Iron Seraph

Iron Seraph

Hair shorter in the back, but otherwise pretty spot-on.

Iron Seraph is a character in the Nihao Honey campaign setting, in the Nihao Honey 2 subcampaign. He is played by Argent, who pestered Belphanior enough so that he started up a second, web-based game in the first place. Seraph is a student of Black Crane High.

About the Character

Nihao Honey 2: the new Challengers is a harem show, and Seraph is the lone guy among the player characters. Owing to fate, his immense good looks and the necessities of humor and drama this means that he is constantly surrounded by female would-be love interests. It also means that he is not all that jazzed about being a romance/lust object in this way, much preferring to be left to his own devices - like, say, being the bulwark between Zhen Zhou City and the forces of the Thousand Hells.

Yeah, you read that right. Iron Seraph is, see, a scion of the ill-kept-secret society/sub-clan called the Jin Shen, so his extracurricular activities might differ somewhat from his fellow students. Some people make flower arrangements, others perfect their skills at God of War on the PS2 - Seraph fights demons in the night. That ought to account for his serious demeanour.

Appearance

Cutting loose, looking good.

Iron Seraph is what teenaged girls of Zhen Zhou city refers to using any combination of the words "gorgeous", "dreamy" and/or "mine!". He is of mid-height for his age, but his slim, athletic frame makes him look rather tall - and this is usually photoshopped into peoples memories; he is used to having to hear "I had thought you´d be... taller.". His hair is cut short with long bangs and is silvery gray in color; this is the first of the three things that marks him as a member of the Jin Shen (the hair of the Hunters turn silver on their sixteenth birthday). The second mark is the Daoist trigram tattoos on his body, which serve both as a badge of office and (supposedly) as a protection against dark forces. Most significant, though, is the trigrams that mark the icy blue irises of his eyes. When he concentrates and focuses his Chi, they rotate and realign to focus the Legacy power of the All-Seeing Eye!

He moves with an effortless grace, favors dark, billowing coats and is reported to be able to brood for hours.

• • Note: his hair is shorter in the back than the picture above seems to indicate - imperfection is the bane of internet snooping for character pictures. Were it an actual Seraph pic, the tattoos would also peek up above his collar. I´ll make my own, supergenuine picture later - the sketches at the Yahoogroup just won´t do!**

Kung Fu

Apart from the obligatory Lightfoot techniques, Seraph complements his near-mastery of the Three Kings sword style with the (revised) Winds of Battle style; the gusts of wind are a signature mark of his, and it goes great with his preference for long, black coats.

His signature style concentrates on fighting demons and the forces of darkness, and is based on Learning. Seraph´s Signature Style.

Personal Life

We´ve been touching that Jin Shen upbringing before, right? This might be the time to mention that they are an offshoot from the Heaven Sword Clan some time in the far past - following a little demon hunting-related accident, only that when we say "accident" we really mean "our ancestor killed an elder of the clan who had gotten himself possessed by a demon, and a dozen or so clanmembers who somewhat misguidedly wanted to protect him, and then everyone got all tense and stuff so she split". This is detailed in the custom Demons in Zhen Zhou.

Anyway. The Jin Shen are a rather traditional bunch, so Seraph´s upbringing made him into a very serious young man with some serious emotional issues and performance angst. Being raised and trained by Seraph´s Elder Uncle didn´t really help matters - the old man was a warrior of immense skill before he was injured, and as time went by he became extremely bitter. Think about those hockey parents who put everything into their kids becoming professional hockey players because "they never got the chance"? Yeah, it´s like that - only with the added lethality of being raised to fight demons by someone for whom your accomplishments are never enough and who thinks that letting you fight your first demon when you are six years old just so you´ll learn quickly is an acceptable pedagogic method.

You´ll notice that we haven´t really mentioned Seraph´s parents? Well, that´s because they are dead. Instead, he was raised both by Elder Uncle and his two aunts, those women being colorful characters of their own. One of them a Daoist, the other a Confucianist, both of them predictionists and high-caliber gossips. It was they who discovered Seraph´s great destiny in the year when he entered Black Crane High - how this was the year when he would meet his true love!

This was, of course, when the "gossips" part kicked in... so now *everyone* knows about the prediction - and predictably enough, this has made the boy´s life more complicated than it ever was. Seraph is not happy.

Romance

Who can blame him for looking pensive?

Yeah, Seraph´s romantic life is a little fucked up. Trying to keep a cool head and living up to the proud Jin Shen legacy while a population of romantically inclined and/or horny school girls want to get inside of your pants can do that to a guy. Being under an official Prediction to meet is true love during this very year adds to the pressure. But hey, no one ever said being a young hero should be easy!

Shall we try to at least take a look at the important ladies in Seraph´s life? Who knows, maybe somewhere in here there´s a prophesized True Love waiting to be discovered!

• Thrice-Radiant Ping - it wouldn´t really be fair to start with someone else here, what with her and Seraph´s ongoing feuds, conflicts of philosophies and confrontations brimming with sexual tension. Seraph is extremely worried about Ping´s unapologetic bias for chaos and destruction and her likewise ambition to walk in the foosteps of Kuafu to kick down the gates of Heaven! And yet, he just can´t seem to let her go - he will show her the viability of the virtuous ways! Or is it something inside of him who has something altogether less virtuous in mind?

• Red Star Dervish - almost the antihesis of Ping, in that she is probably the one that Seraph feels most comfortable with. She makes him smile when he´s down, she always manages to help him find his way when he´s lost. In short, she has taken the step from ally and hot ganger chick to confidante and semi-sister figure. And their recent date couldn´t do anything to change that aspect of their relationship, right? Right?

• Zero - Though mysterious, Seraph had come to trust the diminutive Predictionist-Warrior; she is gone now, but he still hasn´t forgotten about her.

• Guardian of the Eclipse - Seraph´s cousin and childhood friend, she probably knows more about him than most. After he left for Two Mountain School, they spent some time apart for the first time - and things seemed to have changed somewhat since they reunited... at least for Eclipse, who (it is hinted) has begun to see her cousin in an entirely new way (as detailed in the Black Crane Party at the Tony´s Band concert). Only time will tell if this was temporary insanity caused by an overabundance of alcohol!

• Akiko - only featured in a quick flashback, this Nipponese exchange student was the girlfriend of Seraph´s old best buddy Ten Mountain Ox... who flipped out and became a Devil Warrior, claiming that Seraph was having an affair with her behind his back! Who knows the truth?

Game stats

For complete stats, see Seraph´s character sheet.

Story Highlights

Some of the defining stuff that has happened to Seraph:

SERIES 01 - NIHAO HONEY 2: THE NEW CHALLENGERS

• At the start of NH2, he entered as a Black Crane student. A later flashback revealed that he was shipped off to the Crane because he wasn´t welcome at his old school, Two Mountain School, any more after he killed another student (his own best friend, Ten Mountain Ox) who has become a Devil Warrior to get revenge on Seraph, claiming that Seraph had tapped his girlfriend (Akiko, unnamed in the flashback) behind his back. (The whole flashback sequence begins in NH2 post #828, linked [[1]].)

• Along with Zero and Red Star Dervish, he confronted the Iron-Winged Devils gang as his "entry mission" for the Black Crane. Failing to get the Devils (and their leader, the Devil King) to listen to reason, the trio fought and defeated the gang - including the Devil King and Four Kicks Down - the latter later joining the Black Crane School. During the fight´s climax, the Devil King revealed a hiherto unknown source of power as he transformed into a ten-foot Devil Bishounen form. After a hard fight, Seraph laid the King low with his Three Kings Style. Four Kicks Down revealed that the deceased leader had accepted power from a woman who had served as his concubine/advisor, and who had conveniently skipped out before the battle took place. She seems to be connected to the hellish conspiracy named RAIN - which Seraph and the gang has vowed to destroy!

• Competed in the Tournament, where he was mangled in his second match by Black Oasis - a fight that left the latter bleeding profusely and Seraph in the hospital after being smashed down into a crater and then blown all across the stadium by Oasis´ last blow.

• During the Tournament, he was possessed by Red Star Dervish through her Legacy power, and made to piss of Thunder Executioner through behaving like an arrogant ass.

• Got into an ongoing soap opera back-and-forth with Thrice-Radiant Ping, who has a differing attitude to the Xia Virtues and the edicts of Heaven than the old-fashioned swordsman. He has currently set his mind to showing Ping that there are alternatives to her lonely, Baneful ways.

• This got complicated somewhat when, during the Tournament, he was painted into a corner by a demon emissary who explained that Ping going forth in the tournament and thus proving the validity of her philosophy was unacceptable to the Thousand Hells. Consequently, they gave Seraph the choice to remove her from the tournament altogether before the demon lords´ chosen assassin took care of her in a more permanent manner. Lost for directions, Seraph accepted and battled Ping in a recreation room the same night - managing to beat her up with a ruler (and his Three Kings Style) so bad that she was forced to concede.

• Ping later pumped Seraph for his motives to fight her, and he explained them to her. It is uncertain if the letter of the situation was translated perfectly, but Ping accepted Seraph´s reasons for his actions even though she warned him off from doing something as stupid ever again.

• After the tournament, he became embroiled in a plot of a more personal nature - the internet writings of (XX), that slash-paired him with Torrent of Serenity in a potpurri of yaoi sex and abominable prose. He has tried to investigate the matter since any serious school work became nigh-impossible because of all the unwelcome "attention", but has so far had minimal success. Only Zero´s prediction techniques provided any kind of lead, and things being what they are he hasn´t had the time to fully follow up on them.

• In the following **Halloween 1-Hour Special**, the team (Seraph, Dervish, Zero and Ping) entered the newly created shadowland in the middle of Zhen Zhou City and fought against the legions of living dead that was all that remained of its´inhabitants! After an epic battle, they entered the center of the zone and discovered the cause for the destruction and the influence of the Creation-Hating Radiance - the reincarnated Three Powers Sage! Long story short: the Sage wanted us to bring him warriors that interested him, but the negotiations disintegrated when Zero decided that the only good approach was a lethal approach. In a split-second decision, everyone backed up the loliroid - with the consequence that the Sage sent them all off the mountain with but a slight display of his mighty Rare kung fu style!

• Seraph and Dervish went on a sort-of fake date as a way to start taking care of the yaoi issue. They both had a great time, even though the evening ended with a gang war before they even had a chance to enjoy the main dish. That´s the main dish in *the restaurant*, perverts!

• Back in the Black Crane, they learned that Red Star Dervish´s mentor Blind Fox had been beaten up and hospitalized in an incident that had also comatized Four Kicks Down. Some investigations pointed towards Torrent of Serenity being responsible. Red Star Dervish gathered a posse of Six Phantoms Consortium gangers and some of the D-rankers from Black Crane High to storm Torrent´s residence and return the favor, and Seraph reluctantly joined the mission.

• After Seraph almost managed to smooth things over with the Jade Dragon guardians, tempers flared and the inevitable battle followed. One one side was Seraph, Red Star Dervish, Zero, Sorrow of the Crestfallen, Guardian of the Eclipse, Ace of Hearts, the Six Phantoms and some E-ranker rabble. On the other was a gathering of students from Jade Dragon and Scarlet Tiger High - a surprising alliance! The battle went sour for almost everyone involved, and the Cranes were finally forced to withdraw. Seraph got his ancestral blade shattered against the God-Weapon Bone Bows Before the Steel and got massively shot up, cut up, pierced by arrows and set on fire. Life is hard on the pretty ones.

• Returning from their misadventures, the team found the Black Crane in disarray and the dorm a burning wreck - Torrent of Serenity and co had launched a sneak attack while they were gone! Needless to say, this didn´t help tempers any. Seraph settled for trying to find out the hows and whys himself and arranged a secret meeting with Torrent.

• During downtime at the Black Crane school, Thrice-Radiant Ping managed to find a hidden chamber by falling down through the floor and into it. Seraph found the hole and the unconscious Ping, and was technically the first one to set eyes on the actual chamber. Some sexual tension later, Ping claimed ownership of the chamber. They have settled for a sort-of compromise that allows Seraph to help her decode the texts contained in there - something that he accepts on the grounds that it allows him to stay close to her and perhaps even realize his ambition to make her see the viability of the virtuous ways! Just recently, Ping found references to Kuafu and the Light-Body Form in the texts and got into her head that Seraph tried to steal her secrets. This caused a short but intense battle in the chamber that had an enraged Seraph pull one would-be fatal strike in favor of leaving Ping completely naked. This got really uncomfortable really fast, but not *just* uncomfortable...

• Romantic tension turned into an all-time high as Red Star Dervish went to work with sneaky courtier Secret Arts - not only did some unexpected fallout from a fight with Ping turn the latter completely obsessed with Seraph, but Dervish managed to ensnare the young demon hunter beyond wits or coherent thought! Seraph is crushing on Dervish, Ping is crushing hard on Seraph... whatever will happen next?

SERIES 02: ZAIJIAN HONEY BLUES

• THE YEAR OF THE BLACK CROW episode (ZHB s01ep01) showed us the unfortunate proceedings - Dervish left the Black Crane to run the streets with Blind Fox for her own reasons and Seraph retreated into his own studies. When the Black Crow Brigade hit the Crane, Seraph and Ping were assaulted and defeated by the black-clad teenaged enforcers of the King´s new rule. Never the less, things kept on going on - though darker times had fallen over ZZ City. Sheguai and Scarlet Wake were gone. Principal Mountain had died some months before, and no one wants to tell the students just how that came about. The new Principal - Contentious Thorn - introduced herself, and Seraph was reintroduced to Dervish, who had returned to the Crane at the request of Four Kicks Down.

• S01E02 - ALWAYS TWO, THEY ARE

In this episode, Seraph is haunted by the legacy of the Jin Shen and Red Star Dervish is drawn into the mix as their friendship is reevaluated after the almost-romance of NH2.

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