Applicant Info

Name: Kes
Contact: rikoren
Current Character(s): n/a

Character Info

Character's Name: Xie Lian
Character's Canon: Heavenly Official's Blessing
Character's Age: 800+ (physically 17)
Canon Point: Chapter 8, as he's stepping into the temple
Background/History: A wiki

Strengths:

Kind: Xie Lian is best known for being what basically amounts to a bleeding heart. In his childhood he was constantly proclaiming how he'd "save the common people," and even centuries later, without the self-confidence he had as a teen, he still can't help offering a helping hand to whoever needs it, as long as he's able. He shows no discrimination towards the young, the old, the blessed, the cursed, the rich, the poor--to a point that people once took his assistance for granted, back in his early years. Kindness is one of the few things he has yet to lose over the centuries, and it's how he gained an eternally devoted demon lord for a follower.

Adaptable: 800 years as a vagrant really does something to a person's ability to adapt; where once he was used to riding palanquins and wearing the finest royal robes, now he's perfectly happy living in an abandoned shack and eating stale offerings off the floor. When he goes back to heaven for the third time he wanders around like someone trying to remember their way around on a casual visit to their old school, and when he discovers his new best friend is the most powerful demon lord on earth--well, there's nothing better than home cooking to reward a helpful companion, right? The other gods have quite a lot of mixed feelings about him traveling on foot and living in caves and building shrines to himself, but hey, he'll do what he needs to get by.

Persistent: If there's anything he's picked up over the centuries, it's a sort of mental fortitude. He'll take any pain without complaint, used to putting on a brave face; he'll wander for hours through an uncomfortable maze of mud and cannibals and killer worms with, again, no complaint. Various parts of the book mention him surviving everything from rolling down mountains to stepping on nails to getting bitten by a variety of deadly poisonous creatures, yet through it all he's still managed to keep a smile and a positive attitude towards the world around him, rarely blaming anything other than his own foolishness for any mishaps that come about.
Weaknesses:

Impulsive: Xie Lian's a quick thinker and a smart planner, but that doesn't mean he always stops to think before he acts. If someone's in trouble, he'll run straight there and think of solutions on the go. With his amazing martial arts skills and god-level reflexes, this also means that he may sometimes have already thrown himself into the danger before his brain's had time to process it. Snake attack? He's there to be a human shield! Friend jumped into the inescapable death pit? He just jumped after them on instinct, oops. (This might also be why he'll hurt himself tripping on a cloud despite canon stating that he's basically unstoppable in a fight.)

Low sense of self-preservation: Before he ascended, Xie Lian lived a life of luxury, was praised to the high heavens, thought he could do literally anything he wanted if he put his mind to it, and never even considered the possibility that he could be hurt. While he got to experience quite a lot of the less savory side of existence once he'd become a god, after 800 years he's grown almost entirely numb to it. Pain still hurts, but it's not like he can die, and certainly he's experienced worse, hasn't he? It's reached a point where sacrificing himself has become something he'll do without even thinking about it - when a deadly poisonous snake is about to attack someone who's proven entirely capable of handling them himself, Xie Lian reaches for it on instinct (and gets bitten). When faced with giant soldiers planning to sacrifice the team, he immediately offers himself as tribute, because hey, even if the monsters in the pit rip him to shreds he'll still get better eventually, right? Whenever he actually gets injured, too, he'll wave off any worried inquiries with what basically amounts to "It's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine," regardless of how much pain he might actually be feeling. He'll smile, even! No problem.

Unlucky: Xie Lian has been cursed with astronomically bad luck for pretty much 800 years straight. If he needs to roll a high number, he gets a low; if he needs a low number, he'll get high. When he returned to heaven the third time it put him in ten lifetimes' worth of heavenly debt, and when he got targeted by a bad luck monster it gave up on him because he had no positive events for it to curse. It's mentioned very early on that if there was a single poisoned wineglass out of a thousand, that's exactly the one he'd pick. It hasn't been stated in canon if his bad luck is natural or magical or what, but regardless, it's really bad.

Powers/Abilities:
- A master of martial arts, both swordfighting and hand-to-hand combat
- Immortal (not invincible though, sadly)
- Advanced healing rates
- Above-average senses (hearing, vision, etc)
- Superhuman strength and speed, too
- Can draw defensive magical spells (protection circles, evil-repelling talismans, etc.)

Bonus list of things he doesn't have enough mp to actually do:
- Soul Swap: he can switch bodies with a spiritually powerful person, or if the other person isn't powerful his soul can ride along in theirs and basically share control of it--and if he's low on power then it's just the riding along without any ability to control.
- Can animate statues!
- Knows a spell to weight himself down!
- Telepathic communication, the heavenly equivalent of wireless phones! This is actually useless outside of castmates with spiritual power.

Other Noteworthy Traits:
- Huge martial arts fanatic, near-encyclopedic knowledge of (Asian) weapons and fighting styles
- Can sing and play a variety of musical instruments
- Can quote Daoist scripture

- Absolutely terrible cook
- Has two curse marks on his body that limit his powers--his spiritual energy levels are constantly stuck at near-empty, so if he wants to actually do anything he needs to borrow energy from others.
Weapons & Other Special Inventory:
- A bamboo hat
- A living scarf named Ruoye. It can stretch, fly, tie people up, be used as an escape rope, strangle things, create a defensive circle that makes you invisible to demons/undead, etc.

Color: Light blue, for clear skies after the storm, for innocence and purity, for positivity in the face of unpredictable weather.

Sample: TDM

[ OPTIONAL ] World Aspect: n/a