Race: Lightning
Gender: Male
3 Base Traits: responsible, inquisitive, suspicious
Personality:
- + responsible
One of Zhan's top priorities is controlling his surroundings, especially on the ship. He is very good at following orders from superiors and seeing his duties through to completion, and his scheduling is meticulous. He takes great pride in this, and when someone jeopardizes his intent, he is prone to losing his cool.
+ intelligent
Though he is quiet about it, Zhan's thoughts are always churning, zipping along unexpected pathways and making surprising connections. He enjoys thinking problems through rather than running at them with weapons drawn, and even though he is rather gruff, he's not terrible at feigning charisma for short periods of time if the situation calls for it.
~ inquisitive
Over the course of his travels, Zhan has seen a lot of things, and he is always interested in learning more about them. He's not pushy with his curiosity, content to extrapolate knowledge over time, and he is particularly entertained by people and things that are hard to crack.
~ dapper
Zhan loves dressing well, and he holds himself like an Oban noble despite his comparatively lowly status and questionable background. Being a sailor can occasionally be troublesome when you don't want to muss your clothes.
- abrasive
Years of being curt and hiding his emotions have definitely left Zhan more inconsiderate than most, particularly when people are being know-it-alls in spaces he considers his.
- suspicious
Zhan has met enough people in his life to know that few of them have his best interests at heart. Even those he has known his entire life are shifty for the most part, and dealing with them regularly has damaged his sense of trust.
Description:
- Skin: ██████████ (freckles across his nose and upper cheeks)
Eyes: ██████████
Crystals: ██████████ (rounded; placement is artist's choice)
Hair: ██████████ (floppy)
Svelte and lightly muscled, Zhan is straight-backed and confident in his position as a lower-ranked sailor. He doesn't smile much, but smirks are never far from his lips, and his eyes are often full of sarcastic disdain.
Clothing:
- open-collared shirt with belted sleeve garters
vest with long tails and a pattern of some sort
tight pants
knee-high boots
browns and blacks
Accessories:
- small gold hoop in his left earlobe
various other earrings, artist's choice
pale peridot-ish stud in his nose that matches his crystals
gold ear cuffs
a simple wildflower tattoo sprouting from behind his left ear and stretching to his temple, visible in the shorter part of his hair on that side
a small commonplace book/journal with a green leather cover where he keeps his schedule, notes about the things he observes, and hastily penned song lyrics
History: Zhan has lived on a ship for as long as he can recall. For most of his life, he believed that his captain, Volarik, was his mother, and though he didn't know exactly who had fathered him, he assumed it was Tieren, a member of the Sector of Transportation and Volarik's former partner. As younger sailors and inventors, Tieren and Volarik had a falling out when the former accepted an invitation to join the Academy of Steam and took their budding ship-related research with him. Volarik schemed to steal back something equivalent to what he had taken from her, and she eventually succeeded, pilfering a good portion of Tieren's work since entering the Academy and leaving him a bit of a laughing stock. She used this information to make her ship, The Sector of Secrets, quite speedy and efficient which helped to land her crew legitimate jobs, as well as more questionable ones.
Growing up, Zhan was treated like every other deckhand on the ship. He learned how to climb rigging, the basics of how to defend himself, and how to swim his way out of an emergency. He never took to the dirtier parts of piracy and was often pushed to the forefront as the face of the ship, even though he wasn't really a fan of that either. He preferred to be alone, penning songs and singing into the wind when no one was watching.
On their last stop in Talrise, Zhan received a letter from Tieren, requesting a meeting. When he obliged without the captain's knowledge, Tieren treated him to a delicious pastry and a tall tale about his parentage. Tieren was, in fact, his father, but Zhan's mother was another Academy member named Inoue. It seemed Volarik had stolen more than a little of Tieren's life work.
It has been six months since that meeting, and Zhan has not addressed it further. He left Belrea that day without agreeing to meet his supposed mother or to even return at any point in the future. He is in a mental holding pattern at the moment, unsure as to how to proceed now that his foundation has been slightly rattled.
