Portrait library'The Dragon Queen'
Half-Dragon / Sorcefighter
Submitted character story
For someone your group saved the life of on the road, she sure doesn’t seem as grateful as she really ought to. She might just be as cold-blooded as the pompous *lizard* she claims herself to be. But you suppose she’s not all bad. She does her best to ensure you’re healthy and taken care of and, when you’ve gone into a fight along-side her, you’ve never quite seen anyone so commanding of a battlespace between her magic, that ‘nyan nyun’-or whatever she called it-that polearm she uses, and the sheer presence she demands without even trying…
Xi Wenque, ‘The Dragon Queen’, is the young, warrior monarch of a distant, eastern kingdom that has fallen into steady decline after many years beyond its last ‘golden age’. The far-distant descendant of a golden dragon, she subscribes to the belief that revitalizing her now mostly-human bloodline with the offspring of a golden dragon is the only way to ensure the prosperity of her family and the nation it rules. After making this her primary goal, she facilitated the extensive research on the topic of known gold dragons and managed to learn rumors of a male one possibly located in the surrounding vicinity of the campaign setting, very far away from her home. She has travelled countless miles to be here and, after multiple disasters have struck her procession, she finds herself in the company of a band of local warriors…
The Xi family can be traced back to the beginning days of the Kingdom of Huánghūn, when a grand warrior of both spell and blade, clad in magnificent gilded armor, protected a city far-removed from the protection of its parent nation from being sacked by the army of a tyrant. With glorious wrath, he banished the force and slew the wretched commander.
The settlement and surrounding agricultural community, both fed up with their own unappreciative king and grateful for the protection of the dragon warrior, created a new kingdom and nominated the warrior as their chosen King; a role he did not wish for but came to accept after its numerous insistences.
In the times since, the king and his descendants fought against the two countries at the kingdom's Northern and Southern borders and, despite multiple failed-and successful-attempts on the lives of members of the royal family, they prevailed and eventually came to conquer the lands of both rival kingdoms in their entirety.
With a considerably larger span of lands to defend, Huánghūn has since fallen from its golden age and much of its previously held lands have fallen to conquest, however, a sizeable portion of land beyond the core territory remains and to this day the warrior monarchs of Huánghūn's court diligently defend the kingdom against whoever would harm it.
Wenque is what you would expect out of a young queen, she has spent her entire life getting her butt kissed, and so she behaves with a level of arrogance one would find of an absolute monarch. She, however, knows how far removed she is from the lands in which she holds influence and understands the vulnerability of a queen without-or with few-supporters to protect her (It’s DM’s choice on how many procession survivors she commands-or if there even are any).
Though her harness of gilded plate is western-inspired, her (what is technically a) close helm is of Chinese inspiration, and her weaponry, like her ‘Jīnlóng’ yǎnyuèdāo and her jian are weapons of Chinese origin.
Like other characters with more unique heritages in my lineup, Wenque’s chosen race (aasimar) is more of a re-skinned representation of her racial abilities. As a trained warrior, she is of the fighter class, but as the distant descendant of a dragon, both her ‘Radiant Soul’ ability and her sorcerer class’ spells and abilities are representative of the echoes of her ancestors’ ability to transform into a dragon, so severely weakened by her own overwhelmingly human heritage, that she may only partially transform and to severely-limited degrees.
Through the use of her abilities, spells, and third party spells (DM-willing) she is able to transform her hands into dragon’s claws, temporarily grow scales over her skin on different portions of her body, change her eyes into those of a lizard, breathe fire, and temporarily sprout dragon’s wings to fly with. Wenque’s ancestral, gilded plate harness was reverently crafted to allow for the lesser-dragon members of her family who donned it to freely transform their bodies while inside the harness. The gauntlets do not feature gloves and directly fasten to the hands, the rear of the cuirass has articulated scaled ‘curtains’ to account for-and rest upon-sprouted wings, and the helmet’s construction is not just intended for fashion, but to allow for the wearer to breath fire through the exposed visor even when in the lowered position.
Due to her diverse abilities, Wenque’s fighting style is practically that of a veritable *dynasty warrior,* making wide arcs of her guandao, carving through the battlefield, and using her magic to try taking on multiple enemies at once.
Given the level required to mimic her canon strength, she’s soft-locked to starting in higher-level campaigns of approximately level eight or above.
Wenque’s story arc may revolve around her finding a gold dragon to offer her own hand in marriage to, but golden dragons are beings of absolute good and it may be quite a bit more of an endeavor to convince him to go along with her intentions than she thinks, considering who she is as a person. Ideally, it should begin a string of adventurous events which may result in serious character development.
…”If I had a nickel for”-hmm hmm-”thought of helmet design”-hmm hmm-”isn’t a lot”-hmm-”weird it happened twice.”
We all know the nickel saying lmao.
This is, in fact, my second of two characters in The Hall of Heroes whose catalyst for their very inception was a frickin’ helmet design I randomly thought of. I don’t know what inspired me to design a Chinese dragon-themed close helm that someone could breathe fire through but it happened and such strange and cool ideas always demand to be a part of something greater than just an aesthetic on a mini, concept sketchpad.