Zhong Lu

* Official Drawing
* Picrew Ver
* ArtBreeder Ver
* 1.0

Zhong is a loner, but he is extroverted when he is with animals. He is an energetic person when outdoors and free to roam, but quickly closes up once he is with new people. At first, he only does small talk, but stinks at it. He adores the sky and water.

## Appearance

Zhong is a lanky Half-Elf who wears very basic clothing. The medium black hair and silver eyes would look graceful on anyone else, but it is relatively average looking on Zhong. He stands at 5'9 and appears as tired as a person in their later life, but is actually quite young.

## Personality

Zhong is an awkward individual who generally tried to avoid conflicts. However, due to being a half elf and a mess, he finds himself in trouble more often than not. A classic defense of Zhong's is to lay down and appearing as innocent as possible (others may refer to it as "playing dead"). He tends to be drawn to animals and befriends many throughout the Water and Stone Trilogy. Most notably, Zhong encounters Sminkle the badger and ends up bonding with him.

## Backstory (semi-inaccurate from OG Character Sheet)

Zhong’s father is an elf and his mother was human. However, his mother, Jia Lu, died from childbirth, so he grew up within his father’s elven village. He was never ostracized, but he always had people watching as he aged. At first, Zhong’s father, Thamior Liadon, put him into an elven school, but since he aged faster than the other children, he never fit in. Zhong even tried befriending them, but he grew and learned faster than all of his elven counterparts. That was when Thamior began to school him himself. Zhong grew up fascinated with wildlife. The animals themselves changed faster than he did and they made him feel less alone growing up. He would talk to them and pretend that they would talk back to him. Once he was around 17 years old, his father felt that he taught him all that he knew, especially since Zhong seemed to absorb information faster than most elves growing up. Thamior recognized his love of nature and asked Zhong if he would want to travel in the woods and discover what he wanted to do by adventuring. Of course, after years of spending time in the woods, Zhong accepted and adventured alongside his father for a few years, and Thamior watched as his son grew from someone who just appreciated nature to a person who inherently understood nature and felt as though he were a part of nature. At this point, Thamior knew that he would survive living in the wild on his own, and decided to leave and continue his life as a minstrel because he missed meeting new people. Zhong was sad about this but also realized that his father deserved to live his own life, and they promised to write to each other on the first 10th of every year. As Zhong grew more in tune with the world around him, he began to hear whispers from one part of the forest, but he could never tell the source. So each day, for better or worse, he followed the direction of the noise. One day, he ran into another person, a human named Lian Pin. At first, both of them were wary of the other. Zhong had not seen another person for about a year before encountering the man before him. He seemed about 50 and his hair had a few strands of gray. On the other hand, Lian had only just recently escaped into the forest after “Tethyrians came to my bar and got so drunk that they wrecked it and tried to chase after me because I looked at them wrong?” or so he says. However, Lian ran so far away from civilization (to triple check that all of the Tethyrians were not chasing after him) that he lost track of where he was. He already had a poor sense of direction within a town, and without obvious landmarks to point him in the direction he needed to go, he got very very lost in the woods. Then he wandered around for about a day and ran into Zhong. Thankfully, Zhong had been in the woods for a while, and constantly had nature ready to help him. He knew that the closest town was about a three-day walk away, and so the two walked together. On the first night, they were together, Zhong realized that he did not hear the whispers anymore. He was surprised until he realized that whatever he was hearing wanted to lead him to Lian. Then, he wondered why. The next day, he woke up to Lian’s ridiculously loud snoring and a sunbeam on his face. That was when he noticed that Lian looked like the painting his father had of his mother. That meant, a few hours later, Lian woke up to Zhong staring at him with a puzzled expression and was instantly bombarded with questions from the younger individual. “Where are you from?” “Kara-Tur.” “More specifically” “Shou Lung.” “Where in Shou Lung?” “Lo Shan.” That was when Zhong realized that he might have known his mother. When he asked, Lian’s face went dark. He revealed that he did not know of her personally, but before he left the town to travel to other places to find his purpose in life, he had heard of her death. It spread around the small town that she had met an elf and fallen in love. This made Zhong remember his dad telling stories of how he met his mother. But Lian then told Zhong that he heard his mother was killed by a local group of humans who believed that humans were not supposed to trust most other races and especially were not fond of when a fellow human became romantically involved with another race. At first, there were only a few written threats sent to her, but when she got pregnant and began showing signs, they began to throw rocks at her home and it became more and more dangerous for Jia and Thamior to stay within the town. One of the last things Lian had heard about them both was that Zhong’s parents ran away and never showed up again. However, he also heard that one of the group members tried to follow them, and there were rumors that he attacked her and hurt her before she could give birth to Zhong. At that point, Zhong looked at the ground and thanked Lian for the information. The next two days were spent in a resigned silence until Lian returned home. After that, Zhong made it his mission to find the group so he could get revenge.

## Water and Stone Trilogy

Zhong's Journey begins in the Port of Amaryllis.

## Fun Facts

* Zhong was his player's first character.