Name: Lan Wangji
Canon: The Untamed
Canon Point: Post Canon
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: AU Lan Wangji cultivated to immortality, waiting for Wei Ying's return. He is still waiting.
Age: 1000+

World Information: Here at the start, until the sixteen years of mourning has passed and then diverts from canon, as Wei Wuxian does not get resurrected and cannot help him.

Personal History: The bare essentials.
Lan Wangji's life was mostly settled by the time he was fifteen, he was the lead disciple in his sect, he was a good scholar and strong swordsman. Unfortunately he then met Wei Wuxian and everything changed, in his mind, for the better. Then the Wen attacked and burned his sect to the ground, starting a war he had no choice but to fight in, while also searching for his missing best friend. Once found Wei Wuxian had changed and caused no end of problems with his dangerous cultivation, cultivation that threatened his health while Lan Wangji offers to help were rebuffed and scorned. Once they had won the war, Lan Wangji had hoped to help his friend (and love) back to health, but Wei Wuxian upset the entire cultivation world and fled into the burial mounds with the wen remnants.

Lan Wangji visited and saw the terrible conditions the people were living in, he resolved to help in any way that he could. Poisoned by Jin clan, the entire cultivation world had turned on Wei Wuxian and would eventually cause his death, devastating Lan Wangji and dealing him a blow from which he would never recover. He fought back against his own clan's teachings, to the point where his Uncle lashed him thirty three times and scarred him for life. He still managed to rescue the youngest Wen - Wen Yuan who he would take as his own son and hide his true bloodline until the boy was of age.

Sixteen years of relative peace pass and Lan Wangji is still waiting for any sign of Wei Wuxian's return, escorting the young disciples on night hunts and refining his cultivation. Then the mysterious arm of a fierce corpse attacks and murders two of the disciples under his care. Feeling guilty lan Wangji resolves to solve the mystery of the corpse and refine his cultivation so this does not happen again. While on the trail of mysteries the arm leads him on, it takes several months to work out exactly what has been going on in the cultivation world and even longer to try and convince his brother of what is truly going on.
The juniors have another very bloody harrowing escape from Yi City, where Lan Wangji has to slay the esteemed cultivator turned fierce corpse Song Lan and accidentally lets Xue Yang slip through his fingers in what would later become his greatest regret.

Frightened by how strong the Fierce corpses controlled by Xue Yang turn out to be, Lan Wangji trains even harder at cultivation, meditating frequently and training daily. He breaks through at least one level of cultivation this way, trying to buy his time to build the case against the suspect; Jin Guangyao.

It takes nearly a year to get Jin Guangyao into a corner from which he cannot escape, his brother is desolate at the realisation and this culminates in a much delayed confrontation at the Guanyin Temple. Once Jin Guangyao realises the trap, he sets Su She on Lan Wangji who he has to fight to the death leaving him wounded and vulnerable. His brother bargains for his safety, which only leads to Jin Guangyao's escape, aided by Xue Yang.

Once they have recovered, both brothers try to track down Jin Guangyao but it is Nie Huaisang who tricks him into his downfall and then, his death. This unexpected ally can not come too soon as Xue Yang declares war on the entire cultivation world, for which he has the overwhelming advantage of the Yin Tiger seal, forged anew. This is a long, drawn out and bitter war as Xue Yang has no base of operations and disappears before they can even lay a finger on him. Lan Wangji does benefit in getting more training, at the cost of two thirds of almost every sect being slaughtered and turned against them.

It is Jiang Cheng that strikes the final blow to end this war, he and Lan Wangji have fought too long at each other's side to truly hate each other anymore. Afterwards, the cultivation world lies in irreparable tatters and each sect retreats to try and staunch the loss. The common folk lose faith in cultivators in the majority: they caused two large scale wars that ruined the landscape and countless lives and cultivation gradually falls to the wayside as a practise because of this.

This is the decline of the Cultivation world and Lan Wangji does not know what to do about it. He resigns himself to cloud recesses to keep as much of what he can alive, which in this case is his brother and son. Shizui becomes a man in a war and grows to be a fine cultivator, he eventually marries and continues the Lan clan, but Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji show little to no signs of aging at all. It is with a painful kind of acceptance that they watch time touch everyone around them, with Lan Shizui occupied with his own family, Lan Wangji resolves to make use of the power he has amassed:
He will wait for the next cycle of Wei Ying's soul.

In order to do so he must go even further than where he is now, a very hard task, but he has endless love and his family so he feels he must try. Over the next hundred years, he goes into seclusion frequently and travels as far as he can to find monsters and ingredients that will raise him to the limits. He watches his grand children grow and his great grand children until one day he realises that his son looks older than he does. When Shizui dies, happily and in his sleep, Lan Wangji goes into seclusion and does not come out again for many many years. This is where his cultivation outstrips even his brother, who had been following him step for step.

He is summoned, by his brother telling him that he is retiring from sect life. Lan Xichen has no friends left, only his extended family and Wangji, and he wants to live in peace and comfort until he passes. Lan Wangji cannot deny him, but finds he cannot stay all the time in this far too peaceful land where cultivation is a hobby, new inventions are making thing easier every day and no one remembers how truly horrible the wars had been. The cloud recesses has been turned into a place of historical value and is preserved as much as possible, while people can now visit parts of the sight and relive what it was like in the golden age of cultivation. He is a highly sought after person, but he refuses to speak to most people unless it is a subject of learning. It is when he is away, travelling the world that he gets the request to return, to teach new enquiring minds of cultivation and the trials they faced back then. He is happy for a time.

His brother chooses to stop cultivating one year as he has found a new and very mortal love. It is like the years he was ageless catch up all at once and he dies one day, saving an innocent and much weaker than Lan Wangji can ever remember him being. Lan Wangji does not go into seclusion, but he does stop looking in mirrors.

This is how he spends his days now; teaching every few years or so, he is a beloved teacher no matter the year. Writing music for his family - some descendants still run the place - and going on quiet night hunts that the common folk pretend not to exist. He handles the problems before they become too big for anyone else and takes no thanks for it, ignoring government officials and getting confused by whatever latest invention the world has come up with.

Personality: In the beginning, before the second war, Lan Wangji was very similar to canon: a seemingly stoic man with a calm outward appearance that can be hard to crack by anything other than dogged perseverance, but full of endless love for the ones he chooses. Slow to warm to people beyond a casual acquaintance but once you become his friend he will support you to the best of his ability. He liked small fluffy animals and quiet hobbies such as reading or playing music.
After the second war; he grew colder to the cultivation world at large, disengaging with it and choosing to focus all his time and energy into his family. He is the one that the grandchildren run to for hidden sweets and to hide behind if Lan Qiren is looking for them. He is a bit of a soft touch for any child, prone to spoiling his own and any he meets on the streets in his night hunts. He flies into a panic if any of them fall ill, worrying over them with a stoic face long after they have recovered and are out playing once again.
One of his greatest fears is losing the people he cares about to things he could have changed; if he had only tried a little harder, reached a little further he could have saved them all. He was already prone to self flagellation, dwelling on past mistakes and perceived failings: he has always been his own worst critic. After losing Wei Wuxian and then the majority of his sect because of letting Xue Yang escape, this habit only cements itself into his psyche; he takes every failing very personally and spends what amounts to years dwelling over what ifs, when before he could be certain he acted justly and to the best of his ability.
The darkest times in all of his years are always after someone he loves dies, these started after Shizui; turning him into a recluse and suffering from such a prolonged melancholy that it seeped into his chest and makes him feel like he's perpetually cold. In these darker years it was often a struggle to get out of bed and force himself to live beyond the bare minimum to stay alive in case of Wei Ying's return. He can often feel these moods coming on and tries to avoid getting anyone involved so that he does not take it out on them. These moods make him needlessly harsh and snap back at anyone no matter the context, if he continues without a break he will suffer sudden repercussions, such as fits of black rage where he stops being aware of what he is doing and destroying anything he can get his hands on before he can gather himself. After witnessing one of these enraged sessions, Lan Xichen started doing guided mental meditation for him with an emphasis on healing, a practise Lan Wangji continues to this day otherwise his mental health can start to backslide. Even now, some days he refuses to speak to anyone so that he can mourn the people he has lost and spare them from the black temperament that overtakes him.
Modern day Lan Wangji has had time to heal from some of his wounds, such as outliving everyone he knows. He misses each one of them dearly and is dedicated to their memory: keeping the graves clean for centuries and talking about them with their descendants albeit a little awkwardly. He finds that he often cannot speak much of the people he has befriended over the years, choking on sad memories and resorting to simple and short statements to describe them, to the point where he has been called "unfeeling". He is more sentimental than before, keeping a great great grandchild's inky fingerprints on an unfinished composition, labelling each of them so he does not forget who it was. He likes to think he has an excellent memory, but the number of years can be confusing and he occasionally mixes up past and present students.
His greatest fear is forgetting now, having lived so long that even some features of his son have faded at the edges, Wei Ying has turned into this timeless form he tries not to think about because the details keep changing.
One of his greatest delights from his many years of living is teaching. He is a firm teacher that expects the students best in his lectures, challenging them to try and work things out themselves before asking questions and supportive of those who would struggle by going out of his way to find the time to help. He's known as a bit of rebel by letting the students get away with are minor infractions on a whim and not listening to all the updated rules of the Cloud Recesses Scholars. This is not entirely intentional, he just defaults back to the rules he knows best, that just happen to be from a few hundred years ago. If a student is doing something that there was no rule against from back then, he often lets them get away with it for his own amusement. This means he can be an unexpected accomplice in any shenanigans taking place, especially as the rest of the faculty often dismiss him as suspicious because of his historical reputation for being the embodiment of such rules. He indulges some students simply because they remind him of people, most often if they are loud and unthinking, but have good hearts.
He still tries to be a champion of justice, but finds it a much more complex affair than in his youth. He thinks through every law and rule to find which rules can truly be considered for the good of all and can completely disregard any he finds wanting. He would never outright seek to cause harm, but he does try and see the issue from all angles so that history does not repeat itself. He would shelter the unjustly accused, would help someone escape if what they had done had good reason.
Lan Wangji likes to think that he is mostly the same as his youth, just wiser and more careful.

Key themes: Waiting. Family.

Main Motivation: Seeing Wei Wuxian once more, everything he has lived through and fought so hard to attain becomes useless if Wei Ying never returns to the earth, even if he has to search alternate worlds to do it.

Skills: Master of Cultivation and all that entails: including sword flight, a heightened healing factor, strength and speed. He has been trained in his sect's style of martial arts and techniques, which range from talismans to healing energy. He can play the guqin and uses it regularly to fight and soothe resentful spirits. He is functionally immortal but only in terms of age, he can still die from attacks or illness.

Item: A portrait of his family, showing his brother, himself, Shizui and his children in the rabbit field. If you look to the back hills there is a small figure all in black facing away from the viewer.

Sample: "It has been many years since the last time Lan Wangji has given the lectures he is preparing for today. It still feels like it was only last week. When you have cultivated as strongly as he has, time seems to move like a still river. Nothing seems to change until you step in and suddenly your feet are swept out from under you by the unexpected current.

He chooses to give them roughly every five years, long enough for students to progress and for the reminder to be necessary, (even if time sometimes slips away from him and the lectures come out more like once every decade). He does not like it when that happens, and it is rarely by his own choice; when someone decides he is too important to bother and lead a normal sect member's life they will leave him to his seclusion or his meditation in the cold pond cave, until he spots something that makes him wonder how long it has been. Occasionally it has been his fault, too consumed with guilt or longing on an important anniversary such as a hundred years since his brothers death to come out and teach such wide eyed children such harsh truths.

Even if he has not been an acting regular sect member in a long, long time.

He last remembers these lectures when the current head of the preservation society was in his teens. The man now has grey hair and wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Lan Wangji had thought it was only a few extra years, he has had no need to eat or sleep for so long now that these bodily functions cannot be used as a marker of time passing unless he insists upon them.

As it is, there is a larger fan-fare than usual about these lectures after his longer absence, so he chooses to dress in the way that is most visually impressive and to him the most comfortable: robes similar to what he wore back when he first cultivated to immortality, over his more recent trousers and shoes.

Now he finishes editing his notes and attempts to catch up with the world: his notes are now to be projected on to a screen for all to see, via a series of electronic devices he vaguely understands and then a much more familiar practical demonstration afterwards.

He sighs a little at all the noise this makes in cloud recesses still, thinking fondly of silent spaces that were so easily shattered by a vibrant yell of "LAN ZHAN!" He uses this as fuel to fight with the scanner that promises to send his notes to the correct box, completely unconvinced it will work but walks into the lecture theatre with his head up and back straight. He has faced worse demons than esteemed colleagues and eager to learn students and the perils of technology.
Even if he misses one of them with all his heart."

Notes: Happy for him to no longer be immortal, or make any changes as needed.

Player Information

Name: Bear
Age: 27
Contact details: ghostingoutskirts@hotmail.co.uk/Frozen2dragons#4926
Other characters:Lan Wangji