Player Name: Laure
Are you over 18?: Ya
Contact: rashoumon, DM
Other Characters in Game: N/A

IC INFORMATION

Character Name: Dan Heng
Canon: Honkai: Star Rail
Canon Point: Post-Belobog, pre-Kafka's message. As a note, Dan Heng's backstory was revealed to us in Version 1.2, which launched in July 2023. His canonpoint is technically from game launch, though.
Age: "Teen" is the only canon age description given. Dan Heng's species typically lives for upwards of 700 years by Earth calendars, and seem to mature slowly—my estimate is that he's probably developmentally equal to a human that's only 16 or 17. Like reverse dog-years. He's young enough that others consider him a "kid" or "youth," but old enough that other long-life species do not treat him like a child, and he's probably not done growing either.
Background: Dan Heng's Lore page; Dan Heng (Imbibitor Lunae)'s Lore page; Previous life's information.

Arrival Scenario: Solvunn. The High Elder of the Vidyadhara is a person with responsibilities specifically dealing with rituals for containing the power of an Aeon (H:SR's term for divinities), and as the exiled reincarnation of the previous High Elder, the emphasis on ritual being used for the reverse in Solvunn would be Fun for Dan Heng. He would also have to adjusting to surviving without his usual recluse hobby (reading), and the rustic setting would be an interesting character challenge for a kid who is used to phones and interstellar travel.

Suitability: Dan Heng has a voracious appetite for new knowledge and experiences (on account of the "being in prison most of his life" thing), and values his explorations across the galaxy to different planets and worlds. He'd want to explore and see as much of Abraxas as possible, just for curiosity's sake. I picked Solvunn in part because of the lack of a library for him to sequester himself in. He will have to talk to locals and other summoned to get information, or at least to get access to something like a library. In particular, I'd like to see if he can discover things about the lost city of Tornis (he's already parted the sea once so we could walk down into a sunken palace, let him do it AGAIN its Free Real Estate) or the reason the ocean consumes those who venture too far out into the open water. Also Lyfbringr has a LOT of visual similarities to motifs for The Abundance, Yaoshi, and the mara-struck (the halo of branches, the golden leaves, the red fruits, etc), so that's cool? (It is Not Cool if you're from the Xianzhou, because they have beef with Yaoshi.) As for his ability to engage in the darker plot environment of Abraxas, some dude with a sword and a revenge obsession from his past life has been hunting him down across the universe for who knows how long, and nearly every time he catches up, Dan Heng has to kill him to get away. He can handle it.

Powers:
🐉 Dan Heng is a Vidyadhara, a draconic long-life species descended from Long, the Aeon of Permanence. They live for roughly 700 years before undergoing "molting rebirth" where they turn into pearl-like eggs and are born again as children without any memories. Vidyadhara magic is known as cloudhymn (or cloudcry) and is hydrokinetic in nature, with a few notable applications including using optical refraction to create an invisibility effect and like. Floating? I guess?? Vidyadhara are an aquatic species, and can hold their breath for "over 100 minutes," if not breathe in water itself. Like many long-life species, they are "more durable" than the average short-life species as well, and unlike other long-life species, their cells are constantly undergoing transdifferentiation to maintain itself over the course of their centuries-long lives.
🐉 High Elder - Dan Heng is the reincarnation of the previous Luofu High Elder, and has inherited the destructive portion of said High Elder's powers. While other other Vidyadhara have to train to achieve a level of skill with cloudhymn, High Elders have innate abilities, and are capable of causing tsunamis, rain, lightning, summoning dragons out of water, and even permanently parting the sea. They also develop draconic traits, like horns or tails, as evidence of their direct inheritance of power from the Permanence. Textual evidence also implies that Super High Elder Power Lizard Mode™ overrides their sense of empathy and self-identity as the dragon part starts driving.
🐉 Cloud-Piercer - Unlike Cloud Knights or Silvermane Guards, and armed followers of Sanctus Medicus or the Antimatter Legion, playable characters keep their weapons in a hammerspace, and summon them for combat. This is because Mihoyo doesn't want to have to animate 900 different run cycles while they're equipped, but summoning weapons out of nowhere is an ability Dan Heng uses in cutscenes as well as the Gameplay Dimensio, so I'm counting it as an ability but only for this specific spear. Cloud-Piercer was a relic belonging to Dan Heng's past life. The sphere fixed beneath the blade is the foci that Dan Heng uses when he is manifesting his High Elder abilities, implying that the concept of the spear's form is mutable. He can enhance the power of his strikes with wind or throw it far and hard enough to impale part of a giant robot four stories off the ground. When he is using the power of the High Elder, he can make multiple copies of it out of water.
🐉 The Trailblaze. We know of two benefits granted by the Trailblaze to its Pathstriders: Environmental resistance (the party is less effected by Jarilo-VI's uninhabitable cold until they venture closer to the engine of creation and the Stellaron) & unnatural stamina with equal cost (March states that the Trailblaze lets them stay awake for multiple days but then you sleep just as long after).
🐉 ... We don't know what the mechanic for it is, but Dan Heng spends most of his time looking more like a human than a Vidyadhara. I'm pretty sure it's an actual transformation, and not just a type of glamour, since it maintains itself when he sleeps.

IC Limitations.
🐲 Dan Heng's a pretty reliable self-regulator--he refrains from using his "secret strength" during a fight with a void dragon the size of a house and a fight with a giant robot controlled by a sexy ice lady. He also had to be forcibly impaled by a sword to transform in the middle of a "immortality monsters are running rampant and attacking everyone" disaster, and even then he probably would have avoided being stabbed and subsequently transforming if his brain weren't melting out of his ears from environmental hazard smoke that causes long-life species to lose their grip on their reality.
🐲 Despite his level of martial prowess, Dan Heng dislikes conflict, and primarily acts out of self-preservation or to protect others instead of leading with an offensive, and seems to manage fine 99.5% of the time with just his (admittedly impressive) spear skills. Super-dragon-tsunami powers are reserved for fighting giant immortal women with gravity powers inside of a giant tree levels of threat.
🐲 Dan Heng doesn't want to hurt people (see: his response to Yanqing's arrest attempt after Blade forces the Imbibitor Lunae transformation and his voice lines about avoiding conflict in battle), thus he avoids using his other abilities if he can.
🐲 He also advocates for diplomacy instead of combat whenever the Express crew can afford to do so (ie, Svarog).

OOC Limitations:
🚫 Molting rebirth cancelled. If he dies he will not turn into an egg and hatch back into a little baby toddler with a new identity.
🚫 Cloudhymn is limited by existing water and moisture content. There's more water to fuck with in a swamp than a desert, etc. While he could possibly command clouds or weather in the atmosphere to call down rain, distance makes things difficult, and he would tire more easily in the process. While the Game Mechanics Universe seems to imply a level of water creation, I think that's stupid and that playing by waterbender rules is more interesting. No pulling water out of existing creatures or plants, either. Ice or snow isn't off limits but will need more effort to force it to return to a liquid state.
🚫 He cannot use the more destructive and powerful abilities without transforming into his super special secret strength form, which he won't want to do! (Barring serious development, or a canon update, he'd prefer to remain human-shaped as much time as possible and I believe he is using a considerable amount of effort to maintain his human appearance. His transformation sequence is pretty dope though, and I'd like to keep it as an option for the Drama.)
🚫 No flying lol. Maybe a little bit of stressed, lizard style hovering and enhanced jumps for the hoops aesthetic, but that requires moisture in the air to manipulate and use to lift himself. Proper suspended flight for extended time or distances at Dan Feng levels just can't happen.
🚫 As the player, I abide by the permissions listed on a character's journal, and prefer to communicate ahead of time and during combat. I can do an opt in/out post as well, and further limitations from mods are welcome.


PERSONALITY QUESTIONS

Describe an important event in your character's life and how it impacted them.
The Ten-Lords Commission of the Xianzhou Luofu said, "Hey I know this baby hatched like, this morning but we should just go ahead and put him in THE SHACKLING PRISON. This is an appropriate measure to deal with a child who is LEGALLY AND MENTALLY DISTINCT from his past life who did all those war crimes and that big sedition. We should chain him up in the dark too, and then "educate" him about all of the crimes his past life did, and how as Dan Feng's reincarnation, he has to take the punishment. This will not effect the trout population his developing brain at all." Prison, and his subsequent banishment and hunting by Blade, taught Dan Heng that he needs to do everything on his own, without relying on others or putting them in danger. His greatest obstacle to teamwork is the fact that so far, playing lone wolf has worked out fine, and he assumes that he will be able to protect people fine on his own. It's only been recently, after joining the Astral Express, that he's learned to start relying on others more if he can, but he still sees the sins of his past life as his own burden and rather than trying to work with his friends to coordinate their efforts from the start to prevent chaos.

Does your character have a moral code, or other set of standards they try to live by?
In Honkai: Star Rail, civilizations and people are characterized by philosophical schools belonging to different Aeons (divinities). Though they are not moral codes, they do help define how people interact with the universe around them. Dan Heng belongs to two different Paths, to some degree.

As one of the Nameless, he follows the Path of the Trailblaze, which has four main tenets. "Explore, understand, establish, and connect." AKA, "Prime Directive my ass, we're going to tell everyone about space travel while we learn about the universe around us." The Nameless travel through the stars, connecting worlds to each other and expanding the boundaries of awareness. Dan Heng in particular seems to have an emphasis on exploration and understanding, and aims to arm his companions with as much understanding of the worlds around them as he can in order to help them.

Though Dan Heng does not follow the narrow path of the Hunt to the degree that others from the Xianzhou do, he still shares the Hunt's characteristic anti-immortality stance with the rest of the Alliance. In particular, because of the abominations that the prior Imbibitor Lunae was convicted of creating with the power of the Abundance, it is a topic he is sensitive about. Abominations by Xianzhou standards include: genetic manipulation beyond basic curative or medicinal efforts; resurrection of dead short-life species to create undying beings; and long-life species that have succumbed to "mara" (a state where the cumulative experience of life and memories upset someone to the point of them losing all sense of self).

What quality or qualities do they admire most?
While he seems most appreciative of people who can mind their own damn business (thank you, Welt and Himeko) and see him as his own person, Dan Heng has also expressed admiration for Bailu—and to a lesser extent March—for being energetic and not letting her situation hold her back. Don't let the stoicism fool you, he is not immune to sunshine archetypes. He just also likes his privacy.

Do they have a part of themselves they dislike?
[ points at Dan Feng. ] This mothefucker. Dan Heng's past life is a presence that has cast his shadow over Dan Heng... for his entire life. From the moment he hatched onward, things in Dan Heng's life have been dictated by the actions of a person Dan Heng will never know, will never meet, and yet every day he wears the face of Dan Feng, and every Imbibitor Lunae that preceded him. Because of this, Dan Heng's journey is about moving forward, never once looking back, blazing a trail of his own through the stars.

(Also, Blade is probably Dan Feng's toxic old man yaoi ex, and now Blade keeps trying to hunt Dan Heng down and kill him, and whatever Dan Feng did to Blade means now the fucker won't stay dead even if Dan Heng kills him. This has been tested multiple times. So Dan Heng is really not crazy about whatever the fuck Dan Feng did to bewitch Yingxing with the lizussy or whatever.)

What is their sign, and why?
The High Priestess. Dan Heng is the archivist (and biologist?) for the Astral Express. He reads as his only hobby, likes to observe new phenomena/animals and info dump about weird topics to his friends. He is also not as wise as his love of books might suggest; Dan Heng is still a doofus teenager who is in Situations a lot. He manages to look a lot wiser than he is by virtue of hanging out with someone who compulsively digs around in trash cans and the Universal Selfie Champion who gets bullied into playing hide and seek with the local children's gang — but only just... Would a wise man go to a fight club with the guy who just drugged everyone into unconsciousness? Maybe not. But Cold Dragon Young will. (And maybe there is wisdom in trying to make some cash in a new town that won't accept credit...)

SAMPLES

Samples: space teen texting & tdm toplevel