Ling Yao

From Desaiuniversity

Revision as of 23:29, 18 January 2007

Confucius say, your mom had a great time last night. Excuse the lame background on the image; the only really good color image of him is from the playing card deck.

Ling is from the manga Fullmetal Alchemist. He did not appear in the anime version, having been introduced into the story while the anime was already in production. It was the anime's loss.

There are a couple of significant AU points for Ling, partly to make him a suitable university age and partly to accomodate the anime-canon players already in the game. He's been aged up from fifteen to eighteen; his father's illness (and thus Ling's impetus for leaving) simply didn't happen until a few years later, and instead of heading to Amestris in search of alchemical immortality he's come to Desai in search of any form of immortality he can get. He's certainly heard of the more famous characters of the main cast, but hasn't participated in the main events of the manga.

Ling is played by Megan.

Basics

Name: Ling Yao
Age: 18
Height: 6' (hey, if he was that much taller than Ed at fifteen...)
Weight: 185 lbs.
Hair: Black.
Eyes: Brown.
Family: Emperor of Xing (father), eleven older siblings, and an unknown number of younger siblings (only one of which, Mei Chan, has been named).
Style: Ling, when he has to dress with any amount of dignity, prefers Chinese-style clothes even in a modern world like Desai-- Mandarin collars, that sort of thing. When he doesn't have to show any amount of style or dignity, he wears an atrocious long jacket with flames painted on it.
Notable Features: Other than his habit of loudly butting into conversations and leaving other people with his meal tabs? Oh, wait, you meant physical features. No, Ling is very normal-looking. This is how he gets the unsuspecting in his clutches, see.
Musical Tastes: That's not for the likes of you to know, honky.
Weapons of Choice: Ling uses a dao as his primary weapon, although he's also used knives, bombs, razor wire, and other smaller implements to fight. He's gotten quite creative in his solutions to defeating tough enemies.

Personality

Ling is a laid-back kind of guy. He likes to go with the flow, and get by with as little work as possible. He's optimistic, friendly, and slow both to anger and to panic. These traits make him a good person to have around in a crisis, since he won't lose his head, but they also make him very, very obnoxious at times-- especially if you're doing a group project with him or worse, the poor sucker he left with the bill for his huge meal. He often comes across as overdone, even smarmy, especially with women. He's a little too loud, a little too obvious, and little too nice. Unless he's making fun of you, in which case he takes the joke a little too far.

You know what? Keep thinking that. Because that's exactly the person you're supposed to see when you look at Ling Yao. If you knew about the intelligent, scheming prince out to beat his brothers and sisters for the throne in the impending civil war for succession, he might have to kill you.

Underneath his carefully-cultivated idiot persona who makes wildly offensive jokes about his own ethnicity and has just enough luck with the ladies not to be a total failure, Ling is actually very, very intelligent. He's discreet, has common sense, and plans for contingencies. But a prince who seems to be an idiot is a prince more likely to be sent away or given a court position than to be killed should he fail to win the throne, and Ling likes very little more than he does his own skin. He's careful not to meddle in affairs that are beyond his league.

Background

Ling is the twelfth son of the Emperor of Xing (it's unknown whether there are eleven brothers ahead of him or eleven siblings of both sexes; while many aspects of the position suggest it's traditionally a male one, one of Ling's younger sisters is portrayed as trying to win the throne as well and refers to herself as being seventeenth in the succession order) by his wife from the powerful Yao clan. In Xing, the Emperor is required to take a wife from each of the clans-- and, judging by the marriage proposals Ling gives to women in the manga, is allowed or even encouraged to take more. This results in a civil war between the clans every time an Emperor dies, since each one wants their Prince to become the next Emperor.

Being from a privileged clan in addition to the imperial family, Ling has had access to the best education and training possible in his world (this was, in fact, what caught the attention of an antagonist later in the manga). He's well-read, speaks several languages, is an accomplished martial artist, and while he's not a practicioner he knows a bit about the fundamentals of alchemy (or pharmacy, as they call it in Xing because of its medical bent). Ling can also sense chi auras, but only to the degree that he can differentiate between "regular guy" and "phenomenal cosmic power" and decide whether to fight or run away.

Ling's goal, for as long as he's been old enough to comprehend the specifics of it, has been to find a way to become immortal. Not out of a selfish fear of his own death, however, but so that when he takes the throne of Xing he will rule forever and end the civil wars. In the manga, he heads to Amestris at the age of fifteen in search of an alchemical solution to immortality (and finds it, voluntarily becoming a homunculus) because of his father's sudden failing health. In the AU leading up to this game, he heads to Desai at the age of eighteen in search of a magical or technological solution to immortalilty because of his father's sudden failing health. He's willing to do almost anything, even at the cost of his own soul or humanity, to help his country.

Lan Fan and Fu

Lan Fan and Fu are Ling's bodyguards. Fu is an older man and Lan Fan is his teenaged granddaughter; they are not mentioned or implied to have any familiar relationship to Ling other than coming from the Yao clan as well (which means that if they're related at all, it's probably only very distantly). They're both cloaked and masked ninjas, and currently serve as NPCs for Ling.

In-Game

Ling is playing the part of the Baker in the DU production of Into the Woods. He's also recently been elected to the Student Board of Affairs.

He is currently rooming with Roxas and is majoring in political science.

He uses the same handle everywhere on the network, having a journal at yaohuangdi and the instant messenger name yaohuangdi.