Difference between revisions of "Shou Lushan"
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<div style="padding: 7px 4px;font-size:13px; color:#26212B;font-family:Georgia;">Shou Lushan is a short, slightly overweight Miqo'Te, with slate-gray skin, and black hair, highlighted with orange. Shou generally appears frazzled, but not unsanitary, head and tail hair shaggy and mussed, and her choice of clothing is generally. Her body hosts a large number of scars, none deliberate, but several modified for either magical, or ritual purposes, with the scar tissue embedded with deeper rents that form magical arrays. Her left ear bends over about halfway up, and doesn't always keep up with her right as they pivot towards sound. She favors dark cosmetics for everyday wear, including black lipstick, and a large stripe of charcoal painted across her eyes to divert some of the light from the sun. Though she makes extensive efforts to conceal it, Shou bears a coiling, abstract brand on the back of her neck about six ilms in diameter. It's a deep, black rent, perpetually damp, and clearly magical in nature, both by its' effects on her Aether, and the fact that it tends to <i>squirm</i> when observed. | <div style="padding: 7px 4px;font-size:13px; color:#26212B;font-family:Georgia;">Shou Lushan is a short, slightly overweight Miqo'Te, with slate-gray skin, and black hair, highlighted with orange. Shou generally appears frazzled, but not unsanitary, head and tail hair shaggy and mussed, and her choice of clothing is generally. Her body hosts a large number of scars, none deliberate, but several modified for either magical, or ritual purposes, with the scar tissue embedded with deeper rents that form magical arrays. Her left ear bends over about halfway up, and doesn't always keep up with her right as they pivot towards sound. She favors dark cosmetics for everyday wear, including black lipstick, and a large stripe of charcoal painted across her eyes to divert some of the light from the sun. Though she makes extensive efforts to conceal it, Shou bears a coiling, abstract brand on the back of her neck about six ilms in diameter. It's a deep, black rent, perpetually damp, and clearly magical in nature, both by its' effects on her Aether, and the fact that it tends to <i>squirm</i> when observed. | ||
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<i><b>Note:</b> Aetherial analysis, such as through Sharlayan goggles, reveals the brand on the back of her neck seems to be draining her aether towards some location. The stream is thin and sufficiently obfuscated enough that it is virtually impossible to determine where it's going. Shou's aether appears otherwise normal for a healthy adult Miqo'Te despite this affliction, even if it's a little chumpy for a Thaumaturge.</i></div> | <i><b>Note:</b> Aetherial analysis, such as through Sharlayan goggles, reveals the brand on the back of her neck seems to be draining her aether towards some location. The stream is thin and sufficiently obfuscated enough that it is virtually impossible to determine where it's going. Shou's aether appears otherwise normal for a healthy adult Miqo'Te despite this affliction, even if it's a little chumpy for a Thaumaturge.</i></div> | ||
Revision as of 11:40, 30 December 2016
[edit]
Shou Lushan is a career Thaumaturge and archaeologist for the Pathfinders' Free Mercenary Company, where she serves as head of Aetherial research and development.
Shou Lushan is a short, slightly overweight Miqo'Te, with slate-gray skin, and black hair, highlighted with orange. Shou generally appears frazzled, but not unsanitary, head and tail hair shaggy and mussed, and her choice of clothing is generally. Her body hosts a large number of scars, none deliberate, but several modified for either magical, or ritual purposes, with the scar tissue embedded with deeper rents that form magical arrays. Her left ear bends over about halfway up, and doesn't always keep up with her right as they pivot towards sound. She favors dark cosmetics for everyday wear, including black lipstick, and a large stripe of charcoal painted across her eyes to divert some of the light from the sun. Though she makes extensive efforts to conceal it, Shou bears a coiling, abstract brand on the back of her neck about six ilms in diameter. It's a deep, black rent, perpetually damp, and clearly magical in nature, both by its' effects on her Aether, and the fact that it tends to squirm when observed.
Note: Aetherial analysis, such as through Sharlayan goggles, reveals the brand on the back of her neck seems to be draining her aether towards some location. The stream is thin and sufficiently obfuscated enough that it is virtually impossible to determine where it's going. Shou's aether appears otherwise normal for a healthy adult Miqo'Te despite this affliction, even if it's a little chumpy for a Thaumaturge.
Shou Lushan was probably born to the Lushan, a tribe of Keepers known locally for banditry tribe in Wellwick Wood, southern Thanalan. Due to a particularly intense forest fire during the dry season, the tribe dissolved, and she was dropped off as an infant by an unknown individual, likely after a long journey, at Arrzaneth Ossuary, likely mistaken for the seat of a more domestic, monastic religion by a foreign Miqo'Te. Unwilling, or unable to raise Shou, a priest of Nald'Thal passed the child off to Skinned Tree, a Hellsguard woman known for taking in lost children and running a nearby tavern known as Chanters' Rest. Named “Shou” after the word stitched onto her blanket (probably stolen, because, y'know, parents were bandits), Shou grew up dicking around the restaurant, later being pressed into service under Skinned Tree washing dishes, bussing tables, and doing general gruntwork. Chanters' Rest was originally built to offer pilgrims and religiously minded leyfolk inexpensive shelter in their ascetic lives (Skinned Tree herself was an ardent devotee of Nald'Thal), but the fact that it was built near Pearl Lane and offered terrible, but filling food and a cheap bunk meant that by the time Shou showed up, it was a total dive. While staying there, her Keeper nature was quickly exoticised into 'savagery', leading to her being the star of stunts like midnight sneak-outs, stunt rat-eating shows, and at least one attempted joy ride on a Chocobo. While those with a talent for cooking or tending bar were permitted to stay, Skinned Tree kicked out all of her adoptive children when they reached fourteen summers, whether they were willing or not. Shou leapt at the chance, and her eagerness was rewarded with hardship. Eager, Shou immediately applied to the Thaumaturge's guild, and was soundly rejected after her Aether Reserves were found insufficient, and her mind unsuitably disciplined to even begin training. Shou took this hard, but refused to return to Chanters' Rest, bunking up in the Pearl Lane slums with another, older scamp, likewise formerly in Skinned Tree's care, the Seeker T'Zhenha Gao. Zhena made her living as a modestly successful dancer and escort, catering largely to a clientele of small-time crooks and made men in Ul'Dah's ubiquitous and varied criminal organizations.
Shou spent less than a moon and a half trying to make an honest living. After an argument with her 'manager', Zhenha fired from her job dancing, she and Shou solicited an offer from one of Zhenha's former clients, Jijirati Ruruzati. ringleader of a band of smugglers known as the Pilotfish.
The Pilotfish specialized in smuggling small, valuable contraband in the nooks and crannies of otherwise legitimate airships, often with a “runner” packed in there with it. The runner would smuggle the merchandise out, while a “face” distracted any bystanders that might get wise to the grift. Joining together, Shou and Zhenha were almost exclusively partnered with each other. Shou, with her small size and impressive nocturnal eyesight was a natural runner, and Zhenha, with her disarming, effortless speechcraft, was an adroit face. With their natural chemistry, and a couple Turns of practice, Shou and Zhenha quickly became among Ruruzati's favored operatives. During the voyages, in the dark of the hold, Shou often read or tinkered with some of the contraband, inspiring what would become her passion for history, archaeology, and conspiracy. Her career in crime ended when a run went bad. After an inside man ratted them out, Zhenha was busted on the spot in the airship landing of Ul'Dah, and promptly arrested. Shou, meanwhile, ditched the contraband (five-hundred-thousand Gil of Yafaemi scrolls, and bolted out into the windows in a daring-- perhaps idiotic-- escape, clambering down Hustings' Strip in the dead of night. Avoiding immediate identification, she was quickly spotted and followed by a detachment of Brass Blades sweeping the area for anyone who matched her description. For the first time in her life, Shou was absolutely certain she was going to die. Crying, running at full tilt, making sputtering apologies to Nald'Thal, she ran, quite literally, into Sagacious Ziz. Sagacious Ziz was the Hellsguard leader of the Sagacian Band, a local mercenary company, known mostly for their recruitment policy: they only hire recruits whose lives had been personally saved by one among their number. With Shou at his feet, a sobbing, pitiful, and sputtering pile of requests for mercy and a fair trial, Ziz intervened between her and the Blades, identified himself as “The Sagacious Ziz” and deflected their questions, fabricating a thorough, seemingly unassailable litany of her accomplishments as his loyal page and secretary. When they relented, he delivered Shou and ultimatum, "You are smarter than this. If you want to put yourself to honest use, come along." Shou pledged her loyalty to him on the spot, cutting all ties with Ruruzati and the Pilotfish. Ruruzati is likely still calculating punitive interest on the debt he owes her for the missing scrolls. She was escorted out of the city, and began what would become a mercenary career.
Like the rest of the members of the band, Shou owed Sagacious her life, and with the onus of that debt on her head, she undertook formal training as an Thaumaturge under the band, apprenticed to the Sagacians' head mage, the Highlander Maelzel. In the three turns that she served with them, Shou amassed, by all verifiable accounts, a highly decorated tenure among the Sagacians as a combat caster, and by the time of the Garlean invasion, was a Journeyman mage in her own right. Like the rest of the members of the band, Shou owed Sagacious her life, and with the onus of that debt on her head, she undertook formal training as an Thaumaturge under the band, apprenticed to the Sagacians' head mage, the Highlander Maelzel. In the three turns that she served with them, Shou amassed, by all verifiable accounts, a highly decorated tenure among the Sagacians as a combat caster, and by the time of the Garlean invasion, was a promising journeyman mage in her own right. This came to an end when Sagacious volunteered his entire company, gratis, to serve at Carteneau Flats. Shou was fielded as part of the Sagacian's magical artillery in her typical position. Stationed on a hill just short of the thick of the fighting. When Dalamud ruptured. A pylon from Dalamud plunged a few hundred yalms away, decimating it with the airburst. Shou reckons she hit her head at some point during this-- her memories get fuzzy and selective, but, for the second time in her life, Shou was absolutely certain she was going to die. Bahamut emerged and scorched the world shortly thereafter, and Shou died of severe burns and catastrophic trauma shortly thereafter, only to be intercepted before her aether departed her body by Phrekyos, a sinister Voidsent lurking around the battlefield for desperate souls looking for a second chance at life. Shou accepted, and witnessed her Aether being reconstructed before her very eyes by Phrekyos' dark machinations, with the addition of a brand at the nape of her neck, a perpetual feed to Phrekyos' own bloated corpus. Phrekyos made his terms clear: the brand will kill her, but may be forestalled, perhaps indefinitely, by bolstering her Aether, most reliably through challenge, trial, and victory.
Cursed and traumatized, Shou returned to Ul'Dah amid the chaos of Post-calamity reconstruction; greeted not as a war-hero, but just another refugee. She returned to the Sagacious Band headquarters as the few other survivors trickled in, maimed. Sagacious was not among them. Without his leadership, Sagacious company disbanded, and for the first time in her life, Shou was truly alone, save for the fiend that haunted her dreams. For a few moons, she despaired. She tried to fall back on petty theft to feed herself, but without a support network of like-minded brigands, the rewards were minor, and the thrills hollow; she felt guilty. Spurred by a sense of global responsibility she'd unwittingly developed fighting in defense of the world, Shou resolved to help the reconstruction effort, sustaining herself on the meagre food rations and beggars' stipend offered for eight bells of digging, lifting and hammering, to set the bones of the city's back into place so it could heal. Carteneau hadn't changed her entirely. Honest, hard work still sucked ass. She ditched the job within a sennight, and used the meagre pay she earned to buy herself a rickety stave, a bowl of Eft dumplings, and cart-fare out of the city, setting her mind to adventure. Shou spent four summers freelancing as an Adventurer, defining herself beyond the rabble as a specialist: a freelance archaeologist, able to not only recover, but identify the significance of artifacts that either plunged from orbit during the Calamity, or emerged as a result of it. The profit margins were slim, the competition fierce, and the prestige nonexistent. She emerged from this period with an abiding love for Allag and Mhach. Combining their teachings with her background in Rhalgrite Thaumaturgy, Shou emerged as something of an arcane polymath, utterly convinced not only of the splendor of the ancients, but also of the value in applying their wisdom to modern perspective. After all, doing so had saved her life innumerable times in the dank depths of forgotten civilizations. After four years, however, Shou found herself broke and lonely, with Phrekyos' brand ever burning on the back of her neck, she needed money, friends, and cooperation to move beyond tavern ale and bad deals. An answer came in the name of Eddard Holt. At the time, a grunt serving the Pathfinders Free Company in Ul'Dah under the wise leadership of Chief Neverfar and Ashen Everyman, Shou signed up eagerly. If nothing else, She'd have a couch to crash on, and a food supply not hinging entirely on flinging herself fearlessly towards evil for rent money. Packing up her few possessions in a rucksack, she signed on.
Owing perhaps to her numerous and bizarre experiences throughout her life, Shou comes across as a bizarre, but committed individual. Devoted to her Company, and solidarity within it, Shou values principles of honor, harmony, and generosity. Unlike most scholars of antiquity, her studies into the-- often apocalyptic-- mistakes that have defined the vanished civilizations of Eorzean history gives her hope for the future, instead of despair. She's a driven idealist, placing trust in the goodness of people, and answers with spite and vindictive force when that trust is betrayed. A trained mercenary, she defers to her superiors, and sees value and dignity in rank and title, but generally regards authority as an abstract with contempt. Literary, and driven by scholarly knowledge, she regards endeavours of the mind and soul with enthusiasm, and has a tendency to gush about metaphysical mechanics and thought to an often baffled audience, even quoting her own translations of centuries-old philosophical esoterica at length. However, despite her intellectual nature, her typical manner of speaking is coarse and direct, and tact seems to be a secondary concern, and often considered as an afterthought.
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