PLAYER NAME: rakel CONTACT: no personal journal, but i get all PMs to weifinder!
CHARACTER: Wei Wuxian CANON: The Untamed (Television Series) CANON POINT: End of series, prior to returning to Gusu Lan.
BACKGROUND:
Wei Ying (birth name) was orphaned at a young age, and later adopted by his father's close friend Jiang Fengmian, the leader of Yunmeng Jiang Sect (both a martial arts sect and a clan bloodline of martial artists). Wei Wuxian (courtesy name, in theory for show canon generally starts being used in teen years) was thus raised as an adopted son but also a martial sect disciple for the Jiangs. Between Jiang Yanli, his elder (martial) sister, and Jiang Cheng, his younger (martial) brother, Wei Wuxian was raised in the Jiang Sect and produced excellent results in both swordwork and with a bow, known not only for his martial skills but also for his frequent punishment at Madam Yu's (Jiang Fengmian's wife) behest.
A brief history of Wei Wuxian's life prior to his "death" deals with a young man who believed with enough skill and depending on your own abilities, near anything could be overcome. He learned, very painfully, this was not the case, from the time where acting to help friends had exposed his adoptive clan to an opening that an enemy clan exploited in order to massacre all but three of them, to where his sacrifice of his cultivation ability (by golden core surgical extraction and implanting, more on golden core to follow) to his martial-brother Jiang Cheng left him vulnerable and tossed into a land where no living person survives (Yiling Burial Grounds--a physical location so steeped in resentful energies from the murdered that no cultivators had been able to cleanse the area in over 100 years), to where surviving the Yiling Burial Mounts was a matter of him learning a new (at least to him) style of cultivation using ghosts and resentful energies instead of his absent golden core (a golden core is a physical part of the body which stores and generates the spiritual energy that a cultivator uses, and the top cultivators have a golden core), to the participation in the Sunshot Campaign (when the rest of the cultivation clans went to war against the Wen clan, which was self-styled as the 'head' of them all and had been engaging in various war crimes, such as the Jiang Clan massacre) war efforts where his contributions led the clans combined against the Wens to victory... and set him up for a fall when political machinations ultimately made him a target of suspicion and jealousy over the power he crafted. He threw himself onto what he believed was the right and just path, even if not the political one, and didn't really listen to the people who cared for him when they asked him to slow down or find another way. It was how he ended up freeing and running with the remainder of the Wens in the year after the war ended, people who weren't cultivators for the most part and who were all innocent of the main Wen Clan Branch's crimes, and how he ended up becoming known as the Yiling Patriarch, moving the Wen remnants to the Yiling Burial Grounds he'd survived prior to the Sunshot Campaign.
Wei Wuxian ended up "leaving" the Jiang Sect by agreement with Jiang Cheng so that Jiang Cheng was no longer pressured by the other righteous clans over accounting for Wei Wuxian's actions. He was thus ostracised for the next year, not allowed to be at his martial-sister's wedding, and only invited back into the social circle of the cultivation world at the time of his martial-nephew's one-month celebration after his birth... to be set up for killing said nephew's father, the heir to the Jin Clan, and his father's cousin. The Wens who he'd been protecting then turned themselves in on the request of the Jin Clan, who stated they'd let Wei Wuxian live if the Wens gave themselves up. To no surprise, the Jins killed most the remaining Wens, and locked Wen Ning away for Reasons (of wanting to learn to control his abilities/his unique condition, which Wei Wuxian had been able to do). Wei Wuxian came too late to do more than see the bodies or hear the clans talk about how the Wens were finally eradicated, and how he was next; he then engaged in another fight he didn't start, had the control of spirits he'd been holding and directing taken away by someone playing disruptive control music in the background, and had his martial-sister murdered protecting him from being stabbed through the back. He proceeded into a full breakdown, laughed and sobbed his way to absorbing all the resentful energy darkening the skies over Nightless City, and then broke the his Stygian Tiger Amulet (a device of power he forged from a portion of another device of power, as you do) which most the 'righteous' clans went scrambling after... and decided to die by falling off a cliff.
Lan Wangji (at this point, both friend and soulmate/heartmate, noting this is not a romantic coded assessment, it's both separate and deeper) tried to save him. Jiang Cheng angrily stabbed at rock over where Lan Zhan held onto Wei Wuxian while trying to process the loss of his sister, Jiang Yanli, and Wei Wuxian pulled his arm away from Lan Wangji when the rock started to give under Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng and fell to his "death".
His body was never found. Sixteen years later, he's summoned from wherever his body had been held in suspended animation by unknown forces to appear instead where Mo Xuanyu has exchanged physical places with him, a young man and bastard of the Jin Clan from the prior generation's liberal sowing of wild oats.
After his resurrection, Wei Wuxian's pulled back into the world he'd left and re-meets Lan Wangji, who proceeds to shepherd him around without explanation of anything that's happened in the last sixteen years as they solve the mysteries of his "resurrection" and subsequent cursing, the sword spirit touched by Stygian Tiger/Yin Iron energy that appeared in the manor where he "resurrected" after being Body Switch Summoned by Mo Xuanyu (and also cursed by Mo Xuanyu to destroy all those who'd tormented Mo Xuanyu), and unravelling the political shadows for at least one of the major players in the cultivation world. This ultimately culminates in the revealing of Jin Guangyao (Meng Yao)'s (one of the Jin clan bastards who had been taken into the Jin clan after his spy efforts in the war against the Wens) ruthless misdeeds over the course of the last eighteen plus years, his role in the deaths of various sect leaders, and in Wei Wuxian's ultimate ostracising and active framing of events into full villification. By series end, Wei Wuxian knows his once friend, Nie Huaisang, was responsible for his "resurrection" and the events that revealed Jin Guangyao's actions, with his motivation centring around the murder of Nie Huaisang's elder half brother, Nie Mingjue.
Wei Wuxian is left on his own and sets out to wander the world, parting ways with his rediscovered adopted son (Wen Yuan, now Lan Yuan, courtesy name Sizhui) who is working with Wen Ning to build a cenotaph to their deceased clan, and his soulmate Lan Wangji who, being the new chief cultivator of the clans, needs to handle those responsibilities for the sake of the oath they'd made way back when they were in Gusu Lan's (the home of the Lan clan) finishing school together.
After some unknown amount of time traveling, Wei Wuxian returns to Gusu Lan, playing the as far as he knows unnamed song that Lan Wangji wrote, to be greeted by Lan Wangji calling out his name. His canon point is from on the road back to Gusu Lan.
More in depth by reading the episode summaries on Wikipedia, as the wiki for Mo Dao Zu Shi focusses on other media sources.
ABILITIES | POWERS:
Bear with me here, Untamed is legitimately the worst about this/contradicts itself/forgets aspects/reinvents them, as you do.
Cultivation: The basics behind here seem to involve manipulation of spiritual qi (energy), advanced qigong (explained further below), the ability to use spiritual blades, the ability to freely work magics and talismans, and the ability to heal faster than normal humans. Possessing a golden core is what allows one to learn cultivation, and practice most of its physical enhancements or abilities requiring large reserves of spiritual qi. Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian no longer has a golden core. He cannot use his spiritual sword for long periods of time as a consequence, as it drains his small reserves too fast. Thus he cannot sword fly, but he can for periods of time make his sword fly around under his direction. He also cannot withstand a golden core cultivator's full strength taken directly on for anything beyond brief encounters, and goes out of his way to avoid these conflicts.
Sword arts: Wei Wuxian is an excellent swordsman who no longer fights with a spiritual sword for long periods of time as he cannot bear up on the demands of using an unsheathed spiritual blade. Given a normal blade, he can be an effective fighter until his natural stamina runs out. On this, he's like any other trained swordsperson, nothing noted beyond his style favouring the straight two edged blade (jian).
Archery: Wei Wuxian is a notably accomplished archer, and once showed off shooting five arrows at once, blindfolded, over the heads of prisoners of war being used as live target blocks, to hit dead centre in every target set up behind said prisoners of war. This all when he had no golden core, aka no cultivation was used to achieve this feat.
Qigong: This is increased speed and agility and strength, such as the ability to leap great distances (it looks like floating and flying in Untamed), and in other words being capable of greater physical feats than seem sensible or possible for a normal human. He can jump on top of buildings, off buildings, jump between dramatic cliffs, spin really fast and pretty, leap through the air, float... through the air... I have no explanation for how they can pause or spin dramatically around each other in air but they definitely do this. Wei Wuxian does still have this to varying degrees after the loss of his golden core, but I'd say it takes more out of him/relies on just his natural qi amount so he can't do this ongoing without using resentful energies to basically fuel himself.
Demonic Cultivation/Necromancy: Based on series limitations, this focusses on using outside of himself resentful energy from ghosts/demons and directing it to attack, defend, or to possess. He can soothe or inflame these spirits, and can seal them as well as stop them with seals drawn before him for some period of time.
In greater detail, Wei Wuxian is, technically, a necromancer. Who has dealt with possessed living people. Or been able to manipulate... possessed... barely alive people. Ghosts and spirits were freer game, but the theory of him manipulating zombies should be sound, given he's a necromancer, but he wouldn't assume he could because canon didn't allow him to do so. Wen Ning, who in other media sources was fully killed them resurrected as a Fierce Corpse/Zombie, was "mostly dead" in series, barely alive enough and inundated with resentful energies that Wei Wuxian was eventually able to call his consciousness back through to the top. What we see him outright manipulating are ghosts/masses of resentful energy and other negatively charged energy he can then instruct to act in certain ways, as controlled by his music, or he can instruct to possess living persons and then attack.
He generally avoids this latter situation, particularly after his "resurrection." Notable in this sense is he does use these energies/ghosts to fight on his behalf, making up for what he lacks as a golden core, but also that he's primarily settling and sealing these energies, or getting them to pull back from full frenzy. He can go the other direction, and stir ghosts/resentful energies/people inflicted with resentful energies into a frenzy, but it is not generally to his benefit, and he's cautious these days. Guiding resentful energies to go their natural course and then give up their resentment on their own was once his theory of thought.
Wei Wuxian | The Untamed (1/2)
CONTACT: no personal journal, but i get all PMs to
CHARACTER: Wei Wuxian
CANON: The Untamed (Television Series)
CANON POINT: End of series, prior to returning to Gusu Lan.
BACKGROUND:
Wei Ying (birth name) was orphaned at a young age, and later adopted by his father's close friend Jiang Fengmian, the leader of Yunmeng Jiang Sect (both a martial arts sect and a clan bloodline of martial artists). Wei Wuxian (courtesy name, in theory for show canon generally starts being used in teen years) was thus raised as an adopted son but also a martial sect disciple for the Jiangs. Between Jiang Yanli, his elder (martial) sister, and Jiang Cheng, his younger (martial) brother, Wei Wuxian was raised in the Jiang Sect and produced excellent results in both swordwork and with a bow, known not only for his martial skills but also for his frequent punishment at Madam Yu's (Jiang Fengmian's wife) behest.
A brief history of Wei Wuxian's life prior to his "death" deals with a young man who believed with enough skill and depending on your own abilities, near anything could be overcome. He learned, very painfully, this was not the case, from the time where acting to help friends had exposed his adoptive clan to an opening that an enemy clan exploited in order to massacre all but three of them, to where his sacrifice of his cultivation ability (by golden core surgical extraction and implanting, more on golden core to follow) to his martial-brother Jiang Cheng left him vulnerable and tossed into a land where no living person survives (Yiling Burial Grounds--a physical location so steeped in resentful energies from the murdered that no cultivators had been able to cleanse the area in over 100 years), to where surviving the Yiling Burial Mounts was a matter of him learning a new (at least to him) style of cultivation using ghosts and resentful energies instead of his absent golden core (a golden core is a physical part of the body which stores and generates the spiritual energy that a cultivator uses, and the top cultivators have a golden core), to the participation in the Sunshot Campaign (when the rest of the cultivation clans went to war against the Wen clan, which was self-styled as the 'head' of them all and had been engaging in various war crimes, such as the Jiang Clan massacre) war efforts where his contributions led the clans combined against the Wens to victory... and set him up for a fall when political machinations ultimately made him a target of suspicion and jealousy over the power he crafted. He threw himself onto what he believed was the right and just path, even if not the political one, and didn't really listen to the people who cared for him when they asked him to slow down or find another way. It was how he ended up freeing and running with the remainder of the Wens in the year after the war ended, people who weren't cultivators for the most part and who were all innocent of the main Wen Clan Branch's crimes, and how he ended up becoming known as the Yiling Patriarch, moving the Wen remnants to the Yiling Burial Grounds he'd survived prior to the Sunshot Campaign.
Wei Wuxian ended up "leaving" the Jiang Sect by agreement with Jiang Cheng so that Jiang Cheng was no longer pressured by the other righteous clans over accounting for Wei Wuxian's actions. He was thus ostracised for the next year, not allowed to be at his martial-sister's wedding, and only invited back into the social circle of the cultivation world at the time of his martial-nephew's one-month celebration after his birth... to be set up for killing said nephew's father, the heir to the Jin Clan, and his father's cousin. The Wens who he'd been protecting then turned themselves in on the request of the Jin Clan, who stated they'd let Wei Wuxian live if the Wens gave themselves up. To no surprise, the Jins killed most the remaining Wens, and locked Wen Ning away for Reasons (of wanting to learn to control his abilities/his unique condition, which Wei Wuxian had been able to do). Wei Wuxian came too late to do more than see the bodies or hear the clans talk about how the Wens were finally eradicated, and how he was next; he then engaged in another fight he didn't start, had the control of spirits he'd been holding and directing taken away by someone playing disruptive control music in the background, and had his martial-sister murdered protecting him from being stabbed through the back. He proceeded into a full breakdown, laughed and sobbed his way to absorbing all the resentful energy darkening the skies over Nightless City, and then broke the his Stygian Tiger Amulet (a device of power he forged from a portion of another device of power, as you do) which most the 'righteous' clans went scrambling after... and decided to die by falling off a cliff.
Lan Wangji (at this point, both friend and soulmate/heartmate, noting this is not a romantic coded assessment, it's both separate and deeper) tried to save him. Jiang Cheng angrily stabbed at rock over where Lan Zhan held onto Wei Wuxian while trying to process the loss of his sister, Jiang Yanli, and Wei Wuxian pulled his arm away from Lan Wangji when the rock started to give under Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng and fell to his "death".
His body was never found. Sixteen years later, he's summoned from wherever his body had been held in suspended animation by unknown forces to appear instead where Mo Xuanyu has exchanged physical places with him, a young man and bastard of the Jin Clan from the prior generation's liberal sowing of wild oats.
After his resurrection, Wei Wuxian's pulled back into the world he'd left and re-meets Lan Wangji, who proceeds to shepherd him around without explanation of anything that's happened in the last sixteen years as they solve the mysteries of his "resurrection" and subsequent cursing, the sword spirit touched by Stygian Tiger/Yin Iron energy that appeared in the manor where he "resurrected" after being Body Switch Summoned by Mo Xuanyu (and also cursed by Mo Xuanyu to destroy all those who'd tormented Mo Xuanyu), and unravelling the political shadows for at least one of the major players in the cultivation world. This ultimately culminates in the revealing of Jin Guangyao (Meng Yao)'s (one of the Jin clan bastards who had been taken into the Jin clan after his spy efforts in the war against the Wens) ruthless misdeeds over the course of the last eighteen plus years, his role in the deaths of various sect leaders, and in Wei Wuxian's ultimate ostracising and active framing of events into full villification. By series end, Wei Wuxian knows his once friend, Nie Huaisang, was responsible for his "resurrection" and the events that revealed Jin Guangyao's actions, with his motivation centring around the murder of Nie Huaisang's elder half brother, Nie Mingjue.
Wei Wuxian is left on his own and sets out to wander the world, parting ways with his rediscovered adopted son (Wen Yuan, now Lan Yuan, courtesy name Sizhui) who is working with Wen Ning to build a cenotaph to their deceased clan, and his soulmate Lan Wangji who, being the new chief cultivator of the clans, needs to handle those responsibilities for the sake of the oath they'd made way back when they were in Gusu Lan's (the home of the Lan clan) finishing school together.
After some unknown amount of time traveling, Wei Wuxian returns to Gusu Lan, playing the as far as he knows unnamed song that Lan Wangji wrote, to be greeted by Lan Wangji calling out his name. His canon point is from on the road back to Gusu Lan.
More in depth by reading the episode summaries on Wikipedia, as the wiki for Mo Dao Zu Shi focusses on other media sources.
ABILITIES | POWERS:
Bear with me here, Untamed is legitimately the worst about this/contradicts itself/forgets aspects/reinvents them, as you do.
Cultivation: The basics behind here seem to involve manipulation of spiritual qi (energy), advanced qigong (explained further below), the ability to use spiritual blades, the ability to freely work magics and talismans, and the ability to heal faster than normal humans. Possessing a golden core is what allows one to learn cultivation, and practice most of its physical enhancements or abilities requiring large reserves of spiritual qi. Unfortunately, Wei Wuxian no longer has a golden core. He cannot use his spiritual sword for long periods of time as a consequence, as it drains his small reserves too fast. Thus he cannot sword fly, but he can for periods of time make his sword fly around under his direction. He also cannot withstand a golden core cultivator's full strength taken directly on for anything beyond brief encounters, and goes out of his way to avoid these conflicts.
Sword arts: Wei Wuxian is an excellent swordsman who no longer fights with a spiritual sword for long periods of time as he cannot bear up on the demands of using an unsheathed spiritual blade. Given a normal blade, he can be an effective fighter until his natural stamina runs out. On this, he's like any other trained swordsperson, nothing noted beyond his style favouring the straight two edged blade (jian).
Archery: Wei Wuxian is a notably accomplished archer, and once showed off shooting five arrows at once, blindfolded, over the heads of prisoners of war being used as live target blocks, to hit dead centre in every target set up behind said prisoners of war. This all when he had no golden core, aka no cultivation was used to achieve this feat.
Qigong: This is increased speed and agility and strength, such as the ability to leap great distances (it looks like floating and flying in Untamed), and in other words being capable of greater physical feats than seem sensible or possible for a normal human. He can jump on top of buildings, off buildings, jump between dramatic cliffs, spin really fast and pretty, leap through the air, float... through the air... I have no explanation for how they can pause or spin dramatically around each other in air but they definitely do this. Wei Wuxian does still have this to varying degrees after the loss of his golden core, but I'd say it takes more out of him/relies on just his natural qi amount so he can't do this ongoing without using resentful energies to basically fuel himself.
Demonic Cultivation/Necromancy: Based on series limitations, this focusses on using outside of himself resentful energy from ghosts/demons and directing it to attack, defend, or to possess. He can soothe or inflame these spirits, and can seal them as well as stop them with seals drawn before him for some period of time.
In greater detail, Wei Wuxian is, technically, a necromancer. Who has dealt with possessed living people. Or been able to manipulate... possessed... barely alive people. Ghosts and spirits were freer game, but the theory of him manipulating zombies should be sound, given he's a necromancer, but he wouldn't assume he could because canon didn't allow him to do so. Wen Ning, who in other media sources was fully killed them resurrected as a Fierce Corpse/Zombie, was "mostly dead" in series, barely alive enough and inundated with resentful energies that Wei Wuxian was eventually able to call his consciousness back through to the top. What we see him outright manipulating are ghosts/masses of resentful energy and other negatively charged energy he can then instruct to act in certain ways, as controlled by his music, or he can instruct to possess living persons and then attack.
He generally avoids this latter situation, particularly after his "resurrection." Notable in this sense is he does use these energies/ghosts to fight on his behalf, making up for what he lacks as a golden core, but also that he's primarily settling and sealing these energies, or getting them to pull back from full frenzy. He can go the other direction, and stir ghosts/resentful energies/people inflicted with resentful energies into a frenzy, but it is not generally to his benefit, and he's cautious these days. Guiding resentful energies to go their natural course and then give up their resentment on their own was once his theory of thought.