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and i am not a coward's son.
GU YUN / GU ZIXI
Sha Po Lang
CANON
23
AGE
Meridian
FACTION
1
HARMONIZATION LEVEL
End of Book 1
CANON POINT
Male (he/his)
GENDER
Harbinger
ASPECT
0
DISCORD LEVEL
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Gu Yun is a lively young man with pale skin, long, dark hair that reaches the small of his back, and bright "peach blossom" - flirtatious - eyes. His eyes always seem to hold a little twinkle to them, as if he's laughing at some kind of inside joke. He is very, very pretty. I don't know how else to describe this, he is simply just a Pretty Boy. Despite his stature at only 5'6" on a good day, he has big Tall Guy energy. He walks confidently and stands up straight, and his movements are elegant and sure. He sometimes wears a fancy monocle over one eye, has a bright red mole on his cheek underneath the opposite eye, and one on his earlobe as well. Though sometimes... those disappear? That's weird. He typically wears dark colors, dressed in traditional Chinese silks, or perhaps in dark black armor.
He consistently smells like something medicinal, and something a little bit floral. His hands are always cold and he will weaponize them by touching you with them when you are least expecting it. He's extremely ticklish. This isn't a first impression but now you know.
I feel as though it is also important to note that he has broad shoulders and a tiny lil barbie doll waist. Little yifu.
SHARD
Gu Yun's shard is the shape of a single plum blossom. It's purple in color, and resides at the back of his neck, on his spine. I will. Get back to you on how it tastes. I guess.
ASPECT TATTOO
His aspect tattoo, the Harbinger, is on his left palm - the lines are purple.
PERSONALITY
Gu Yun on the surface is a lively, clever, successful military general with a sharp tongue, who loves to tease and bully, and is generally just a bastard. Following in the footsteps of his father, Gu Yun started young in the military (like, really young) and his patriotic streak and filial nature have colored his every decision in life. As the Marquis of Order, Gu Yun is a walking symbol of the strength of Great Liang, and so, he presents the image of calm, in control, charming, brave, and dangerous on that first glance, with the unshakable iron spine of loyalty that a good general must have. Under the surface of the soldier, Gu Yun is playful and flirtatious, even childishly spiteful and sarcastic. Sometimes he picks a fight with a bird. He often pretends to be deaf if he doesn't want to do something, (as canon calls him, "Great Liang's Greatest Garlic"), play dumb or do things badly on purpose, and shamelessly lies and flatters as a deflection tactic when its necessary. In fact, he's generally just shameless, and runs his mouth with little to no concern for the consequences that go with it. You don't have to face consequences when you're sexy. ;O
All of that said, he's also a gentleman who loves the aesthetic life, a skilled poet and master of the literary arts, and a filial servant of his nation. He has major daddy issues. He also gives other people daddy issues. It's fine.
BACKGROUND
Gu Yun was born into the Gu family on the sixteenth day of the first lunar month, as the only son of the First Princess Li Tong and the Marquis of Order Gu Shen. He was, in a few words, an incredibly spoiled little meatball as a kid who ran around causing trouble basically all the time. He was more or less raised in the Black Iron Camp, his father's military, and spent the first half of his childhood ambitionless and free. However! An attempt on his life was made at age 7ish in the Black Iron Military Camp - during an attack by the Barbarian tribes, he was seriously injured, and both his sight and hearing were lost as a consequence. Shit Changed After That.
His father began to push Gu Yun harder once his senses were taken from him, simply because that was Unacceptable, and told him Either learn how to stand up or hang yourself. The Gu family would rather have no heir than raise a worthless child. Yikes. Gu Yun took that real personally and started to train as a tiny child, working his ass off to overcome his shortcomings under his father's incredibly strict eye. He started to take a special type of medicine that helped him regain his eyesight and hearing, though the medicine is extremely poisonous (its fine).
His parents died two years later or so, and he was taken in by the then emperor Yuan He, the same one who almost got him killed. That's cool. Life's complicated. Gu Yun was offered the finest tutors and he took to learning, and was ultimately given the choice between palace life as sort of distant royalty or going out to the army like his father had expected him to do. He chose the latter.
After a disastrous assignment under a general, Gu Yun eventually found his footing. By fifteen he reached the rank of general in the army; by seventeen, he was officially named the Marquis of Order, the leader of the Black Iron Camp's three factions, the head of the entire army. He raised the Black Iron Camps back to their original status in Great Liang as they had been more or less defunded by the Emperor, who didn't believe they were necessary and saw them as a threat to his power.
Around the age of 19, he was sent to live undercover in a tiny border town called Yanhui to chase down the Fourth Prince, a young man named Chang Geng and protect him. Gu Yun rescued him from Yanhui under the guise of "Shen Shiliu", a half blind half deaf layabout, defeated several barbarian tribes, and then skipped off back home.
He was officially made
Literally so much stuff happens here that I cannot summarize this in a small amount so I'm going to stop there.
ABILITIES & SKILLS
PERMISSIONS
PLAYER INFO
Played By: Sisi
Contact Info: protags#8655 @ disco /protags
OUT OF CHARACTER
Writing Style: Brackets and present tense. I will generally just reply to prose with brackets i can't be as funny in prose. (no) (but actually)
Backtagging: Yes please.
Threadhopping: Absolutely!!
Offensive Subjects: I'm not big on noncon.
IN CHARACTER
Physical Violence: yes, please just ask first!
Death/Dissipation: plot with me first!!
Physical Affection: good luck he is somewhere between "ill flirt with you and put my hands on you" and "if you hold my hand with sincerity ill die"
Shipping/Sex: let's plot first but the answer is yes if the cr's good. probably. bisexual king gu zixi
Mental/Communion: Gu Yun will spend an unreasonable amount of time protecting his emotions with communion so good luck getting in there and experiencing anything he doesnt want you to feel. Let me know about any mind reading stuff beyond base communion/ just be open to communication about it!!
Offensive Subjects: ACTUALLY I GOTTA EDIT THIS this is more ooc than IC but - OOCly I've been very clear about Gu Yun's condition of being blind and deaf and will make references to it in meta/tags that may be clear or clearish if you're In The Know, BUT he is incredibly closed off about it and the likelihood of anyone actually finding out is pretty slim. If that's a thing you're interested in playing out please please please discuss it with me first - this is one of those make sure the IC/OOC blur doesn't bleed over thing. There is almost no reason why someone would immediately know he's blind or deaf with very, VERY rare exceptions. Not that it's impossible - but just please let me know first if that's something you want to try and dig into in cr because of course I want to play with it. ♥ But like also I'm not kidding because this is ICLy offensive because there's a not small chance he will find a way to end your life if you find out and try to use it against him or have any iota of a hint that you might use it against him. ;O
GU ZIXI, YOUR DOG NOSE!
Because GY's sight and hearing are so bad, he's learned to compensate with his other senses - aka touch, smell and taste. Because of this, he's able to detect smells from a decent distance and is highly sensitive to stinky people. Gross.
So this is a question from me to you to use in our threads that may impact our CR a little bit: What does your character smell like? Is it a strong smell or weak? Do they shower. Is there anything particularly unique about it? He's from a nonmagical canon, but the smell of "something magic" might be normalized now that we're in Kenos. Things like that!
I didn't screen comments but feel free to reply to this comment to let me know! ♥
slams this down
chances are that voryn will also smell like burning plants because here in kenos we get our fucking blaze on brah. hookah, pipeweed, other illicit things like opiates will probably feature prominently all up in here.
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Also depending on how sensitive his nose is, Sebastian also has an absence of a smell you'd expect! He doesn't sweat, so he'd be missing that particular note of eau du human/mortal. But that's also weird enough that it might just be like "something smells off here" and might take a while to make the connection.
no subject
The first scent you'd get is probably from his clothes. He wears a lot of fancy materials like furs, leather, and thick cloth. Much of this retains the smell of what it was washed in which can vary in its scents, but always smells distantly like nice soap. Or in the case of leather, it just smells like leather. (....don't read into it I beg of you.)
Otherwise, the rest of him smells just as nice! But in a different way. He takes showers and baths daily. (Shower in the morning unless circumstances dictate otherwise, and a hot bath over wine at night. He'll get bitchy if you interrupt bath time.) During each, he scrubs down with some nice and rather expensive things. The smell is kinda...earthy? With things like sandalwood, rosewood, or amber. Hair product is along similar lines, but tended to a little less often.
I'm sorry he's a fancy-ass fuck.
no subject
This is on purpose. He knows that scents are what stay in your brain the longest, and he makes it a thing that people don't remember him, even if he were brushed past in a crowd. He showers often and searches for fragrance-free products for that.
However, those are incredibly difficult to find in Kenos, and he can't shower all the freaking time, which means that eventually, he does have a scent to him. Soap, the light kind, clean, may have a little bit of sweat to him, considering he's always very active. Probably some sort of lubricating oil from maintaining his sword. Catch him in a bad (or good, really, he'd call it good), there would be a scent of blood and occasionally a very faint scent of gunpowder.
no subject
Other than that very overpowering stench, however, he smells mostly nondescript -- neither subtle nor overt, just kind of there. He smells like generic soap when he's just showered (he showers daily unless circumstances don't permit it, thank you very much); after a few hours he'll just smell like sweat and 'general human smell'. He doesn't really look for fancy soaps, body washes, perfumes or the like, so he tends to smell very 'normal' beneath the smell of cigarette smoke.
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he just..... smells good in a very inhuman and alien way โ it wouldn't be hard to recognize that much, so i guess whatever that means to gu yun?? but he does have a light personal scent of sun-warmed sand, and probably the same lingering exotic smokes and illicit drugs as voryn, since they're both hookah/pipe fiends.