Create a Character Challenge #69

K

Kitti

Guest
Original poster
This challenge is one about making characters based on the setting that they're destined for and also just a fun romp with one of the most creative aspects of roleplaying: character making. Based on the image posted, my challenge is for you to create a character for that setting and post it here!
This week's image:
momajiyama-ryokan.jpg
Feel free to utilize this character sheet or create your own:
Name:
Gender:
Age:
Species:
Family:
Personality:
History:
Current Goal/Purpose:
Appearance:
 
Name:
Sakurako Song
Gender:
Female
Age:
19 years
Species:
Human Wujen (Asian Sorceress)
Family:
Lives with her father and his two wives, and the combined total of seven children. Of which she is a middle child from her father's second wife.
Personality:
Sakurako is a quiet child, though not without having her moments of loudness. Like the element she calls friend, she can be at times like the calm, still pool, and yet at other times, the raging sea or the gurgling brook. To her three younger siblings she is caretaker and teller of stories, to her older siblings, an annoyance that was hard to catch.​
Sakurako has a mischievous streak in her that leads her to using her skills for....less respectable hobbies according to her parents. A sibling could wake up to a cold wet bed, or find a fish staring at them on their pillow. Still, she does have discipline, once she sets her mind on something, she sticks with it. She is an avid practitioner of her craft and spends a couple hours a day by the courtyard pool practicing.​
History:
It started with an adventurer by the name of Cheng Li. He was like the typical adventurer, off wandering roads unknown in search of glory, honor and riches. He fought in many battles against man and beast alike and he even fought in a war!
Somewhere along the way in all that fun, he did an incredibly stupid thing. He tickled a sleeping dragon. No, really he did! It was a big dragon, of the most ugly and putrid yellow hide Cheng had ever seen. You might be wondering if he had lost his head, and indeed he wondered the same thing. All of this to rescue a damsel in distress? He really ought to find who ever started that and teach them what it meant to be "in distress".
But there was a woman in need of help and his moral code said he couldn't leave her there. At least he learned that dragons do indeed like ketchup, he just didn't stick around to find out if it liked a side of human to go with that ketchup. Anyways, long story short, he rescued the lady and discovered that she was one of the emperor's beloved daughters.
Low and behold, he had it made. An adventurer's dream come true! Quicker than you can say "bless you!" he found himself with not one, but two wives, ennobled (and the most important) with land and holdings! It goes with out saying that Cheng retired happily from adventuring and began to work on a lesser dream of his. That of a family. After all, someone had to listen to his tales. Thus was Sakurako born, the first daughter of Cheng's beloved second wife. Here did Cheng's story end, and Sakurako's began.
Sakurako lead a rather sheltered life compared to that of her father's but that was okay for her. At the tender age of ten months old, her parents received a rather wet wake up call one night. Sakurako was hungry, and no one was getting up! So in her crying, the water in the air began to coalesce into a watery ball above her parents bed. I don't need to say any more on this I believe.​
So she grew in a happy family, the first in over three centuries to show power of any kind in the long line of Cheng's family history. Her mothers said that no one in their families had ever been recorded having the ability to manipulate the elements. Though she was the first, Sakurako was by no means the last, two of her younger siblings showed the same ability.​
Current Goal/Purpose:
To master her abilities to a point where her mother and father will let her go explore the world.
Appearance:
Coming in at a petit five foot and two inches Sakurako is rather proud of her willowy frame. Hands and feet are a dainty size as is fitting for a young lady and her nails are well kept. Her hair is a midnight black and is kept long, it is often coiled in elaborate knots with decorative hair pins keeping it all together. Almond eyes, a small nose, and lips quick to smile adorn a pale face often free of powders and paint. She prefers loose clothing in colors of blue, though she does have a wardrobe full of both plain and simple kimonos and elaborate ones.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kitti
  • Name - Ippinu
  • Gender - Male
  • Age - 14
  • Species - Human
  • Family & History - Nomads. Merchants. The front of the wagon train thronged with spotted, striped, double-coated curs. Ippinu was born in the back of a shaking and heaving cart. And then his mother climbed down to keep driving the mules. He grew without siblings, without the brush of loving fingertips - just sighs, smacks, screams - endless impatience. And always the dogs. At ten, after crossing rivers, mountains, paddies, piss-pots, they arrive in the Golden City, the capitol of their fair and forested Eastern nation. There, the monks see Ippinu for what he is - a fur-changer, one who speaks to dogs, and eventually, other animals - and they buy him for less than the eldest aged cheese on the cart.
  • Personality - Contrary to his harsh upbringing, Ippinu is a sweet boy, aching to please, much like the dogs that were his only friends. Also, he is a born haggler. Little wonder, considering his rounded eyes and how they peered past the curtains; he listened to his father stamp and swear over the least copper. Thrifty. Mischievous. Quick of wit, leg, and bite. Loyal to a fault. The monks want to meditate his desires out of him - how is he supposed to speak to the birds when his desires are so heavy?
  • Current Goal/Purpose - The forests are dying. The monks need him to speak to the trees, to the fruit bats, the larvae in the roots. With the forests, the animals - the hunters come back empty-handed - the strain on the fields is too much. The people are starving. It is a great calamity, and no one knows the cause.
  • Appearance - Tan as a chestnut. Short. Broad across the chest, but quick. Grecian nose. Tight brown curls before they are shaved off. Golden hoops in his ears and nose. When speaking to an animal, his face shifts and changes into an animal face - but with lips for speaking. He wears un-dyed linen pants and goes shirtless. Every animal he speaks to is tattooed on his back.
The monks have given him the temple pool as a space to clear his mind for the task ahead. He must learn to converse with the fish.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: Kitti
Name: Hua Li-xian​
Gender: Male​
Age: 43​
Species: Human​
Family: Father, mother, three living brothers, three deceased, seven sisters, all married. Is a bachelor himself.​
Personality: Strong-willed, moody, is compelled to help the weak, somewhat petulant, extremely sensitive about his honor and that of his family and country.​
History: General Li-Xian was once a merchant from the small state of Qu, bordered on the north by Wang and on the west by Tian. The south and east were already in anarchy, and Qu was growing stronger every year, conquering and pillaging. When Li-xian met Bu-ying the scholar and Nong-ta the wandering monk, the three set forth to right the wrongs of their town, and soon of their state, garnering the attention and admiration of the citizens of Qu and bringing down first corrupt merchants, then aristocrats, then nobles, then local warlords in their quest to fix the world. Along the way they make both enemies and friends, including the savage warlord Tang-yao and the alchemist-doctor Yu-bao. Bu-ying becomes their spokesman and leader, a king in the making, having the favor of Heaven bestowed upon him. Nong-ta becomes a formidable fighter and warrior, and Li-Xian rises in popularity to control an army of peasants and townsmen in defense of the state of Qu. By wit and luck, the Heavenly Trio manage to win battles, gather land and people to themselves, and raise Qu into an increasingly mighty empire against Tian and Wang.​
Current Goal/Purpose: Li-Xian is visiting the home of the sorceress Fei-chi, who holds sway over a formidable demon army, in order to convince her to turn her powers against Wang and Tian. He was forced to brave treacherous mountain paths and harrowing canyons, as well as ingenious traps and an army of shadow-warriors just to knock at the gates of the sorceress's home, but he is wiling to endure almost anything for the sake of his friends and of the state of Qu.​
Appearance: Tall, muscular man with high cheekbones and pitch-black hair, ruddy complexion, long and narrow beard tucked in his robes, long hair in a bun, almond-shaped eyes with eyeliner, metal and leather armor emblazoned with dragons and the symbols of Qu and the Heavenly Trio, several swords, dust and grime and sweat from his trials, scars from battle​