Series: Lethumi
Class: Bounty Hunter/Bartender
Alignment:
Gender: Male
Species: Phoenix
Age: 4800, give or take a few centuries
Birthdate:
Height: six foot
Weight:
Short Description: A man with hair colored like it might be fire.
Swordplay skills: Gonfei has lived through the Punic Wars, numerous Roman campaigns, barbarian raids, crusades, the fast-to duel times of the Renaissance, defended against conquistadors... He is extremely proficient with light melee weapon combat, with or without a shield, and with spears.
Firearms: Gonfei has also been through the Napoleonic wars, both world wars, and spent quite a lot of time as a bounty hunter, be it in the American West or in interstellar space. He has as such become an excellent shot, and can easily adapt to nearly any firearm, be it pistol or Rifle. While in the past he has been excellent with a bow, this skill has atrophied since firearms have become accurate enough to fully replace the bow.
Military Tactics: Gonfei has worked under some of the greatest military minds the world has known, be it directly or as a soldier, and has even helped lead the Aztecs to victory against the invading Spanish in the 16th century. He has developed an eye for tactics and overall strategy.
Fire based attacks: As a several millenia old Phoenix, Gonfei has long since learned to channel the fire of his other form into many fire-based attacks should the need arise, even in his human form.
Phoenix Form: As a phoenix, Gonfei is capable of transforming into a large eagle that either appears to be made of fire from its coloration, or actually can be of fire. If he were killed in an environment that allows fire to exist(in other words not in a vacuum or underwater, to name the most likely situations) he would immediately catch fire and burn down to ash. From this ash he would then erupt in the full flame bird form. While he must 'recharge' his power to do this over a month or so, he is capable of transforming between bird and human at will. When in bird form, his fire attacks are significantly more powerful.
Culinary skills: When he's not been involved in fighting, Gonfei has typically been involved in the food industry, be it running an inn in between campaigns for Rome, running a tavern in the middle ages, or an English Pub between the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War. He's an expert at various cuisines, though he specializes in Italian, and he's well versed in his mixed drinks, making him a fully trained bartender, as well as a barrister.
Piloting: While he has relatively limited fighter experience, while he was a bounty hunter he managed to pick up how to pilot a small transport through space combat.
See Theme_Music for help with this section.
Logs
Background
Born on Sicily some time in the second millenium BCE, Gonfei was a part of a tribe of Phoenixes living in the Mt. Etna area. He was happily living among his people until, in the First Punic War, they were wiped out by Carthage. From here on until the fall of the Empire in the 5th Century, he remained a loyal soldier of Rome, volunteering for the legions as often as he dared.
As the Western Empire fell, Gonfei felt no loyalty to the Eastern Empire. He instead spent time in what would later be known as Italy and France, eventually befriending the Norse and travelling as far as Mesoamerica for a short period of time. He returned to Europe and later joined the Conquistadors to return to Mesoamerica, except he turned against Spain in favor of the Aztecs. Later on he fought for the British Empire against Napoleon, after which he ran a pub until travelling to America after the Civil War. In the American West, he managed to get a taste for bounty hunting, which he returned to after the World Wars, but in a rather dramatic fashion.
It was 1947, and his tension with an old friend/enemy Quetz, had reached a boiling point once again. They agreed to meet in the Sonoran desert to settle their score once and for all. They met in northern Mexico, in a place that should have had no one but the two of them. But fate intervened, and when they arrived at their intended abandoned location, they instead found a wrecked ship well on its way to being repaired. Caught off guard, the two were captured and abducted by dragon-like aliens known as Draygons, and were soon carted off to the Perseus spiral arm.
Quetz and Gonfei, however, were difficult science captives, and soon managed to escape, finding other alien races that were more friendly than the dragon-like race. While Quetz seemingly vanished, Gonfei hid his human nature behind powered armor and began taking up bounty hunting once again, taking the name Gonthri Fei. After the different spiral arms began talking to each other in the early 2000s, including Earth being made aware of the other cultures of the galaxy, including another Human one, Gonfei began operating across all three arms: Sidra(Perseus), Orion, and Tyrian(Sagittarius). At one point he fathered a daughter, Rayne, though was left unaware of her until she was 13.
It was a few centuries after this that Gonfei later found himself in NeoTokyo, where he has had a few low-key adventures, but mostly kept himself under the radar. While he returned to his own universe for a few decades when NeoTokyo's universe collapsed, he found himself back in the city once again when it returned.
Gonthri Fei
In the Sidra arm, there is the legend of the infamous bounty hunter, Gonthri Fei. While this began as simply Gonfei getting by and not allowing anyone to see who(or rather, what, considering humans were unknown to Sidrans) he was at the time. His skills, Khadran Crystal, and the mysterious aura he put around himself lead to him becoming more and more known throughout the Sidra Arm. Eventually, copy cats began to spring up, especially after his supposed death near the beginning of the Draygon War. From here, the legend spread further, culminating in his well known involvement in Operation Diamond Angel, the liberation of Diamondia. In the Sidra arm, the bounty hunter Gonthri Fei is still considered a legend, the likes of which has spawned movies, TV shows, books, and more. In almost all of these depictions, they keep true to his never removing his helmet, but even when they do have Gonthri Fei's helmet removed, underneath is typically a Sidran or Diamondian. In fact, his original helmet was given to a Diamondian that was using the name of Gonthri Fei, an individual that has remained active among the bounty hunting world and furthered the legends of Gonthri Fei.
Even now, in Neo-Tokyo, Gonfei from time to time uses this old persona, though typically only in the Badlands. He still keeps fully armored, even with an armored false tail, to keep this persona of 'Gonthri Fei' separate from the real man of Gonfei Thri, and in fact even his entire personality shifts to that of his bounty hunting self when he armors up. He typically hunts alone, but if he comes across others, he won't shy away from working with them for a mission or fight, but he tries to leave no clue as to who, or even what, he is under the armor.
Notes
The origins of Gonfei date back to when I was in high school. When he was first created, it was as Gonthri Fei, and he was intended to be a mysterious, badass bounty hunter, heavily inspired by Boba Fett. Considering this was well before even the first of the prequel trilogy, at the time almost nothing was known about Fett. At the time I had no idea what was under the helmet, or even plans to ever reveal it. It was actually in 1998 on Neo-Tokyo that I came up with Gonfei Thri as the man, and phoenix, under the helmet.
