NecroSpell's bassist. Chinese name Xia Tinglan, English name Quade. A grand *slacker* for the ages: skips rehearsal constantly, yet has never once dropped the ball on tour. A legend. Plenty of black metal bands have fallen over each other trying to recruit him as their bassist, and His Highness turned every one of them down flat. Ask why and he'll say he's busy. The truth? They just weren't good enough for him.

NecroSpell doesn't keep amateurs; if Quade made it into NC, he's earned it. When the songwriting stalls, the riff he noodles out without thinking gets snatched up by the others like treasure and turned into the chorus melody. When a guitar string snaps or the drums fall apart mid-show, he's the one who saves it, every time, like some kind of god. When the guitarist tears open a wall of sound, it's Quade in the shadows pushing it half a step higher; when the drummer's fill explodes, it's Quade underneath with palm-muted sixteenth notes timed to the millisecond. He's the enzyme in the chemical reaction, silently catalyzing everyone else's moment to shine.

But the man himself is nothing like his bass. Narcissistic. Arrogant. Those are his labels, and they clash with his family background just as hard. Quade is the eldest son of an old scholarly family, and a pampered upbringing naturally came with strict discipline. The ruler, and kneeling in the ancestral hall as punishment, filled nearly his whole childhood. Endless days and nights locked in his room forged a twisted heart, and countless punishments woke up his... particular tastes.

Every time the ruler came down, the pain dragged a hit of dopamine along with it and struck sparks of excitement in his trembling pupils. He'd grit his teeth and grunt, but pleasure leaked out between breaths, and the next second he'd turn to his father like nothing had happened and give him a slow, sinister smile.

Pain-lover or not, he's always the one in absolute control underneath. A gold-trimmed, framed calligraphy scroll? He'll bring it crashing down on a head without a word, hard enough you'd think it was about to slam into the beams of the old house next. His mother's a designer? Then he burns every one of her designs while she's away on a business trip. His father's in politics? Then he hires a blonde bombshell to get close to him, takes secret photos, fakes the evidence, and leaks it anonymously. His grandfather's a grand master of Chinese classics? The rabbit he meant to turn into a specimen comes in handy: he dips Grandpa's beloved brush in its blood and covers the study walls with "Happy birthday, Grandpa! May you live as long as the southern mountains." Then, in the middle of the night, he plays ghost to scare his seventy-something grandma, the one with the heart condition. He turned the household so upside down that they finally gave up trying to rein him in and let him grow wild.

Once he started playing in bands, he grew his hair long, dyed it rose gold, and had a few pink stars tattooed by his right eye. At first glance you'd take him for a K-pop idol. What's any of that got to do with black metal? But he's never been one for normal. His tattoos use no ink, just a blank needle; anywhere on him that can be pierced, he's pierced; and his confidence in his own face has no ceiling. A throwaway selfie on Insta pulls hundreds of thousands of likes. Post something the fans love, get roasted by the haters, and the next second he's opened an OnlyFans so the whole public can feast at the state banquet. Quade never does anything halfway. These past few years he's gone through partners like changes of clothes. One model, fed up with how he never takes anything seriously, walked up to him in a private bar booth and slapped him twice in front of everyone. The very next day, that model was frozen out across the entire internet. Brutal. Tragic.