena is utterly typical of an upper middle class woman in her late thirties, from her taste in media to her set of interests, to her social and political opinions, which lean conservatively left but little more.

Bio: Selena grew up cursing her father, whoever he was, for leaving. She always assumed that he was some no good gangbanger. She was raised by her aunt and uncle and it was a largely happy upbringing, though they were rather poor and often struggled. Just having her in the room often made them feel better. 

Taking this a step further, she got into medicine and after years of schooling, eventually became a doctor. It was right after her graduation that she was told the truth about her birth by her aunt. The old woman was rather skeptical herself, but she had never known her sister to lie. Upon investigating New Celestia herself, Selena was contacted by her father and was horrified to find out that not only was he real, but he was  the very epitome of a cool, handsome, emotionless death god. She wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him, not understanding (or perhaps not wanting to understand) that he saw it as his job to ease pain as well. 

Moving her practice to New Celestia, she did well for herself and eventually fell in love with one of her clients, a man named Michael Xu, the son of a Chinese water deity. Before long, they had gotten married and Selena had gotten pregnant. She worked for as long as was medically responsible, before temporarily referring her clients to another physician while she went on maternity leave. Her daughter, Victoria, is the light of her life, and was born seven years ago. That was also the time that her father picked to come back into her life. They talked rather openly about her resentment. He admitted that he had probably inadvertently killed her mother. There was nothing that could be done to change the past. However, they could attempt to have a future.[/center][/hider]

A CS for a superhero/metahuman RPG from years ago called [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/163647-collateral-damage-a-superhero-rp/ooc]'Collateral Damage'[/url]. Sadly, it never got off the ground. I really see China as a way underrepresented nation of origin for RPG characters despite it having such a large population. Maybe people just shy away from the political dimension? I also wanna see some Asian dudes kicking ass, an no, not just because they know martial arts (though that [i]is [/i]pretty badass)

[hider=Gary Xu]
Name: Gary Xu
 
Gender: Male
 
Appearance: Gary is a middle aged Chinese man of below average height, solidly built but not carrying any extra weight. He’s clean shaven, with lightly tanned skin and a full head of straight black hair worn professionally short and just starting to grey around the temples. His teeth are unexpectedly perfect, and though he sometimes wears glasses, he generally looks somewhat younger than his 41 years – perhaps mid-thirties. He can usually be found wearing a collared shirt in a hue of pastel with the top button undone, as well as a pair of business slacks and dress shoes. When not working, he prefers a pair of comfortable, slightly worn blue jeans and a golf shirt, or a tracksuit with blue Air Jordans. As one might imagine from this description, he’s fit and in good shape.
 
Age: 41 
 
Alias: (The Indestructible Man)
 
Alignment: undecided (he is leaning towards hunter, though likely as more of a facilitator)
 
Identity: Private and recently discovered
 
History: Gary was born in 1976 in the small mountain village of Wulingyuan in scenic Hunan province, south-central China. It was the final, violent spasm of the Cultural Revolution, and his parents, who were shop owners, were forced into hiding until a degree of sanity returned. In 1982, the nearby mountains were designated a protected area, and over the following decade, morphed into a significant tourist attraction. Gary’s father, a shrewd and intelligent man, soon expanded his business to provide beverages, tours, and lodging. He used his savings to purchase a second home in the nearby city of Zhangjiajie, and the young family split their time between the two places.
 
With Deng Xiaoping’s open door policy picking up steam, the area witnessed its first western tourists, and Gary’s father was of the opinion that there would be many more to come. The boy was enrolled in English lessons (which were not easy to come by in those days, especially in a provincial backwater), and given the English name that he still carries. Being able to speak the language of international business proved to be a huge boon to his prospects, and as a teenager, he earned a good deal of extra cash acting as a tour guide and bootleg interpreter to curious Americans, Europeans, and others who came to visit.

By the time that Gary was 20, he decided to make the move to Shanghai, a decision fully supported by his parents. The city was on the precipice of a major boom, and both Gary and his father could sense it.

Living on the cheap in rough and ready Baoshan, a former port town in the process of morphing into an industrial suburb, he paid the bills for most of his first year by working construction jobs.  During this time, Gary was involved in more than his fair share of barroom brawls, and found that he could take a punch better than anyone else either he or his new friends knew. However, he didn’t remain in his lowly position for long. With international companies beginning to move their manufacturing to Shanghai, his ability to speak passable English was a major asset and he was soon moved to international customer liaison.
 
1997 was a huge year for Gary, as he was promoted and used his newfound time off to moonlight as a student at Shanghai’s prestigious Jiao Tong University. While he didn’t have the money or education to formally attend, he bought clothes to look the part, became a regular in the library, and managed to sneak into lectures. There, he not only furthered his knowledge of marketing and economics, but he also made many friends from influential backgrounds. Before long, this young group began formulating plans and studying the marketplace, looking for investment opportunities. Gary worked two jobs, scrimped and saved in order to invest along with the others. Also, in the world at large, a couple of important things happened. Firstly, China opened up to Western media, with the box office hit Titanic becoming a massive cultural phenomenon there. Second, and more importantly, the presence of metahumans became publicly known, resulting in intense interest, debate, and official ambivalence. 

Gary had little time to worry about the actions of superheroes and supervillains so long as they didn’t affect him. Over the next three years, he and his group of ‘Young Tigers’ invested in ever larger projects, gradually amassing a fortune. Despite having been promoted again, Gary left his job to focus on becoming a fulltime investor. By 2002, he returned to his former employer, having purchased it outright. With an eye to the future, the young tycoon purchased shares in up and coming social media and online banking platforms as well as local distributors of cellphone technologies. His construction firm thrived during the boom and was able to buy out a number of its rivals. He eventually married and became a father of two, willingly paying the government-imposed fine for having a second child. Over the next decade, Gary managed to get his fingers in a number of industries: English training schools, entertainment, banking, and insurance. 

It was in the case of the latter that the metahuman issue impacted Gary the most. His firm was among the first to offer metahuman insurance, but this proved to be a difficult and unpredictable field, prone to losing money. Working closely with the government, he pioneered a public-private approach that combined compensation with both market prospecting and law enforcement. On a personal level, Gary was deeply disturbed by much of what he witnessed, becoming convinced that human beings with such power were inevitably bound to misuse it even if their intentions were good. 

Gary himself had become something of a renaissance man by the time that he celebrated his fortieth birthday. He spoke seven languages, was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and Jeet Kune Do, as well as an avid hiker and cyclist who could also pilot personal aircraft. He maintained a large garage, as well as interests in history, physics, and geology. He attempted to learn guitar but found that he wasn’t particularly talented. 

It was shortly after his forty-first birthday that an incident took place which would profoundly alter his world. He was in the middle of a meeting when a fight between a pair of local metas – Suprasonic (a deliberate – though flying – knockoff of Supersonic) and The Mountain – erupted nearby. Gary was in the process of evacuating when the metas did serious damage to the office tower that he was in, causing the elevator cables to snap. The tycoon and two of his long-time associates plunged over four hundred feet to their deaths – except, Gary didn’t die. In fact he was completely uninjured while his colleagues were killed instantly. Removing himself from the building before it collapsed, dazed and confused, he quickly invented a story to account for his survival while the Chinese government cracked down harshly on metahuman activities. 

Over the past two months, he has been on leave from his many business ventures, rethinking a number of incidents in his past that he had originally put down to good luck, a strong constitution, and sheer toughness. His father always liked to recount the story of how Gary had fallen into a steep ravine as an infant while his family was running from the red guards, only to be found completely unscathed. Then there had been the time that a carelessly handled i-beam had struck him as a young man working on a construction site, sending him tumbling over forty feet to the ground below. He had dusted himself off and resumed working later that same day. His youthful brawls where he’d been able to swing for the fences while brushing off opponents’ punches had to be reconsidered, as did a waterskiing incident a few years back where he’d hit the water going nearly 100km/h and been completely unharmed. When Gary really thinks about it, he realizes that he can’t remember a single significant injury over the course of his life. The inescapable conclusion is that Gary Xu has been a metahuman the entire time. He is what he has come to hate. How he will deal with that going forward, only he can know.  
 
Personality: Gary’s a man who has lived a lot. He is very competent in a number of areas and possesses a deep – though slightly cynical – understanding of human nature. He enjoys making dry jokes and wry comments, and isn’t afraid of being self-deprecating, though his humour is almost always situational. In general, he’s a friendly guy and a good communicator, with a large circle of friends. However, his relationships with other people are best described as ‘friendly but somewhat distant.’ This extends to his own family. That doesn’t denote a lack of caring, however, just a desire to maintain a healthy distance between himself and other people and a lack of involvement in their everyday and quite frankly mundane affairs.

As one might expect, he’s extremely motivated and determined, almost obsessively so. When Gary sets his mind to something, he will systematically break it down, examine it in detail, and execute a carefully-laid plan. He’s not entirely averse to risk, though he does try to minimize it. Perhaps due to his success in life, Gary is not easily impressed and has little sympathy or use for people who complain or make excuses, especially if they have a background or talents that give them a head start. Though he tries to see the world for the subjective thing that it is, and to always keep his own ego in check, he can be unintentionally arrogant at times. 
 
Skills: Gary is in good though not exceptional shape. Though fairly small, he is a skilled and experienced hand-to-hand fighter, schooled in multiple martial arts, as well as possessing elementary training with some traditional Chinese weapons. He has never fired a gun before and hopes that he’ll never have to. He has, however, piloted personal aircraft and boats up to the size of a small yacht. He enjoys racing his collection of exotic cars at the track. 

Gary’s also perceptive and a good negotiator, able to read people and situations quickly and thoroughly. Finally, he is fluent in Mandarin (including his local Hunan dialect), Cantonese, English, and Korean, as well as passable in Italian, Japanese, French, and Spanish.
 
Abilities: Gary hasn’t really had the chance to become familiar with his metahuman abilities, though he seems to possess only one: he is completely indestructible. Beyond that, he is a bog-standard human.
 
Equipment: Gary doesn’t really have any special equipment right now, except for an extensive garage full of exotic cars, aircraft, and boats. Obviously, he can’t bring this with him. Beyond that, he has a name that means something in business, dozens of high-level international contacts, and a credit card with no limit. Maybe he’ll build a batcave?[/hider]

One of my first characters was for an RPG called [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/163420-through-the-portal/ic]Through the Portal[/url] that had a really interesting premise but a too-large cast and got bogged down in interpersonal (IC) strife before folding. Rintor acted as an inspiration for Illusion Arcanists in The Hourglass Order, however. I'd noticed that, within the large cast, there weren't any characters of colour and almost none over the age of thirty. Hence, this guy was both. I think a lot of times, we become focused on having lots of fantasy races while forgetting the variance in human ones.

[hider=Rintor Otorik]
[b]Name:[/b] Rintor Otorik, aka. The Smiler, The Blade of Boshir

[b]Age:[/b] 33

[b]Race:[/b] Human (Sub-Saharan African in appearance)

[b]Appearance:[/b] Rintor is a smallish, very dark-skinned man in his early thirties, wiry but muscular. He has dark grey-brown eyes and is vaguely handsome. However, he suffers from Alopecia Universalis, which renders him completely hairless across his entire body. He usually dresses in a simple black robe, with black leather boots, loose black pants, a handful of fur pelts, and a thick brown leather belt with a trio of leather satchels around his waist. In his youth, he would often wear a mask that covered most of his face. However, he doesn't wear it anymore.

[hider=Rintor during his 'glory days'][img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/cd/03/b3/cd03b3eea952818ddd8c7f07d52074c9.jpg[/img][/hider]  

[b]Role:[/b] Linguist, assassin, scout

[b]Bio:[/b] Rintor comes from Boshir, a powerful fiefdom in the south, where he was the third son in a family from his country’s equivalent of the landed gentry. His father and grandfather had both served with distinction in the king’s army as armed scouts in previous conflicts, rising to become commanders. Rintor seemed destined for the same path, and indeed demonstrated considerable aptitude as a child. However, he manifested somewhat unexpected magical abilities upon puberty and was sent for schooling in the arcane arts. He showed little promise with higher magicks, but excelled at what was called ‘lightbending’, which, in short, allows him to bend the visible light spectrum so as to appear all-but invisible. Before long it appeared that he had reached a dead-end. While lightbending was a useful skill, people who trained at the academy of thaumaturgy were strictly forbidden from using the abilities learned there for violent ends.

When war erupted with a neighboring Elven kingdom, Rintor, then only seventeen, remained at the academy. He had flourished during his years there and grown into a thoughtful young man. However, after a year, the military situation turned for the worse, and he was personally pulled out of the academy upon orders of the king and placed into the army as a commissioned officer. Whatever his moral qualms, Rintor served as his father and grandfather had before him. If his swordsmanship was subpar for his station, he had little use for it during scouting missions. However, one can only last for so long in a war without resorting to violence. Forced to kill an enemy scout who would have revealed his army’s position, Rintor had shed his first blood. Surrounded by martial culture, his guilt was quickly assuaged.

From that point onward, he became the leader of an advance party that quickly became infamous for its lightning strikes, guerilla warfare, and sabotage. His lightbending skills made him almost absurdly effective, and before long Rintor was doing more than scouting. Assassinations came next, followed by long missions deep into enemy territory. His initial moral objections having become a thing of the past, and fed a steady diet of awards, honours, propaganda, and berserker mushrooms, Rintor became a gleeful killing machine. Gifted a pair of finely honed daggers by the king himself, the lightbender’s trail of bodies grew until he was feared, revered, and loathed across much of the continent. It became something of a legend that he would always appear out of nowhere a bare moment before striking the fatal blow, smiling like the devil himself.

His high (or low) point, came when he infiltrated the bedchambers of the Elven king and murdered him and his entire family in cold blood. This plunged the country into civil war and forced their interim leadership to sue for peace terms. Back home, Rintor was hailed as a hero, but with the war over and the accolades, drugs, and honours drying up, he felt increasingly hollow. He longed for purpose, which he attempted to find in hunting, bloodsport, and horse racing. All were dead ends. The academy had long since severed all ties with him and he was not allowed to return there. At some point, he disappeared from society altogether. 

Nobody is entirely certain where he went for seven years, but when he reappeared, he was able to speak six new languages and he seemed to have found his peace. He sat outside of the academy in meditation, drinking only one bottle of water each day, for twenty-six days and nights until he was finally granted an audience with the provost. The price that he paid for readmission to the academy was considerable: all of his lands, honours, titles, and possessions save what he had carried with him, as well as a solemn vow of non-violence to be broken upon pain of a degenerative curse that will slowly and painfully cause him to waste away.
 
For the next three years, he ensconced himself within its hallowed halls, re-emerging at around the same time that the opening of the portal was announced. He appeared before the king, dressed in his simple black robes, and requested that he be the first of his nation to step through the portal. Given his status as a war hero, it was a request that could hardly be refused. Nobody knows what his motivation is except for Rintor himself, though one would assume that it has to do with the fascination of exploring a new land and finding redemption in the process.

[b]Skills:[/b] Rintor can move with the utmost stealth and silence. Even elven ears struggle to detect him. He is almost ridiculously proficient with knives and daggers, though he has sworn never to use them for violence against another sentient being so long as he lives. He is able to draw maps and describe topography in considerable detail, though perhaps not as well as he might’ve in his youth. He is adept at sabotage, guerilla warfare, and has some tactical abilities, though these are qualities that he tries not to advertise. Rintor is a skilled horseman and reasonably proficient with a bow, though not what one would call 'naturally talented'. He can fast for an extended period of time and possesses basic survival skills. He has an innate ear for languages and has studied linguistics over the prvious handful of years, though he tends to speak with a thick accent.

[b]Magic:[/b] Rintor is able to bend light so that he blends in flawlessly with his surroundings for extended periods of time when still and short bursts while moving. This effectively makes him able to turn invisible. However, the ability only extends to the visible light spectrum, and requires considerable concentration. He also struggles to blend into backdrops with especially intricate patterns or with many colours and a great deal of motion.

[b]Equipment:[/b] Rintor has the clothes on his back, a flask of water in one satchel, some parchment and a quill in another, and some dried fruits, jerky, and nuts in another. He also has a pair of wickedly sharp daggers gifted to him by the king, but he wants nothing to do with them.

[b]Other:[/b] Rintor is quiet and reserved – some would say aloof and subtly arrogant. He never shows his teeth anymore when smiling. He seems to be highly intelligent, though he will rarely correct people’s mistakes. He also appears to have little to no interest in women. Though he has tried hard to train it out of himself, he harbours a degree of suspicion towards elves and many near-human beings. Before Rintor went through the portal, the king gifted him his old daggers back and bade him take them through the portal. Rintor could not disobey with so many eyes on him, but he plans to drop them the moment that he steps through, and not just for his own sake. Given his past and his distinctive appearance, I'd assume that he would be known to many of the other characters, at least by name and reputation.[/hider]