Xian Xiao
Elementalist
NAME: Xian Xiao
NICKNAME: Vex
FACTION: Unaffiliated
Formerly The Diarchy
RANK: Former Apprentice / Force Adept
SPECIES: Human (Atrisian)
HOMEWORLD: Castell, birth to age 4. Coruscant, 4–13. Kashyyyk, 13–16. Castell, 16–18. Bastion, 18–20. Currently without a permanent home.
AGE: 21
SEX: Female
HEIGHT: 5'4"
WEIGHT: 115 lbs
EYES: Black
HAIR: Naturally black, dyed red
SKIN: Light tan
FORCE SENSITIVE: Yes
Years spent surviving on her own have made Xian observant, adaptable, and practical. She has an instinct for noticing details others overlook and is often at her best when given time to watch a situation before acting. Her unconventional training has also made her willing to experiment rather than assume there is only one correct solution to a problem.
That independence has its disadvantages. Xian spent much of her childhood without a stable education and entered Jedi training significantly behind where she should have been academically. Although she has improved considerably since then, reading and formal study have never come as naturally to her as practical learning. Her training in the Force was similarly inconsistent, leaving gaps in areas that another Force user of comparable experience might consider fundamental.
Xian also has difficulty trusting permanence. Parents, homes, teachers, mentors, and organizations have repeatedly disappeared from her life, leaving her accustomed to preparing for the possibility that whatever stability she has found will eventually vanish. She can be stubborn, occasionally mouthy, and prone to believing she can figure something out herself rather than asking for help. The attitude earned her the nickname Vex, though age has tempered some of the impulsiveness behind it.
She generally favors practical clothing suited to travel rather than anything particularly elaborate. Years of owning relatively little have also left her without much attachment to possessions. What she carries is usually something she actually expects to use.
Coruscant became the home Xian actually remembered. Without a parent figure, she learned the rhythms of the immense city alongside the other children of the orphanage. When the Galactic Alliance fell, and Coruscant descended into upheaval, Xian lost another home and spent time surviving on the streets with other displaced children. She was never their leader, but she looked after younger children where she could, and survival became a matter of getting everyone through one more day. Food was not always guaranteed. Sometimes she stole it. Sometimes sympathetic vendors quietly made certain she didn't have to.
Her connection to the Force began revealing itself before Xian understood what it was. Air responded to her with particular ease, while fire became something she could summon almost instinctively. She discovered that talent in part by using small flames to warm food for the younger children around her. Not everyone reacted kindly to what she could do, however, and as Xian grew older, the differences between her and the other children became increasingly difficult to ignore.
At thirteen, her life changed again when she left Coruscant. After finding passage offworld, Xian eventually reached Kashyyyk and became involved with the Jedi. She spent the next several years as a Padawan, but stability continued to elude her. Masters and mentors came and went, each beginning some portion of her education without remaining long enough to finish it. Xian nevertheless learned what she could, supplementing formal instruction with experimentation and developing an increasingly personal relationship with the Force.
By sixteen, she had grown tired of waiting for someone else to provide the consistency she needed. Xian left the Jedi and returned to Castell. For two years she built a quieter existence there, working and supporting herself until an encounter with Diarch Rellik offered another unexpected change of direction.
Xian accepted Rellik's offer and joined the Diarchy as his apprentice, relocating to Bastion. For a time, she once again had something approaching structure: a mentor, a purpose, and somewhere she could begin imagining as home. Those years also continued to shape her into a capable Force-user in her own right, rather than simply the perpetually unfinished Padawan she had once considered herself to be.
Her life outside the Diarchy changed as well. During her travels, Xian grew close to Caelan, and for perhaps the first time she began confronting feelings she had little experience navigating. Their relationship never had the opportunity to become what it might have. Caelan died, leaving Xian with another painful lesson in how suddenly someone important could disappear. His death affected her deeply, reinforcing the fear that allowing herself to care for someone meant accepting that she could lose them.
Not long afterward, the Diarchy itself fell. Rellik was lost with it, and the stability Xian had slowly allowed herself to trust disappeared once again. Despite having been an apprentice to one of the Diarchy's leaders, she emerged from its collapse with no title or fortune to insulate her from the aftermath. Bastion was filled with displaced people struggling for work, food, and some semblance of normal life, and Xian found herself among them.
She survived because surviving was something she already knew how to do.
In the two years since, Xian has remained largely independent, traveling, taking work where she can find it, and continuing to develop abilities that were never shaped by a single teacher or philosophy. Much of that time has been spent alongside Jerrik, another former Jedi whose path through the galaxy bears more similarities to hers than either initially realized. What began as companionship between two people taking jobs and trying to stay alive has gradually become something far more personal. Their relationship remains new and largely undefined, but Xian has begun allowing herself to consider something she has spent much of her life avoiding: that caring for someone does not have to mean waiting for the moment they disappear.
At twenty-one, Xian is once again without an Order, Master, or permanent home. For most of her life, the future was simply whatever happened next. Now, for perhaps the first time, she has begun wondering what she actually wants that future to become.
NICKNAME: Vex
FACTION: Unaffiliated
Formerly The Diarchy
RANK: Former Apprentice / Force Adept
SPECIES: Human (Atrisian)
HOMEWORLD: Castell, birth to age 4. Coruscant, 4–13. Kashyyyk, 13–16. Castell, 16–18. Bastion, 18–20. Currently without a permanent home.
AGE: 21
SEX: Female
HEIGHT: 5'4"
WEIGHT: 115 lbs
EYES: Black
HAIR: Naturally black, dyed red
SKIN: Light tan
FORCE SENSITIVE: Yes
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
Xian has a strong natural affinity for elemental applications of the Force, particularly Air. Fire comes nearly as naturally to her, while Earth has taken more deliberate effort and Water remains the element she struggles with most. Her affinity for Air has shaped much of the way she uses the Force. She is highly mobile, capable of flight, and tends to favor redirection, precision, and the use of her surroundings rather than meeting strength with strength.Years spent surviving on her own have made Xian observant, adaptable, and practical. She has an instinct for noticing details others overlook and is often at her best when given time to watch a situation before acting. Her unconventional training has also made her willing to experiment rather than assume there is only one correct solution to a problem.
That independence has its disadvantages. Xian spent much of her childhood without a stable education and entered Jedi training significantly behind where she should have been academically. Although she has improved considerably since then, reading and formal study have never come as naturally to her as practical learning. Her training in the Force was similarly inconsistent, leaving gaps in areas that another Force user of comparable experience might consider fundamental.
Xian also has difficulty trusting permanence. Parents, homes, teachers, mentors, and organizations have repeatedly disappeared from her life, leaving her accustomed to preparing for the possibility that whatever stability she has found will eventually vanish. She can be stubborn, occasionally mouthy, and prone to believing she can figure something out herself rather than asking for help. The attitude earned her the nickname Vex, though age has tempered some of the impulsiveness behind it.
APPEARANCE
Xian is a petite young woman standing approximately 5'4" and weighing around 115 pounds. Her build remains slender, though years of travel, training, and survival have replaced much of the awkward lankiness she possessed as a child with lean athleticism. Her black eyes retain the subtly angled appearance characteristic of her Atrisian heritage. Her natural hair color is black, though she has continued to dye it red.She generally favors practical clothing suited to travel rather than anything particularly elaborate. Years of owning relatively little have also left her without much attachment to possessions. What she carries is usually something she actually expects to use.
BIOGRAPHY
Xian Xiao was born on Castell and spent the first four years of her life there with her parents. That childhood ended abruptly when violence outside the family home caused it to catch fire. Her parents died in the blaze, but before the structure collapsed, Xian's mother managed to push her young daughter through a window to safety. Ra'a'mah found the child and eventually brought her to an orphanage on Coruscant, the same world where Ra believed she herself had grown up.Coruscant became the home Xian actually remembered. Without a parent figure, she learned the rhythms of the immense city alongside the other children of the orphanage. When the Galactic Alliance fell, and Coruscant descended into upheaval, Xian lost another home and spent time surviving on the streets with other displaced children. She was never their leader, but she looked after younger children where she could, and survival became a matter of getting everyone through one more day. Food was not always guaranteed. Sometimes she stole it. Sometimes sympathetic vendors quietly made certain she didn't have to.
Her connection to the Force began revealing itself before Xian understood what it was. Air responded to her with particular ease, while fire became something she could summon almost instinctively. She discovered that talent in part by using small flames to warm food for the younger children around her. Not everyone reacted kindly to what she could do, however, and as Xian grew older, the differences between her and the other children became increasingly difficult to ignore.
At thirteen, her life changed again when she left Coruscant. After finding passage offworld, Xian eventually reached Kashyyyk and became involved with the Jedi. She spent the next several years as a Padawan, but stability continued to elude her. Masters and mentors came and went, each beginning some portion of her education without remaining long enough to finish it. Xian nevertheless learned what she could, supplementing formal instruction with experimentation and developing an increasingly personal relationship with the Force.
By sixteen, she had grown tired of waiting for someone else to provide the consistency she needed. Xian left the Jedi and returned to Castell. For two years she built a quieter existence there, working and supporting herself until an encounter with Diarch Rellik offered another unexpected change of direction.
Xian accepted Rellik's offer and joined the Diarchy as his apprentice, relocating to Bastion. For a time, she once again had something approaching structure: a mentor, a purpose, and somewhere she could begin imagining as home. Those years also continued to shape her into a capable Force-user in her own right, rather than simply the perpetually unfinished Padawan she had once considered herself to be.
Her life outside the Diarchy changed as well. During her travels, Xian grew close to Caelan, and for perhaps the first time she began confronting feelings she had little experience navigating. Their relationship never had the opportunity to become what it might have. Caelan died, leaving Xian with another painful lesson in how suddenly someone important could disappear. His death affected her deeply, reinforcing the fear that allowing herself to care for someone meant accepting that she could lose them.
Not long afterward, the Diarchy itself fell. Rellik was lost with it, and the stability Xian had slowly allowed herself to trust disappeared once again. Despite having been an apprentice to one of the Diarchy's leaders, she emerged from its collapse with no title or fortune to insulate her from the aftermath. Bastion was filled with displaced people struggling for work, food, and some semblance of normal life, and Xian found herself among them.
She survived because surviving was something she already knew how to do.
In the two years since, Xian has remained largely independent, traveling, taking work where she can find it, and continuing to develop abilities that were never shaped by a single teacher or philosophy. Much of that time has been spent alongside Jerrik, another former Jedi whose path through the galaxy bears more similarities to hers than either initially realized. What began as companionship between two people taking jobs and trying to stay alive has gradually become something far more personal. Their relationship remains new and largely undefined, but Xian has begun allowing herself to consider something she has spent much of her life avoiding: that caring for someone does not have to mean waiting for the moment they disappear.
At twenty-one, Xian is once again without an Order, Master, or permanent home. For most of her life, the future was simply whatever happened next. Now, for perhaps the first time, she has begun wondering what she actually wants that future to become.
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