Shen Li-Yuan 'the Golden Mandarin'
Origin - Philosopher (+1 Sanctum)
Nature - Expert (Virtue - tied to impressive use of Science,
Vice - tied to showing off the versatility of his craft)
Strength 3
Dexterity 3, Martial Arts 2
Stamina 4 (healthy), Endurance 1, Resistance 2
[+5 Freebies in Attributes, +1 Transformation point]
Perception 2, Awareness 1, Investigation 2
Intelligence 5 (methodical), Academics 3, Bureaucracy 1, Engineering
1, Linguistics 1 (Chinese, English), Medicine 3, Science 6 (Ability Mastery:
Science)
Wits 2, Arts 1
[+4 Freebies in Abilities, +1 Transformation point]
Appearance 2, Style 1
Manipulation 2
Charisma 2, Etiquette 1
Cipher 2 (litte known outside of Hong Kong)
Contacts 2 (science & occult; Chinese & British mostly)
Followers 2 (one lab assistant/apprentice (a young girl
named Deng), two 'extra' manservants (one a cousin, the other an old friend))
Resources 5 (in cash, property and gold)
Sanctum 2 (research laboratories in both Britain and Hong Kong,
with a small villa on one of the isles in the South China Sea just across
the bay from Hong Kong)
[+2 Freebies, +1 Transformation point, +1 Sanctum from Origin,
+1 Backing from HMSO membership]
Willpower 5 [+4 Freebies]
Inspiration 5 [+4 Transformation points] - currently down 1
to pay for his inventions
Destructive Facet 1 [+1 damage once / game]
Intuitive Facet 2 [+2 Initiative]
Reflective Facet 2 [+2 to rolls for Endurance, patience, etc]
Knacks
Mad Scientist (chinese alchemy, much of it relating to the
use of gold)
Optimized Metabolism (his alchemical transformations have a
somewhat unstable effect on his apparent age.
He sometimes appears to be fairly old, and at other times middle-aged or
even simply mature. He has no control
of this quirk, it is of no use for intentional disguise or deception, nor is it
abrupt or obviously supernatural. It is
tied into the lunar cycles. On the new
moon, he is most aged, on the nights of the full moon he appears most
youthful.)
Body of Bronze (gold actually)
[+6 Transformation points]
Walk 5 meters / turn
Run 15 meters / turn
Sprint 29 meters / turn
Initiative 7 [+2 for Intuitive facet]
Chemistry inventions; Steelsilk 'pajamas' (Armor [2/4, 0]),
6 doses Aqua Regia (acid that dissolves anything not made of gold, 9 dice
lethal damage).
Born in the British colony of Hong Kong, Shen spent time as
a child running errands for the colonials and working the boats with his
fisherman father. A clever child, he
made many friends, and picked up the language easily, learning to anticipate
his British masters wishes and provide for them, which brought him into some
odd company indeed, as the people he worked for were dabbling chemists and
would-be alchemists and freemasons, often having seemingly nonsensical demands
and requirements. As he grew older
however, he found that the men who were willing to toss a coin to a beggar-boy
to have something run across town were not as forthcoming for an older man who
could be considered to 'know too much' about what they were doing, and he found
himself forced to return to fishing full-time.
It was in his later years that a freak accident involving
entanglement in a net resulted in his discovery of a sunken cache of golden
coin. It took over a year before he
could privately gather the coins and garner them into a hidden fortune, as he
did not want to risk losing his private knowledge of the shipwreck site, nor
'flood the market' with the distinctive new rush of gold, forcing him to horde
it for over a decade before being able to 'liquidate' his assets. (For he knew that if word got out, he would
be descended upon by thieves of every stripe, from local thugs and tongs out to
muscle in and take the money, to British administrators who would craft a law
to claim the salvage rights of the coin, claiming perhaps that the wrecked ship
and its treasures were British property by law.) In this his cleverness, and somewhat cynical view of his fellow
men, served him well. Even his own
family remained in the dark until the treasure was secure!
As the years went by and his wealth steadily grew, he ended
up purchasing the island off of which the shipwreck lay, and his family now
dwells on the island (and some still fish, more because it is what they have
always done than from any need for the profits) in the odd house / laboratory
he has constructed.
Over the years of secrecy, when none but he knew of the
golden metal beneath the waves, he grew obsessed with what he had seen, and the
small coin he had carried with him as proof, and as his stockpile grew, a few
painstaking coins at a time, to be carefully converted to cash, he began to
obsess on gold in its many forms, re-igniting a boyhood fascination in the arts
of alchemy, and more specifically with the poor boys fantasy of transforming
base metals into gold. As years
progressed, his was no longer limited by the financial concerns of western
alchemists, and he started with coins of purest gold, working instead on a
method to convert them into base metals, certain that once he had the key, he
could reverse the process and transform not just that base metal, but any base
substance into gold. He has not
succeeded at that lofty task, but he has managed to refine many substances from
his studies of gold. An ancient art of
chinese alchemy was the crafting of elixers from reduced metals, such as
silver, in an attempt to become immortal.
He had the resources now to refine that research and attempt to imbue
within his aging fleshly body the purity of changeless eternal gold, the
substance thought to have remained most pure from the state of creation, and
therefore the metal most in touch with the gods.
It was in this work that he became Inspired, and his Transformation
caused him not to be wracked with the same mind-destroying metal toxicity
that cripped the chinese alchemists of old, but to internalize his elixers
and become indeed a man of gold. His
skin became flushed with a more golden hue, which most Americans fail to recognize
as unnatural for a Chinaman, and his body became both more solid and more
resistant to aging, as a part of his weakening flesh was gifted with the properties
of the timeless metal of the gods. His mind as well was strengthened, as if tiny
threads of gold contained his very thoughts, and he became able to enter an
Inspired trance in his workshop, leaving his lab assistant gaping as his words
became incomprehensible and he would produce the most uncanny gold-based chemical
constructions, such as silk spun of thinnest golden strands and woven into
fine cloth as sturdy as armor, or a salve that would temporarily transform
reduced iron (such as that in the bloodstream...) into gold for a time, causing
disorientation, shortness of breath and metal poisoning.
He has since opened a laboratory in Great Britain as well,
marketing one of his acidic compounds as a cleaning / bleaching solution,
mainly as an excuse to be 'where the action is' near the HMSO leadership,
and it's fantastic stores of occult literature, granting him access to the
alchemical esoterica of many cultures, and a part of him hopes to someday
find something again like his gold rush to transform his life yet again and
make it even more wondrous... His family in Hong Kong also gets on his nerves
somewhat with their small dreams, and he is pleased to leave them behind.
He occasionally wears fine robes of red with gold trim and
embroidery of lions, dragons or eagles over his gold-fiber 'casual' dress, but
generally avoids looking too ostentatious when out of his native country. He is tall and lean, with a 'fu manchu'
mustache and pointy beardlet, as well as thinning hair of black with touches of
grey. His hair is fairly scraggly and
shoulder-length, although both his hair and his mustache tend to turn white
when he is 'aged' and solid black when he is 'young.' He has the long affected nails of the chinese aristocrat, a
symbol of his not being required to engage in physical labor, and he has
laquered those nails with gold. The
nail on his left pinky finger is almost as long as the finger itself, although
he keeps the rest only about 1 inch long, so that he may handle his beakers and
poultices without incident. He also is
prone to unusual finger jewelry and other trinkets that make him look somewhat
exotic (but mostly eccentric) to a western viewer. His eyes are more of a rich amber, than the usual dark brown and
his skin is notably more golden in hue than it should be to anyone familiar
with chinese skin colorations, or seeing him outside of his traditional attire
or surroundings (which usually have enough yellows and golds in them to offset
his own color, which would be more startlingly obvious were he put in a grey
shirt and stood next to persons of a more normal Asian skin tone).