Tabby
Derpsichord
[Chao, wearing the newest model of her power armor, the Mark III Essence-Fueled Powersuit, about to punch a hole through someone wearing superheavy plate]
Name: Chao Lingshen
Age: 17
Concept: Tech-Martial Artist
Motivation: Perfect both powersuit and herself
Favorite Quote: "Every pound of force I exert is multiplied by my suit and gauntlets. A strong, well-trained human being can exert two thousand four hundred pounds of force per square inch in a punch, penetrating four and one half inches of wood - I just punched through a fucking stone wall. A kneecap only requires about fifteen pounds per square inch to shatter. Would you like to discover how much force I must exert to break you?"
Intimacies:
+Azure Sky (Severin)
+Powersuit
Personality
-Honor. Integrity. Honesty. Valor. While she is not so easily broken down into four words, those four principles guide Chao's dealings with the world around her.
-Very self-assured, though not quite egotistical; as a result, she -can- be competitive.
-Friendly and charismatic, but very rarely exerts any significant presence; she tends to 'blend in' rather than try to steal the show, and while she can be very persuasive, she rarely puts those talents to work.
-Very, very loyal, but a terrible liar, doubly so with friends - she compensates by simply not being there to have to lie. That is not to say that she is at all honest, just that she usually masks it with charisma or lives under the assumption that it is 'easier to ask forgiveness than permission.'
-Has a sense of humor, though it strays into the realm of odd at times.
-Chao tends to speak informally and bluntly, and while she can restrain herself if needs be, she prefers to avoid situations wherein she must. As such, she very rarely offers to be the spokesman for a group in any capacity, though she has no issue whatsoever making sure her opinions are known. Loudly. Multiple times, if need be to make her point.
-She has a heavy Dragonblooded background and is still to some degree loyal to Ledaal, so not at all down with killing all the DBs like SOME FAILBOATS, but not really attached to the entire race either, and she has no problem at all with the idea of fixing the Realm up a bit, maybe eradicate all the morons dragging it down.
-She has a significant scientific background and is basically a magitechnophile, not to mention a very competent craftsman. While this is less obvious without a workshop, her workmanship is quite literally engraved on her body by the armor she wears.
-Not in the least honorable and has no problem with sneak attacks, but vastly prefers to overwhelm foes with her skill rather than stealth and views single combat as nearly inviolable.
-Has a bit of a hard-on for Lookshy, which she views as a good, small-scale example of what the Realm should be like.
-While Chao does occasionally start fights if she's bored or desperate, she very rarely intentionally provokes anyone to lethal combat and usually makes at least a token effort to avoid it, though she does sabotage herself to some degree in that aspect by generally being on the lookout for a fight regardless.
-Similarly, while she generally doesn't make a point of killing people, she doesn't have too much of a problem with it, particularly if it wasn't someone she liked - in other words, just about anyone other than the approximately five people she could even pretend to give a damn about. It doesn't help that she is determined to be awesome enough to punch a hole through anyone regardless of armor, but she usually aims away from vital spots.
-Chao immensely respects Azure Sky, nearly to the point of idolization. It is a quiet respect, not one she expresses to him or anyone else, but deep-rooted and absolutely genuine nonetheless.
-She tends to alternate between techspeak, normal language, and vague terms rapidly when trying to explain a concept to anyone as a result of how quickly her mind moves as compared to her mouth; even a relatively simple explanation, such as how the basic concepts of her suit works, will range from a highly technical explanation of essence-conducting materials to wild gestures as she talks about how the 'stuff' goes from 'one thing' to the 'other thing.' Chao is aware of this, but has trouble noticing that she's doing it until well into the discussion.
-Knowledge is power. Guard it well.
Backstory
Born to (House Ledaal/small house?), she never actually underwent terrestrial exaltation, but had immense skill in crafting and was a very competent martial artist, so despite being a bit of a disappointment to the house, still had a life open to her and went through school anyways. That was fine with her; she didn't give much of a damn about in-house power struggles or exaltation, just working on her latest project and beating the bejeebus out of people who underestimated a 'mere mortal' of a martial artist. While in school she underwent celestial exaltation as a Solar and ran like a motherfucker, vamoosing from the Blessed Isle faster than anyone's business - judgement might not be her very strongest suit, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that solar + blessed idle = bad. Even though she was a genius.
Her house was less than heartbroken at her going missing, but since it was still possible that she might undergo terrestrial exaltation (she was 16 at the time), and besides, she was useful enough as a craftsman that they figured she would be worth more to them alive than dead. As such, they put a relatively small bounty on her head and didn't worry about it too much. Chao was intelligent, but not a master of going unnoticed, so eventually a bounty hunter who went by the name Azure Sky tracked her down and attacked her when she proved uncooperative and introduced herself as Dragonblooded. Neither could outmatch the other, though he was winning when he eventually realized that she was actually a Solar Exalt, backed off, and explained the situation a bit better to her, along with his goals.
Lonely, impressionable, and interested in helping him achieve his goal of pacifying and saving the Realm, she joined up with him for that general purpose. For the greater good and all that rot, not to mention an excuse to punch people in the face. Plus, hiding out was really getting on her nerves - it was damn hard to find a high-end magitech workshop while being a fugitive from the law and all that.
{Not her brightest moment, but damn if she didn't look good for someone just coming out of a knock-down, drag-out brawl}
Attributes
Strength 4
Dexterity 5
Stamina 4
Charisma 3
Manipulation 1
Appearance 3
Perception 3
Intelligence 5
Wits 3
Abilities
- Martial Arts 5 (Smashfists +3)
- Resistance 5 (Resist Damage +3)
- Stealth 5
- Craft - Air 5
- Craft - Fire 5
- Craft - Magitech 5
- Presence 4
- Lore 4 (Essence +2)
- Athletics 4 (+1 powersuit)
Awareness 2
Advantages
Essence: 2
Personal Essence: 12
Peripheral Essence: 29 (23 perma-comitted)
Willpower: 6
Valor: 3
Temperance: 3
Compassion: 2
Conviction: 1
Virtue Flaw: Foolhardy Contempt
Backgrounds
Artifact 2 - Orihalcum Powerfists: spd5, acc2, dmg8, def4, rate3, piercing. 2 attune cost
While they are not technically part of the suit, they are always worn together. The counterpart to the general bonuses offered by the rest of the suit, the gloves are entirely combat oriented, fairly small and unimpressive black gloves at first glance, but easily charged with enough essence to blow a hole straight through a man in superheavy plate - something that Chao finds a certain degree of perverse pleasure in doing.
Chao originally used normal smashfists to train with, before deciding that their excessive bulk and atrocious inability to match the powersuit meant that they needed to be refitted. She went through two full sets of artifact smashfists and a dozen mock workups before managing to come up with a viable solution in the drastically more modernized and pliable current version, which she has dubbed 'powerfists,' despite their similarity in function to smashfists, due to both her pride in her worksmanship and as a literal reference to their method of function; rather than simply being ornate gauntlets, they are heavily fueled with essence from the suit which regulates and controls the force they bring to bear, all while allowing them to be used as little more than a odd-looking fashion statement. As such, while any close inspection could quickly reveal them as powerfists, a cursory inspection would likely leave the interested party thinking that they were little more than a well-made set of gloves.
Artifact 4 - Orihalcum Powersuit: 7 L/B soak, +1 L/B hardness, +2acc, +2def, +1dmg, +1 Athletics. 10 attune cost
The magnum opus of her magna opera, Chao's powersuit is quite simply the single most advanced thing she has yet constructed, a suit of clothing and light armor that, rather than hindering her movements, actually enhances them. While it does take a certain degree of self-control to keep from crushing someone's hand instead of shaking it or shattering a teacup rather than holding it, Chao is more than happy to trade off the minor downsides of the suit for its impressive, generally combat-oriented boni. That is not to say that she is satisfied with it, however; it is already on its third version, and once she manages to locate a suitable workshop, she will inevitably upgrade it once more with ideas she has come up with over the past year or two.
In action, it is a stark contrast of black and white, the suit itself being mostly white while the light plates that contribute the armor bonus, not to mention being the thickest essence pathways, counter the otherwise-dreary hues. Of some note are the crimson striping that runs across it in a few parts; during combat, those lines glow brightly as an indication of the sheer essence being channeled through them. On a related note, while the suit runs perfectly well off of her natural essence flow and requires no further expenditure, it does require a fairly large amount of juice to actually work, and will not attune to anyone other than Chao herself.
Artifact 2 - Orihalcum Hearthstone Bracers: +2dmg, +3DDV. 2 attune cost
While the powersuit and powerfists certainly have their bonuses, they do have certain downsides. The most obvious, of course, is that Chao's forearm would snap like brittle spaghetti the instant she made contact with a punch give the sheer force behind each blow. Enter her bracers, slim, similarly dark-hued equipment that not only reroutes the force throughout the armor to aid in other blows, but even negates a certain degree of it entirely - as needed - so neither her arm nor her suit overload. Much like the rest of the suit, they are most distinguishable by the dull red line that snakes across them, which assumes an angry crimson glow when enough essence is being consciously channeled through the bracers - in other words, during combat.
Artifact 1 - White Treatise of Sorcery
Chao is not an accomplished sorcerer. She may have an unusually immense understanding of Essence, its flow and creation, but she has no idea how to work it without the aid of technology and a bit of luck, hence the 'techpriest' appellation. On the other hand, she is fascinated by the concept of sorcery, from its innumerable uses in crafting and combat to the simple raw power at a sorcerer's fingertips and the possibilities for improving her own understanding of essence through sorcery, so she has possessed a copy of the White Treatise for some time. It has not been of much use to her yet, but she optimistically looks forward to the day that her understanding of the occult improves to the point that she can begin to learn some of the magic held within.
Artifact 1 - Daric's Laws of Magic
Some of the concepts that Chao used in the creation of her powersuit came from the formulae and concepts presented by this text, and she fully expects to find and come up with yet more if she can only master it. When she gets around to actually learning sorcery it will be yet more useful in understanding the underlying concepts, but she has yet to reach anything near the mastery of either the occult or her own essence to reach that step as of yet.
Merits/Flaws
Merit - Double-Jointed; +1 die on grapple rolls, +1 die on all athletics-based Dexterity rolls
Flaw - Wanted (1pt) - Chao has a bounty placed on her, and while House Ledaal has yet to make much of an effort to inspire anyone to collect on it, it does restrict her from approaching the Blessed Isle - not that she would anyways - or ports that directly and often access it.
Flaw - Code of Honor (1pt) - While she has a dubious set of morals much of the time, Chao has serious difficulty lying to anyone she trusts enough. Everyone else is carte blanche, though; her morality only extends as far as those close to her and no one else.
Charms
- Second Presence Excellency
2motes per 1 success
- Irresistable Salesman Spirit
doubles successes on presence/charisma rolls, 2motes
- Second Martial Arts Excellency
2motes per 1 success
- Iron-Arm Block
+8 PDV for 3m
- Leaping Mantis Technique
+8 JB/distance to jump for 3m
- Mantis Form
+8B/L soak, parry lethal, no onslaught penalties, inflict lethal damage (6motes perma-comitted)
- Easily Overlooked Presence Method
invisible outside of combat
- Graceful Crane Stance
auto-balance, no balance penalties (3motes permacomitted)
- Durability of Oak Meditation
hardness = 8, 3motes
- Iron Skin Concentration
Chao's [res+stam] vs [attacker's essence]; if I win, negate damage, otherwise +8B/L soak (2m)
Stats
Join Battle: 14 (22 with LMT charm)
Smashfists: Accuracy: 17, Damage 14B/L Piercing
Parry DV: 10 (18 with IABcharm)
Dodge DV: 6
Lethal Soak: 16(MF)
Bashing Soak: 21(MF)
