Jin Tian

The Basics

 * Name: Jin Tian
 * Species: Sun Dragon
 * Gender: Male
 * Age: Several million years. Looks to be in his late teens.
 * Hair: Tangerine-orange
 * Eyes: Jade-green
 * Race/Ethnicity: Looks like a mix of Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern and North African.
 * Location: Nova City, CT, USA
 * Year: 2010
 * Verse: OC
 * Played By: Gerald Anderson
 * Room # 411
 * Mun: Pen
 * LJ: supernova1006

Appearance
Jin has tangerine-orange hair, though every once in awhile he’s forced to die it black or something in order to fit in. People never believe him when he tells them that it’s his natural hair color. His eyes are a pale, jade green, and are slightly slanted, almond-shaped. In his human form he is relatively short and skinny, very gangly in the tradition of teenage boys. He wears very casual, loose-fitting cloths and often wears scarves with odd patterns. His skin is rather dark, like burnt caramel. He always wears sandals, except in winter when he wears boots and lots of socks. He also has a metal shackle around his right wrist, and attached to it is a single chain link—the metal is very bright and has an almost rainbow-like sheen.

In his dragon form, he is about the size of a young elephant. He is a very bright gold-orange and is actually glowing. He looks like a cross between an Eastern and a Western dragon—he is long and somewhat thin, but he also has wings and a rather long neck. He has four horns on his head, two above his ears and two below and further back, and they all point backward. He is covered in varying patches of scales and feathers; there are feathers on his head, at the tips of his ears, down his neck and back, in stripes along his side, down the back of his tail and the tip of his tail turns completely into feathers which fan outward. His wings are also feathered and are enormous. His body is very hot to the touch and gives off a lot of warmth. His eyes remain the same shade of green, however, and the shackle is still around his right forepaw.

Psychology
Jin is an extremely happy, cheerful, lively person about ninety percent of the time. He encompasses every meaning of the word “sunny.” He loves life and he loves the planet and everything on it. In particular he loves the diversity of all things, since there isn’t as much diversity among dragons. He doesn’t care what people think in terms of how crazy he sometimes acts, because he wants more than anything to enjoy his life. He has a habit of jumping off of high buildings.

Underneath all the cheerfulness, however, is a hell of a lot of guilt. Even though his intentions were good, he still sold out his home star, and he holds himself responsible for its destruction and the death of most of his clan. Internally he is almost constantly reminding himself of the promise he made to the Sol dragons, to his mentor, Shi, and to himself—to defeat every star-eater and star-eater machine on Earth. He therefore puts a lot of responsibility on his own shoulders, and he blames himself whenever the star-eaters manage to hurt or kill something or someone. For the most part, however, he knows that what’s done is done, and that since he can’t change the past, he might as well try to change the future.

He also suffers from extreme homesickness. The Sol dragons have forbidden him from leaving Earth, which means that he can’t even visit neighboring stars. His home star is completely gone, as is his family, and what remains of his clan now hates him. In the current times, he can’t even really transform into a dragon, since if he is spotted the human governments might take an interest in him. He has essentially been cut off from almost everything that makes a dragon a dragon. All he has left is his devotion to taking care of the planet. What this means is that he overburdens himself with taking care of the planet and its creatures. He often goes out of his way to protect people, plants and animals, and has been known to take bullets for strangers and such. This often leads to him being badly hurt.

Jin also is a bit of a crybaby. He never cries for himself, but he’ll cry for species going extinct, for a stranger being murdered in the city, for people dying in wars, and anything else he thinks of as horrible or sad. He also cries for happy or beautiful things sometimes.

Where there’s light, there’s always darkness, and like anyone, Jin also has a dark side. His hatred of the star-eaters runs deep, and he can turn outright vicious if he finds star-eaters or their machines threatening someone or something he cares about. During fights he is usually very gung-ho and cheerful about it, but if the star-eater he is fighting has done something unforgivable, he turns cold, blank and merciless. This typically leads to a guilt trip afterward, especially if other people have seen him. He never wants people to see him acting like the star-eaters he hates.

His dark side also has other aspects to it, mostly concerning his relationship with Nifraim. He hates Nifraim more than anything in the world, and at the same time Nifraim is the only one who can really get under his skin. He has been physically and psychologically tortured by Nifraim in the past, and Nifraim has developed something of an obsession with causing the utmost suffering to Jin. When Nifraim is around, Jin becomes mentally unstable, prone to break downs, panic attacks and violent outbursts. As much as he hates Nifraim, he is also terrified of him. Even the mere thought of him can change his mood from good to bad.

For the most part, though, Jin is a very happy and hyperactive guy. He’s friendly and extremely compassionate and generous, and in many cases is just completely selfless. At the same time, he loves life and shows it in everything he does. He also rather likes being human, mostly because he gets to eat and wear clothes. He loves food, particularly fish, vegetables, fruits and sweets. He also has a thing for mismatched clothes and scarves. He hates being indoors and tends to run around outside as often as he can. He also hates, and in fact fears, the dark, wet and cold. He needs sunlight and warmth to survive, even in human form, so spending time in the dark, water or cold saps his energy very quickly, leaving him lethargic and sickly. At the same time, he would likely be running around quite happily in 100 degree weather.

Finally, Jin has a rather complex relationship with other dragons. When he is around them, he is constantly aware that he is being judged. Almost all dragons these days either disdain or outright hate him. He tends to become very quiet and act very subservient when they’re around. He is well aware that he deserves everything they can level at him. If they do end up liking him, however, he fawns over them like a puppy. He desperately wants the approval of the dragons, which is part of the reason he wants to rid the planet of star-eaters. Much as he loves Earth, he does want to one day return to the stars.

Skills/Powers
Just in general, Jin is sort of like a superhuman. He can hold his breath for longer, jump higher, run faster, heal faster, and is also stronger than the average human. He doesn’t need to sleep or eat as much, though he has taken a serious liking to food. He can also fly by letting out his wings and altering his internal biology slightly. He can transform with ease between dragon and human, and the transformation to human is virtually a total transformation on the genetic level. No dragon is perfect at this transformation, however—if he loses focus, or is injured or something, he might lose grip on the transformation and turn back into a dragon, or sprout an extra kidney or arm etc. He could technically transform into anything else on Earth, but he typically doesn’t—mastering a transformation takes many, many years and is often quite difficult.

Like any dragon, he can also adjust his internal temperature at will and can switch between different ocular lenses which allow him to see different kinds of light. In human form he typically keeps his eyes at the human level, since changing lenses in human form requires him to rewire his brain, which takes time. If his internal temperature goes too high, he automatically returns to dragon form in order to keep from frying his human brain.

Jin’s main talent is that he can wield what he calls the Clockwork Scythe, which is a rather complex weapon with transformative properties. The scythe is actually made up of two clockwork cats called Tick and Tock—Tick is the handle while Tock is the blade. The cats are wound up by a key and can then join together and transform into a scythe; the scythe itself then has transformative properties. The scythe is made up of the second-hardest metal in Jin’s galaxy after dragon bones, which means it can break or pierce just about anything. Tick and Tock also won’t transform for anyone else, so Jin is the only one who can use them.

Also his bones are metal.

History
Jin was born into a normal, average-sized yellow star somewhere in the Lupus constellation. He lived the first few million years of his life as a normal dragon living inside the star, though he liked to travel more than the average dragon. He would often travel between star systems and particularly liked to find systems with life-bearing planets. Most dragons are content to take care of such planets, but Jin in particular liked to watch the goings on of life on those planets and learn from it. The ideas he got from the different species he watched made him start thinking about things beyond the scope of a dragon’s life.

About a million years ago, the star-eaters began appearing in the galaxy. At first the dragons would only receive occasional reports about stars that had been destroyed, but as time went by, more and more stars began disappearing. Whole populations of dragons were being killed off. The dragons came to understand that they were facing a great enemy, though their knowledge of that enemy remained very limited. The star-eaters were similar to dragons, but they survived by absorbing the energy of stars directly, and that same energy powered their massive starships. Dragons tried to reason with the star-eaters, but they seemed to have no real interest in peace with them.

Then about a thousand years ago, a fleet of star-eater ships began to head for Jin’s home star. His clan prepared themselves and were able to fight back when the star-eaters arrived. Jin saw all of the death and destruction that was happening and realized that the star itself wasn’t important—that life was important. He had watched how species on life-bearing planets always seemed to travel between one place and another, and how they adapted to new places. He decided that his clan should do the same.

In secret, he went to the flagship and asked to negotiate with the fleet’s commander, Nifraim. He told Nifraim that he would be willing to show him how to infiltrate the star itself, so long as Jin and his people had time to escape. Nifraim seemed to be a reasonable sort and agreed to the arrangement. Jin led him through a gap in the dragons’ defenses and into the star. As soon as Nifraim and his forces were inside the star, Nifraim betrayed Jin and captured him. Jin was locked away on one of the ships and his limbs were shackled with a seemingly unbreakable metal. He was also given a window to watch what happened.

Nifraim’s forces moved quickly. When the dragons realized what Jin had done, many of them retreated into the sun to try and stop the star-eaters, but it was too late. The star-eaters devoured the top layers of the star, shrinking it so quickly that the star became unstable. Nifraim then dropped an antimatter warhead into the star’s core. The supernova that resulted killed almost all of the dragons of Jin’s clan, including his entire family. Jin was forced to watch his home and his clan be destroyed.

Nifraim kept Jin on the ship because, in his words, he found traitors interesting. Jin suffered psychological and physical torture at Nifraim’s hands for many years. This combined with an overwhelming guilt caused Jin to lose many of his memories. Then one day a dragon, a survivor from Jin’s clan, snuck aboard Nifraim’s ship and appeared before Jin. Jin could barely remember what had happened, but the dragon told him that she had come at the request of Jin’s mother, before she had died in the supernova. The dragon had stolen an antimatter weapon from the star-eater ship and managed to free three of the shackles binding Jin before Nifraim appeared. She only had enough time to shoot at the fourth and final chain, breaking the chain but not the shackle around Jin’s wrist. Nifraim killed her, and in the commotion Jin managed to escape. He opened a Tunnel haphazardly, not knowing where he was going, and came out just above Earth’s atmosphere. Time had bent around him, and he had passed several centuries into the future

It was the year 1406 on Earth. Four hundred years ago, people all over the world had witnessed an extremely bright supernova in the sky. Then in 1406, what seemed to be a meteor crashed down in China, setting fire to the nearby village. The meteor burned in its crater for four days before the people were able to approach it. There, in the crater, they found Jin. Jin had lost almost all of his memories, but he remembered that he was supposed to take on the form of one of the species on a life-bearing planet. He analyzed the humans who were staring at him in awe, and transformed into what was essentially an amalgamation of all of those people, many of whom were children and young men. His hair remained bright orange, however.

The people believed that Jin was a real Chinese dragon and treated him with respect. Jin was badly wounded, so the villagers collectively took care of him. They gave him the name Jin Tian, due to his coloring and the fact that he’d fallen from the sky. One young man agreed to take him in and look after him, since Jin didn’t know anything about being human and couldn’t even speak their language. The man’s name was Shi, and he took a liking to Jin immediately. Shi was an inventor, and though his inventions usually failed, he was known for his creativity. He had recently begun to experiment with clocks and other time-keeping devices. Over the next several years, Shi and Jin became inseparable. Shi taught Jin everything he could, and Jin quickly learned the language and the customs. He also slowly began to regain his memories.

Shi was beginning to age and Jin had regained a lot of his memories when one day several dragons appeared on Earth. All of them were from Earth’s sun, Sol, and had come to put Jin on trial for treason and mass murder. Jin could barely remember what he had done, but he hadn’t forgotten the guilt. The dragons of Sol explained that some of the dragons from Jin’s home star had survived. They also explained that since Supernova 1006, as it was known on Earth, the dragons had taken to creating and using technology of their own. They had discovered a way to create a very hard, dense metal, almost as dense as dragon bones; this metal was almost indestructible, and was the same type of metal used by the star-eaters. The only thing that could break it, in fact, was dragon bones—dragon metal.

The dragons also revealed that star-eaters had begun to come to Earth and were sending their androids down to infiltrate the planet. They hadn’t yet launched an attack on Sol itself, but the dragons were very worried. Nifraim, now an admiral, seemed to also be looking for Jin. Jin was more worried for Earth’s safety than for his own.

The Sol dragons were going to take Jin to be tried and probably executed, but Shi, who had heard the whole story, asked them to allow for an alternative. He told the dragons that since Jin knew the inner-workings of the star-eaters, and since he also now had extensive knowledge of Earth, it would be better for him to be a spy than to be taken away and killed. The dragons pointed out that Jin would need to then kill whatever star-eaters or star-eater robots he came into contact with. But in the years since meeting Jin, Shi had become quite the inventor and had become famous in the region for his clocks. He offered to build a weapon that could defeat the star-eaters weapons, so long as the Sol dragons provided some of their metal.

The Sol dragons finally agreed. They told Jin that he must spend the remainder of his life on Earth, until every last star-eater on Earth had been killed. If he tried to leave the planet, the dragons would kill him. They provided Shi with the materials he needed and departed to keep watch over Jin and the planet from afar. Over the next few decades, the relationship between Jin and Shi was rather strained, as both of them had become part of something very large. Part of Shi might have resented Jin for dragging him into this, as well as for betraying his people. He spent almost all of his time figuring out how to create the weapon, and decided to base the design on what he had learned about star-eaters, whose weapons were robotic and had transformative properties.

At the end of his life, Shi finally presented Jin with the completed weapon. The weapon came in two parts in the form of two clockwork cats, built the metal the dragons had provided and installed with a basic AI. The two cats when joined together transformed into a scythe that could change its form at will and easily dispatch any star-eater robot. The cats were named Tick and Tock, and Jin was given a clock key that would wind them up. Shortly after he gave them to Jin, Shi died, though he made Jin promise to fight the star-eaters for as long as he could.

Jin wandered all over the world after that. He traveled south first through India, the Middle East, and Africa, learning more about humans and their planet and destroying star-eater machines whenever he encountered them. He also began adjusting his appearance slightly whenever he encountered a new race of people. He went back through Southeast Asia to Japan, and then north across Russia and into Europe. It was the early 1500’s in France when Nifraim caught up with him again.

Nifraim had opened a proper Tunnel shortly after Jin had disappeared, and so arrived four hundred years before Jin in Europe. He too had traveled far, and everywhere he went he left legends and influence. In the Central and South Americas he was known as Quetzacoatl; in Scandinavia he was known as Nidhogg; in China and Japan he was Seiryu; and in the Middle East he was worshipped as an incarnation of Abzu. Even when he seemed to impart good teachings or protection to the people who worshiped him, he at the same time helped brought about their destruction. He was now back in Europe and was secretly conducting some of the major explorations that took place in the 1500’s.

Nifraim seemed to have a power over Jin that no one else had, and could push his buttons as no one else could. Jin had never been able to get the one shackle off of his wrist, not even when it was hit with star-eater weapons. Nifraim explained that for the past several thousand years, he had been specifically targeting stars with lots of dragons in order to harvest their bones and turn their bones into weapons—and shackles. Jin was infuriated. He tried to fight him and lost, and was temporarily recaptured by Nifraim before escaping again. For the next five hundred years, Nifraim went back and forth between Earth and his fleet of ships, helping to direct attacks elsewhere while simultaneously instigating internal strive all across Earth. Jin ran into him several more times during that five hundred years, sometimes challenging him to a fight and other times simply fleeing. The last time he saw Nifraim was in the early 1900’s in America, when Nifraim was aiding in the capitalist movement against unionization and worker’s rights.

Jin has spent the last hundred years in America, going wherever he hears about star-eaters and their machines. Most recently, he has come to a small city called Nova City in Connecticut. Due to his young appearance, these days he mostly poses as a student of some such, since he is too lazy to adjust his appearance to that of an older person. He is now “attending” Nova City High due to strange reports about some of the students there, and this is where he meets Mila. When Mila gets involved in a fight between Jin and a star-eater, she becomes the first person in several years to find out what Jin is, and she ends up attaching herself to him.

Later the two of them meet up with a star-eater android who is a model of a scrapped line, due to a faulty coding in his AI that causes this model to ask questions. The android—a Sun Hound model, capable of transforming from dog to human and back—was hiding out on Earth to escape the star-eaters, who would scrap him if they found him. The android, who comes to be called Sirius, decides to help Jin and Mila.

They are currently still in Nova City, as it seems to lately have become something of a nexus for star-eater activity.

World Info
Jin is currently on a very normal version of Earth. The only unusual thing about his universe is that all of the stars are in fact nests for dragons. All of the dragons in his reality live inside stars, and different breeds of dragons live in different kinds of stars. These dragons have evolved to survive the extreme heat and radiation of the various stars. They all look generally the same and have the same biology, but their coloring and internal temperatures differ depending on the kind of star. Jin and what remains of his people come from a yellow star similar to our sun.

Dragon biology is complex and is suited for a star’s environment. Their flesh resembles scales and feathers and is quite malleable but also very tough, difficult to puncture and able to withstand very, very high temperatures. Their blood is made almost entirely of plasma, and their bones are made from an extremely high-density fused metal not found on Earth. Their brains and hearts are very large, and they don’t eat, speak or breathe. They receive all of their energy directly from the sun’s light and radiation. Their organs therefore consist of a circulatory system, a neurological system, a lymphatic system, a system to synthesize the sun’s energy, and a system which can alter the internal temperature at different points in the body. Dragons can therefore increase or decrease their temperature at will; their temperature system is also what allows them to breathe fire (though technically it’s low-temp plasma). Their typical core temperature while inside a sun is approximately that of the sun itself, perhaps a few degrees lower. Dragons communicate through a very complex psychic link which transmits thoughts, feelings, images and colors which combine to make a coherent language. This language is virtually untranslateable to any spoken language, and dragons essentially cannot communicate with others using this language except on a basic level, as the brains of other species aren’t wired to interpret the messages. For long distances, however, they communicate with loud, variable frequency roars.

Their eyes also have multiple lenses that they can switch between. Different lenses allow them to see different kinds of light—they can therefore see all light on the spectrum.

Dragons are very intelligent and are essentially pacifists. They consider themselves to be caretakers of planets with life, and have certain rules about interacting with life-bearing planets and the species on them. Since their bodies are malleable, they are able to lower their temperatures and transform into other creatures. When they choose to go to a particular planet, their code of conduct states that they must take the form of one of the species there initially, and that they aren’t to interfere in the processes of life and evolution. Some of them choose to remain on planets long-term, and either keep their chosen form or return to dragon form, though they keep their temperatures significantly reduced. They’re generally a happy people and don’t really interfere in the lives of others, just sort of going about their business. Once every few millennia or so, dragons send representatives from each star to a Dragon Moot at a predetermined location in the galaxy to discuss how stars and planets are progressing and cite any threats.

The only real technology that dragons possess is a system of wormholes throughout the galaxy, known collectively as Tunnels, which permit speedy transit between star systems. These Tunnels can only be accessed by two species, of which dragons are one, as they are one of two in the galaxy with the appropriate psychic skills necessary to open, direct, and close the Tunnels.

Dragons live out their lives inside stars, and they age with the stars. When the star undergoes its natural death, dragons typically die with the star. If the star dies or is destroyed prematurely, the dragon clan living within the star is forced to seek out an uninhabited star or create a new one. Star creation takes a long time and requires dragon blood, so a good deal of the clan will die before the star is completed. Most naturally-occurring stars will be born with dragon eggs already inside them; stars created by dragons won’t have this unless the dragons actually lay some.

In the past million years, dragons have been dealing with an intruder into the galaxy. The star-eaters are a race of beings that have come from beyond the edges of the galaxy and have for the past million years started consuming stars. The truth is that the star-eaters are actually dragons, or anti-dragons. They share a common ancestor with dragons and they look quite similar, but they survive by literally eating stars. Whereas dragons are beings of fire, gas and metal, star-eaters are beings of light, dust and shadow. They live on solid planets, and therefore have been able to create extremely advanced weapons and spaceships that have allowed them to cross the galactic boundary. Since their arrival, they have been eating stars and using them for their ships’ fuel, and have been killing dragons as they go. They eat the first few layers of the star, which causes the star to become unstable. If the star then doesn’t go into supernova on its own, the star-eaters help it along by dropping antimatter bombs into the star. The resulting supernova is capable of powering the star-eater ships for thousands of years. The war between the dragons and the star-eaters is ongoing, and there have been terrible losses on both sides.

In the past several thousand years, the star-eaters have been taking an interest in the life-bearing planets that the dragons protect. While dragons love life-bearing planets, star-eaters seem to have a deeply ingrained hatred of them. They have been attempting to wipe out any life-bearing planets they come into contact with, with minimal success—the dragons do everything in their power to thwart them. In recent centuries, the star-eaters have begun to infiltrate some life-bearing planets, either disguising themselves as one of the species or sending in robots and androids. They have a veritable army of robots that often do most of the fighting for them, while androids are mostly used for infiltration.

Most recently, the star-eaters have set their sights on Earth.

In-Game

 * Ladon Ceto--Friend--Ever since learning that Ladon is a dragon, Jin has essentially attached himself to Ladon. They confide in each other about dragon things and get along for the most part. However, their relationship is in a near-constant state of flux. Jin can't quite reconcile the fact that he is friends with Ladon with the fact that Ladon is a dragon, so he's always somewhere between being Ladon's friend and Ladon's dog.


 * Dr. Henry McCoy / The Beast--Friend--So far, Hank has been very nice to Jin, and Jin just loves that Hank is all blue and fuzzy.


 * Len--Friend--Jin quite likes Len and is rather attached to him. They helped each other during their mutual freakout and Jin has thoroughly enjoyed introducing Len to various technologies.


 * Ivan Braginski/Russia--Friend?--Jin rather likes Russia, but he can't help but be reminded of Nifraim when he's with him. He also sort of mauled Russia when Russia was hallucinating that Jin was Liet, so their relationship is a little strained.

Canon

 * Tick and Tock--Neutral--Jin absolutely loves Tick and Tock; alternately, at the best of times Tick and Tock see Jin as a partner, and at the worst of times they see him as a traitorous scumbag. Most of this is due to their dragonic programming. They generally don't like Jin at all, and spend most of their time insulting him and reminding him of every mistake he's ever made. Jin can't ever bring himself to dislike them; they're the last reminder he has of Shi.


 * Shi--Friend--Shi was Jin's first friend when Jin crash-landed in China. He took Jin in and helped him learn the language and how to be human. They were absolutely inseparable, and people who knew them would say that Jin followed Shi around like a puppy. Their relationship became strained toward the end of Shi's life, when the Sol dragons arrived and explained what had happened and what Jin had done. Shi is the one who made the clockwork cats, Tick and Tock. On his deathbed, he made Jin promise to fight the star-eaters for as long as he was able. It is likely that part of Shi resented Jin for what Jin had done, but they remained friends until Shi's death.


 * Mila--Friend--She's one of few people to ever learn that Jin is a dragon, and one of even fewer to keep hanging around him after finding out. She genuinely thinks of him as a friend and wants to help him in his fight against the star-eaters. Jin just things she's absolutely lovely. She's bookish and kind of bossy, though she isn't nearly as studious as she pretends to be.


 * Sirius--Friend?--A Sun Hound 6 model star-eater android. He's one of the last SH6 machines left; faulty programming in his AI prompts him to ask questions, which makes him and the rest of the line a liability in combat--can't exactly have your soldier asking why they're fighting and killing. The entire SH6 line was scrapped, though a few managed to escape. Sun Hounds are infiltration androids, capable of transforming from a human into a dog and back, which makes them both intelligence and combat machines. He's generally a friendly person and makes a very sweet puppy, but Jin still doesn't trust him all that much. He genuinely believes that all star-eater machines are a threat to the well-being of Earth and the rest of the galaxy. Jin would have killed Sirius outright if Mila hadn't interceded, and though a month or so has gone by, Jin still doesn't quite know what to make of him.


 * Nifraim--ENEMY--If there is anything in the universe that Jin hates with every fiber of his being, it is Nifraim. Nifraim is a commander in the star-eater fleet, and spends a good deal of his time these days on Earth, heading up the assault on Earth. He is the one who struck the deal with Jin that led to the destruction of Jin's star, and he is also the one that kept Jin captive for a good time afterward and tortured him. He represents everything that Jin is against. Nifraim is also able to get under Jin's skin like no one else can, and takes pleasure in psychologically--and physically--torturing him whenever their paths cross.