Wan ShaiLu

Wan ShaiLu
Abilities	Forger
Nationality	MaiPon
Homeworld	Sel

Wan ShaiLu, known as Shai, is a twenty-eight year old, female MaiPon on Sel. She has a reputation throughout the Rose Empire as being one of the best Forgers alive.

History

Shai first started inquiring about being a Forger when she was eight years old.

Han ShuXen, an old painter who had tutored Shai as a child, asked her to destroy his masterpiece Lily of the Spring Pond. ShuXen hated the Rose Empire and didn't want his painting, which he had painted for a woman he once loved, at their hands. He helped Shai create a counterfeit.

Shai managed to destroy the original painting in the arbiter Frava's office near the Imperial Gallery, replaced it with a fake and planted another lower-quality counterfeit in her room in order to hide to theft. With the help of the Imperial Fool^{[citation needed]}, she also broke into the Rose Palace's Imperial Gallery by impersonating a noblewoman to steal the Moon Scepter. However The Fool betrayed her. He stole Shai's copy of the Moon Scepter, swapped it for the original, then escaped after giving Shai up to the palace guards. Shai was captured and charged with public execution for theft.

The Emperor's Soul

A day before her execution, she is asked by the council of five arbiters to Forge a soul in exchange for her freedom. Shai doesn't think it is possible to create a soulstamp for an entire person's soul in the hundred days they give her at first, but accepts their offer in the hope that it will give her time to escape. She is taken before the Emperor Ashravan and told that he took a crossbow bolt in the head from the assassins sent by the Glory Faction and despite surgeons resealing the wound, he is in a vegetative state. She is told to replace the emperor's soul with a Forgery.

Appearance and Personality

Shai is small of stature like the rest of MaiPon people. She has dark hair that lays straight and long. She wears spectacles because of bad eyesight.

She loves the thrill, the accomplishment and the wonder of Forgery. However, at times, she is tempted by a simple life where she doesn't have to hide or lie. She constantly quotes her Uncle Won and Aunt Sol although they don't exist. They are figments of her imagination created for one of her Essence Marks.

She worships the Unknown God. She has a very good understanding of the Realmatic Theory.

Attributes and Abilities

She is a very talented artist. She generally uses her ability to make forgeries of famous paintings.

Shai is one of the best Forgers ever to live.

Essence Marks

For more information, see Essence Mark.

Shai has five Essence Marks which took her eight years to create.

Shaizan

Shaizan, translated Shai of the Fist, is an extremely skilled warrior who spent the last fifteen years among the Teullu people. The Teullu had adopted and trained her in their martial arts. They also gave her the name Shaizan. Gaining access to Teullu training was very difficult. Shaizan was nearly killed a dozen times while training. She has a lean, hard body, short hair and a scar that stretches from her nose down around her right cheek. Unlike Shai, she doesn't need spectacles. She doesn't know how to create soulstamps and doesn't have scholarly inclinations. She doesn't have the patience for witticisms or gibes. She is a creature of instinct. She thrives on a challenge. It took Shai two years to create this Essence Mark.

The Scholar

She can speak a dozen language, from Fen to Mulla'dil and a few from Opelon as well. She knows dozens of cultures and how to move in them. She knows science, mathematics and the major political factions of the world.

The Beggar

She knows the ways of the streets and how to survive in a city's underworld. She is an incomparable lockpick and has years of experience as a contortionist. She is emaciated. She lost her hair and her skin is scarred. Shai finds thinking like a beggar uncomfortable.

The Survivalist

She is a woodsman and a hunter. She is extremely versatile in skills.

The Way Out

She knows cooking, farm work, sewing. She visited a resealer and were given a remedy, which is actually the soulstamp for this Essence Mark, for an illness. She believes she will die unless she applies the soulstamp every morning. Her Aunt Sol and Uncle Won will send her letters, hundreds of which Shai already wrote and will give to a delivery service before using the soulstamp. She is afraid of traveling, thinks a trip to visit her relatives is too dangerous. Unlike Shai's other Essence Marks, this one doesn't know she is a Forgery. She is Shai's way out to a simpler life. The Mark rewrites her years as a Forger. It removes all knowledge of Forgery from her mind.

Trivia

In one of The Emperor's Soul deleted scenes, Hoid visits her in prison and discuses the thing she stole and how he stole it first.

Notes

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