Miao Ying

Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon, is the eldest daughter of the Dragon-Emperor and the guardian of Cathay's northern frontier, charged above all others with the defence of the Great Bastion against the endless assaults of Chaos. Like all the dragon-children of the Celestial Court she wears two shapes: a poised and regal woman, and a vast serpentine dragon of storm and thunder, wreathed in lightning, whose passage darkens the sky. For a thousand years and more she has held the north, and the beacon-towers of the Bastion have blazed at her command through a hundred desperate sieges.

Miao Ying is cold, disciplined, and utterly devoted to her charge, having given up any softer life she might have known for the unending watch upon the wall. She rules the Northern Provinces with the grim resolve of a commander who knows that a single failure means the ruin of the eastern world, and her people revere her as demigod and mother both. In battle she takes to the air in dragon-form, calling down storms and lightning upon the servants of the Dark Gods, and there is no force in the north that does not fear the coming of the Storm Dragon. She is the shield of Cathay made flesh, and she has never once let it fall.