Shan, the Celestial Gloom, is a young prodigy and spy of the Revolt Tyrants. Alongside her adoptive brother, Brown, she serves under the Matriarch, who acts as both their mentor and maternal figure. Known for her gentle nature and unwavering compassion, Shan’s selfless dedication to helping others has made her an invaluable asset to the Tyrants.
A childhood friend of Lin and a descendant of the Ren Dynasty, Shan has never abandoned hope despite the tragedy of the Outbreak Incident. Determined to liberate Ultfinites from oppression, she embarks on a journey to find Lin, believing that both he and the world still have a chance at a peaceful future.
– Personality –
Shan is a deeply gentle and outwardly warm woman. She devotes herself to helping others, believing in service before self, and carries herself with a mature outlook on life. She often follows a personal code of conduct that guides her everyday actions: being content rather than contentious, forgiving rather than vengeful, passive rather than intrusive, and patient rather than anxious. Shan is highly reflective of herself in order to maintain these values, but she is unafraid to venture into uncharted territories due to her adventurous spirit. Her love for discovering things beyond her horizon makes her someone who embraces variety and change within her otherwise stable life.
Despite her warm and dependable nature, Shan carries a deep-seated sense of isolation stemming from her belief that she must always be a source of support for others while rarely allowing herself to be supported in return. She often suppresses her own struggles and depressive feelings, fearing that expressing vulnerability would burden those around her or disrupt the stability she tries to provide. As a result, Shan tends to hide her inner loneliness behind kindness, patience, and a reassuring presence.
Shan’s closest relationship is with her adoptive brother, Brown. After losing contact with Lin following the Nephilim slaughter, Shan was left with a lingering sense of emptiness. Brown became her anchor, sharing memories with her as they learned to rely on each other’s strengths while compensating for their weaknesses. Under the Matriarch, they became a refined duo, before becoming proteges.
Shan’s childhood friendship with Lin was built through their shared circumstances. Having never known her father, Shan was taken in by Longwang, Lin’s father, who helped her mother raise her. Through this connection, Shan grew up alongside Lin and became familiar with his impulsive and thrill-seeking nature from a young age. While others saw Lin as a troublesome child, Shan saw something deeper within him: a desire to experience life and find meaning beyond what was expected of him.
Rather than trying to suppress Lin’s recklessness, Shan became a calming influence who guided him toward considering others while still encouraging him to pursue his passions. In turn, Lin helped Shan break away from her overly structured way of living, encouraging her to take risks, explore unfamiliar experiences, and embrace uncertainty instead of simply following expectations.
However, after losing Lin during the Nephilim slaughter, Shan struggled with the absence of the person who had changed her life so deeply. Having spent much of their childhood being the one who supported Lin, she became accustomed to prioritizing his struggles over her own. While she admired his strength and determination, Shan remained quietly concerned about the pain he concealed behind his confidence.
Believing that she could have helped Lin overcome the burdens he carried, Shan developed a lingering sense of guilt over failing to reach him before the tragedy occurred. Driven by the hope that things could still be changed, she devoted herself to finding Lin, determined to bring back the person who had once shown her how to embrace life.
– History – Past –
TBA
– Abilities (Neo-Gen – Opal Nuwa) –
Shan’s Neo-Gen, Opal Nuwa, grants her the ability to create, shape, and manipulate crystalline structures by rapidly concentrating dissolved minerals within her body into solidified crystal lattices. She can project these crystals from herself or nearby surfaces, allowing them to grow into spikes, barriers, platforms, cages, and other formations to control the battlefield. Her crystalline attacks naturally inflict Cryo damage, gradually freezing enemies upon repeated strikes.
Opal Nuwa also enhances Shan’s physical resilience by coating her body in dense crystalline armor that reinforces her bones and muscles, greatly increasing her endurance. However, the armor gradually fractures as it absorbs damage and must be regenerated before it can withstand further punishment. Shan is likewise capable of repairing herself by crystallizing minerals around damaged limbs, allowing her to reattach severed body parts or regenerate lost ones entirely.
By precisely manipulating the lattice structure of her crystals, Shan can refract, redirect, and concentrate energy—particularly light. She can bend light around herself to produce mirages that briefly conceal her movements while evading attacks, making her exceptionally difficult to strike. This same principle allows her to redirect energy attacks or condense sunlight into her bow, Celestial’s Wing, creating photonic arrows that stagger enemies on impact. Alternatively, she can alter the trajectory of her crystal arrows to ricochet between targets, increasing their damage with each successive bounce.
Whenever Shan’s crystal formations are shattered, they erupt into a storm of razor-sharp fragments that tear through even heavily armored opponents, turning destroyed constructs into one final offensive weapon.
– Weapons –
Bejeweled: Shan’s signature weapon: a large staff composed of a graphite shaft with rounded edges that can project razor-sharp, diamond-like crystal blades along its surface. It excels at fast, mid-ranged combat, allowing Shan to seamlessly transition between sweeping strikes, thrusts, and precision attacks.
The staff can dynamically reconfigure its proportions to suit different combat situations. It can extend its length to perform wide sweeping attacks or strike enemies from a greater distance, shorten itself for close-quarters combat and rapid combinations, or alter its shape to adapt to specialized techniques.
Silica Gust: A pair of tessen weapons made from a flexible metal frame, containing thin blades that are folded within. When unfolded, Shan’s attacks are swift, bending the winds with her gracious swings. When folded, Shan alternates to using her bare hands for martial arts.
Celestial’s Wing: An angelic bow that rapidly fires crystallized arrows capable of delivering powerful knockback with moderate damage. Rather than relying on a conventional bowstring, it utilizes a pump-and-sling propulsion system that compresses and tightens crystallized projectiles before launching them at high velocity. This unique mechanism enables Shan to maintain a high rate of fire while retaining the impact needed to stagger and repel enemies from a distance.
– Trivia –
Shan’s motif is based on the Nuwa, a Chinese goddess with a humanly face and a serpent-like body.
Shan’s Bejeweled was originally a spear before being changed to a staff to suit her pacifism.
Shan was originally planned to possess both fire and ice abilities, inherited from her parents: her mother, Pompeii, a volcanic being, and her father, Lagriemelex, a mutant ice spider. During this early concept stage, she was given an Aquarius motif and was named Miche.
During early development for Generation 5, Shan was planned to have a cloned rival known as Wolf Melunde.
Shan was originally envisioned as a spy who secretly served Levita before her role and characterization were reworked.
Shan’s elemental affinity was originally planned to be Geo before being changed to Cryo.
Shan was inspired by one of Lin’s (the developer’s) Chinese friends, Miche, who originated from Taiwan. Miche would jokingly refer to Lex as “son,” which influenced Shan’s later dynamic of playfully acting as a mother figure toward Elpis due to his brooding personality.
Shan was partially inspired by the series Land of the Lustrous, which features humanoid characters composed of gemstones. The series was a major influence due to its popularity with one of Lin’s friends, Brown.
Shan’s spear was originally planned to feature interchangeable crystal attachments that altered its damage properties. The three planned variants were:
- Obsidian Bludgeon: Focused on fast piercing attacks that launched obsidian shards, trading defensive capability for sustained damage through consecutive guard-breaking strikes.
- Steel Piercer: Used lightning-infused slashes that magnetized nearby enemies and extended Shan’s attacks through follow-ups, allowing for wider-reaching heavy attacks.
- Quartz Shrapnel: Specialized in multi-hit attacks by trapping enemies in crystal formations after guard breaks, grabs, or finishers. The spear tip could also be detached and thrown as a javelin or detonated into a burst of crystal shards through charged attacks.
– Gallery –
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