Post by yulan on Aug 21, 2009 5:28:17 GMT -6
Name: Lu Shan Chen
Age: 23
Appearance: Lu Shan is of a lean and sinewy build, about 5’3 with pale skin common among those with Fire Nation ancestry. Her face is angular, almost fierce, but her cheerful demeanor softens her features into something more inviting. Her brown hair is slightly wavy and has a perpetually wind-tossed look, which she attempts to tame by tying into a high ponytail using a length of red ribbon decorated with white plum flowers. Lu Shan’s eyes are dark golden, like her father’s. If she’s smiling, one of them will be closed. Her smiles tend to be of the toothy variety.
Despite Lu Shan’s pride in her heritage, her constant travels throughout the Earth Kingdom have led her to wearing clothes of colors more appropriate to its culture and people, for pragmatism’s sake. Her usual outfit is a simple pale green tunic with a square collar and wide sleeves that reach to her elbows. The tunic is splashed with a pattern of peony leaves in hues of darker green and light amber, and reaches mid-thigh, tied closed around her waist with thick white cord. Lu Shan wears a headband the same green as her tunic, knotted firmly below her ponytail with the ends trailing free. Her pants are black with gold cuffs, nice and loose. Her shoes are supposed to be black as well, but constant wear has lightened them to a more gray color.
Everything Lu Shan needs to survive on the road is stored in a large leather bag she keeps slung diagonally across her chest. A tiny wooden figurine of an ostrich-horse in full gallop dangles from a red string around her neck, a memento of her ex-boyfriend. It’s seen its share of wear and tear; one of the ostrich-horse’s legs has broken off.
History:
Lu Shan grew up in one of the more influential cities of the Fire Nation under the loving eye of her mother, Chu-e, a respected historian from the city’s most prestigious university. Her father, Horan, was an officer in the Navy stationed aboard the Heavenly Koi, and due to his military position he and Lu Shan’s mother were often at odds. Her father firmly believed in their Fire Lord’s policy of ‘might makes right’ for purposes of spreading their culture to the rest of the world, while her mother always felt there were more peaceful ways to carry out this manifesto, noble as it was.
It had always been Chu-e’s dream to travel to the Earth Kingdom and record the minutiae of its vast culture before the war wiped them out forever. Meanwhile, Horan disagreed. What use did their powerful empire have for details on the mundane, insignificant lives of Earth Kingdom peasants? Worried that Chu-e’s interest in the enemy would attract unwelcome attention to his family, Horan forbade his wife from leaving the country. Eventually Chu-e had enough and left without a word to him, taking her daughter and ambitions with her to the Earth Kingdom. Lu Shan was ten years old.
They took up residence in one of the colonies by the coastline, taking just enough time to settle into their new home before Chu-e embarked on the first of what would be many journeys across the continent. There was no shortage of cultural morsels to feed her appetite, made all the tastier because she truly believed the towns and villages she visited would no longer exist by war’s end, all the more important that she collect as much data as possible. What greater purpose could a historian ask for, than to immortalize what could soon be an extinct people?
Lu Shan tagged along on every trip, lending Chu-e some credibility with those they met, at least until they got wind that the strangely inquisitive traveler and her daughter were from the Fire Nation. They were never able to stay long in any one place; most Fire Nation citizens knew to keep a low profile when living amongst those who hated them the most, but Chu-e’s constant inquiries had the opposite effect. It was never more than a few weeks before every soul in town knew about the two of them, and once their true colors were exposed, Lu Shan and Chu-e were invariably chased out. Not that these setbacks ever did a thing to dampen Chu-e’s spirits. The woman was on a mission.
After a particularly thrilling episode in which they had nearly been buried in an avalanche and were forced to jump into the river to escape, Lu Shan and her mother retreated home to the Fire Nation colony to rest without fear of being persecuted. During their stay, a group of Earth Kingdom rebels launched an attack on the town, hoping to retake it; they were ultimately unsuccessful. Among those defeated was Ishida, a young man of a ripe sixteen years – the same as Lu Shan – who broke into their home and wrecked the place.
Lu Shan, fearing he would destroy all her mother’s hard-earned research in the process, fought back, beat him silly, and then felt so guilty about the whole ordeal she hid him in their house when the victorious colony troops went around gathering prisoners. During the month it took him to recover, Lu Shan became quite taken with him. He in turn developed quite the crush on her. Chu-e naturally used the opportunity to squeeze any bit of info about Earth Kingdom culture out of the poor boy.
Once Ishida was healed, he wanted to leave the colony, and to Lu Shan’s surprise as well as his own, he wanted her to come with him. Chu-e gave them her full support and saw them off with tears in her eyes, proud that her daughter was embarking on her own adventure.
The new couple’s first few attempts at finding a town to call home ended badly once the people found out Lu Shan was a firebender. Fortune was looking out for their interests though, and after a year they came upon the small village of An Jiao nestled in the mountains east of the Si Wong Desert. The village elder was willing to give Lu Shan a chance, and with time, the other villagers agreed with varying degrees of reluctance that she wasn’t dangerous.
Life was peaceful for a time, but conflict arose between Lu Shan and Ishida when he was unable to budge her belief that those of the Fire Nation were superior to all others. Yes, she loved the Earth Kingdom, its land as well as its people, but she would love them more if they just accepted her home nation’s teachings without such a fuss. Eventually, Ishida realized she would never change her views on this topic, so he bid her an angry goodbye and left to enlist in the Earth Kingdom army.
Lu Shan did not react well. For many months she moped around her now empty house, replaying her talks with Ishida but never able to realize her own stubbornness. Some of her neighbors actually became worried about her, perhaps a testament to how much An Jiao’s residents had come to accept Lu Shan as one of their own.
Soon after her nineteenth birthday she finally felt somewhat like herself again, and with so much time spent indoors she was feeling the itch to travel. She thanked her neighbors for their concern, asked them to look after her house while she was gone, then hit the road.
There was never any specific destination in mind. Lu Shan went where her legs wanted to take her. However, like Chu-e, Lu Shan was horrible at keeping to herself, and her heritage was received as warmly as one could expect of oppressed Earth Kingdomers who had lost homes and loved ones to her nation. All the constant running away and defending herself proved to be great practice for her combat skills, though Lu Shan never started a fight of her own volition. She loved these people too much to behave with such dishonor, even if they didn’t love her back.
These days Lu Shan is still crossing the continent up, down, and sideways. She spends less than a quarter of the year at her home in An Jiao, but whenever she does return she brings back armloads of trinkets to line her shelves with, as well as small presents for her friends. She might be content to wander for the rest of her life…
Personality:
Like an overgrown child, Lu Shan is excitable and easily amused, greeting the world with an outlook that oozes friendliness and the lighthearted belief that all people are good at heart. She inherited her mother’s eccentricity as well as her amazing willingness to put herself in trouble for trivial reasons. Lu Shan can be whimsical to the point of outright ignoring immediate danger if something worthier has caught her attention. Depending on one’s viewpoint, she is either well-centered or an idiot. It is difficult to disturb her emotionally, whether through fear or anger. She is quick to grant forgiveness, except in the most extreme cases.
Thanks to her history of being chased out of various towns and villages by furious Earth Kingdomers, Lu Shan has developed a skewed sense of peril and does not usually get scared unless she’s certain her life is in actual jeopardy. This has led to her getting injured a few times, but she refuses to humor the idea that her actions can sometimes be reckless. Come the rare times she is forced to defend herself, Lu Shan proves that she’s just as hot-blooded in combat as the next firebender, but she inevitably feels bad about having to fight in the first place.
As proud as she is of her heritage and abilities, Lu Shan does realize her firebending inspires much fear in others, and so tries to use it as little as possible. She refuses to lie about her origins however; she can’t see the point in apologizing for something that doesn’t cause her any shame, thus why she is so quickly discovered in her travels and chased away. Due to these policies, her firebending prowess is subpar for someone her age, but she has learned to be excellent at dodging attacks and running away.
Talk of Ishida and related tangents may be the only thing guaranteed to halt Lu Shan’s sunny disposition in its tracks. For the life of her, she still can’t understand what went wrong in their relationship. She sometimes wonders if her wanderlust is linked to this failure, as though she might find the answer if she learns enough about Ishida’s homeland, gain much-needed insight into his way of thinking. Another theory of hers is that she simply doesn’t like being at home in An Jiao, surrounded by memories of him.
Lu Shan is a mild kleptomaniac. She really means no harm, but she’s been to so many interesting places over her short lifetime she just can’t help taking souvenirs with her when she leaves. These incidents are almost always involuntary; if the victim finds her out, of course she’ll return the item with profuse apologies, but many times they just won’t listen. Being a firebender and accused thief tends to make people respond with violence more often than not.
Age: 23
Appearance: Lu Shan is of a lean and sinewy build, about 5’3 with pale skin common among those with Fire Nation ancestry. Her face is angular, almost fierce, but her cheerful demeanor softens her features into something more inviting. Her brown hair is slightly wavy and has a perpetually wind-tossed look, which she attempts to tame by tying into a high ponytail using a length of red ribbon decorated with white plum flowers. Lu Shan’s eyes are dark golden, like her father’s. If she’s smiling, one of them will be closed. Her smiles tend to be of the toothy variety.
Despite Lu Shan’s pride in her heritage, her constant travels throughout the Earth Kingdom have led her to wearing clothes of colors more appropriate to its culture and people, for pragmatism’s sake. Her usual outfit is a simple pale green tunic with a square collar and wide sleeves that reach to her elbows. The tunic is splashed with a pattern of peony leaves in hues of darker green and light amber, and reaches mid-thigh, tied closed around her waist with thick white cord. Lu Shan wears a headband the same green as her tunic, knotted firmly below her ponytail with the ends trailing free. Her pants are black with gold cuffs, nice and loose. Her shoes are supposed to be black as well, but constant wear has lightened them to a more gray color.
Everything Lu Shan needs to survive on the road is stored in a large leather bag she keeps slung diagonally across her chest. A tiny wooden figurine of an ostrich-horse in full gallop dangles from a red string around her neck, a memento of her ex-boyfriend. It’s seen its share of wear and tear; one of the ostrich-horse’s legs has broken off.
History:
Lu Shan grew up in one of the more influential cities of the Fire Nation under the loving eye of her mother, Chu-e, a respected historian from the city’s most prestigious university. Her father, Horan, was an officer in the Navy stationed aboard the Heavenly Koi, and due to his military position he and Lu Shan’s mother were often at odds. Her father firmly believed in their Fire Lord’s policy of ‘might makes right’ for purposes of spreading their culture to the rest of the world, while her mother always felt there were more peaceful ways to carry out this manifesto, noble as it was.
It had always been Chu-e’s dream to travel to the Earth Kingdom and record the minutiae of its vast culture before the war wiped them out forever. Meanwhile, Horan disagreed. What use did their powerful empire have for details on the mundane, insignificant lives of Earth Kingdom peasants? Worried that Chu-e’s interest in the enemy would attract unwelcome attention to his family, Horan forbade his wife from leaving the country. Eventually Chu-e had enough and left without a word to him, taking her daughter and ambitions with her to the Earth Kingdom. Lu Shan was ten years old.
They took up residence in one of the colonies by the coastline, taking just enough time to settle into their new home before Chu-e embarked on the first of what would be many journeys across the continent. There was no shortage of cultural morsels to feed her appetite, made all the tastier because she truly believed the towns and villages she visited would no longer exist by war’s end, all the more important that she collect as much data as possible. What greater purpose could a historian ask for, than to immortalize what could soon be an extinct people?
Lu Shan tagged along on every trip, lending Chu-e some credibility with those they met, at least until they got wind that the strangely inquisitive traveler and her daughter were from the Fire Nation. They were never able to stay long in any one place; most Fire Nation citizens knew to keep a low profile when living amongst those who hated them the most, but Chu-e’s constant inquiries had the opposite effect. It was never more than a few weeks before every soul in town knew about the two of them, and once their true colors were exposed, Lu Shan and Chu-e were invariably chased out. Not that these setbacks ever did a thing to dampen Chu-e’s spirits. The woman was on a mission.
After a particularly thrilling episode in which they had nearly been buried in an avalanche and were forced to jump into the river to escape, Lu Shan and her mother retreated home to the Fire Nation colony to rest without fear of being persecuted. During their stay, a group of Earth Kingdom rebels launched an attack on the town, hoping to retake it; they were ultimately unsuccessful. Among those defeated was Ishida, a young man of a ripe sixteen years – the same as Lu Shan – who broke into their home and wrecked the place.
Lu Shan, fearing he would destroy all her mother’s hard-earned research in the process, fought back, beat him silly, and then felt so guilty about the whole ordeal she hid him in their house when the victorious colony troops went around gathering prisoners. During the month it took him to recover, Lu Shan became quite taken with him. He in turn developed quite the crush on her. Chu-e naturally used the opportunity to squeeze any bit of info about Earth Kingdom culture out of the poor boy.
Once Ishida was healed, he wanted to leave the colony, and to Lu Shan’s surprise as well as his own, he wanted her to come with him. Chu-e gave them her full support and saw them off with tears in her eyes, proud that her daughter was embarking on her own adventure.
The new couple’s first few attempts at finding a town to call home ended badly once the people found out Lu Shan was a firebender. Fortune was looking out for their interests though, and after a year they came upon the small village of An Jiao nestled in the mountains east of the Si Wong Desert. The village elder was willing to give Lu Shan a chance, and with time, the other villagers agreed with varying degrees of reluctance that she wasn’t dangerous.
Life was peaceful for a time, but conflict arose between Lu Shan and Ishida when he was unable to budge her belief that those of the Fire Nation were superior to all others. Yes, she loved the Earth Kingdom, its land as well as its people, but she would love them more if they just accepted her home nation’s teachings without such a fuss. Eventually, Ishida realized she would never change her views on this topic, so he bid her an angry goodbye and left to enlist in the Earth Kingdom army.
Lu Shan did not react well. For many months she moped around her now empty house, replaying her talks with Ishida but never able to realize her own stubbornness. Some of her neighbors actually became worried about her, perhaps a testament to how much An Jiao’s residents had come to accept Lu Shan as one of their own.
Soon after her nineteenth birthday she finally felt somewhat like herself again, and with so much time spent indoors she was feeling the itch to travel. She thanked her neighbors for their concern, asked them to look after her house while she was gone, then hit the road.
There was never any specific destination in mind. Lu Shan went where her legs wanted to take her. However, like Chu-e, Lu Shan was horrible at keeping to herself, and her heritage was received as warmly as one could expect of oppressed Earth Kingdomers who had lost homes and loved ones to her nation. All the constant running away and defending herself proved to be great practice for her combat skills, though Lu Shan never started a fight of her own volition. She loved these people too much to behave with such dishonor, even if they didn’t love her back.
These days Lu Shan is still crossing the continent up, down, and sideways. She spends less than a quarter of the year at her home in An Jiao, but whenever she does return she brings back armloads of trinkets to line her shelves with, as well as small presents for her friends. She might be content to wander for the rest of her life…
Personality:
Like an overgrown child, Lu Shan is excitable and easily amused, greeting the world with an outlook that oozes friendliness and the lighthearted belief that all people are good at heart. She inherited her mother’s eccentricity as well as her amazing willingness to put herself in trouble for trivial reasons. Lu Shan can be whimsical to the point of outright ignoring immediate danger if something worthier has caught her attention. Depending on one’s viewpoint, she is either well-centered or an idiot. It is difficult to disturb her emotionally, whether through fear or anger. She is quick to grant forgiveness, except in the most extreme cases.
Thanks to her history of being chased out of various towns and villages by furious Earth Kingdomers, Lu Shan has developed a skewed sense of peril and does not usually get scared unless she’s certain her life is in actual jeopardy. This has led to her getting injured a few times, but she refuses to humor the idea that her actions can sometimes be reckless. Come the rare times she is forced to defend herself, Lu Shan proves that she’s just as hot-blooded in combat as the next firebender, but she inevitably feels bad about having to fight in the first place.
As proud as she is of her heritage and abilities, Lu Shan does realize her firebending inspires much fear in others, and so tries to use it as little as possible. She refuses to lie about her origins however; she can’t see the point in apologizing for something that doesn’t cause her any shame, thus why she is so quickly discovered in her travels and chased away. Due to these policies, her firebending prowess is subpar for someone her age, but she has learned to be excellent at dodging attacks and running away.
Talk of Ishida and related tangents may be the only thing guaranteed to halt Lu Shan’s sunny disposition in its tracks. For the life of her, she still can’t understand what went wrong in their relationship. She sometimes wonders if her wanderlust is linked to this failure, as though she might find the answer if she learns enough about Ishida’s homeland, gain much-needed insight into his way of thinking. Another theory of hers is that she simply doesn’t like being at home in An Jiao, surrounded by memories of him.
Lu Shan is a mild kleptomaniac. She really means no harm, but she’s been to so many interesting places over her short lifetime she just can’t help taking souvenirs with her when she leaves. These incidents are almost always involuntary; if the victim finds her out, of course she’ll return the item with profuse apologies, but many times they just won’t listen. Being a firebender and accused thief tends to make people respond with violence more often than not.