What is loyalty? What is righteousness?

Character name: Zhang Liao, styled Wenyuan
Fandom: Ravages of Time
Timeline: Chapter 304, immediately after Sun Ce strikes him down.
Character's age: Early 20s.

Powers, skills, pets and equipment: No supernatural powers originally; he is a brilliant fighter, considered one of the very best by his peers, a "god of war" in the making. His expertise is with halberd and sword - the former usually from horseback, the latter at close range. At said close range his skill is pretty crazy, really - he likes to boast that no one has ever passed the reach of his sword, and up until the canon point he's taken from, no one has. He's shown to be able to keep dozens of foes at bay without breaking much of a sweat. Though not a strategist himself, he is an able commander and on-the-fly tactician, and also shown to capably work as a scout.

As one of the Scorched, Zhang Liao has gained a sort of supernatural extension of his natural skills. When in a physical bottleneck - a narrow passage or corridor, a doorway - he is able to throw up a force-field behind himself that will make it impossible to pass without his express permission. The force field is effectively one-way, impervious to any but the most extreme attacks from the side he's defending, but may be passed freely from the other side. It moves with him - if he steps forward or back in the bottleneck, it automatically shifts to stay about three feet behind him - and he can only create one shield at a time to block one passage. Knocking him out (or killing him) won't do any good - the shield will remain on indefinitely until he chooses to takes it down.


Canon history:

General setting - late 2nd century China, near the collapse of the Han Dynasty. The warlord Dong Zhuo is in control of the capital at Chang'an and of the child emperor, and a coalition of eighteen warlords rises to oppose him. Zhang Liao is introduced as a subordinate of Dong Zhuo's top general, the ruthless, brilliant "God of War", Lu Bu. We know little to nothing of his life before that - we know, in broad strokes, that he used to be an assassin, and that he followed Lu Bu when the man betrayed his first master, Ding Yuan, and into Dong Zhuo's service. We also know he's quite young at this point, but held in high esteem by his companions. He first appears as one of a dozen men who masquerade as Lu Bu to strengthen the army's morale and spread panic among the enemy. Unusual among them as not an esteemed general in his own right, he nonetheless stands out as the best and brightest of the lot.

Even early on, Zhang Liao's loyalties are clearly owed to Lu Bu over anyone else, and he holds his trust implicitly. At a mere hint from his master, he finishes the enemy's job in eliminating another general that was threatening to overshadow Lu Bu's glory. He plays a key part in his lord's scheme to assassinate Dong Zhuo: he kills Dong Zhuo's heir, hiding his body to be used later in framing Lu Bu's rival Li Ru for the murder. Later on, he commands the defense of the imperial palace against Li Ru's men as the assassination takes place inside, and slips back in just in time to kill the man himself - all acts of high treason committed without a blink, gleefully even. It's in the course of this plot that he first meets the Handicapped Warriors, the assassins' force of the Sima Clan (coincidentally the series' protagonists) and among them the eunuch archer Xiao Meng, at the time disguised as a woman. They don't get along particularly well.

Lu Bu's triumph is short-lived - soon he is defeated by the schemes of Dong Zhuo's surviving subordinates, and he and his men, Zhang Liao among them, are ousted from Chang'an, then from a secondary base in Liangzhou, losing everything they had.

Thankfully, an opportunity soon comes Lu Bu's way in the shape of the rising warlord Cao Cao, who mounts an attack against the province of Xuzhou. Desperate to hold him off, Xuzhou's people beg help from two great men: Lu Bu, and the famously benevolent, powerfully charismatic kinsman of the Imperial Clan, Liu Bei. The three forces clash around the city of Tanxian, where, out scouting, Zhang Liao unexpectedly meets a kindred soul of sorts: Liu Bei's oath-brother, Zhang Fei. The two men understand each other immediately and work together well. He has rather less luck with the third brother, Guan Yu, a staunchly honorable man, who punches him in the face then proceeds to save his life. Guan Yu expresses his regret that a man like Zhang Liao is serving an unrighteous master; Zhang Liao is furious at first, but something about the encounter leaves its mark.

After Cao Cao retreats from Xuzhou, Liu Bei gains lordship of the province, while Lu Bu, bolstered by the help of the strategist Chen Gong, turns his sights to Cao Cao's own home base in Yanzhou, and attacks its capital, Puyang. This turns out to have been a very bad idea: Cao Cao was prepared for the attack and has enlisted the assistance of the Sima Clan, what seems to be an easy win turns into a disaster, and Zhang Liao just barely saves his lord from being killed by the Handicapped Warriors.

Master and subordinate then flee to Xiapi, capital of Xuzhou, where they are sent by Liu Bei - now the local governor - to settle in the backwater region of Xiaopei. There, Zhang Liao attempts to pick up his understanding-cum-friendship with Zhang Fei, to little avail; at the behest of the self-styled Emperor Yuan Shu, Lu Bu attacks Xiapi and sends Liu Bei and his brothers themselves fleeing. During the attack, Zhang Liao finally gets to repay his debt to Guan Yu, forcing him to leave the battlefield before Lu Bu can eliminate him. Lu Bu is fairly forgiving of that slip-up in his own special way, which means he stops at breaking Zhang Liao's nose. It's a tender moment, really. After it, everything goes downhill.

Cao Cao, in the meantime, has gained control of the emperor and become effectively the strongest man in the country; he soon turns his sights on Lu Bu again and attacks Xuzhou with overwhelming force, laying siege to Xiapi. Back-and-forth maneuvers and heroics abound, and Lu Bu even gains the unlikely aid of Xiao Meng once more (he and Zhang Liao continue to not get along); but in the end, Cao Cao's strategists outmatch Chen Gong. In the dead of winter, Xiapi's fields are flooded, its supplies run out and its defenses begin to crumble. With no other recourse, Lu Bu leaves Zhang Liao to command the defenders and sets out of the city with his young daughter to deliver her to Yuan Shu, a match for the pretender's son in return for relief from the siege. They are ambushed on the way: the girl is killed and Lu Bu barely escapes with his own life, saved from the raging flood water in a blatantly insane act of daring that costs Zhang Liao the last of his own strength.

After this, Lu Bu is broken, making no more efforts to fight back against the siege or even stop his followers from defecting en mass. Zhang Liao meets the men at the gates; desperately ill, he nonetheless challenges them to get past the reach of his sword before collapsing. He begs them to remain with the lord that they had been so loyal to. They don't.

Xiapi is breached within days, and fate has it that it's Liu Bei and his brothers who come across Zhang Liao. Liu Bei asks him if he is satisfied to die this way; Zhang Liao spits in his face. Despite his wretched state, Zhang Fei still comes within an inch of his life in subduing him and presenting him to Cao Cao still alive. Zhang Liao is perfectly ready to be executed along with Lu Bu, proclaiming his loyalty and cursing at Cao Cao practically from under the headsman's blade, when Liu Bei steps in.

What happens next borders on the transcendent. Once more, Liu Bei asks Zhang Liao if he is satisfied with the death he has coming, then proceeds, passionately and with the full force of his terrifying charisma, to dismantle everything that Zhang Liao holds sacred: all the lies of loyalty, righteousness and Heaven's Mandate that used by sages and emperors to lead men to their deaths. He tears open wide those cracks that Lu Bu's apathy toward those loyal to him had left. Answer with your heart, he demands of Zhang Liao, and the young warrior breaks down in tears, and surrenders.

When next we see Zhang Liao, a while later, he is overseeing the burial of Xiapi's dead defenders in a mass grave outside the city; quieter, grimmer and clearly mistrusted by his fellows, he explains that he owes them this much. When the army of Cao Cao's enemy Yuan Tan attempts to pass through, threatening to trample the graves, he snaps, and charges into their midst alone. There, he runs across and cooperates with Liaoyuan Huo, leader of the Handicapped Warriors, who has been searching the mass grave for the remains of Xiao Meng; the two of them aim for the army's incompetent commander and together rout ten thousand men.

Yuan Tan's averted move signals the beginning of intense hostilities between Cao Cao and the Yuan Clan, who compete for control over the North of China. A drawn-out battle begin in Guandu; while there, Zhang Liao is approached by strategist Yuan Fang with an offer to defect. Pretending to agree, he infiltrates the ranks of a conspiracy for rebellion within Cao Cao's army and foils the scheme, bringing the head of the main player back to his new lord. His unique position makes him useful in another, rather more personal assignment: when Cao Cao takes Xuzhou, he is sent into Xiapi to talk Guan Yu into surrendering rather than dying on the field. It's a cruder and simpler version of Liu Bei's words that he speaks back to the man's oath-brother, but they work. Guan Yu entrusts his weapon, the fate of Liu Bei's family and peace in Xuzhou to Zhang Liao, and agrees to keep on living.

Shaken from the encounter, Zhang Liao rejoins Cao Cao's main force in the Shochun region, and there something happens that shakes him worst of all: the army is ambushed by the forces of the Eastern warlord Sun Ce, whom Cao Cao had hoped to eliminate by trickery.
Taken completely off-guard, the army scatters, the generals are all engaged, and Zhang Liao is left to face Sun Ce himself. The match is brutal and over all too quickly: for the first time in his life, the man who boasted that no one could get past his sword-reach is knocked down.

And that painful disgrace of a lesson is the last that Zhang Liao knows of his own world.


Personality:

Zhang Liao is a man in deep conflict. That is his most defining characteristic at this point in life: the painful, deep-running transition from one idea of self to another. Before his lord's defeat, he was a brash, almost carefree young warrior, proud to the point of smugness, incredibly self-assured and completely confident in his place in the world, who he was, what he was meant to do with his life. He was, and still is very well-aware of his own talent, his genius almost for warfare, and had always enjoyed that talent with few if any scruples to think of. He still thinks of himself as a general above all, and enjoys a good battle and a skilled opponent. But the lynchpin of his life was his position as Lu Bu's right hand, as "the Warrior God's most favored man". Lu Bu was everything to Zhang Liao - idol, mentor, father and brother figure as well as commanding officer and lord - and he thought of himself as chosen, touched by Heaven's own favor. In Lu Bu's service he is repeatedly shown to enjoy - well, just about everything he did, including bloody assassination and backstabbing. He even happily boasts of having murdered Lu Bu's own foster-brother on his lord's orders.

Then Xiapi happened; and now Zhang Liao's lord, idol, mentor and father-figure is gone, and he must, somehow, take charge of his own life. A maturing process, you could say, and he is certainly more mature under Cao Cao - more subdued, not as boastful, quieter, grimmer, a close-mouthed enigma to his new comrades. While still a fearless warrior, the delight is gone. Liu Bei's transforming words stay with him, needle at him - he wants to find his own path in life and see what he can accomplish, but don't ask him where to even start. The only certain thing is that he doesn't put much stock in sagely ideals of loyalty anymore. The absolute devotion that used to define him has burned him to the bone, and he feels duped by it, wasted, even as he still struggles to free himself from it. He still calls Lu Bu "Master". Half a dozen years aren't undone in a day.

His loyalty is, he realizes now, chiefly given to his brothers in arms: he has always been devoted to and protective of his subordinates, always the last to leave in any desperate situation. It's this willingness to die for the sake of any soldier under his command that wins him Guan Yu's respect, and he holds it more important than ever. He enjoys easy camaraderie, though his single-minded devotion to his lord means that he had few other close bonds. When Cao Cao's officers give him the cold shoulder he endures that quietly, but practically latches onto Guan Yu as soon as the other speaks kindly to him. He is the sort of man who needs other people.

His everyday conduct is casual and straightforward if usually a little too serious: teasing gets to him easily and he's repeatedly shown to not have much of a sense of humor. While very capable as a commanding officer, his talents are strictly military and he knows as much, remaining essentially a follower not a leader. Though shown to be quite bright enough to follow even very intricate plans, he doesn't usually come up with them himself; he was and is perfectly happy to rely on the expertise of strategists, and isn't much of a liar. He is educated - knows and loves his history - and far from crude, but still a soldier: practicality wins out where he is concerned, even over propriety and certainly over refinement. Too much talking annoy him if he sees it as needless caution and hesitation, but he is still more cautious than most - he has to be, having been the common sane sense to Lu Bu's inhuman ambition and Chen Gong's scheming for quite a while. Essentially an earthy, steady-minded man, his flights of fancy are limited to being inspired by others; but when he is inspired, there is little he wouldn't do.