qilin Jin [Ready]

[Dio]

Name: Jin Shu (金属), usually just Jin

Sex: Male

Age: Stallion

Species: Qilin

 

Body Color: Gunmetal grey coat with the same color for any exposed body scales.  Belly scales are a burnished bronze.

Mane/Tail Color and Style: Fetlock and tail tufts fade from grey to white, evoking the feeling of ash within a furnace.

Eye Color: Green.

Physique: Burly, stout, and broad, a combination of both genetics and a career at the forge.

 

Residence: Canterlot born and raised.

Occupation: Armorer, weaponsmith, and precision machining specialist, master of anything metal.

 

Cutie Mark: A  glyph resembling the alchemical symbol for iron.

 

Spoiler

 

Unique Traits

Jin’s talents both magical and mechanical revolve around the manipulation of metal.  His dragon breath manifests as a spray of liquid metal and places the components he is forging into a magically-induced pliable state that allows him to perform precision work without requiring extreme temperatures.  The opposite is also true; Jin can just as easily tear open an armored breastplate like paper or turn swords and spear points to a rubbery consistency if the situation calls for something drastic.  A favorite party trick is deconstructing and reconstructing knives, batons, trinkets, or silly shapes out of the bar of billet steel he carries with him nearly all the time.  

 

Even without his magic, Jin’s talents as an armorsmith and weaponsmith are without equal in Canterlot.  Many of the techniques that he uses to custom-forge REA gear are those he developed and pioneered himself.  Though they may not bear his name specifically, his work is well known and well appreciated by REA units lucky enough to receive gear forged by him.

 

Character History

Born and raised in Canterlot, Jin has more in common with the unicorns that frequent the city streets than with natives of Long Guo.  His parents worked at the Long Sun consulate in Canterlot as diplomatic liaison between Huangjing and Canterlot and enrolled him in the local schools.  While they attempted to raise him with an understanding of their native land, Jin found himself far more interested in the culture and trappings of Equestria.

 

Whether it be by fate or a bit of nominative determinism, Jin always found himself with a natural affinity for metal.  Everything from the Statue of Friendship in Manehattan to the great bronze busts of past Equestrian heroes in the Canterlot gardens, to even the weapons and armor the Royal Guards carried, he found fascinating.  His childhood was filled with hiking expeditions into Solstice Heights and in the metal shops in lower Canterlot watching the smiths work.  His parents allowed him to enroll in after school classes with the local blacksmiths to cultivate his interests and the beginnings of his signature metal-shaping spell.

 

One day, while on a trip with his class into Whitetail Wood, Jin felt something strange, a feeling that he couldn’t shake, a feeling so strong that it prompted him to wander off away from his group.  He followed the magical feeling until he finally reached a place in the woods that smelled of fire and metal.  A hole had been punched in the canopy of the forest and at the base of a shaft of radiant sunlight lay a still-smoldering crater.

 

Jin dashed to the crater rim, already knowing what it was.  Looking down, he found a lump of metal that had fallen from the heavens.  His eyes grew wide as he picked up the warm metal, stowing it in his saddlebag and running to catch up to his class before he got in trouble.  Later that night, he tried shaping it with his dragon breath, but found he could not manipulate it as he could other metal objects.

 

For days after, Jin tried every night to make the strange space metal do something, anything, almost abandoning his schoolwork to do so.  Finally, after studying even harder, Jin had an epiphany.  The metal lump had some sort of impurity in it that made it otherwise immune to his metal-shaping spell.  Accounting for this, he was finally able to shape it into a replica of a sword he’d seen a royal guardspony carrying, in the process earning his cutie mark.

 

As Jin grew up, he gradually refined his spell, not through book-learning but through trial and error and intuition garnered through years of experience.  Even now in his job as an REA armorer, he continues to experiment and work to perfect his techniques.  The Star Sword he forged as a child still hangs in his workshop and the iridium pendant forged from the extracted metal is worn as a keepsake and reminder of his humble beginnings.

 

Personality

Rough, gruff, talented, and proud of it all, Jin is the quintessential working stallion.  He is wary of solely theoretical magic and prefers a very hooves-on approach to learning and practice.  Any technical reading he does is limited to gleaning enough concepts from manuals and scientific texts to jump start his next experiment.  That said, he does indulge in comics and adventure novels and is a fan of the Daring Do series.

 

Jin’s personality is multi-faceted.  It is immediately clear that the Qilin values of honor, justice, and diligence are a core part of his being.  However, many more nuanced Long Sun customs are lost upon him.  Were it not for the scales and horns, one might easily have mistaken him for a Canterlot local, albeit not one among the noble circles.

 

Jin enjoys learning, but he also enjoys being right.  Most of the time, he tempers his ego with sound logic and thorough thinking, but when engaged in conversation about something he is passionate about-- namely his job as an armorer -- he rarely hides the fact that he is knowledgeable.  For all his know-it-all inclinations, however, Jin still has a heart of gold and hates to see other ponies in want.

[RainbowFoxxy]

Looks great! Second review coming soon!

[Bellosh]