There's a lot to draw on and I appreciate you posing the question:
I'm helping create a game that will double as a board game/digital release, and during our generation playtesting my favorite character to be made was Liaou Xiang.
2nd prince to a kingdom that continues to be prosperous after his brother, the king, was killed in honorable combat because their political system at the time respected challengers and had the belief that the strongest should rule. The victor had the right to rule from this, but abdicated the throne which led to a high court seizing power (got corrupt, real quick) and leaving Liaou without a true home or purpose. The campaign was high-fantasy, dragons, wyverns, oni, vampires, but Liaou was 100% human with a vendetta against the man who killed his brother and didn't take up the responsibility as king. There was a lot going on in the campaign and this plotline for my character was by no means the focus, in fact, it was rather minor compared to potentially world-ending events and a BBEG creating an army of the dead and monstrous but it got weaved in until I finally had the chance to accomplish his initial goal of revenge.
Notable achievement for Liaou included: Hiring a mercenary who protected him all campaign who he later married, their children have moved on to next generations to fill story and for me to play as if needed. Hiring an enemy who attacked him by promising to pay better, she saved his life and many others by switching sides. Killing the leaders of a tribe of veteran killers raised in best described more-dangerous-fantasy-Australia, who were the parents of another party-member and immediately giving her the role of their new leader as he would quickly have died to her if he had kept it. Beating the daughter of the strongest vampire in the known campaign due to luck in a 1x1, it counts, percentile chance abilities work when they need to. Stealing a vast amount of spoons (no he doesn't share). Making a million puns of "Your time is up, my time is Liaou".
There's a lot more but those stand out, but chief among them is that Liaou survived a pact with the dragon that was pacted to his late brother. In the rules of our game, dragon pacts are a little tricky where a character must give up something (Empathy, kindness, ambition, passion, sight, hearing) to the dragon in order to receive it's boons. With this, the individual that pacted with the dragon would grow stronger to the point they are consumed completely by the dragon (who in turn grows stronger for having developed the recipient). Should the dragon die while a pact is active, both are dead; should the recipient die first, dragon survives and gains what's left of their power. With this setup, Liaou pacted with the dragon that also shared his quest for vengeance against the man that killed his brother and in the middle of a serious combat session in a frozen war where he was forced to work with the man he wanted to kill (and his respective dragon, among other player characters) his dragon couldn't resist the one opportunity he had.
In the middle of battle they fought, Liaou's dragon didn't have much in the means of morals so attacking while the other was compromised and injured from the shared enemy was just a great opportunity. This led to their shared target's demise, their target's dragon's demise, and through a lot of other campaign means Liaou finding a way out of his pact before having the other characters around him that had the strength to do so kill his own dragon before it tried to consume him after getting what it wanted.
Long post but I truly love this character and am happy to continue his legacy elsewhere ^^ I hope to read a lot more inspired stories.
