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Lan Xichen and his younger brother Lan Wangji were raised primarily by their strict uncle, Lan Qiren. Their parents were in seclusion; their mother had killed her teacher and in order to save her from execution, their father married and imprisoned her in the Gentian House before entering his own isolation out of guilt. Xichen and Wangji were only permitted to visit their mother once a month. Just shy of Xichen's 9th year, she died. We are not told how. This experience left him grappling with a difficult moral dilemma, and one he struggles to look directly into. He does not want to know his mother's motives for killing his father's teacher. If her reasons were just, he would have to condemn his father and the entire Lan Sect for unjustly imprisoning her. If her motives didn't hold ground, he would have to reconcile the fact that the kind mother who loved him and his brother, who he looked forward to seeing every month, was also capable of cold-blooded murder. In his later years, he managed to make something like peace with it, and it shaped his ethics into something more flexible than his uncles own rigid morality.The Sunshot Campaign
The Sunshot Campaign was a war between cultivation sects (think noble houses but with specialized Daoist magic powers). The Wen sect were the ones who sought control and oversight over the other four great sects (Lan, Jin, Jiang, and Nie) as well as other minor cultivation sects. The Wen started their invasion with razing Xichen's home – the Cloud Recesses – and Xichen was forced to flee with whatever texts from the library he could carry. With his home in ruins, and the fate of his father, brother, and uncle uncertain, Xichen was left with a sense of shame and pervading survivor's guilt. It was Meng Yao who found him during this vulnerable state and risked life and limb to protect Xichen (who was both a stranger and a liability to Meng Yao's safety). This act of selfless altruism cemented a deep and abiding affection from Xichen that would last until Meng Yao's death. When the smoke cleared, Xichen encouraged Meng Yao (now Jin Guangyao) and his other dearest friend and one of the heroes of the Sunshot Campaign, Nie Mingjue, to swear brotherhood with him. He did this in hopes of repairing their relationship with the other after Jin Guangyao killed Mingjue's fellow cultivators (while undercover as a spy), but unfortunately Xichen's plans to reconcile his two besties just didn't pan out.Interim Years
The war left Xichen very tired; he isn't by any means, a violent man, but once he had recovered, he was capable of being truly ruthless in battle. Xichen has a lot of blood on his hands that has been weighing on his conscience that will later be compounded with complication of what is to be done with the remnants of the Wen sect and the increasingly erratic Wei Wuxian. These are also the years Nie Mingjue steadily declined mentally, his temper increasingly worse and exacerbated by his trauma from the war and the magical cursed sword that was basically driving him insane. Xichen's sect had a means of somewhat quelling Mingjue's supernatural case of terminal roid-rage through the musical cultivation technique called Purification. He taught this technique to Jin Guangyao in a last ditch effort to repair the ever-growing rift between his two friends while constantly dismissing their concerns about each other. This is, in part, due to his conscious avoidance rearing its ugly head the same way it did with his mother and father's situationship. But to als be fair, Xichen had his own personal concerns with the reconstruction of the Cloud Recesses and attending to his brother Lan Wangji who was languishing after the death of Wei Wuxian and nearly dying from being struck 33 times with the discipline whip. This was also the time Xichen was helping Jin Guangyao with his watchtower project – something to help remote settlements deal with fierce corpses, ghosts, monsters, and other sorts of spooks and spectres. It's a project that helps ease his own conscience – something that will materially help a huge swathe of people, and also something that further cements Jin Guangyao as someone who, despite having many difficult choices and some considerable blood on his own hands, is ultimately altruistic.Guanyin Temple
It is at the temple that Xichen learns that Jin Guangyao has betrayed his trust three-fold; first in tricking Xichen to come to him after a supposed assassination attempt, only to seal his power and take Xichen hostage. Second, that he accelerated Nie Mingjue's decline into his inevitable (and fatal) Qi deviation with a cultivation technique he stole from the Lan sect's libraries. Third in that he kept from Xichen the fact that he murdered his own father Jin Guangshan and married his own half-sister Qin-Su, on top of a handful of other atrocities. Xichen spent the majority of the clusterfuck that is Guanyin Temple trying to understand why Jin Guangyao did the things he did, because Xichen is furious at the betrayal, but he also just doesn't abandon the people he cares about over a little thing like murder or war crimes. And Jin Guangyao isn't without some good reasons for his actions and while Xichen struggles to come to terms with that, he ultimately decides to show Jin Guangyao mercy. It is only when the person who orchestrated Jin Guangyao's downfall tricks Xichen into believing Jin Guangyao is about to attack him from behind that Xichen kills his best friend of many years. In the aftermath, Xichen is a mess. He's lost two of his best friends through his own failures, was betrayed by another friend in their quest for revenge, and his brother has run off into the sunset while his uncle only has a lecture for him. When we last see Lan Xichen in the novels, he's lost considerable weight from his time in seclusion and his mind seems a thousand miles away.
The Kirin/Qilin, but like, with a Petshop of Horrors kind of edge to it (iykyk). The Qilin is a divine beast – a chimera of a deer and dragon. It often heralds the rise of a benevolent leader, and is considered so gentle in its disposition, even grass doesn't bend beneath its hooves.Stage 1: Very little will be visibly different beyond Xichen's eyes taking an ungulate quality to them. Stage 2: Scales in shades ranging from silvery white to deep blue will appear on his body. His ears will will be pointed. Stage 3: The beginnings of a backwards antler will begin sprouting from his head and his legs will develope hooves. A tail might also be involved. Stage 4: Xichen is a Qilin. He will be flighty and difficult to capture but not particularly dangerous unless you ask a boon of him.
Light of Foot | As a Qilin, he'll be quick, light of foot, able to leap so far he almost seems to fly short distances.
Horny Healing | His horn will possess healing properties and if taken from him, will render him helpless.
Bad Boons | As a Qilin, Xichen can grant a singular boon. This, however, is not a good thing, as whatever the person wishes for will twist horrifically. A bit like the monkey's paw. I encourage players who want this to consider first what their character wants most and how it can go horrifically wrong.
Not particularly aggressive, but prone to bolt at any time. If cornered, he will defend himself. He'll stick to wooded areas around sources of water such as ponds, rivers and streams, as he is semi-aquatic and likes to graze on water flora.
Stage 1: Very little will be visibly different beyond Xichen's eyes taking an ungulate quality to them.
Stage 2: Scales in shades ranging from silvery white to deep blue will appear on his body. His ears will will be pointed.
Stage 3: The beginnings of a backwards antler will begin sprouting from his head and his legs will develope hooves. A tail might also be involved.
Stage 4: Xichen is a Qilin. He will be flighty and difficult to capture but not particularly dangerous unless you ask a boon of him.