Hai Xiangli

[Hai Xiangli]

"Don't worry, mates, it's just a girl in a fishing boat. What can she do?"
- Pirate (now deceased)

ABOUT THE PLAYER

Player Name/Alias:EternalSerpent
Player Age: 21
Player Gender:Male
How did you find us?:Received the e-mail from admins
What is the 5th bold rule point in section one of the rules?:Use an OOC Account – Make sure you have an ooc account for which to be known by. It should not have a character attached to it, instead characters you wish to play as should be given their own separate accounts. The reason being will become more clear as you engage with the site.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Name: Hai Xiangli
Age: 20
Gender: Female
Style: Original
Residence: Wu

THE PERSONALITY

The best way to describe Xiangli is an outsider. She is detached and frequently changes subjects in the middle of a conversation, especially when speaking on personal subjects. Her favorite topic of conversation is the Chang Jiang river, upon which she has lived her entire life, and the “water spirits” that inhabit this river. She has a heavy accent, clearly from the Southlands, and is quite unaccustomed to northern climates. In general, however, Xiangli is reserved and humble. Although she can easily be fired up to explicate the benefits or weaknesses of a strategy, she will never turn debates into personal issues nor would she boast about the successes of her strategems. She is clearly set apart from others by her absolute and total belief in the mystical arts, and she understands that she is commonly perceived to be some sort of “witch”. Despite this she retains a high degree of popularity with fisherman and sailors, as she will commonly spend her spare time using her extensive knowledge of the Chang Jiang to aid those who sail upon it.

THE APPEARANCE

Xiangli's most striking visual feature is odd blue-highlights in her dark hair, as featured in the portrait above. These dyed strands of hair reflect light so as to always give off a strange blue glow, further setting the already odd Xiangli apart from other officials. Her long hair falls straight over her shoulders and tends to blow in the wind, commonly getting caught up in her face when she neglects to don her helmet. She stands at the relatively average height of 5'6” and maintains a lithe figure. Her dark eyes generally appear to be very focused, except perhaps for the few moments when she can look over the Chang Jiang with the utmost appreciation of its beauty. She has a warm smile and, even under difficult circumstances, will rarely frown. Her face is also rather flush and rarely grows pale.

Xiangli almost always wears the color blue, unless it would be completely inappropriate to do so. She most commonly dresses in the ceremonial armor of an Imperial naval officer, a blue cloak over her light iron chest plate. She also sometimes wears the robes of a court official, depending on the situation, though these are also blue. Her final outfit is a tighter blue dress worn for certain occassions and special ceremonies, though she rarely dons this dress when it is not necessary.

Though Xiangli abhors physical combat and will rarely enter into a melee herself, if in battle it can be assumed that she is wearing iron lamellar armor under her ceremonial plate. The interlocking iron pieces that create the lamellar armor of the time period provide protection for her chest and pelvis area. She would also wear leather boots and gloves, able to deflect weak blows and absorb impact from small bludgeoning weapons only. She also carries around a helmet, though she doesn't usually don it. In general, she attempts to keep the amount of armor she is wearing to a minimum since her previous experience is all in naval combat and she wishes to be free to swim if her boat capsizes.

She also carries a curved iron blade that once belonged to Xiangli's adoptive father, and was standard issue to Han naval forces in the Wu region. Her father used this blade to slay multiple pirates, but it passed into their possession when he was killed by a pirate ambush. Xiangli later retrieved this blade, more for its sentimental value than combat effectiveness.

THE HISTORY

Xiangli's birth is somewhat of a mystery, even to herself. She was found as a child by a Han naval officer along the coast of the Chang Jiang during a routine patrol, abandoned by her parents in a small basket. This naval officer raised Xiangli as his own child, giving her the name Hai Xiangli. Since he knew not who her parents were, he used “Hai” meaning sea, as her family name and chose “Xiangli” meaning auspicious beauty as her given name. It was a new chapter in this old warrior's life as he became a father for the first time. Due to the nature of her father's work, Xiangli grew up almost exclusively on boats or port towns, and found that she had a natural affinity with the river. She learned to swim at an extremely early age, and she once won a fishing competition at the age of twelve.

Her adoptive father had had a long and distinguished career of military service, and he had paid the right bribes, so he wound up with a comfortable living which he spent almost exclusively on Xiangli's education. She was afforded the best teachers and tutors, and exposed to works from Sunzi to the Analects. Once her father convinced her of the value in education, Xiangli excelled at schooling as well. She thusly studied many texts: both on military and civil matters. On one fateful day, one of her teachers observed her fishing when she should have been studying. He approached her to admonish her for playing in the river, but as soon as he saw her fishing, he realized her innate connection with the river. He gifted to Xiangli a book titled “The Art of the Spirits”, it was a heavy tome containing many of the mysteries of the magical arts. It took Xiangli much study to understand the basics of this, but in time she grew to love the mystical arts almost as much as she loved the Chang Jiang. By the age of fifteen, her instructors swore that she was capable of forecasting (or maybe even summoning) small rainstorms, though nothing had ever been even close to proven.

Unfortunately, her life of scholarship came to an abrupt end when her beloved father was killed during a raid on a pirate's hideout. Xiangli could not take the thought of revenge out of her head, though she was only sixteen at the time and no soldiers would aid her in the task. With a borrowed fishing boat, she sailed down the Chang Jiang towards the pirate vessel. By reading the signs in the clouds, she caught up with the pirates just as a large storm was about to hit. By jeering them and then sailing away, she managed to force the not-so-intelligent pirates to stay out at sea just a bit too long, and they were unable to make it back to their hideout before the storm crushed their ship. Xiangli fished in the spot that the ship had sunk for days and days until she finally managed to catch a sword that looked like her father's, and it now hangs at her belt.

Over the past three years, Xiangli has been living in solitude in a small hut along the Chang Jiang in the northern part of Wu, fishing and aiding fisherman for a living. Recently, one of her friends approached her and told her that she was wasting her talents and could better use them aiding the people of this land in this time of chaos. She shrugged it off initially, but eventually realized that her friends were right, and she left this small hut to find an employer worthy of her time and talents.