Bai Hu

Appearance

Bai Hu is an athletic, Chinese American woman somewhere in her late twenties. She keeps her hair cut short and favors durable clothing.

Nimbus

When Bai Hu’s nimbus flares one can hear the eerie echo of a gong in the distance and she takes on the appearance of a moving statue, with skin of bronze, and hair and eyes of jet.

Biography

Bai Hu grew up in San Francisco, learning to cook in the family restaurant and playing a variety of sports. After high school she floated for a year before deciding that she needed to make a radical change, something that would force her to evolve, and thus she enlisted in the Army in 2006. She spent her first few years of duty serving state-side as a food service specialist, though she used the time to study and learn Dari, one of Afghanistan's official languages. She was deployed in 2008 to Afghanistan and her first tour was hell. The base she was stationed at became the center of a heavily contested area, as a new organization of insurgents blossomed in the region, and causalities were a common occurrence. Because of this, and her linguistic skills, she was deployed beyond the wire frequently and saw combat on three occasions. Her goal had originally been to become a warrant officer in charge of a base kitchen, but after experiencing the reality of being at war she changed her course. She applied for a posting with the Cultural Support Teams and was soon training at Fort Bragg to be deployed alongside SF teams. The next time she hit dirt in Afghanistan she was alongside a ranger unit, though her tour was cut short. After 4 months of working to make tribal alliances,Bai Hu and her unit were ambushed in the mountains and she caught 4 bullets. Her unit was victorious, but she wasn’t the only casualty. Because of the severity of her wounds she was deemed 'not fit for duty' and was discharged once she was recovered enough to exit the hospital.

It was back state-side that she experienced her Awakening. She was passing through Colorado, on her way back to San Francisco when a car in the oncoming lane cut across the highway, swerved, and then flipped into a ditch, missing her car due to some stroke of luck. Panicked, she pulled over and rushed to the smoking wreck. Her cell had no reception in the mountains but she tried to do something, anything for the family trapped in the car. It was as a 12 year old boy breathed his last breath in her arms that she felt the earth open beneath her and she was plunged into the realm of Stygia. There, her grief was eased, amidst the whispering rush of dark, swift rivers and the cool stone of monuments and tombs. Gems glinted beneath the surface of the water, and 9 pale suns glowed behind clouds and fog. Lead by the shades of the family she couldn't save, she came to the Watchtower, a massive temple made of nephrite, jet, bronze and ivory. As she stepped into the grand structure she tripped and cut her palms against a carpet made of silver and white gold. Her blood flowed through the carpet’s weave until it crawled onto the face of a massive gong that held thousands upon thousands of names, and then the blood formed her own name. Then, suddenly, she found herself back by the roadside, palms sticky and wet with a child's blood.

The rest of her trip back to San Francisco was subdued, and her nightmares began to intensify. She was much changed by the time she saw her family again, and even despite their warmth and love they felt like strangers to her. She moped and struggled against her inner demons until she met an oddly dressed man in one of Chinatown's open air markets. The man was a Thyrsus of the Free Council, who went simply by Jack (Daniels, after his favorite drink), and he revealed to her the truth of her existence. He helped heal her physically and recover mentally, and taught her about the Awakened world. After a few months she was feeling positive about life again. She let her combat skills slip and focused on cooking, laughing, and learning. Jack’s cabal, all libertines, welcomed her in, all except a wary Acanthus that saw bloody Destiny laying on her, a Destiny that would only end in flames. It was from a Moros in the Cabal that she learned the beginning intricacies of the arcana of Matter and Death, and as the months turned into a year, Jo felt intimately close with Jack. She was ready to join the Libertines and become his apprentice, but this was not to be. The Seers of the Throne had different plans for hers mentor and his cabal. In a spectacular display of brutality, the Seers butchered them for transgressing on the dictates of the Exarchs and for the purpose of sending a message to the Golden Consilium. Bai Hu never learned which Pylon was responsible, but it didn’t really matter to her. The slaughter of her friends was personal, but it was also more than that; she didn’t want simple vengeance, she now wanted to wage War. She joined the Order of the Adamantine Arrow and changed her shadowname from Yulan (which connected to the Chinese Ghost Festivals) to Bai Hu (white tiger) to represent her connection to war, metal, and strength.

Then, when her new Order was attacked by its own allies, Bai Hu decided that it was time to leave. She didn’t dare risk staying in the same city as her family if she would have to fight her allies as well as her enemies, and thus she left for Sacramento, hoping to find a place to grow and a place to protect.