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Yan Lanmo [ready]


Windwright

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Roleplay Type: World of Equestria

Name: Yan Lanmo ( 蓝魔) which roughly translates to Blue Magic Flame. His given name is Lanmo(1)

Sex: Male

Age: Drake

Species: Qillin

Eye colour: Ocean Blue

Coat: Lapis Lazuli, with brilliant orange scale-plates along his belly and snout.

Mane/Tail: Dodger blue, he keeps his mane  in a long braid, held in place by crimson ribbons. His tail ruff, tuft, and the tufts at his knees and ankles fade from dodger blue to a burnt violet, then out into the same orange as his scales.

Physique: Like all Qilin, Lanmo is built lither than most ponies. Compared to other Qilin, he has what might be considered an average build. He’s losing weight from what was likely a pudgy build at one point, trading fat for muscle the long, slow way of simply increasing his daily exercise and having less ready access to food. He still holds himself with the timid posture of a scholar.

Residence: Originally the Qilin capital city, more recently nomadic since the loss of his balloon.

Occupation: Breath-Scholar

Cutie Mark: A stylised fire emerging from a cloud, all in crimson

Unique Traits: He has two bone white horns that sweep back from in front of each ear with a slight twist, like an impala's. He usually ornaments these with braided crimson cords and gold medallions.

 

Rather than the single 'spell' one might expect of a unicorn or dragonfire, scholarly qilin like Yan Lanmo tend to accumulate several different breath effects related to their studies. Lanmo's field of study was  these effects themselves, so he's collected a fair number of spells and tricks. He's capable of duplicating qilin breath magic, or mimicking unicorn and dragon magic(2), usually on a smaller scale than either of those species' spells.

 

History:

Born to a pair of qilin who needed magical help to conceive, Yan Lanmo is the treasured heir and sole inheritor of his family's long legacy. His name is derived from the fact that in a family that has consistently produced members whose pelts and scales are all in the red and orange registers, Lanmo was born azure blue as a side effect of the magic used to give him life. His scales gradually changed over the course of his childhood, and his fur darkened to its current colour before his eyes opened for the first time, but he would always be marked apart. His parents, for their part, considered it an auspicious sign.

 

The Yan clan has a long history of producing talented scholars, and so it was with Lanmo who, aside from his unusual colouration, was no different than any other Yan qilin. His clan tutored him in a variety of subjects, gauging and piquing his interests in as many as they could arrange. Tradition also dictated that he refrain from using his breath until the clan's sages could be brought in to assess its nature. And so it was that on his eighth birthday he was summoned to the clan's manor and provided a simple task: bathe a brazier in smoke and flame.

 

True to his name, and contrary to the family's traditional orange or red, his breath burned blue. Also unlike theirs, rather than showing one trait more strongly than others, his flame switched between different forms: now intense and wild, now calm and steady, now flickering weakly, now blazing furiously. It was concluded that his breath marked indecision and impetuity, and that he was not ready to choose a path of study.

 

Lanmo accepted the news, and returned to his various subjects until the next year. And then the next. Finally, when he turned eleven, he grew frustrated and engaged his breath to cast a spell, causing the brazier to vanish in a cloud of azure smoke and reappear across the room. When asked where he'd learned the spell, Lanmo replied that he'd read of it in a scroll from Equestria.

 

'Read of it?' his elders asked, and when Lanmo confirmed that, yes, he'd never actually seen the spell, they presented him another scroll with a different spell described in it. Lanmo was able to duplicate that one, a muffling haze, as well, and the sages withdrew to discuss this development. No one noticed the qilin had obtained his cutie mark until the next morning, when they returned to announce that his path of study would be breath magic, a subject none in his family had undertaken before.

 

Lanmo spent years mastering different breath effects, and once he'd at least attempted every breath trick he'd ever heard of hearing about he moved on to trying to duplicate other race's spells. None were as powerful as what the unicorn or draconic spells he was basing them off of could be, but he made up for that with sheer variety, from the ability to warm and brew tea, to a personal walkable cloud, to a haze that obscures his presence.

 

Eventually, he exhausted his family's accounts of magics of other races, and he petitioned the sages to be allowed to travel to Equestria to learn directly from the unicorns there and the dragons across its outlands. He was granted the use of a hot air balloon, which he powered himself, and he embarked immediately.

 

Unfortunately, his first destination was the Dragon's ancestral homelands. And even more unfortunately, none of his accounts ever mentioned how territorial dragons were. His balloon was attacked and destroyed, along with all of his supplies, and he himself was only spared by displacing himself into the nearby woods and fleeing.

 

Now he wanders Equestria, undeterred from his initial course of action by his severely altered itinerary, while he does odd jobs to earn bits for food and to replace his lost equipment.

 

Character Personality:

Yan Lanmo tends to be quiet and reserved, preferring to observe than to interact, which has served him well in the past. He is still unused to the 'rough life' that he's found himself in now, though he's quickly adapting thanks to his open mind and natural curiosity. He tends to forget, however, that it's only polite to provide information in exchange for information learned, and coupled with his natural reservations this does lend him an impression of being rude.

 

If asked, he's generally fairly free with information, unless it pertains to his clan or his homeland, as he would strongly prefer the embarrassing details of his failed first contact not reach their ears.

 

Character Summary:

Itinerant scholar, Yan Lanmo is the scion of the Yan family and the fate of their honour ultimately rests on his shoulders. Eventually, he knows he must earn enough and learn enough to return home with honour and win a strong match for the family's legacy, but until he can wash away the shame of his crash-course in dracology, he is content to focus on the scholarly pursuits he originally embarked upon.

 

Lanmo can mimic or duplicate spells he sees others cast, provided he is able to manipulate the energies involved through his breath. Most of these breath tricks take the form of mist, flames, haze, or smoke that produce an effect. He can mimic unicorn magic and dragon breath-spells, but his tricks tend to be smaller-scale versions of these in most cases, since his breath tricks are not as efficient at channeling his qi as a unicorn's horn, and he doesn't have nearly the reservoirs that a full-grown dragon does.

 

With a breath trick for any occasion, Lanmo is a drake of all trades, master of none, and always has a trick or two close at hoof for when things go south.

 

(1) I'm not including diacritical marks that would otherwise be in his name, because if I did I'd need to type them every time, which usually leads me to juggling pronouns rather than using the actual name.

(2) This functions not-unlike 'enemy skills' in some games though he does need to practice and experiment to get a trick to work like it should. He's usually capable of replicating simple spells that are similar to another he already has nearly immediately, but a more complicated spell or one that he has never seen the like of before will take days or even weeks to learn.

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Ah, I see you waited until the forum fix to make the requested edit. I have no further comments to make, so here's a stamp!
 

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NOTE: Firefoxx gave this app preliminary approval last week in a post that no longer exists.

 

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