Tianhuo

**Tianhuo** is a Longma who was chosen as a champion of Huoshan. She serves as one of the main characters of the game and is part of the original roster, providing aerial type of rushdown gameplay.

## Biography

High above the clouds atop the highest of mountains lies the diminutive Empire of Huoshan (火山, known to other Fœnecians as The Volcano), built over the gaping maw of an active, lava-spewing crater. The Empire’s subjects are Longmas, a very proud race who are half horse, half dragon. Every Longma is a member of the military, sworn not only to protect their beloved Empress (Daughter of Heaven, Empress of the Miniscule yet Mighty Realm of Magnanimous Magma, Lava, and Fire) and their honored volcanic home, but all of Fœnum itself.

It took the Empress not even a moment to make her choice for Key Keeper. Her name is Tianhuo, and amongst her people, she is undoubtedly the greatest the noble half-breeds have to offer. As Captain of the Imperial Guard, Tianhuo is the frontline defender of her Royal Highness!

## Personality

For certain she is an intimidating sight, emitting stoic confidence, but not a hint of arrogance. She has no disdain for her opponents. In fact, she greatly admires skill and strength and cannot enjoy a duel unless she faces a combatant who offers her a challenge... no one is more disciplined, no one more determined, and even the Predators’ Champion should beware!

## Abilities & Fighting Style

Tianhuo, Captain of the Imperial Guard strikes from above, below and all around! Flexible, aerodynamic, and explosive, she is a real firecracker! Flight-based attacks keep your opponent’s head in the clouds! Cancel any and all of your attacks into her Firecracker Magic attack to overwhelm your opponents, or use it to move quickly across the stage.

As Tianhuo, your primary objective is getting in your opponent's face and not leaving them with a chance to respond or recover, making her a **rushdown** type of character. However, as such, her strongest defense is her unrelenting offense, so a player who wants to main her will have to spend some time learning her combos and practice canceling with her Firecracker Attack. Experienced fighting game players will recognize Tianhuo as a rushdown character, and with that there are a lot of assumptions that will be made about the person behind the controller. Rushdown character players are often thought of as impulsive and easily baited, so more than any other character, your job is to break that mould and take advantage of their assumptions. If Oleander is poking at range with Fel Spark, keep on guard and push block your way in; save your Firecracker Attacks for when you are finally within range. If an Arizona is dashing in and short-hopping back, wait for them to get *just* close enough to properly combo. They will do everything that they can to bait out a poke that they can punish, so don't let them. Tianhuo is a martial artist and exhibits discipline in battle; you should as well. Punish your opponent's mistakes and teach them the error of their ways.

## Trivia

* Tianhuo is based off of the *Fighting is Magic* character Rainbow Dash from *My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic*.
	+ Both characters share a lot of similarities in their move sets, in both function and design: normal attacks, special moves, and magic system.
		- For the most part, general idea of aerial gameplay has been transferred onto Tianhuo's kit, but because *Fighting is Magic* was cancelled shortly before the first public release with the base cast of six characters, it's not known what exactly Rainbow's final kit looked like.
	+ Both characters share similarities in their ability to fly, as well as staying loyal to their respective people and showing off some of the competitive side to their personalities.
	+ Unlike Rainbow Dash, who likes to fly fast and show off, Tianhuo's strength is martial arts and using her skills for serving her Empress, Huoshan Empire and entirety of Foenum. Tianhuo is shown to be more mature, noble and disciplined, although in her younghood she used to think higher of the others who were significantly weaker than her.
* Tiān Huǒ (天火), means "Sky/Heavens of Fire" in Chinese.
* Tianhuo is the only playable character who can fly.
* Being partially a horse, she's the only character in the main cast to be odd-toed: the rest of characters have cloven hooves.
* In early concept art, Tianhuo's eyes used to be orange, the same color as her fire. To add more, her head was thinner, and snout was longer and a bit more blocky. Her eyes became red to compliment her palette better, head became rounder, and snout was shortened.
* Early in development, Mane6 attempted to make Tianhuo's idle animation face away from the camera, contrary to how fighting game characters are usually displayed on the battle screen in a 1/3 perspective. It was eventually scrapped.
* She's the oldest character in the cast, in both maturity and age.
	+ Just like Oleander, she has one of the longest lifespawn as her species.
* For the longest time, she used to be the only character in the cast to have pupils, until Shanty was introduced.
* Couple of her lines during Super commands are pronounced in Chinese, and mean the same as the lines she pronounces in English.
* Tianhuo's intro line "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight" is a Sun Tzu's quote.
* When on her duty, Tianhuo wears Imperial Guard armor.
* In concept, pixel and promo art, Tianhuo can be seen with fire fetlocks erupting from her hooves, but in the battle screen she doesn't have them. This is due to difficulty of implementing the fire animations in general. Despite this, Tianhuo canonically has fire fetlocks.

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