Hanari Rua (Final)

[Pretzelparty]

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria

 

Name: Rua Hanari

 

Sex: Female

 

Age: Young Mare

 

Species: Kirin

 

Eye Color: Bright orange

 

Coat: Rua's coat is mostly a very off-white grey, her scales and draconic features being a darker grey as well.

 

Mane/Tail: Wears her mane in a style that would be considered somewhat outdated in Neighpon. One could easily describe it as a type of bowlcut with asmall cut tuft of a mane that pokes on top almost like a stem. Her horns are fairly long but groomed and filed regularly.

 

Physique: Despite appearing rather small, Rua has a well toned and trained build: The type one would associate with speed, agility, and finesse.

 

Residence: None

 

Occupation: Rua has no steady occupation, mostly identifying herself as a Ronin: A masterless Samurai. She tends to wander all across the lands, honing her skills in order to live up to the code she admires... she has however had to take a large amount of oddjobs in order to make ends meet. She has had experience as a farmhoof, a waitress, and even a delivery mare.

 

Cutie Mark:

 

A swirling, wisplike ball of magical smoke.

 

When Rua was young and only just started following the code left for her by the stranger, She and her mother had run into a recurring problem. One day they made their way to the closest town nearby the forest (which was still quite a distance off) and there was a Qilin there who told her that he was camping on this route and if she wanted to pass she'd need to pay him a toll. The qilin seemed a bit older than her mother and when she tried to pass by him he was able to stop her with some magic he exhaled from his maw.

 

Rather than take the offense lying down, Rua got up and challenged him to a duel to allow them to pass if she won with her own magic could subdue him... and promptly lost. This wasn't the last time she saw that rude stallion however, as she came back the next day determined to fight him once again... and again lost.

 

Each day before she came to challenge him again she would train her breath through meditation and exercises as best she could. The attempts to beat the stallion continued for a week and one day she again had managed to lose. This time though the stranger was impressed by her as in their little spat she'd manage to actually bruise his leg: not badly, but enough that it was visible. Out of respect for his little opponent he agreed to stop being in their way and told her to seek him out again someday. That day as she laid in the grass breathless as that qilin walked off... she sat buck up and noticed a mark emblazoned on her plot.

 

Portrait: 

 

Unique Traits:

 

Breath Magic Prodigy: Rua has a natural talent for the magical breath of the native born creatures of Long Guo. She regularly trains it and hones it through her meditations and training alone. She is entirely self taught , however and as a result only knows some very simple spells that can conceivably assist her: Most of them she learned from the book on Bushido the stranger left her. Enchanting her equipment with her breath, she can strengthen the  threads on her kimono to make it tough as iron, give her blunt training sword an invisible cutting edge, strengthen her body, breathe fire, and able to levitate things with her breath magic so long as her respiration is un-impeded.

 

Quick Study: Rua learns things very quickly. In regards to her magic she is very good at learning new spells when she has enough practice.

 

Ninja and Samurai Training: Since She was a filly, her clan trained her well in martial arts. From her years of training she is a very capable combatant with tools she is familiar with and even keeps one of her old favorites at her side at all times thanks to it’s versatility: A kusarigama. In her travels she is perfectly fine using her old wooden training sword, regularly enchanted by her own breath to be sturdy enough to combat normal steel.

 

History:

 

A time ago there was a mare who was part of a secretive ninja clan in Neighpon's most infamous woods. This mare took a great and clever warrior as her lover, but circumstances drove them apart: Him needing to find his destiny and her devoted to her sisters in the clan. In the end the mother bore him a daughter and that daughter was Rua... at least that is what the little kirin had been told growing up.

 

The part about the secret ninja clan was true as she can attest. Being raised up in clan Aokigahara in the Forest of the Forsaken was far from easy. Ninja training in one of the most inhospitable areas of Neighpon could never be a trot in the park. Still she wound up excelling and working hard to understand the necessary skills in order to excel at what was likely to be her trade in the future. Even with all the training that occurred, she and her mother would often leave the forest. To this day Rua isn't fully sure why they would venture out so much more often then the other mothers and daughters in the clan. Deep down Rua suspected it might have been a hope from her mother to see the warrior she told her daughter about walk down the road, but she always said it was so she could socialize better since she'd heard one of the fillies in the clan had fainted when put only a few inches away from a colt when she went on her first mission.

 

The trips outside the forest were very varied in the types of kirin, ryuma, and ponies. One trip to the mountain wound up being possibly the most important day of her life. A simple trip to retrieve an herb was made into a deadly night when a blizzard blew in. Rua and her mother had become lost in a vast landscape of white. The end of their story seemed like a certainty for the small family, but a stranger in the snow retrieved them just after they had passed out. They spoke softly, had a … curious mane style and had an old sword at their side. This stranger nursed them both back health. With the filly to keep her spirits up they wove tales of a samurai, a traveler who wrote the wrongs and fought caribou in ages past... by the glint in her eyes he gave her book on the ways of Neighponese samurai code. ON the morning when both she and her mother had shown to be healthy once again, he had left only that book at the mouth of cave they'd rested in: a sentence circled in it's pages.

 

“Righteousness is it's own reward.”

 

In her admiration, Rua began to style her mane in shape of that of the wanderer who saved her and her mother's life that day... and wound up taking offense to any slight against the style.

 

Around this time she began to diverge a bit from the clan, feeling as though the way of the ninja... while not evil was not the way she wished to follow. Instead she focused on training her breath and skills with the tools of their trade but not so much the philosophy of sneakiness and striking in the darkness. Her gradual gravitation away from her clan's primary methodology, while not severing her bond with her sisters did weaken it. She grew to enjoy her trips to the outside more and more. On one trip to a nearby town she wound up meeting a curious colt who she only knew as Ishi-kun. He was a strange Kirin who was accompanied by armed guards but he apparently decided to try and talk to her after she'd scurried away when some group of fillies and colts chased after her when she beat them in a game of horseshoes. Ishi came to her defense, and after she finally was able to get a word out past her initial nervousness of having to say thank you to both a stranger and a colt... the two wound up spending most of the day together exploring the town and evading those guards. Eventually the two had to part ways and all that Rua could say was that she hoped she'd see him again someday.

 

Days turned into months turned into years and Rua's desire to travel only grew as those increments of time did pass. She only took a small pack of supplies, a wooden training sword, a simple robe and her self taught breath magic with her. Her sisters took her to the edge of the forest and she bid her mother goodbye, promising to return and visit.

 

So her travels began and continue. Rua's wandering has many purposes for her. She believes that her experiences on the open road will help her grow as a person beyond her talents, yet she also hopes that each hoofstep on this long road may bring her to the face she encountered growing up... and perhaps the one that is partly responsible for her being born.

 

Neighpon has been her primary wandering ground but she has begun work to try and travel beyond...

 

Personality:

 

Above all else, Rua aspires to embody the virtues of the way of the samurai. She strives to be kind, loyal, dependable, and willing to defend or hope those in need in whatever way she can. While on the outside she seems as calm as a still pond, inside she is fiercely devoted and has a remarkable persistence that pushes her to continue her travels. There are occasional lapses in her almost overly polite nature in which even she can be pushed from anything that would try the patience of anypony. Her most vulnerable moments can usually be seen when she is truly feeling the weight of her travels bearing down on her or if she finds she has been deceived. One of the most notable outbursts of her inner passions would seem to occur anyone disrespects, belittles, or insults her manestyle: due to the significance of the one who inspired it in her life, she treats such remarks as gravely as if someone had spit on the legacy of her entire family. Those who have spoken ill of it know now that her reaction varies from a calm restrained fury to an out and out rage that a caribou would envy... and usually once the damage is done she will apologize profusely for her actions and work to pay off any debts owed if reasonable.

 

In regards to odd quirks, Rua has a very vivid imagination. Often times in tense situations she will imagine various ways in which a situation can go and ponder on the ramifications of the actions she could take.. only to be jarred from her trance by a frustrated 'hey!' from whoever had been talking to her.

 

Due to her upbringing by a secluded all female ninja clan in a forest, Rua has little no experience with members of the opposite sex. She is completely capable of speaking to them but occasionally will let a compliment slip, and can be incredibly nervous especially if they are around her age and are physically adjacent to her.

 

Perhaps taking her philosophical following of the samurai, Rua has adopted a somewhat archaic way of speaking in her native tongue as well as Equestrian. At the end of sentences she will almost always end certain statements with “That it is” or some variation thereof. This has seemingly become second nature to her as even when members of her own culture say the formalness of her speech is unnecessary she will continue with this verbal tic even after trying to restrain herself.

Rua Can also be rather critical of herself, when she makes a slight against someone she will often go beyond what is necessary if she considers it her fault. One of the reasons she currently only carries a wooden sword instead of a real one is because she does not believe she truly deserves to wield one yet.

 

Summary:

 

Rua is typically a calm and polite mare of Neighpon. Raised in an infamous forest by a secretive clan of ninja she chose a more honorable path in that of the samurai after one saved her and her mother's lives in a bad blizzard. Now on her own with only a momento from home, a training sword, a rucksack, and some basic creature comforts to her name she travels the land: trying to grow as a warrior and a person.

 

Her skills with many different types of weapons and the breath magic of east make her quite a force to be reckoned with, but she is not the type to show it off as that would go heavily against the code she follows. Her time on the road has granted her more than a few skills that are useful for a few occasions and most of the time her biggest worry is finding a place to sleep and some food to eat.

 

[Blueblood]