Jin Bei

Jin Bei is the youngest member of the Pride and now the humorless leader of the Corsairs. He saw Nasser Graham as a father figure, so the monarch's disappearence hit him harder than most. Jin Bei originally approached each member of the Party, recruting them for a Corsairs to aid him in his mission to find the Orphan Sphere and stop the White Lion Armada.
Jin Bei is known for a bushido combat style, carrying a katana in one hand, a wakazashi in another, and wielding a small tanto with his tail. A fateful encounter with his former protoge, Prince Lucas, left him severely injured, so the Party had to strike out without him. Nevertheless, Jin Bei does what he can to assist them by providing guidance and using his position on the Chimera Council to advocate for them.

Early Life

No member of the Pride has gone through such dramatic changes as Jin Bei. While known now for his dour and determined attitude, as a young lad Jin Bei was a mischevious and conniving trickster. He grew up as a war orphan during the reign of the Koan empire. He was taken in by the legendary smuggler, Jim Kestrel, aboard his ship, The Dark Home, along with a Homyn girl named Klarisia. The two served together aboard Kestrel's crew as deck-hands often competing for his affection. Klarisia always seemed to come out on top, however, due in part to her strong connection to the Dream World. Despite looking up to their captain, Jin Bei never seemed able to impress him, and the closest thing he had to a parental figure on the crew was their lookout, another Mong Bal named Wa, who had been assigned to keep an eye on the kids.
Jin Bei found an early mentor when Jim Kestrel's crew pressganged a Scalfi engineer named Anh to help them sink a Koan Dreadnaught. Back in his own home town, Anh had enjoyed entertaining the children while he worked his forge, and he filled much of the same role with Jin Bei as he worked to build weapons to fight the Koan empire. Their work hit a snag when the empire kidnapped Klarisia and took her aboard the Dreadnaught. Anh, Jim Kestrel, and Jin Bei mounted a rescue mission to save her, with Jin Bei riding on Anh's back. Together, they managed to save Klarisia and sink the koan Dreadnaught.
Their victory, however, brought an end to Anh's time with the crew. Jin Bei was forced to say goodbye as The Dark Home departed for the Rim.

The Pride's Rebellion

Sinking the imperial Dreadnaught was far from the last part Jin Bei played in the rebellion against the Empire. His life changed forever when he met Nasser Graham and his crew, known as the Pride. Unlike Jim, Nasser had no compunctions about putting Jin Bei on the front lines and going along with his clever strategies to outsmart their enemies. Jin Bei found in Nasser a father figure that he never quite could in Jim, and by letting the young Mong Bal serve in the Pride, Nasser earned Jin Bei's life long loyalty.
Together, the Pride snuck into the Imperial City and overthrew The Undying Empress, securing a new age of peace across the spheres.

Joining the Corsairs

While most other members of the Pride came from nobility of their respective nations, Jin Bei had spent most of his life fighting with Nasser in the Pride. He wanted to continue serving Nasser and helping make his dreams for the system a reality. He got his chance with the newly-formed Corsairs, an order formed originally to dispatch the remnants of the Koan Armada and later came to combat threats to the alliance as a whole. Nasser favored the corsairs over a traditional army to protect the sovereignty of the member nations and also to ensure that this new government would not simply become a world power that replaced the Koan empire with military force.
Jin Bei dove wholeheartedly into his new role. He used what he had learned from Anh, Nasser, and Jim Kestrel to sink the last remaining Koan dreadnaughts with the original corsairs. Nasser even taught Jin Bei the secret and ancient art of resonance, allowing him to manipulate the powers of the universe to grant him preturnatural abilities like heightened strength and accelerated healing. He also became close with Nasser Graham's two children, Lucas and Halle. The latter of which, while too young to take into the field, proved an eager pupil who showed much of her father's adventerous qualities.

An Interlude on the Rim

Jin Bei's major test as a Corsair came when word got out that the Pirate Warlords of the Rim were planning to invade Lion City. Nasser sent Jin Bei to the far reaches of the system to gather intelligence and see if the alliance needed to bolster their military forces after all. Little of Jin Bei's adventures on the Rim made it back to the inner system, but suffice to say he used every ounce of his cunning to curb the invasion efforts, sabotaging their forces and turning the warlords against each other. He also employed the help of a bounty hunter with prophetic abilities named Marko Pyth, and has alluded that some kind of debt existed between them. Marko evidently made a strong impression on Jin Bei, as he urged the Party to visit the Rim specifically to seek him out on their mission to find the Orphan Sphere.
By the time the invasion made its way to Lion City, the pirate fleet was a shadow of its intended size and the city's coast guard was more than sufficient to bring them to heel. Jin Bei's success on the Rim proved the viability of the corsairs, showing that a standing military was not necessary to protect the interests of the alliance. Jin Bei was named the leader of the Corsairs upon his return, with Nasser Graham stepping down from the order to pursue the study of astronomy.

A Mission to Mong Bal

Jin Bei's life took a sudden turn when, on the day Prince Lucas became a Corsair, Nasser Graham suddenly disappeared. Shortly after, the Pride discovered that Source was running out of nectar, meaning the Alliance would soon lose its strongest incentive for keeping its members in the fold. While he could not come up with an explanation that explained Nasser's unnanounced disappearence, Jin Bei knew in his heart that his surrogate father-figure had not abandoned his people. The only clue to his whereabouts, however, was his obsessive study of the Progenitors and the search for the mythical Orphan Sphere that purportedly existed beyond the Rim. Jin Bei reasoned that the solution to the nectar crisis must exist on the Orphan Sphere and that Nasser Graham had departed to find it.
More pressing matters took Jin Bei's attention away from his search when the Mong Bal announced they were leaving the Chimera Alliance. Deciding that finding Nasser would help matters little if the alliance fell apart during their efforts, Jin Bei mounted a mission to bring them back into the fold. In doing so, he took the novitiate Corsair, Prince Lucas, under his wing, teaching him some of the resonance techniques that his father passed on to Jin Bei. The Prince's involvement prompted a groundswell of support from the people of the alliance, with many pledging to fight with the Prince. However, emboldened by his success on the Rim and mindful of Nasser's principals, Jin Bei instructed Prince Lucas to turn down their offers.
Instead, they traveled with a small crew of Corsairs. Their party included Prince Lucas's friends, Oliver and Thane Kestrel as well as two Mong Bal natives, Sun Guan Yu and Kylia. While few details of the mission to Mong Bal reached the alliance, the group returned embattled and dismayed. Rumors circulating around high-level information brokers even hinted at a doomed marriage betwene Prince Lucas and a Mong Bal girl. Regardless, it was clear that the Mong Bal would not be returning to the Chimera Alliance anytime soon.

The White Lion Armada

Jin Bei's failures in Mong Bal caused a rift to develop between him and Prince Lucas. The Prince increasingly believed that his father had abandoned the alliance, and wanted to form an army to keep what remained of the member nations in place and keep the peace when they inevitably learned of the looming nectar crisis. Jin Bei, however, kept faith with Nasser Graham and his vision, and believed the key to the Alliance's salvation lay in finding the Orphan Sphere.
Prince Lucas seperated from Jin Bei and formed the White Lion Armada with Thane and Oliver Kestrel. Fearing that his actions would lead to the creation of an entity as dangerous and powerful as the Koan Armada, Jin Bei reluctantly struck out against his former protoge. The two factions battled over intelligence about the Progenitors and a secret map called the Progenitor Atlas that Nasser Graham had commissioned. During this time, he grew closer to Princess Halle, who seemed to be the only person on the spheres who shared his fervor to find the missing King. Jin Bei trained the princess with the intention of bringing her into the search, and this time vowed that he would not make the same mistakes with her as he had her brother.
In Jin Bei's search for the Orphan Sphere, he traveled the spheres with what remained of his loyal corsairs in hopes to recruit a new generation to take up the quest. He rescued Simon from the Cimerrean who was escoritng Professor Halle, the author of the Progenitor Atlas. He returned to Lion City where a crew member of his childhood friend Klarisia named Helix had come to Lion City hoping to mend the rift between the Homyn and the Scalfi. Helix helped heal Jin Bei's crewmate Kylia, whom Jin Bei followed to Mong Bal only to find that she had died.
In his efforts to recover her body, he met a distant cousin of Kylia named Jaime, eager to take up his family's mantle and fight for Kylia's cause. He then tracked the Progenitor Atlas to the Mong Bal City of Erryl, which held a tournament each year that made its youth eligible to leave the city and join the Corsairs. After a Mong Bal youth from the lower class named Wukong was robbed of his victory by a noble, Jin Bei intervened to save him.

A Narrow Recovery

While failing to recover the Progenitor Atlas, Jin Bei told those he had recruited to meet him on the Koan moon Aspidie. However, an unexpected encounter with Prince Lucas brought him away from that meeting when he discoverd the White Lion Armada had brought a planet-destroying hyperion bomb to the moon. He and Prince Lucas clashed again, and this time the student bested the master. Jin Bei lay dying at Prince Lucas's feet as the Prince did the unthinkable and activated the hyperion bomb.
Luckily, Jin Bei's recruits proved more proactive and capable than he assumed, and they found him lying near death shortly after the battle. While it was too late to stop the hyperion bomb from going off, the Party managed to save Jin Bei by redirecting a medical ship from the evacuation efforts to the cave where the battle occured. The decision cost the lives of several of Aspidie's residents, but ultimately saved Jin Bei's.
During the Corsair exam, Jin Bei fell into a coma recovering from his injuries. He awoke to the good news that his recruits had passed the corsair exam on their own and recovered the Progenitor Atlas. Two of his old allies, Royce and Itthis, had even returned to help the new Corsairs in the cause.
But the events on Aspidie still came with a cost. During Jin Bei's absence, the Koan Knight Sir Reglas had proposed marriage to Princess Halle in an effort to keep the Koa from breaking off from the Chimera Alliance after the destruction of their moon. Jin Bei was not happy to see the daughter of his best friend sold off for political expediency, but he knew the stakes demanded such a sacrifice. Jin Bei also realized that he was in no shape to carry on the search. So, he entrusted his Corsairs to carry on in his stead with Princess Halle.

The Koan Engagement

Jin Bei reunited with the Party when they visited the Koan capitol of Balphuran for Princess Halle's wedding. He was pleasently surprised to find his old friend and mentor, Anh, among them. However, matters soon grew more complicated as the Party unveiled a plot by a secret organization known as the Blue Frogs to restore the Koan Empire. When Wukong found an ancient book called the Blue Frog manifesto that depicted a Koan knight marrying a Homyn princess. It seemed perhaps that the Homyn and Koa weren't the only ones who had been planning for this wedding.
Tensions heightened when the Party set off for Alteri Island for Reglas's bachelor party on a mission to recruit the powerful knight, Sir Latro, to their cause. While the mission was nominally successful, Anh lost his life navigating the island's brutal, mutant-infested climes.
The loss of his friend caused a rift to form between Jin Bei and Sir Reglas. He saw Reglas's duties as a member of the Pride to keep the Koa in check, and he had even offered the position as king of the Koa to aid in this duty. However, Reglas wanted a republic, and now it seemed, the Koan ideals of democracy and freedom had hamstrung their efforts to stop the rise of a new empire. Having already lost a friend, Jin Bei was reluctant to give up Halle to the Blue Frogs' plans, but with so much already riding on the wedding, it seemed his hand was forced.