Application for Tu Shanshu
Dec. 10th, 2014 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inkulcationPlayer Information:
Name: Makari
Age: 22
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
makaricrow or makari.crow@gmail.com
Other Characters Played: Raine Sage
Character Information:
Name: China Sorrows
Canon: Skulduggery Pleasant
Canon Point: near the end of book 6, directly after her secret is revealed to Skulduggery.
Age: She’s roughly contemporary with Skulduggery himself; I’d estimate she’s about 430. Also, really now, asking a lady her age.
Reference Links: The wiki is located here. Fan-run and subject to all those risks, but a reasonable source.
Setting:
The world of the Skulduggery Pleasant series is much akin to modern-day Earth, with one prominent difference: magic. Magic is hidden from everyday folk, by care and law and in extreme circumstances people with the ability to manipulate memory, so to most people this world seems completely mundane. To those who become aware of magic, however, there’s an entire set of hidden communities, within and apart from the mortal world.
Sorcerers
The majority of people in these communities are humans with the capability to use magic, most commonly called sorcerers or mages. That ability does appear to have greater chance of being transmitted within bloodlines, but there may also be people with the ability born to otherwise apparently completely mundane families. Without any reason to believe in or look for it, many of the latter never discover their magic.
Every sorcerer has three names: the given name, the taken name, and the true name. The given name is, appropriately, the one bequeathed to a child by their parents, and most sorcerers can use that name to control a person. Thus, to prevent this, sorcerers take another name, to seal the given name against that. Every person’s idea of a good name to take varies wildly, and the practice often results in strange and idiosyncratic names, such as Skulduggery Pleasant. The third name, the true name, is the one from which power ultimately stems. Should anyone else discover it, they can use it to control every aspect of that person, but a sorcerer discovering their own true name is said to open the door to limitless power. This is, fortunately, a fairly rare occurrence.
Sorcerers come in two primary flavors: Elementals and Adepts. Elementals, as the name suggests, can manipulate water, earth, fire, and air, and are within those bounds only limited by their imaginations. Adepts focus in one particular discipline, often narrower in scope but more immediately powerful. The variety is boundless, everything from teleporting to wall-walking to energy-throwing, and while some are naturally inclined to one or another, there’s as many possibilities as can be imagined.
Until somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one or so, magical children have the freedom to experiment with all fields of magic. However, as they’re coming to majority, every sorcerer goes through what’s called the Surge: a period of fairly intense discomfort as their magic ‘surges,’ both increasing in power and locking into one particular discipline. Thereafter their aging slows substantially, at a rate correlating to how strong their magic is and how much they use it, and many sorcerers live for several hundred years.
Quite technically, it isn’t necessary to be a sorcerer to use magic, as it’s a force within the land itself as well. There’s a language of magic, primarily symbol-based, which anyone can use, so long as they are willing to dedicate the time and effort to learn. The power is in the sigils, and the way they shape the magic in the world. It’s complex and requires great study to fully understand, though many sorcerers dabble for simple purposes. One of the best known names in the field is China Sorrows.
Additionally, there are a number of non-human beings that are magical in nature, existing only by virtue of it. There are a wide variety of these, the most recognizable of which are vampires, werewolves, witches, and warlocks. All while humanoid at most times use magic in ways that sorcerers are incapable of, thus earning them their own designation.
Ancient History
Or, the Faceless Ones and the Ancients.
According to legend, long ago, the world was ruled by beings called the Faceless Ones, immortal, evil creatures. The Ancients, the first to manipulate magic, effectively the first sorcerers, rose up against them, and while it was initially a futile struggle, eventually they crafted what would later be known as the Sceptre of the Ancients, a weapon that could kill even gods, and drove the Faceless Ones out of this world.
Subsequently, the Ancients turned on each other, their society dissolved, and as a result none remain today, save for very distant descendants.
The Faceless Ones did not die out, however; they simply wait in their dimension to be summoned back into this world. They are formless beings, ones that drive mortals mad to look on them, beings that can’t possibly exist and yet do. They can, however, take hold of a mortal body, and when they do that mortal becomes featureless, faceless. Hence the name. However, once they sink to that level, they are entirely killable if one has the Sceptre.
Some people even in the modern era believe the world was better with the Faceless Ones in charge, and still revere them as gods. They search for a way to re-open the way to the place they were trapped and invite them back, to rule the world, to wipe it clean and start anew. This is a large part of what drove the war, and members of the Church of the Faceless still persist today.
Mevolent’s War
Mevolent was an Irish sorcerer, a worshipper of the Faceless Ones, and one of the most powerful Elementals in the magical world. In the seventeenth century he instigated a purely magical war, between those who wished to see the Faceless Ones returned, and those who preferred that the world remain as it was. The war eventually raged all over the world though its roots were in Ireland. It remained secret for the most part, but a number of natural disasters during the time, and the attached mortal death toll, should rightly have been attributed to sorcerers.
The war did not end until the early twentieth century. At this time Mevolent was killed, and eventually his remaining followers were pardoned under the blanket of the Truce, and while many people still held grudges on both sides any further violence based on actions taken during the war was strictly verboten.
Mevolent’s side included a small unit of sorcerers called the Diablerie, the most fanatical of the followers of the Faceless Ones, and also quite possibly the nastiest. They were founded and led by China Sorrows, and by Baron Vengeous after her departure. Most of them survived the war, and continued to be part of the Church even after the Truce took effect.
On the other side of the war was a group of men possessed of great skill and determination who came to be called the Dead Men, in part for their ability to survive and succeed on apparent suicide missions. All save two survived the war as well, and to this day there is a certain awe attached to their names, and the seemingly impossible things they accomplished as a matter of course.
Politics and Current Events
As a result of the war, every country with enough sorcerers now has a Sanctuary, presided over by a Council of two Elders and a Grand Mage. They’re responsible for governing sorcerers, ensuring that they adhere to the laws the Sanctuaries lay down, and keeping magic out of the public eye. As far as normal mortals are concerned, magic doesn’t exist, and the Sanctuaries would like to keep it that way.
Certain places, known as Cradles of Magic, have more magic in them than the rest of the world, and things that happen in such places are likely to affect the rest of the world in far-reaching ways. These places include Africa, Australia, and Ireland, where the bulk of the series takes place.
In recent times, the Sceptre of the Ancients, long since passed into myth, was rediscovered, and Nefarian Serpine, a sorcerer who had been pardoned under the Truce, murdered the entire Irish Council at the time. He, too, died shortly thereafter, but this series of events heralded a time of upset, especially in Ireland.
The remnants of the Diablerie banded together and successfully summoned three Faceless Ones back into the world. They were defeated or banished in turn, though at a not insignificant price in life. Vicious spirits called Remnants, shadows that inhabit people and eliminate conscience, were set loose on Ireland soon after, and the cost to expel and imprison them again was also a high one. The most recent world-shattering threat at this point was the girl that the Necromancers called the Death Bringer, who developed the power and intent to kill the majority of the world.
While all these potentially horrific fates were ultimately avoided, they’ve taken a toll on the world in the process, and even some mortals are beginning to notice strange things happening. Foreign Sanctuaries have a large interest in bringing Ireland under control; the Church of the Faceless Ones is unfortunately stronger than ever; and Sensitives still warn of a threat on the horizon called Darquesse, who may yet end the world entirely.
It’s a troubled time.
Personality
China Sorrows was born into a family of sorcerers who worshipped the Faceless Ones, and as such was raised in those traditions, conditioned to believe and to follow. She did not grow up with much of a moral center, and generally thought little of others, especially mortals, when they did not entertain her or further her goals. From an early age she loved books, however, above much else, and here was where her fascination with the language of magic was sparked.
It was a good childhood, if, as she put it, completely insane, and she did grow up happy and spoiled and with the freedom to pursue many of her own interests, but it was also one laden with the expectation that she worship the Faceless Ones and do everything she could to invite them back to this world, where they would visit madness and suffering upon all save the faithful. She didn’t necessarily mind this, but then again she had never known anything else. She would, eventually, decide against the Faceless Ones and her family in favor of independence and the long-term survival of the world, but it took her decades to come to that point.
By contrast, her brother, Mr Bliss, broke ties with their family relatively early, enough that they wound up on opposite sides of Mevolent’s war, and there were multiple points where they tried to kill each other. Before his death a few years ago a strange sort of sentiment had developed, or re-developed, between them; while they still regarded each other with utmost wariness each yet demonstrated a particular sort of fury when their sibling was harmed or murdered. Doubtful that it was love, but for her part at least China has a certain sort of possessiveness to her, and he was, after all, her brother.
China did not strike out for her own path, apart from her family and the Church of the Faceless, until some years into the war, around the early nineteenth century. A number of small factors had been piling up -- the fact that she hated taking orders, the fact that she doubted the faithful would be spared the torment the Faceless Ones would inflict, the fact that she rather preferred the world as it was and didn’t particularly feel like inviting the Faceless Ones to make it their home -- but habit, and conditioning, and fear, contrived to keep her where she was for years, until she was pushed to a breaking point all at once.
It went something like this: China wanted a man who chose someone else. To add insult to injury, it was a woman who had been -- once -- something like a friend. And that man was now a powerful force for the opposite side. So, in the midst of the war, she led the Diablerie to that woman and her child, and kidnapped both. She did not kill them then, but rather gave them to one of Mevolent’s generals, Nefarian Serpine, who used wife and child to lure the man into a trap, and after he had watched them die the man was tortured to death. It took weeks.
China watched.
That man, of course, was Skulduggery Pleasant, who eventually put his own bones back together, animated with the force of his rage. When China learned of this it shook her, frightened her where little else did, and when Mevolent indicated that he planned to possibly use her as a suicide trap to kill the dead man she was sure she was not going to make the mistake of acting against Skulduggery again. China put her things in order and quietly disappeared, to a small, unknown bolthole where she rode out much of the remainder of the war, helping neither side and remaining steadfastly neutral.
To this day, China hasn’t changed all that much. She disdains the Faceless Ones and the Church thereof, finding their worshippers foolish, weak-willed, and easily led. For much the same reason she doesn’t think much of Necromancers and their Temple. Despite having been pardoned by the Truce and ostensibly now one of the ‘good guys’ regardless, China is still the same person, self-serving, brilliant, and unapologetic.
China serves her own interests before all others, to a fault: her safety, her security, and her entertainment. In short, she’s someone who does very little without getting something out of it. While occasionally this means she contributes to saving the world, as she does have to live in it, on other occasions this has also contributed to her staying out of conflict in which the aforementioned ‘good guys’ could have benefited from her help.
She doesn’t really see this as a problem. Betrayal, she’s said before, would be acting against someone, rather than a refusal to act. China holds to neutrality now even as she did for the last portion of the war, as the only side she’s on is her own, and it suits her to be able to walk all sides and serve none. Anyone may come to her library, so long as they don’t mistreat the books and pay their late fines, and so on. She collects information and is willing to distribute it again, for a price, and is not overly picky about to whom, so long as they can repay her in some way and don’t cross her.
In the same spirit, China doesn’t have many limits in terms of what she’ll stoop to. She does what she must to get what she wants, she’s said. This can include murder, if she finds it necessary, but with the Truce it’s usually wiser to go about things a different way. It’s not that she cares if she needs to kill people to get what she wants; she cares that it would be prohibitively difficult to get away with it, especially when she usually has better, more elegant ways to go about things. Such as charm.
With the people who fall under the spell of her beauty she acts as a chameleon, delivering a performance best suited to getting what she wants out of them and caring little for what happens after. For others, those it’s too much effort to constantly enthrall or those she can’t for whatever reason, she’s usually more or less polite, but it’s a barbed sort of politeness, and past a certain point China makes little effort to hide what she really thinks. Everyone else is beneath her, after all, and beyond the point where it directly impacts her safety, China doesn’t particularly care what most other people think of her.
That said, however, she is constantly impeccably put together, and has a certain fondness for fashion. It’s the sort of thing that looks superficial, but none of it is really for the benefit of others. China does such things for herself, because it pleases her, and has the excellent side effect of helping her bewitch the unwary.
China also has a passion for books and, to a lesser extent, valuable historical relics, and she maintains her library and her collections of rarities with careful zeal. She’s possessive about all these, too, and few things upset her like damage to or theft of her books and artifacts.
Like most of her weaknesses, she’s very conscious of this. China has a remarkable clarity of self-perception. She knows she’s beautiful, and she uses that. She knows she’s arrogant, and she usually compensates in one way or another. She acknowledges and owns the things she did during the war in the name of Mevolent and the Faceless Ones, and on the occasion it comes up will explain without much asperity. It’s part of her, after all. No point in denying it. There is one striking exception to this: she will kill to keep the secret that she was the one to blame for delivering Skulduggery’s wife and child to Serpine, and in fact already has.
It may not be a surprise that China does not really have friends, per se. There are people who are useful to her, and people who owe her debts, and people she has blackmail on, and people she hates but hasn’t found a subtle way to dispose of yet. That’s more or less it. There are, lately, a few exceptions, people she’s found herself wanting to help with little promise of returns, even when it may not necessarily be a world-ending threat: Skulduggery Pleasant and his student, Valkyrie Cain. It’s something resembling... friendship. She recognizes this in herself, too, and is almost disgusted by her own softer leanings. China neither needs nor wants friends, is content with herself and her books, and the fact that she finds herself wanting anyway, against her better judgment, is concerning.
Especially because she’s certain Skulduggery will kill her, probably unpleasantly, if he ever finds out what she did to his wife and child, and that part of him, that rage, still frightens her like little else can.
At this canon point, Skulduggery has just found out, and while he did not outright kill her, he simply turned, and walked away. Granted, he was leaving China in the hands of a woman who planned to kill her, but all the same it was an action she didn’t quite expect. China’s library has been destroyed, with it all the collections she spent decades if not centuries assembling with money and guile and charm. The possibility of something resembling friendship with Skulduggery and his pupil has, as far as she’s concerned, been completely cut off. Her assistant, who’d been a quiet presence for centuries, is dead. China is at a very low point. She’s confident if she can survive it, she can rebuild some of what she’s lost, but all the same, she regrets that everything came to this.

That action, her responsibility for the deaths of his family, is one of the very few things China genuinely regrets. And yes, part of it is absolutely because of the fear it’s brought her and what it’s lost her, but there is also a part of that regret that’s because of the suffering she caused him.
She’s not incapable of caring, after all. She just really prefers not to.
Appearance: China is described on various occasions as being the most beautiful woman in the world, with features so delicate you’d fear they break were she to smile. Because she does use magic to enhance this, it’s entirely possible that each person sees something slightly different in her, but the constants are black hair, blue eyes, and incredible beauty.
She has a number of intricate tattoos, all in black ink, which are only visible when she wills it or when she’s using their magic.
As a PB I am using Christina Chong, with minor photoshop applied to achieve eye color.
Abilities: China is an Adept, and her discipline is the language of magic. (Never outright specified, but heavily, heavily implied.) As such she has incredible skill in understanding and applying those symbols to produce the effects she desires. Most often she does this by building them into her environment in one way or another, and in tattoos. Her own tattoos are very detailed, as she’s spent literal decades on them, but she has been known to craft pieces for others as well, such as Ghastly Bespoke and Skulduggery Pleasant.
The range of things she can construct with that language is very wide, everything from wards to alarms to false faces to simple utilities to keep tea warm or turn doors translucent. With the language of magic, its limits are more or less the user's imagination, their knowledge of the language, and the effort they're willing to put in. While more advanced things necessarily take significant amounts of time and planning, China has a wide range of options open to her.
China’s tattoos are not completely consistent throughout the series, and so I am choosing to apply the headcanon that she moves and refines them as a matter of course. Some may move automatically. A near-exhaustive list of her current set is as follows:
-A set of markings at the hinges of her jaw enable her to heal anything short of fatal, painfully but quickly enough that she can be upright and combat-functional in less than five minutes. She’ll feel it later, however.
-Matching tattoos on her legs boost her speed past human levels, to the point that she blurs to an untrained eye.
-Another paired set on her knuckles which boost her strength, to the point that she can punch a much larger man off his feet entirely.
-One sigil spread across both her forearms, which activates a yellow force field when they’re aligned correctly. This one has previously been on her palms.
-Different symbols on her palms can generate a beam of weaponized light when she laces her fingers together
-Another set of palm tattoos, when activated, cause utter agony and eventual death as long as they’re touching another person skin-to-skin.
-There’s a tattoo on her belly, likely linked to sigilwork in her apartment, which allows her to fling around the furniture with a wave of one hand. Given time she can replicate the apartment half of the symbols in whatever dwelling she takes up here, but for now it’s useless.
-A different one in the same area activates a brief burst of energy to throw off anyone touching her.
-A set of tattoos currently on her forearms generate waves of blue energy which can be thrown at will.
-A matching set of tattoos on her triceps enable her to fling daggers composed of red light.
-Her beauty is augmented in part by sigil-tattoos as well, these across her neck and collarbones; these are entirely passive, cannot be turned off, and are only visible when the entire set is.
-A large sigil over the front of her body, centralized to her sternum, which is effectively a self-destruct. When activated it increases her core temperature hundredfold, slowly burning her alive from the inside out -- as well as anyone in her immediate vicinity and who’s unlucky enough to touch her. It’s hot enough that she can reasonably expect her touch to incinerate bone.
China’s beauty, and the possible pitfalls:
People tend to fall in love with China Sorrows. She is, after all, a very lovely woman, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s added a passive magical component to help her enthrall people. She has some conscious control over the effect, can dial it up or down as the situation demands or as she feels like it, but by this point it never completely goes away. People who are strong-willed can ignore it at low levels or break it at higher, and it’s less effective if you know to look for it, and especially if you know her beyond just the pretty.
With other characters I will probably handle this one case at a time, by talking to the muns involved, because it’s effectively mind-altering magic and I’m conscious that some people may not want their characters affected or may simply be uncomfortable with it. I fully expect that there will be ways to handwave her being unable to affect some people, as well, as many people here are particularly strong-willed, being protagonists or a reasonable equivalent in their own universes.
Other miscellany:
China has demonstrated not inconsiderable skill at hand-to-hand fighting, fencing, and horseback riding.
Inventory:
The clothes on her back. And those are not in great shape, as she’s just been beaten rather extensively.
The soul-jewelry will manifest as a simple but elegant teardrop pendant, a dark blue gem in a silver setting. Goes with most things, easy to dress up or dress down.
Suitability:
China’s very good at acquiring information, through her charms or through simple listening, and I don’t estimate it’ll take her long to get a feel for the city or to pick up her former occupation as an information broker. She has the capability to be vicious and coldly practical, and, as a city absent significant strife suits her interests, many of her not inconsiderable talents can be directed toward an effort of maintaining something resembling peace and safety, for herself if not for others.
For her own part, at this point she’d greatly welcome the chance to escape her own world, and the people in it. While she may be disappointed on that front thanks to certain canonmates, none them are from a point where they have a vested interest in killing her, so she can co-exist peacefully.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person (Prose):
She’s going to murder Eliza Scorn. That’s really all there is to it, at this point. The woman has blackmailed her, threatened her borderline friendly relationships, and is now threatening her books. Absolutely unacceptable. China might even have to forego some semblance of subtlety, depending on where exactly Scorn has gotten to by now.
China inhales. Studies the device that can’t be anything other than a bomb, flicking through possibilities and probabilities as she does. China’s outlived her usefulness as far as Scorn is concerned, but she won’t simply detonate these from a distance. No, Scorn will want to gloat, to rub it in once and for all that she’s better, that she’s won, and that means China has a little time.
It would be smarter, if Scorn killed her now, but China’s never attributed an overabundance of wits to the woman. She had to rely on accident to learn China’s secret, after all, and she still follows the Faceless Ones. Really, it’s almost a little pathetic. Or it would be, if Scorn wasn’t still holding that secret over her head.
No one else is in her library. Her patrons should mostly have been smart enough to flee when the bombs were planted. China glances around the place, very calmly, and concludes that Scorn is probably outside, waiting for China to flee in a panic.
Consequently, China descends the stairs very calmly. She’s going to wait for Scorn to reveal whatever switch or detonator she has set up, and then she’s going to take it, and she’s going to kill Scorn. If she’s feeling charitable, she may even be quick about it.
Scorn is waiting on the pavement, right about where China thought she’d be. China does not roll her eyes, though it’s tempting, rather pretends to pay attention as Scorn starts to gloat and focuses on the switch in her hand instead. She waits for Scorn to start gesticulating, and in a moment lunges, furious and swift.
It devolves into an all-out brawl very quickly. China’s first blow sends the switch skittering across the concrete, but Scorn is not entirely unprepared, and very shortly Scorn has the switch back and China is nearly struggling to both harm Scorn and keep her from pressing that button at all costs. It’s a difficult balance, and Scorn knows enough to keep her from reaching the most useful tattoos, but China nearly has her when she hears the car. The Bentley.
She wishes she didn’t know the sound of that car quite so well. She chances a sidelong glance, sees Valkyrie, sees the familiar flash of bone that is Skulduggery--
Scorn bodily rams China into the side of the car. China realizes, very dimly, very distantly, that it’s possible she may be about to lose nearly everything.
Network:
[The woman who appears on the video feed is frankly gorgeous, looks carved of porcelain, and her eyes are a striking pale blue.]
[No one here will know her. She’s going to have to build a reputation again, but on the flip side, no one will be prepared for her, either.]
I suppose I should introduce myself; my name is China Sorrows. [She smiles, and it's almost radiant.] Would someone care to explain how, exactly, I’ve been summoned here?
[As much as she likes the idea of a new and fascinating world, she’s not best pleased that it was something beyond her control, and she’s already established the kedan don’t know much about that. The more she can learn, the better.]
Name: Makari
Age: 22
Contact:
Other Characters Played: Raine Sage
Character Information:
Name: China Sorrows
Canon: Skulduggery Pleasant
Canon Point: near the end of book 6, directly after her secret is revealed to Skulduggery.
Age: She’s roughly contemporary with Skulduggery himself; I’d estimate she’s about 430. Also, really now, asking a lady her age.
Reference Links: The wiki is located here. Fan-run and subject to all those risks, but a reasonable source.
Setting:
The world of the Skulduggery Pleasant series is much akin to modern-day Earth, with one prominent difference: magic. Magic is hidden from everyday folk, by care and law and in extreme circumstances people with the ability to manipulate memory, so to most people this world seems completely mundane. To those who become aware of magic, however, there’s an entire set of hidden communities, within and apart from the mortal world.
Sorcerers
The majority of people in these communities are humans with the capability to use magic, most commonly called sorcerers or mages. That ability does appear to have greater chance of being transmitted within bloodlines, but there may also be people with the ability born to otherwise apparently completely mundane families. Without any reason to believe in or look for it, many of the latter never discover their magic.
Every sorcerer has three names: the given name, the taken name, and the true name. The given name is, appropriately, the one bequeathed to a child by their parents, and most sorcerers can use that name to control a person. Thus, to prevent this, sorcerers take another name, to seal the given name against that. Every person’s idea of a good name to take varies wildly, and the practice often results in strange and idiosyncratic names, such as Skulduggery Pleasant. The third name, the true name, is the one from which power ultimately stems. Should anyone else discover it, they can use it to control every aspect of that person, but a sorcerer discovering their own true name is said to open the door to limitless power. This is, fortunately, a fairly rare occurrence.
Sorcerers come in two primary flavors: Elementals and Adepts. Elementals, as the name suggests, can manipulate water, earth, fire, and air, and are within those bounds only limited by their imaginations. Adepts focus in one particular discipline, often narrower in scope but more immediately powerful. The variety is boundless, everything from teleporting to wall-walking to energy-throwing, and while some are naturally inclined to one or another, there’s as many possibilities as can be imagined.
Until somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one or so, magical children have the freedom to experiment with all fields of magic. However, as they’re coming to majority, every sorcerer goes through what’s called the Surge: a period of fairly intense discomfort as their magic ‘surges,’ both increasing in power and locking into one particular discipline. Thereafter their aging slows substantially, at a rate correlating to how strong their magic is and how much they use it, and many sorcerers live for several hundred years.
Quite technically, it isn’t necessary to be a sorcerer to use magic, as it’s a force within the land itself as well. There’s a language of magic, primarily symbol-based, which anyone can use, so long as they are willing to dedicate the time and effort to learn. The power is in the sigils, and the way they shape the magic in the world. It’s complex and requires great study to fully understand, though many sorcerers dabble for simple purposes. One of the best known names in the field is China Sorrows.
Additionally, there are a number of non-human beings that are magical in nature, existing only by virtue of it. There are a wide variety of these, the most recognizable of which are vampires, werewolves, witches, and warlocks. All while humanoid at most times use magic in ways that sorcerers are incapable of, thus earning them their own designation.
Ancient History
Or, the Faceless Ones and the Ancients.
According to legend, long ago, the world was ruled by beings called the Faceless Ones, immortal, evil creatures. The Ancients, the first to manipulate magic, effectively the first sorcerers, rose up against them, and while it was initially a futile struggle, eventually they crafted what would later be known as the Sceptre of the Ancients, a weapon that could kill even gods, and drove the Faceless Ones out of this world.
Subsequently, the Ancients turned on each other, their society dissolved, and as a result none remain today, save for very distant descendants.
The Faceless Ones did not die out, however; they simply wait in their dimension to be summoned back into this world. They are formless beings, ones that drive mortals mad to look on them, beings that can’t possibly exist and yet do. They can, however, take hold of a mortal body, and when they do that mortal becomes featureless, faceless. Hence the name. However, once they sink to that level, they are entirely killable if one has the Sceptre.
Some people even in the modern era believe the world was better with the Faceless Ones in charge, and still revere them as gods. They search for a way to re-open the way to the place they were trapped and invite them back, to rule the world, to wipe it clean and start anew. This is a large part of what drove the war, and members of the Church of the Faceless still persist today.
Mevolent’s War
Mevolent was an Irish sorcerer, a worshipper of the Faceless Ones, and one of the most powerful Elementals in the magical world. In the seventeenth century he instigated a purely magical war, between those who wished to see the Faceless Ones returned, and those who preferred that the world remain as it was. The war eventually raged all over the world though its roots were in Ireland. It remained secret for the most part, but a number of natural disasters during the time, and the attached mortal death toll, should rightly have been attributed to sorcerers.
The war did not end until the early twentieth century. At this time Mevolent was killed, and eventually his remaining followers were pardoned under the blanket of the Truce, and while many people still held grudges on both sides any further violence based on actions taken during the war was strictly verboten.
Mevolent’s side included a small unit of sorcerers called the Diablerie, the most fanatical of the followers of the Faceless Ones, and also quite possibly the nastiest. They were founded and led by China Sorrows, and by Baron Vengeous after her departure. Most of them survived the war, and continued to be part of the Church even after the Truce took effect.
On the other side of the war was a group of men possessed of great skill and determination who came to be called the Dead Men, in part for their ability to survive and succeed on apparent suicide missions. All save two survived the war as well, and to this day there is a certain awe attached to their names, and the seemingly impossible things they accomplished as a matter of course.
Politics and Current Events
As a result of the war, every country with enough sorcerers now has a Sanctuary, presided over by a Council of two Elders and a Grand Mage. They’re responsible for governing sorcerers, ensuring that they adhere to the laws the Sanctuaries lay down, and keeping magic out of the public eye. As far as normal mortals are concerned, magic doesn’t exist, and the Sanctuaries would like to keep it that way.
Certain places, known as Cradles of Magic, have more magic in them than the rest of the world, and things that happen in such places are likely to affect the rest of the world in far-reaching ways. These places include Africa, Australia, and Ireland, where the bulk of the series takes place.
In recent times, the Sceptre of the Ancients, long since passed into myth, was rediscovered, and Nefarian Serpine, a sorcerer who had been pardoned under the Truce, murdered the entire Irish Council at the time. He, too, died shortly thereafter, but this series of events heralded a time of upset, especially in Ireland.
The remnants of the Diablerie banded together and successfully summoned three Faceless Ones back into the world. They were defeated or banished in turn, though at a not insignificant price in life. Vicious spirits called Remnants, shadows that inhabit people and eliminate conscience, were set loose on Ireland soon after, and the cost to expel and imprison them again was also a high one. The most recent world-shattering threat at this point was the girl that the Necromancers called the Death Bringer, who developed the power and intent to kill the majority of the world.
While all these potentially horrific fates were ultimately avoided, they’ve taken a toll on the world in the process, and even some mortals are beginning to notice strange things happening. Foreign Sanctuaries have a large interest in bringing Ireland under control; the Church of the Faceless Ones is unfortunately stronger than ever; and Sensitives still warn of a threat on the horizon called Darquesse, who may yet end the world entirely.
It’s a troubled time.
Personality
China Sorrows was born into a family of sorcerers who worshipped the Faceless Ones, and as such was raised in those traditions, conditioned to believe and to follow. She did not grow up with much of a moral center, and generally thought little of others, especially mortals, when they did not entertain her or further her goals. From an early age she loved books, however, above much else, and here was where her fascination with the language of magic was sparked.
It was a good childhood, if, as she put it, completely insane, and she did grow up happy and spoiled and with the freedom to pursue many of her own interests, but it was also one laden with the expectation that she worship the Faceless Ones and do everything she could to invite them back to this world, where they would visit madness and suffering upon all save the faithful. She didn’t necessarily mind this, but then again she had never known anything else. She would, eventually, decide against the Faceless Ones and her family in favor of independence and the long-term survival of the world, but it took her decades to come to that point.
By contrast, her brother, Mr Bliss, broke ties with their family relatively early, enough that they wound up on opposite sides of Mevolent’s war, and there were multiple points where they tried to kill each other. Before his death a few years ago a strange sort of sentiment had developed, or re-developed, between them; while they still regarded each other with utmost wariness each yet demonstrated a particular sort of fury when their sibling was harmed or murdered. Doubtful that it was love, but for her part at least China has a certain sort of possessiveness to her, and he was, after all, her brother.
China did not strike out for her own path, apart from her family and the Church of the Faceless, until some years into the war, around the early nineteenth century. A number of small factors had been piling up -- the fact that she hated taking orders, the fact that she doubted the faithful would be spared the torment the Faceless Ones would inflict, the fact that she rather preferred the world as it was and didn’t particularly feel like inviting the Faceless Ones to make it their home -- but habit, and conditioning, and fear, contrived to keep her where she was for years, until she was pushed to a breaking point all at once.
It went something like this: China wanted a man who chose someone else. To add insult to injury, it was a woman who had been -- once -- something like a friend. And that man was now a powerful force for the opposite side. So, in the midst of the war, she led the Diablerie to that woman and her child, and kidnapped both. She did not kill them then, but rather gave them to one of Mevolent’s generals, Nefarian Serpine, who used wife and child to lure the man into a trap, and after he had watched them die the man was tortured to death. It took weeks.
China watched.
That man, of course, was Skulduggery Pleasant, who eventually put his own bones back together, animated with the force of his rage. When China learned of this it shook her, frightened her where little else did, and when Mevolent indicated that he planned to possibly use her as a suicide trap to kill the dead man she was sure she was not going to make the mistake of acting against Skulduggery again. China put her things in order and quietly disappeared, to a small, unknown bolthole where she rode out much of the remainder of the war, helping neither side and remaining steadfastly neutral.
To this day, China hasn’t changed all that much. She disdains the Faceless Ones and the Church thereof, finding their worshippers foolish, weak-willed, and easily led. For much the same reason she doesn’t think much of Necromancers and their Temple. Despite having been pardoned by the Truce and ostensibly now one of the ‘good guys’ regardless, China is still the same person, self-serving, brilliant, and unapologetic.
China serves her own interests before all others, to a fault: her safety, her security, and her entertainment. In short, she’s someone who does very little without getting something out of it. While occasionally this means she contributes to saving the world, as she does have to live in it, on other occasions this has also contributed to her staying out of conflict in which the aforementioned ‘good guys’ could have benefited from her help.
She doesn’t really see this as a problem. Betrayal, she’s said before, would be acting against someone, rather than a refusal to act. China holds to neutrality now even as she did for the last portion of the war, as the only side she’s on is her own, and it suits her to be able to walk all sides and serve none. Anyone may come to her library, so long as they don’t mistreat the books and pay their late fines, and so on. She collects information and is willing to distribute it again, for a price, and is not overly picky about to whom, so long as they can repay her in some way and don’t cross her.
In the same spirit, China doesn’t have many limits in terms of what she’ll stoop to. She does what she must to get what she wants, she’s said. This can include murder, if she finds it necessary, but with the Truce it’s usually wiser to go about things a different way. It’s not that she cares if she needs to kill people to get what she wants; she cares that it would be prohibitively difficult to get away with it, especially when she usually has better, more elegant ways to go about things. Such as charm.
With the people who fall under the spell of her beauty she acts as a chameleon, delivering a performance best suited to getting what she wants out of them and caring little for what happens after. For others, those it’s too much effort to constantly enthrall or those she can’t for whatever reason, she’s usually more or less polite, but it’s a barbed sort of politeness, and past a certain point China makes little effort to hide what she really thinks. Everyone else is beneath her, after all, and beyond the point where it directly impacts her safety, China doesn’t particularly care what most other people think of her.
That said, however, she is constantly impeccably put together, and has a certain fondness for fashion. It’s the sort of thing that looks superficial, but none of it is really for the benefit of others. China does such things for herself, because it pleases her, and has the excellent side effect of helping her bewitch the unwary.
China also has a passion for books and, to a lesser extent, valuable historical relics, and she maintains her library and her collections of rarities with careful zeal. She’s possessive about all these, too, and few things upset her like damage to or theft of her books and artifacts.
Like most of her weaknesses, she’s very conscious of this. China has a remarkable clarity of self-perception. She knows she’s beautiful, and she uses that. She knows she’s arrogant, and she usually compensates in one way or another. She acknowledges and owns the things she did during the war in the name of Mevolent and the Faceless Ones, and on the occasion it comes up will explain without much asperity. It’s part of her, after all. No point in denying it. There is one striking exception to this: she will kill to keep the secret that she was the one to blame for delivering Skulduggery’s wife and child to Serpine, and in fact already has.
It may not be a surprise that China does not really have friends, per se. There are people who are useful to her, and people who owe her debts, and people she has blackmail on, and people she hates but hasn’t found a subtle way to dispose of yet. That’s more or less it. There are, lately, a few exceptions, people she’s found herself wanting to help with little promise of returns, even when it may not necessarily be a world-ending threat: Skulduggery Pleasant and his student, Valkyrie Cain. It’s something resembling... friendship. She recognizes this in herself, too, and is almost disgusted by her own softer leanings. China neither needs nor wants friends, is content with herself and her books, and the fact that she finds herself wanting anyway, against her better judgment, is concerning.
Especially because she’s certain Skulduggery will kill her, probably unpleasantly, if he ever finds out what she did to his wife and child, and that part of him, that rage, still frightens her like little else can.
At this canon point, Skulduggery has just found out, and while he did not outright kill her, he simply turned, and walked away. Granted, he was leaving China in the hands of a woman who planned to kill her, but all the same it was an action she didn’t quite expect. China’s library has been destroyed, with it all the collections she spent decades if not centuries assembling with money and guile and charm. The possibility of something resembling friendship with Skulduggery and his pupil has, as far as she’s concerned, been completely cut off. Her assistant, who’d been a quiet presence for centuries, is dead. China is at a very low point. She’s confident if she can survive it, she can rebuild some of what she’s lost, but all the same, she regrets that everything came to this.

That action, her responsibility for the deaths of his family, is one of the very few things China genuinely regrets. And yes, part of it is absolutely because of the fear it’s brought her and what it’s lost her, but there is also a part of that regret that’s because of the suffering she caused him.
She’s not incapable of caring, after all. She just really prefers not to.
Appearance: China is described on various occasions as being the most beautiful woman in the world, with features so delicate you’d fear they break were she to smile. Because she does use magic to enhance this, it’s entirely possible that each person sees something slightly different in her, but the constants are black hair, blue eyes, and incredible beauty.
She has a number of intricate tattoos, all in black ink, which are only visible when she wills it or when she’s using their magic.
As a PB I am using Christina Chong, with minor photoshop applied to achieve eye color.
Abilities: China is an Adept, and her discipline is the language of magic. (Never outright specified, but heavily, heavily implied.) As such she has incredible skill in understanding and applying those symbols to produce the effects she desires. Most often she does this by building them into her environment in one way or another, and in tattoos. Her own tattoos are very detailed, as she’s spent literal decades on them, but she has been known to craft pieces for others as well, such as Ghastly Bespoke and Skulduggery Pleasant.
The range of things she can construct with that language is very wide, everything from wards to alarms to false faces to simple utilities to keep tea warm or turn doors translucent. With the language of magic, its limits are more or less the user's imagination, their knowledge of the language, and the effort they're willing to put in. While more advanced things necessarily take significant amounts of time and planning, China has a wide range of options open to her.
China’s tattoos are not completely consistent throughout the series, and so I am choosing to apply the headcanon that she moves and refines them as a matter of course. Some may move automatically. A near-exhaustive list of her current set is as follows:
-A set of markings at the hinges of her jaw enable her to heal anything short of fatal, painfully but quickly enough that she can be upright and combat-functional in less than five minutes. She’ll feel it later, however.
-Matching tattoos on her legs boost her speed past human levels, to the point that she blurs to an untrained eye.
-Another paired set on her knuckles which boost her strength, to the point that she can punch a much larger man off his feet entirely.
-One sigil spread across both her forearms, which activates a yellow force field when they’re aligned correctly. This one has previously been on her palms.
-Different symbols on her palms can generate a beam of weaponized light when she laces her fingers together
-Another set of palm tattoos, when activated, cause utter agony and eventual death as long as they’re touching another person skin-to-skin.
-There’s a tattoo on her belly, likely linked to sigilwork in her apartment, which allows her to fling around the furniture with a wave of one hand. Given time she can replicate the apartment half of the symbols in whatever dwelling she takes up here, but for now it’s useless.
-A different one in the same area activates a brief burst of energy to throw off anyone touching her.
-A set of tattoos currently on her forearms generate waves of blue energy which can be thrown at will.
-A matching set of tattoos on her triceps enable her to fling daggers composed of red light.
-Her beauty is augmented in part by sigil-tattoos as well, these across her neck and collarbones; these are entirely passive, cannot be turned off, and are only visible when the entire set is.
-A large sigil over the front of her body, centralized to her sternum, which is effectively a self-destruct. When activated it increases her core temperature hundredfold, slowly burning her alive from the inside out -- as well as anyone in her immediate vicinity and who’s unlucky enough to touch her. It’s hot enough that she can reasonably expect her touch to incinerate bone.
China’s beauty, and the possible pitfalls:
People tend to fall in love with China Sorrows. She is, after all, a very lovely woman, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s added a passive magical component to help her enthrall people. She has some conscious control over the effect, can dial it up or down as the situation demands or as she feels like it, but by this point it never completely goes away. People who are strong-willed can ignore it at low levels or break it at higher, and it’s less effective if you know to look for it, and especially if you know her beyond just the pretty.
With other characters I will probably handle this one case at a time, by talking to the muns involved, because it’s effectively mind-altering magic and I’m conscious that some people may not want their characters affected or may simply be uncomfortable with it. I fully expect that there will be ways to handwave her being unable to affect some people, as well, as many people here are particularly strong-willed, being protagonists or a reasonable equivalent in their own universes.
Other miscellany:
China has demonstrated not inconsiderable skill at hand-to-hand fighting, fencing, and horseback riding.
Inventory:
The clothes on her back. And those are not in great shape, as she’s just been beaten rather extensively.
The soul-jewelry will manifest as a simple but elegant teardrop pendant, a dark blue gem in a silver setting. Goes with most things, easy to dress up or dress down.
Suitability:
China’s very good at acquiring information, through her charms or through simple listening, and I don’t estimate it’ll take her long to get a feel for the city or to pick up her former occupation as an information broker. She has the capability to be vicious and coldly practical, and, as a city absent significant strife suits her interests, many of her not inconsiderable talents can be directed toward an effort of maintaining something resembling peace and safety, for herself if not for others.
For her own part, at this point she’d greatly welcome the chance to escape her own world, and the people in it. While she may be disappointed on that front thanks to certain canonmates, none them are from a point where they have a vested interest in killing her, so she can co-exist peacefully.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person (Prose):
She’s going to murder Eliza Scorn. That’s really all there is to it, at this point. The woman has blackmailed her, threatened her borderline friendly relationships, and is now threatening her books. Absolutely unacceptable. China might even have to forego some semblance of subtlety, depending on where exactly Scorn has gotten to by now.
China inhales. Studies the device that can’t be anything other than a bomb, flicking through possibilities and probabilities as she does. China’s outlived her usefulness as far as Scorn is concerned, but she won’t simply detonate these from a distance. No, Scorn will want to gloat, to rub it in once and for all that she’s better, that she’s won, and that means China has a little time.
It would be smarter, if Scorn killed her now, but China’s never attributed an overabundance of wits to the woman. She had to rely on accident to learn China’s secret, after all, and she still follows the Faceless Ones. Really, it’s almost a little pathetic. Or it would be, if Scorn wasn’t still holding that secret over her head.
No one else is in her library. Her patrons should mostly have been smart enough to flee when the bombs were planted. China glances around the place, very calmly, and concludes that Scorn is probably outside, waiting for China to flee in a panic.
Consequently, China descends the stairs very calmly. She’s going to wait for Scorn to reveal whatever switch or detonator she has set up, and then she’s going to take it, and she’s going to kill Scorn. If she’s feeling charitable, she may even be quick about it.
Scorn is waiting on the pavement, right about where China thought she’d be. China does not roll her eyes, though it’s tempting, rather pretends to pay attention as Scorn starts to gloat and focuses on the switch in her hand instead. She waits for Scorn to start gesticulating, and in a moment lunges, furious and swift.
It devolves into an all-out brawl very quickly. China’s first blow sends the switch skittering across the concrete, but Scorn is not entirely unprepared, and very shortly Scorn has the switch back and China is nearly struggling to both harm Scorn and keep her from pressing that button at all costs. It’s a difficult balance, and Scorn knows enough to keep her from reaching the most useful tattoos, but China nearly has her when she hears the car. The Bentley.
She wishes she didn’t know the sound of that car quite so well. She chances a sidelong glance, sees Valkyrie, sees the familiar flash of bone that is Skulduggery--
Scorn bodily rams China into the side of the car. China realizes, very dimly, very distantly, that it’s possible she may be about to lose nearly everything.
Network:
[The woman who appears on the video feed is frankly gorgeous, looks carved of porcelain, and her eyes are a striking pale blue.]
[No one here will know her. She’s going to have to build a reputation again, but on the flip side, no one will be prepared for her, either.]
I suppose I should introduce myself; my name is China Sorrows. [She smiles, and it's almost radiant.] Would someone care to explain how, exactly, I’ve been summoned here?
[As much as she likes the idea of a new and fascinating world, she’s not best pleased that it was something beyond her control, and she’s already established the kedan don’t know much about that. The more she can learn, the better.]