◙◙◙◙* Male...◙◙◙◙* 354...◙◙◙◙* 6'2"...◙◙◙◙* 185 lbs....◙◙◙◙* Qīnglóng
AASPD 」x ▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌ AAAPWR 」x ▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌
AAINT 」x ▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌ AAACNG 」x ▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌
AAWPN 」x ▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌ AAACHA 」x ▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌▌
◈ DRACONIC BODY ┋ Particularly strong and durable
◈ TRANSFORMATION ┋ Capable of flight and waterbreathing
◈ PURIFICATION ┋ Purify toxins or disease; limited
Clichéd as it might be, the reptilian man is cold-blooded.
It's not a universal attribute, not one applied to every situation without discrimination—he understands nuance and complication and exception too well for that. Black and white are the concepts of younger beings than himself, simpler ones. Those who have seen less and understood less, and perhaps who have loved more. Or at least hoped that in the end, good would win out. But those hopes are no longer his, if ever they were to begin with. The chill in his heart seems well-suited to his appearance, which is a thing of perhaps slightly-uncomfortable beauty. His height and build prevent him from ever being mistaken for female, but he does have a rather pretty face, which honestly doesn't seem to have done him many favors in the past. His alienness is inescapable: he cannot even be mistaken for an albino, considering that his hair, like his scales, is actually a soft, sky-blue color. His eyes are actually coral-pink, of all the colors in the world, which helps matters exactly not at all. Anyone who believes in yōkai is near-certain to believe he is one, though he is often mistaken for a qilin. He tries not to feel insulted by this.
Naturally, this has led to some distinct feelings of alienation, especially considering that he has lived among humankind, willingly or not, for the better part of his life. At best, he's looked upon with vague suspicion and distrust. At worst, well... he prefers not to dwell on the worst.
Nature and experience alike have made him into a reserved sort of person; he rarely if ever goes out of his way to engage with strangers, and though he observes courtesy by default, he can easily abandon it if he feels the situation is one better served by silence. He's rarely outright rude, merely apathetic, unconcerned with the things going on around him, though he will always observe them watchfully for any sign of threat. He's bypassed the arrogant stage of his life where he believed being yōkai or quinglong specifically would prevent anything from so much as harming him. So he's wary, though he does have enough discipline not to let it translate into outright paranoia or anything of the kind.
Yún is a strong believer in reciprocity, the compensation of generosity for generosity or harm for harm in equal or comparable measure. He tends to reflect back how other people treat him at them, a sort of fundamental passivity that developed as the years of his life wore on. He isn't one to try and interfere too much with the course of fate, as he's become quite resigned to such things over time, and often believes that any kind of struggle is futile. This general nihilism can make him a bit gloomy, though he doesn't usually make it apparent that he thinks this sort of thing unless he is directly asked for his view. Honest enough to tell the truth most of the time, he is also tactful enough to lie if he believes it's called for, and appreciates the subtleties of real situations in life, not so easily reduced to "right" and "wrong." He's the first to see the merit of an opposing point of view, but it would be a mistake to call him weak-willed because of this. He sticks to his decisions unerringly, and always keeps his word, but he nevertheless sees the world with coolheaded logic rather than emotion.
He is somewhat different with respect to the few people he's ever been close to. The only such person at the moment is Xiaodan, and he looks after her with the patient indulgence of an older brother, bodyguard, and chaperone all at the same time. To look at them, one might assume that he's the one who decides the course their actions take, but that's actually exactly the wrong way around: Yún is the follower, and he goes where Xiaodan leads.
Fang Yún (方 云) was born with another name, but it is one he has long since abandoned or forgotten. His new one was a gift, granted him by a strange human girl who needed something to call him and named him after a cloud. When a surname eventually became necessary, he just took hers.
He was born three and a half centuries ago, though at times it seems to him that it's been much longer than that. Having been born to a pair of quinglong, he was raised and inculcated in their elusive culture, making his home at the bottom of the South China Sea for his first several decades. Dragons have a rather unfortunate tendency towards cultural arrogance, and believing themselves superior to other yōkai and humans alike, some mix perhaps of their strength, well-known vitality, and tendency to be venerated by humans, where often other kinds of yōkai are reviled. Of course, all that breaks down immediately once one actually enters the wider world, as Yún discovered in his second century.
At that point, he was naive, unaware of the workings of the wider world, and quite convinced of his own invincibility. Most people in such situations learn their lesson harshly, but with a chance to actually recover from them. He wasn't quite so lucky—at least not initially. He emerged from the sea on Chinese land and wandered for a while, rather expecting to meet with adoration and worship. What he actually encountered were frightened villagers and then an ambitious Ming Dynasty general and his men.
In all fairness to him, Yún fought very well before he was eventually captured and dragged before the emperor. Having an actual dragon in captivity, one of the famed quinglong at that, was quite the impressive feat, and he became a dynasty trophy of sorts after that, kept from transforming or putting most of his power to use by potent drugs concocted by the Ministry of Rites. In this way, a hundred years passed.
Until he met Fang Xiaodan.
At first, he paid her no more mind than the others. He'd seen her family come and go over his time in the Court, always from a distance. He recognized her immediately by the red hair, for he had known the first of her ancestors to have it. He didn't expect that they would ever exchange words—though he was occasionally forced to give up his scales, hair, or blood for some alchemic purpose or another, it was never those dedicated to cultivating the elixir that came into contact with him. Indeed, they met quite by accident, when she was still a girl at her father's knee.
She seemed to take a shine to him, though he knew not why, exactly—she wasn't of age to be enchanted by his appearance, as some occasionally were. Initially he thought her nothing more than a cruel thing, come to mock the beast in his cage, but that turned out to be just as false. When she asked for his name, he told her he had none, and so she called him Yún, on the odd rationale that his hair reminded her of a cloud. In the end, she saved him—on her way out of the court, she freed him, and together they fled her execution and his torment.
For the sake of convenience—and perhaps partially from gratitude—he adopted her surname and a place as her watchman and protector. She has come to treat him as a brother, and he returns the favor as well as he can. He has not her flighty genius nor her intrinsic warmth and compassion. But he can at least make sure that neither of those otherwise-admirable traits get her killed. Though he fights with his hands as well or better, he carries tiger hooks for this purpose; he's discovered that being armed is more of a deterrent than simply being large. And all in all, he'd rather be a deterrent than actually fight everyone who looks at them the wrong way.
Though it's been a century and a half since he saw anything of his family, he's never really felt the desire to return to the ocean on any permanent basis, though he retains his fondness for the water and instinct to be near it.
*All Credit belongs to them.