Voidstate/LeiFang

Lei Fang, The Watcher With Eyes of White Ashes

A shadow slips close
Uncaring eyes of pure white
Watch lives become ash.

Concept: Perfectionist Courtier, Utter Bitch & Social Assassin
Nature: Critic (Regain WP from pointing out significant flaws that would have been harmful if overlooked)
Caste: Endings
Faction: Bronze
Sifu: Warden (Bronze Faction; Master of Treading On Diamonds Style (from the Wiki) and has partially mastered Charcoal March of Spiders Style)

Attributes
Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Charisma 4, Manipulation 5, Appearance 2, Perception 2, Intelligence 2, Wits 5

Abilities
Athletics* 2, Awareness* 2, Bureaucracy* 2, Craft (Fate) 2, Dodge 3, Larceny* 5 (Impersonation +3), Linguistics 1, Lore 3, Martial Arts* 3, Medicine* 1, Occult 3, Performance 1 (Prayer +1), Presence 2, Socialise* 2 (Lies +2), Stealth* 5, Survival* 1, Thrown 1

Virtues
Compassion 1 (Sidereals +1), Conviction 3, Temperance 2, Valour 2

<b>Essence
Permanent 3, Personal 11, Peripheral 31 (1 committed)

Willpower: 5
Health: -0/-1x1/-2x2/-4Voidstate/LeiFang/Incapaitated

Combat
Base initiative: 8 Soak: 2B/1L (Unarmoured) Dodge: 6 (Essence +3) Minimum Damage: 3 Base Movement: 15 yds

Attacks
Punch: Spd 8, Acc 7, Dmg 2B, Def 8, Rate 5 Kick: Spd 5, Acc 7, Dmg 5B, Def 3, Rate 3 Clinch: Spd 2, Acc 6, Dmg 2B, Def -, Rate 1

Colleges
The Mask 2, The Crow 3, The Corpse 1, Treasure Trove 1

Paradox: 1

Backgrounds
Allies 1 (Niapra-Gil, The Loper of Ten-Thousand Leagues, God of predatory pack animals), Artifact 1 (Hearthstone Amulet), Celestial Manse 3 (AirVoidstate/Windhands gem), Familiar 3 (Crooked Diamond), Salary 3, Savant 1, Sifu 1, Sorcery 3

Merits
Virtue Specialty: Compassion (Sidereals)
Lucky (5 point pool)

Flaws
Callous (-1 Virtue Point)
Small (loses one –1 health level)

Charms
Craft: World Shaping Artistic Vision (Whilst Incognito)
Larceny: Creation Smuggling Procedures, Sidereal Shell Games
Occult: Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Presence: Presence In Absence Technique
Socialise: Hot-Eyed Snake Whispering, Shun The Smiling Lady, You & Yours Stance
Stealth: Blinding The Boar, Soft Presence Practice, Subordinate Inspiration Technique, Walking Outside Fate

Spells
Emerald Countermagic
Flight of Separation
Sprouting Shackles of Doom

Bonus Points
10 BPs: Essence 2 > 3
2 BPs: Stealth 3 > 5
2 BPs: Larceny 3 > 5
3 BPs: Specialties (Larceny, Performance & Socialise)
1 BP: Salary 2 > 3
2 BP: Virtue Specialty (Compassion)
3 BPs: Lucky
-2 BPs: Callous
-3 BPs: Small

Experience
Total:1
Remaining:
Spent (On):

Concept

Lei Fang is a bitch. She knows it and her Sifu knows it. But it just makes her better at what she does: social assassination.

Sometimes a brief ends up with the Violet Bier of Sorrows* where it does not suit the needs of fate for an individual to be killed - perhaps they have a role to play at a future time, perhaps they are influencing the wrong people, being woven into the wrong patterns, and need a change of direction - these people need to be severed from their current activities, their role in life cut away from them and new course charted. Lei Fang has been trained for this end. Need an engagement broken off? A treaty betrayed? A business deal to fall through? Someone to resign their position? Lei fang will be there in one of her many faces, pulling (or more exactly cutting) strings until the true pattern of the weave can establish itself once more. After all, each ending is a new beginning and death is sometimes just too final.

Lei Fang loves her work, she knows she's good at it and thrives on the power and challenge it brings. On the surface she is a passionate believer in the Bronze but really she follows it's dictates for a much more personal reason - she dreads the thought of the Solars returning and lording it over her and so will do whatever it takes to keep them out of the picture. Besides, having an "ideal" to adhere to is a useful tool in justifying her lack of respect for thiose she manipulates. The few missions she has carried out so far have left her very dismissive of mortals and terrestrial exalts - an attitude which may well be her undoing if she comes across someone who should not be underestimated. Because of this, she has begun to take small risks in her job, allowing herself to take a more artistic approach to her manipulation, creating ironic endings for her targets and anlso allowing her to spice up her work with little risks such as leaving small clues and calling cards to prove that these dupes can't even see what's happening when she gives the game away - risks that she finds so pleasing to her egoism that they'll keep getting bigger if she isn't brought into line soon.

Personally, Lei is not entirely without compassion. She just finds it impossible to care for her lessers. This leaves her in a difficult situation. She feels that the Sidereal Exalted are the best group to rule creation and has respect for their methods and achievements, identifying those achievements with her own self-worth. As such, the thought of other Sidereals failing or "giving in" to the newly reborn Solars worries her enough that she will go out of her way to help and protect those them and their schemes even if it rankles her pride. Their failure would be her own and Lei Fang never fails.

Lastly, Lei does have one altruistic element to her personality. She cares deeply about Creation itself, about the natural world and the animals of creation. Playing games and wearing masks all the time is tough and leaves her feeling lost and confused about who she really is. When she gets this feeling, nothing helps more than to travel to the wildernesses of Creation where she can spend time without talking to another soul. Even in Heaven, she prefers the company of gods in the Bureau of nature or the Court of Seasons, where she has made many contacts and even a few friends. In an attempt use this element of her personality to round out her character, when she took a familiar, he subtly arranged for it to be one with a very well developed conscience. For the time being, she is often persuaded by Crooked Diamond's arguments and advice but if she found out her Sifu had manipulated her, her pride would cause her be very angry at them both and leave her much more vulnerable to her own arrogance and ruthlessness.

• some would say all things ends up at the Violet Bier... eventually.

Description

Her natural presence means that most people fail to notice that Lei Fang stands less than five feet tall, a fact perhaps helped by her astonishingly slender physique. Her skin is nut brown and she wears her midnight black hair feather-cut to frame her high-cheek boned face. Each almond-shaped eye is always ringed with a wide circle of white ash. Despite the delicacy of her features there is a sharp harshness to her appearance which is not particularly pleasing to behold.

Her choice of clothing favours blues and violets to match the translucent blue hearthstone worn in a starmetal choker around her slender throat. Cut in elaborate fashions from noble societies across history and Creation her clothing often incorporates a mask or billowing hood. When she carries a weapon, it is always concealed. Lei Fang’s perfumes are always subtle yet all enveloping and favour flowers scents, particularly orchids.

Crooked Diamond, her winged-snake familiar, can often be found curled around her shoulders. It is not unknown for others to comment on her beautiful stole, only to have it animate and hiss in disgust.

History

Born to a threshold noble family in An-Teng as the only daughter of Emerald Lei, advisor to Prince Elseem of the middle kingdom, Lei White Ibis lacked for nothing – neither riches, slaves, nor love from her adoring father. Yet she cared nothing for her wealth, her slaves were mere objects to her and she had nothing but contempt for her father for the way he kow-towed to visiting Dragonblooded nobles. Everything that was freely given had no worth.

With each year her arrogance grew and so it was not long before Lei White Ibis scorned her father in public – an act which changed her life forever. In a rage, her father dismissed all but one of her slaves, confiscated her wealth and confined his daughter to the walled women’s quarters of his home, promising she would not have her life back until she knelt before him in apology. Of course, in her stubbornness, she refused, instead finding a different way to win her freedom. By day she played the part of listless prisoner while by night she escaped the house by switching places with her slave.

During her illicit forays she roamed the city as The White Fang, scourge of the Dragonblooded who despoiled the land. Her exploits grew in daring and scope with each passing moon, from setting up embarrassing coincidences, to thefts, to public speeches about the Realms evil (only to vanish when the guards arrived) to, finally, appearances at banquets and hunting celebrations arranged for Dragonblooded visitors, and with each daring act White Fang’s fame grew, even as Lei White Ibis was forgotten in her walled compound.

The adventures of White Fang came to an end on the night Lei decided on her most daring exploit of all, a deed calculated to turn the tide of opinion against the dragonblooded who humiliated her father and so brought her low while freeing her from the power of the father she despised: she would kidnap herself and frame a circle of visiting Ragaras. Everything was going to plan. She had publicly apologised to her father at a banquet, while catching the eye of Ragara Luren. She had made sure Luren was seen following her away from the celebration before she appeared on a balcony screaming for help. Of course Luren, being nearest ran to intervene, giving the guests below the impression he was chasing the young noble girl. Then it was a simple matter of leading him to where the disfigured and murdered body of her maid lay and simultaneously throwing him a dagger and whipping a curtain away as he caught it, revealing his act to the assembled nobles.

A flawlessly executed plan – but there was one fact for which Lei had not accounted. As he stood there, Ragara Luren merely laughed and admitted the murder with a cool smile and ather than a riot of recrimination, her father and the assembled nobles merely bowed their heads and pretended they had seen nothing while a slave was sent to draw back the curtain.

In her rage, Lei almost leapt from hiding to scream wildly at her pathetic, weak-willed countryfolk. But she did not. Instead, her mind turned to what greater exploits she could arrange to exact revenge. And in that moment she exalted. The hall became filled with a thousand coloured strands as the weave of fate became clear. It took merely a turn her or a twist or knot there and no scheme was needed.

Her sifu allowed his new charge to remain long enough to see the results of her manipulations. To see her father a pauper, the prince in disgrace, the Dragonblooded circle killed, one by one, in a series of hunting ‘accidents’, the palace looted and burned in a riot.

In heaven she took the name Lei Fang for she was now both the murdered noble’s daughter and the arch-manipulator and she wears a circle of ashes taken from the ruins of her prison-palace around each eye as a mark of pride. She has found her destiny.

Expanded Backgrounds

Allies 1: Niapra-Gil, The Loper of Ten-Thousand Leagues, God of predatory pack animals.
Lei Fang came across Niapra-Gil while on a sojourn to the wild forests of the East. She found his quiet confidence and predatory instincts a thrilling match for her own character and during a happy two weeks she ran with his pack and they were lovers.
That relationship ended when she returned to Yu Shan but she still remains on good terms with the god, always inviting him to functions within her bureau were appropriate and occasionally enjoying more private ements together.

Artifact 1 (Hearthstone Amulet)
This fine mesh of starmetal forms a delicate choker to hold Lei’s hearthstone. It was a gift from her Sifu.

Celestial Manse 3 (AirVoidstate/Windhands Gem)
The Orchid Blossom Breeze Pavilion stands, or more properly floats, above a vast tract of rolling meadows, filled with orchids of every colour and species. The Pavilion itself appears as a tower of pink and lavender cloud-stuff formed from the drifting pollen produced by these meadows.
Inside, the tower is more mundane, revealing itself as a series of sparely decorated rooms divided by delicately painted paper screens and simple wooden stairs between levels. The Pavilion’s elemental servants are all wind sprites and other air elementals who mainly remain dematerialised to avoid their mistresses displeasure, except for the major domo, Windfallen Dream, who appears as an orchid filled silhouette, speaks only in whispers and was once the god of an eastern region since enveloped by the wyld.
The Hearthstone is an almost translucent blue diamond.

Familiar 3 (Crooked Diamond)
Crooked Diamond is an Amphitere – a winged snake from the jungles of An-Teng. He has pale blue scales and white feathered wings that deepen to lustrous blue at the tips and his forked tongue is a brilliant yellow. Close-up he gives of a musky honeyed scent which sends rodents into a lethargic state.
While their attachment is deep, Crooked Diamond and Lei have very different outlooks on life, her familiar being a kind, generous and forgiving soul always ready to counsel against his mistresses more ruthless instincts.

Salary 3
Lei Fang receives the standard salary for a member of the Bronze and would accept nothing less.

Savant 1
Her present self-absorption and strong character mean Lei Fang has trouble drawing on her shard’s previous memories.

Sifu 1
Warden is a dour and unapproachable Sifu with a highly developed sense of moral responsibility. He realises his protégé is well-suited to her role but mismatched personalities mean their relationship is entirely one of responsibility and practicality rather than friendship. In fact, he encouraged her to spend much of her training at the Heptagram to avoid having to tutor her himself. Still, he regrets this lack of enthusiasm and was instrumental in arranging for her familiar to be one with great compassion in the hope that it’s attitude would rub off on Lei Fang.

Sorcery 3
Lei Fang has spent several years at the Heptagram under the resplendent destiny of a postgraduate student where she received intensive training and knowledge of several Terrerstrial level spells.

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