Name: Aun Jiang. Generally speaking, anybody who has something to say to or about her will be referring to her as merely Jiang; going by her surname is as much a product of a predilection towards purely professional and formal relationships over closer friendships-- even Ankura knows her only by the surname-- as it is just a general aesthetic choice. She likes Jiang. It has a ring to it.

Nickname: If she has any, she doesn't know of them; she is not in the habit of sparing much mind for that sort of piddling trifle.

Gender: Lady.

Age: Aun Jiang is not young and hasn't been in many years; her fifty four years betray themselves in the hard lines of her face and the steel grey that has begun polluting her black hair, and smokeroot addiction hasn't exactly helped. It's fortunate, then, that several decades of dedication to physical strength and vigor have paid off, and though the weight of time continues to bear down upon her bones, her muscles have not yet forgotten the enormous strength which she wielded in her youth and which has only bit by bit begun to forsake her.

Sexual Orientation: Asexual. Jiang is about as sexual as a boulder.

Description: Jiang is nothing if not distinctive-- tall and broad shouldered, her black skin checkered with the hallmarks of her perilous vocation, she tends to dwarf the people around her, and attract plenty of gawking while she's at it. Her natural size alone can't be faulted for this, as the long coiled locks of her greying black hair, piling over her shoulders like a mass of snakes and drifting around her waist at the longest, are pretty damn conspicuous themselves. The sharp edges of her face outline high cheekbones around a small pointed nose and thin lips, and the creases of age are thoroughly in evidence there; there is a certain element of gauntness to her face despite her general size and physique, one of few open omens of her addiction.

Jiang's armour is a motley assortment of accoutrements scavenged throughout the years-- eschewing plate armour as the cumbersome resort of those who either can't take a hit or can't avoid one, she instead wears a hodgepodge of metal plates and leather over her clothes, a tattered old cloak draped around her broad shoulders.

Creed: Aun Jiang is a woman torn between was and is-- between the convictions which once defined and fueled her actions and the developments of the past ten years which have challenged the foundations of those convictions. Caring for Ankura, a burden Jiang took on wholly against her will, has forced her to reconsider the might makes right ethos which drove her to so relentlessly pursue physical strength and martial skill to the detriment of nearly everything else in her life. How can might make right when she has taken it upon herself to protect a creature so slight, a creature she could crush like a pomegranate seed between her fingertips if she wanted to-- when she has found herself defending that creature not out of self-service but out of love?

Motivation: A good fight's always been enough motivation enough for Jiang. As calamitous as the onslaught of the Afflicted was, somebody like Jiang-- a mercenary, somebody who had neither family nor friends to lose, somebody who glories in the violence-- found it nothing short of delightful. Unfortunately, the initial slaughter has since died down quite a bit, and the introduction of Ankura into her life has complicated matters; far be it for me to claim she no longer revels in combat as she always did, it's just that for once the impetus behind that combat is a determination to protect somebody who isn't paying her exorbitant amounts of cash to do so.

Fears: The looming specter of aging-- the degradation of her body and the loss of the formidable physical strength and skill she spent so many years cultivating-- scares the ever loving shit out of Jiang; she's staring that impending doom straight in the face and she still doesn't know how to deal with it. Her addiction is also a source of some consternation to her; she's managed to keep some measure of control over it, enough that she isn't enslaved to it the way some smokeroot users are, but that doesn't help much when she breaks into one of her coughing fits or finds herself without the drug when the pangs hit her.

Likes: Combat. Violence. Fighting. Warfare. Battle. Want to know how Jiang gets her jollies? Come up with any number of synonyms for destructive acts and that'll pretty much cover it. I guess you can throw Ankura in there too, when she's not being an insufferable little shit. Which is most of the time, Jiang finds-- good thing she's so attached to the runt or she'd've long since gotten fed up and punted her or something.

Dislikes: Few things earn Jiang's ire like a promising fight that fails to deliver; she can't tell you how many times she's faced down some cheeky fucker, cracking her knuckles and preparing for a proper beatdown, only for Ankura to sweep in and do that utterly disgusting thing she does ('diplomacy' or something, she calls it). She also really, really doesn't like Nervannans, who have a bad habit of... breaking around Jiang if they're too upfront about their national pride. Her animosity towards the people of Nervanna is, along with the distinctive manner in which she wears her hair, one of few indicators of her Oriomos heritage.

Strengths: I doubt it really needs saying at this point, but Jiang is a pretty formidable fighter, even in her growing age; those wrinkles and that grey hair don't mean she can't wield her greatsword with the same deadly skill she brought to battle in her youth, nor do they mean she's easily intimidated or fooled. She's also still quite monstrously strong, capable of fighting through injuries that individually would fell another warrior, and her many years of fighting have imbued her with a wealth of martial talents and knowledge to draw upon. These are, however, superficial skills; formidable though they are, they will inevitably wane as she grows older. Perhaps her greatest strength, even if she doesn't (or won't) realise it, is her love of the child she once would have done anything to be rid of; Ankura gives her a reason to live that does not rely on her ability to do violence, that will not wither as the years go by.

Weaknesses: Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that Jiang spent years devoting herself to making of her body the consummate tool of violence... to the neglect of virtually everything else. Outside basic knowledge of living on the road, Jiang has nothing: she doesn't know how to do much of anything that doesn't involve cracking skulls or breaking necks. Most dangerously, Jiang doesn't know a fight she can't win. Acknowledging that she's faced with a situation she can't beat would be coming to terms with the fact that she isn't the best, the strongest, the toughest, and she'd sooner rely on dumb luck to survive than accept that she's not number one. Her smokeroot addiction can also be problematic, particular if the pangs of smokeroot withdrawal hit in the middle of a fight.

Personality: No doubt you've gathered by now: Jiang is anything but pleasant. She prefers to keep her silence most of the time-- anything that can't be communicated in a wordless gesture or at best a monosyllabic grunt is probably not worth saying-- which is probably a good thing, because what you'll find from the second she does see fit to open her mouth is that Jiang has nothing nice to say. In conjunction with sort of a bad habit of viewing other people as either potentially engaging fights or things that are in the way, her interactions with others tend to be short, sharp, and acidic.

Equipment: The nomadic lifestyle Jiang leads doesn't accommodate for much in the way of materiel possessions, and so aside from some money, supplies for the road, and her sword, Jiang doesn't carry much with her.

History: Aun Jiang's story is a long and gnarled chronicle that begins with abject poverty in the far south of Oriomos; a mere sixteen years old, already a smokeroot-addicted bruiser, she escaped those circumstances by lying about her age to gain entrance into the Oriomos army on the cusp of its conflict with Nervanna, after which she was thrown out of the military for committing some rather insalubrious acts in the course of war. Left with no home and little in the way of skills other than what she'd learned in the army, Jiang took to drifting, and subsisted mostly on mercenary and bounty hunting work; when the God Eaters descended upon the realm, Jiang made a living hunting them or defending against them, though the thrill of fighting such a dangerous and mysterious foe was remuneration enough as far as the exiled soldier was concerned.

But all good things must end, alas, and the carnage of the God Eaters began to die down, leaving Jiang to return to her usual mercenary work. It was in the course of one such job that, ten years ago, the monotony of Jiang's existence-- fight, eat, sleep, rinse, repeat-- was shattered by an encounter unlike anything she'd ever experienced. It was this encounter which saddled her with a burden whose fetters soon proved themselves in fact a freedom she may never have attained otherwise-- the child she named Ankura.