User:Geoni/Padmava

Information

Player: Geoni

Name: Padmava Voicecarrier

Sex: Female

Age: 61

Class: Monk

Height: 4'1"

Weight: 170 lbs.

Appearance

Padmava has a stump where her right arm should be. This stump extends from the shoulder at eight inches and contains the same bones a normal arm would have, only compressed and shrunk in size, causing the stub to look mangled and angular. Although she is expressing some sag in her face and experiencing a large amount of grey in the black part of her fur, she doesn’t have a hunch in her back and despite a loss of fat, still has plenty of muscle. This causes her to look very skinny and to many Pandaren, unhealthy. Under her chin, the fur grows in silky grey-black strands of three to four inches, giving her a slightly bearded appearance, perhaps a result of either a reduction of estrogen or increase of testosterone.

To counter that masculine look, she has assigned the color of the lotus to her school, and so her uniforms and the uniforms of her students are a whitish pink, meaning there is room for discoloration due to extensive use and training, which is usually the condition of her own. She carries only three things on her belt: one canteen of water, one pouch for coins, and anywhere from six to twelve rolls of thick bandage, depending on how actively she’s having to use or give them away.

Eye color: Blue

Hair: Her hair is mostly grey, and she forgoes the traditional pins female Pandaren use to hold it if they wear a longer style, meaning hers hangs loose and free.

Personality

Like many Pandaren, Padmava invests all her energy into everything that she does and lives for the present, but due to her past and the challenges that she is required to face, everything she does is radical. This means that she speaks intensely, with the ends of her words spoken faster and than the beginning of the words. She allows for positive energy to flow freely into her, traps it in moments of excitement or an exciting event (whatever that may be), and then lets it leave her. She teaches people to keep emotional balance, but she herself is very prone to ups and downs, with her emotional downs being triggered by feelings of guilt, grief over death, and occasionally anger. There isn’t much that angers her, but thoughtless harmful combat and people mistreating their friends and family are primary triggers.

As a teacher, she openly encourages people to defy her when they believe that there is something that can be learned from it, or done. Not because they think they’re right or she’s wrong. She is very open to all races and ages joining her school, and is an activist for the disabled in monkhood. She constantly reviews her own lessons and behavior to make sure that the next one always surprises, and much of what she puts her students through is intended to throw them face first into an emotionally unstable status or environment. She tries her best to produce chaos around her and then have everyone involved stop and figure a way to settle it down. This is often done to not only her students but strangers around her, causing her not only to be controversial but occasionally contested.

Political Alignment: Despite favoring the Alliance due to her personal philosophies and perhaps strong ties to Jinyu culture, the Hozen and the Jinyu cohabiting the monastery have caused her to be very observant of race relations – she seeks neutrality between unfriendly combinations and has carried that over to her living in the rest of Azeroth, thus keeping her school neutral and open to all walks of life.

History

Zhou was born in New Cifera, but was sent into the middle of a large pond, light enough or her body to rest on a lotus flower, because she was born very lightweight and small. Along with being deformed, her right arm a stub of mangled bone, they concluded that she was dying right after she was born; she was barely breathing and not moving at all. It is for this reason she was sent into the middle of the pond to die on the lotus flower because her parents believed that her energy would be born anew in the lotus flowers they cultivated. Nuo, a travelling Jinyu, was in the area to visit one of the shrines when he witnessed the event from a distance. A number of people were gathered when she was sent out on the lily pad, many of them crying, and the baby resting on it looked dead to Nuo. But after the procession ended, something overcame him and he was driven to the middle of that pond, towards the baby.

A waterspeaker, he was able to consult the pond, which told him that this child’s fate was not for their waters, and that she would grow to a full-sized adult within a monastery. Of course, a prophesy is merely a reading of a specific time in the future, and there was nothing telling him how she would arrive to that point. His first course of action was to return her to her parents and explain that it was their duty to do their best to raise her until she died and not announce her dead when she is still struggling to live, but the parents would hear none of it, their moral conscience clouded with grief. He humbly concluded that it was his responsibility to find a Pandaren who would take care of her and help complete that prophesy on his journey back to Pearlfin Village. Unfortunately, due to a language barrier, he was unable to find that Pandaren. Having gotten used to taking care of the child, she was healthy and loud by the time he arrived to the village with her. Most of his fellow Jinyu were unwelcome to this event, but as a waterspeaker Nuo was among those with the most authority, so he gathered the village to discuss what should be done with her. Before he even told them of what the water spoke, a young Jinyu by the name of Fen spoke up and told him that he could just drop her off at the monastery he was to go to in a few weeks; if anyone were to take up the task of raising such a child, he remarked, it would be those training there. Nuo became wide-eyed, as seeing the prophesy come true was a fulfillment of his journey to the shrine.

Fen’s future in the monastery had been fiercely contested from the moment he heard about its existence and aimed to train there, but due to the waterspeaker’s conduit, the waters gave him the ultimate approval. Because of his goals, Fen went out of his way to learn the language of the Pandaren so that he may understand the teachings of the great masters, so he did not require a translator to accompany him on his journey. Vulnerable due to being alone, inexperienced, and tasked with taking care of a sick child, Fen faced many dangers on his journey through Jade Forest. When stalked and attacked by wild beasts, it was ultimately the smell that protected him, rather than his own combative capabilities. Although she was small, Padmava was able to produce a powerful smell, as all babies do. Additionally, Fen produced an agitating smell as well. Even among the other Jinyu he was noted as having a particular odor, and this false sense of fatherhood produced hormones that made him smell particularly paternal. During her childhood she would make fun of Fen in front of the others, feeling close enough to him at that point to do so, and every time he would embarrass her with the story of a sensitive tiger. According to Fen, a tiger snuck up on them while they were sleeping in the wilds and it decided to bite into his leg instead of swallowing her whole – a scar on his leg that proved the tale and added salt to the wound.

A number of Pandaren in training at the monastery assigned themselves the shared responsibility of raising Padmava in order to use her as a receptor for all of the values they learned from training there, but it would ultimately be Fen who served as a father figure. Fen wasn’t to become this, and tried his best to scare her away because the purpose of his training was to strengthen him so that he could uphold Pearlfin’s isolation, but he was given the same surname as her: Voicecarrier, after recounting Nuo’s prophesy to his masters. This was earned, they argued, because they did not abandon their roles in the waterspeaker’s prophesy and finally made it come true. Padmava survived to adulthood, although she never grew beyond the size of a young adolescent. From the time she arrived at the monastery, she was challenged to keep up with her peers despite having half as many arms they did, and an uncontrollable growth deficiency. Although she will later find it distasteful and unfair, the masters at the monastery made her their favorite due to the teaching challenges she presented them, and the sheer amount of effort she had to put into her training.

Being a favorite of multiple masters, masters of different schools to boot, Padmava found herself not being able to focus on one style and being sent on sometimes incomprehensible journeys and tasks. For this reason, she travelled all over Pandaria and practiced with Pandaren on most of the continent, aside from those behind the great wall or belonging to the Golden Lotus faction. When she was in her late 20s, she was able to locate her birth parents through the help of Fen and Nou, and form a caring, albeit distant relationship with them. Although both she and her parents were both agreeable and active in upholding the relationship, it was riddled with grief and guilt overwhelming the three of them. This quickly led to Padmava being overcome by the Sha, with anger and depression manifesting in particular. This period of victimhood lasted for three years, putting her out of favor with many of her old masters and distancing her from other students. It wasn’t until she lived in Pearlfin Village for a month, under the permission of Nou, so that she and Fen could join him with close relatives as he was dying. There was something about the quiet philosophy of her savior that pushed Padmava to redeem herself and drive away the Sha that took her captive. The last prophesy made by Nou regarding Padmava and Fen was that, as fate bonded them, so will death. They are prophesized to die on the same day, with both of their deaths occurring within water.

Before she was thirty-one, most of her journeying and training involved remaining in certain places for short amounts of time and considering the Tian Monastery as her permanent residence. After the death of her savior, she distanced herself from formal training and chose to spend years doing certain things. Fen always felt that it wasn’t proper or beneficial that he consider himself so close to a Pandaren, but the prophesy of their deaths washed away those feelings, and he became kinder to her. But Padmava didn’t take the news as well – the Jinyu have a much shorter lifespan than Pandaren, meaning she will die young. For nine years, she left Jade Forest and lived in seclusion. Half of these years were hermitage until she gave shelter to a wandering monk named Yong. She housed him for one night, but he returned to her because she wanted for there to be someone she can train with. Eventually, their relationship blossomed to one of lovers, and they lived together for the last four years of that seclusion until they aimed to conceive a child. Padmava was completely and utterly unable to conceive. This would drive them both into being hosts to the Sha, until the two separated and in doing so returned to a normal state of mind. That being said, Padmava was distraught over the loss, and returned to the comfort of familiar faces in the Tian Monastery for the following four years.

Her relationship with old friends, masters, and acquaintances was dull, and she had to rekindle that flame, all the while refreshing herself on combative knowledge. Fen in particular felt betrayed by her decision to leave without notice and never return, and thought that she was throwing away important years of her life by not training. Their kinship would only rekindle with these few years of training. For one last time, Padmava would betray Fen when she decided to return to being a hermit after news of her birth parents having died within the same month. But instead of isolating herself from everyone else, she met an old Shaman named Tu, who would drive her to spend six years with him in order to investigate the relationship attunement with chi and the elements had with keeping the Sha at bay. She did indeed learn that there was a connection there, but even though she wanted to return to the monastery, she felt bad about leaving Tu alone, understanding the pain of solitude all too well. In order to keep herself from being overwhelmed with guilt, she decided she would just keep travelling with Tu. As if the elements were telling her that this stage of her life was over, a large boulder tumbled down the slope of a mountain and fell on Tu’s head, cracking it open and killing him before he could be healed. Instead of succumbing to the grief and the guilt of having lost somebody she secretly wanted dead anyways, she took two years to travel the entire continent of Pandaria in order to attune herself with the elements. The Sha were kept at bay, but that particular guilt she felt remained, and her only hope of easing it would be to surround herself with peaceful and familiar people.

When she returned to the Monastery, almost all of the people she knew accepted her back into the fold and resumed training with her, but Fen expressed that he would not allow himself to be her brother because of the betrayal. A few days after she returned, Fen decided that he had ‘mastered all that he could at the monastery and with these last few decades of his life, dedicate it to training Jinyu in Pearlfin’. This only made Padmava feel worse about what she had done, but one of her old masters justified her years spent in seclusion after she held seminars on the things Tu taught her. This attempt at justification, along with an interest in developing her own school, drove her to train intensely for two years, triggering her health to decline despite strengthening herself incredibly. With her superiors noticing her desire to found her own school, along with the fact that she looked at least 150 years older than she actually was, some of them gave her their blessing to found the Heavy Lotus school at the age of 53.

Padmava would spend the next 8 ½ years keeping up with her individual training while learning what it takes to run her own school and teach her practices and philosophy. Thankfully she was in good standing with a number of masters superior to her in both age and experience, and they gave and continue to give her great advice on teaching. However, founding a school at such a controversial age and condition didn’t come without opposition and eventually challengers. She asked for the masters that disagreed with her to come to her small school outside of the monastery and challenge her. While she may be the only 4’1”, thin, one armed Pandaren to defeat old masters and trainers twice as large as her, she encountered plenty of defeats as well, with aspects of her disability being easy to take advantage of in combat. These were the matches that she built her school on. While her school would never lose its controversial status for those years, it had a status for being an entertaining one for monks of all schools, since it was one of the few schools who permitted formal matches in which combatants fought with a chosen false disability, such as blindfolded, earplugged, an arm tied to the back, or the favorite of the brewmasters: drinking heavily and performing one legged matches.

When the mists of Pandaria faded and the Pandaren were forced to join Azeroth’s scene, Padmava was challenged to put her school and her life in the context of the rest of the world, even other worlds such as Draenor. It only took her half a month to assign her favorite student to running the physical school while she takes it in spirit with her, along with her most dedicated students, around the rest of Azeroth. She soon found out that in order to enter certain cities, she needed to be sided with one faction or the other, forcing her to choose forming her honest alliance with the Alliance and aligning herself personally with the Tushui although she greatly admires Ji Firepaw. In fact, she admires both Ji and Aysa, but equally deems them fools for encouraging their race to abandon the thing their people value the most: peace. She allows her followers to choose whichever side they wish to believe in the most, but warns them not to join the divide that is fueling this war and stirring up the Sha. This is the challenge that lies ahead of her.

On the Heavy Lotus Style

Padmava founded the Heavy Lotus style at the age of 53 – the exception for being considered a master is due to her having shown old age by that point in her life. Those who knew her well and approved of her mastery allowed for this because they believed she was an old soul residing in a young body, due to the ailment she was born with. The style is well-grounded in the values that can be learned from Padmava’s life story and is primarily influenced by the use of one arm, and the use of space to compromise for size differences, and harnessing chi energy to substitute that which comes from the physical body alone (although attaining physical prowess is still practiced). A notorious practice is the requirement for practitioners to tie their arms to their backs for a year and never use it for anything, and then switch arms for an additional year. Other nuances of the school involve living with Pandaren shaman (or Shaman/Hunters of their own race) for a considerable amount of time, living alone in hermitage, and most recently developed as she is learning about the rest of Azeroth, living in Goblin slums. Formal combat matches in the Heavy Lotus Style can be done traditionally, but very often with each combatant having some form of handicap. Needless to say, due to the qualities of her style and her age, she remains a controversial figure among her parent schools. And her unconventional matches make her popular among brewmasters.