Random Word
Three Thousand Club
Name: Shining Silver
Rank: 4
Archetype: Courtesan
Disadvantages:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Woman disguised as man]
Student of Monsters [The Placid Lake Swordsmanship School is disgraced]
Destiny: 1
Lake: 7
River: 2
Joss: 2
Max Chi Aura: 2
Chi Replenishment: 2
Chi Threshold: 11 Trivial, 22 Minor, 33 Major (With Armor: 16 Trivial, 32 Minor, 48 Major)
Normal Chi: 11
Cultivation: 3
Entanglement: 0
- Skills (Max +10)
Perform +10
Confidence +10
Inspire +10
Awareness +10
Learning +5
Tactics +5
- Virtues
(+)Benevolence 2
(-)Ferocity 1
(+)Force 1
(-)Individualism 1
(+)Honor 5
(-)Obsession 5
(+)Loyalty 4
(-)Revenge 1
(+)Righteousness 4
(-)Ruthlessness 1 - External Style
Placid Mirror Meditation (Sword, Staff, Flexible)
Speed: +5
Footwork: +0
Strike: +15 (+5 Sword)
Damage: +0
Block: +15 (+5 Sword)
Toughness: +0
Laughs At: Linear aggression, overwhelming force, reactive styles.
Fears: Deception, darkness, being outnumbered.
(2) Realization of Reflected Intent
If you successfully Block a Strike by 10 or more points, you may flood a die from the River to Reply against your opponent, inflicting 1 Ripple upon her.
(3) Reflected Soul Laid Bare
When you make any Rippling roll, you may choose for it not to inflict an Injury Condition, but instead a Passion condition such as fear, awe, despair or contemplating the error in their methods.
Internal Style
Unstained Lotus Mastery
1: Lotus Point
This insidious technique sends hairline fractures through the body of your opponent. While individually harmless, you can guide them to converge in a single point in his internal organs with careful aim. And with one more strike... a red flower blooms. For this reason, such minute fractures are called “petals” by students of this style.
2: Lotus-Forged Needle
You project power from your weapon that darts through the air. Often, you seem to shoot a copy of your weapon, a gleaming blade composed of force and sharpness. What better method to avoid staining your clothes than to kill your enemies from ten paces away?
- You may make your attack against a target one zone away.
3: Lotus Field
This technique is a more advanced application of the style's basic principles. Rather than a single, thin fracture, this technique creates spreading networks of cracks, making bones fall into shards like glass.
- If your strike hits, inflict two petals on your opponent. You can use this technique after the defender rolls
4: Lotus Seeds Lotus
The natural cycle propagates plants endlessly. Energy is never lost, but always transformed into different states. Your punishment is likewise relentless.
- If you force a Rippling Roll to generate an Injury Condition, your roll has one extra die for each petal present on the target. This doesn’t expend the petals.
- You may make your attack against a target one zone away.
Placid Mirror Meditation
Swords, Staves, Flexible [Must have reflective surfaces]
Qualities: Practitioners of this esoteric style first practice perching on bamboo rods over a perfectly placid lake or pool of water. They are taught to fight by watching not their opponent, but their shared reflections below. Placid Mirror Meditation conceptualizes battle as the reflection of intentions, both of the practitioner and their opponent, and teaches its adherents to perfectly understand both. As the placid lake best reflects the world, the placid soul best reflects the souls of others. Practitioners graduate to using the reflection of their opponent in the polished surface of their weapon instead of an often difficult to find still lake, continually presenting attackers with their own reflected aggression while remaining internally tranquil and minimizing actual motion. When the Mirror does strike, it strikes with a perfect understanding of the defences of its opponent, reflecting the flaws in their character and style.
Laughs At: The Mirror laughs at linear aggression and overwhelming force, for in meeting themselves they are immediately undone. The Mirror laughs at other reactive styles, for it presents them only their own reflection to react to.
Fears: The Mirror fears deception and darkness, for the mirror cannot reflect what it cannot see. The Mirror fears being outnumbered, for a mirror can only reflect what is before it.
Statistics:
Speed: +5
Footwork: +0
Strike: +15
Damage: +0
Block: +15
Toughness: +0
Techniques:
(2) Realization of Reflected Intent: If you successfully Block a Strike by 10 or more points, you may flood a die from the River to Reply against your opponent, inflicting 1 Ripple upon her.
(4) Flawless Complement Assumption: If an attack is described in such a way that you would receive a penalty to block it, you may flood a die from the River to reduce that penalty by up to 10.
(3) Reflected Soul Laid Bare: When you make any Rippling roll, you may choose for it not to inflict an Injury Condition, but instead a Passion condition such as fear, awe, despair or contemplating the error in their methods.
(2) Striking-the-Self Reflection: When hit by an Attack or Marvel, you can flood a die from the River to Reply against your opponent, inflicting 1 Ripple upon her. You can do this only once for any given attack, even if it included multiple elements that hit you.
(4) Through the Mirror: Before initiative is rolled, declare one opponent your chosen target. If that opponent acts before you, and their action benefitted from one or more Techniques of their active External Kung Fu with a price of 4 Destiny or less, you may choose one and gain that Technique for the round.
(1) Placid Lake Internalization: You have a +5 bonus to any attempt to generate a Wave defined by stillness or reflection.
(2 or 4) Infinite Depths Contemplation: In any round in which you complete a Wave characterized by perfect reflection or stillness you gain an additional slot in your river, the contents of which can only be used for flooding. This slot disappears at the end of any round in which you do not complete such a Wave. By paying an additional 2 Destiny, you may increase the number of additional slots to 2.
- Lores
(5) Placid Lake Sword School
(3) Heir Apparent
(-3) Rival
(5) Placid Lake Sword School
TBD
Virtues: Righteousness, Honour
(Disadvantage 0 or 5) Student of Monsters - You are a voluntary adherent of the tradition which stained a great tournament with betrayal. Members of the Wulin will believe you duplicitous and possibly corrupt, and they may be right! If you have a difficult time convincing someone of your honourable intentions, gain a Destiny point. If this is your first or second disadvantage, gain it for free.
(Destiny 3) Heir Apparent - You are perhaps the only student of this forlorn school. You must convince its aging Lord that you have what it takes to restore the school's honour and master its traditions. If you succeed, powerful secrets and school treasures may be yours, but it will be a thankless task and many will shun you. Gain Status (5, Heir to the Placid Lake Sword School) with its few remaining members, but this also acts as an ignoble Status (3) within the greater Wulin.
(Drawback -3) Rival - You are not the only scion of this once proud tradition. Somehow, despite its disgrace, it has attracted another student who desires the secrets of this fading art for themselves. Do they seek to restore the honour of the school, or merely to plunder its secrets before seeing its disgrace recorded in the annals of history once and for all?
- Equipment
Sword
+5 Strike
+5 Block
You may flood one die from the river while you make an attack. If you do and cause a rippling roll, any Chi Aura used to protect against this damage costs 2 Chi points per die to purchase.
Light Armor: +5 to Chi Threshold to resist Injury Ripples
Shining Silver is a woman driven. A particularly canny observer may question whether she - for it would take such a canny observer to notice she was a she - was pulled forward by the nobility of her goal, or pushed by the shadow of failure which looms tall over her life. Scion to a disgraced school, daughter to Cerulean Sky, her vengeful and cunning adoptive mother, she has shouldered the burdens of a history not her own to make up for the one she has lost. For all the weight laid upon her, she remembers well her mother’s teachings: Stand tall, suffer no slight without purpose, and observe propriety in all things, for her every action would carry the school’s name.
The Jiang Hu was in her blood, for no mere orphaned serving girl ought to have taken to the martial arts as well as she did, and Cerulean Sky ought not to have had the disturbingly fervent conviction that the serving girl would be her dead son’s equal in every way. Silver only ever asked who her true mother was once - the fury in her mother’s eyes as much as the punishment she received ensured she would never ask again. Silver was instructed in righteous behaviour and the demands of honour, that she may reflect the school as it once was and restore the lost dignity of its once proud name.
The disgrace of the Placid Lake Sword School originated in the betrayal of his long time friend and ally Righeous Dragon by Xu Shunxing. Xu was the star student of the school and secretly an aspiring master of the Transcendental Soul Mirror style, allowing its practitioner to mimic the chi manipulations of their opponents. Xu Shunxing was a loveable rogue, but had many enemies and few thought him trustworthy. Righteous Dragon was a paragon of virtue and widely favoured to become a Saint Beast in the upcoming grand tournament. When Righteous Dragon was found dead in his room after meeting with Xu Shunxing shortly before the tournament, with wounds clearly inflicted by Corrupt Chi techniques, there was no questioning who was responsible. Xu had already fled, and was never found. Many students left the school immediately, out of solidarity for Righteous Dragon and his family, and many more left with time as the school’s fame and standing were tarnished. The deeds of those unscrupulous or headstrong enough to remain were enough to leave the school a shadow of its former glory.
Now of age, her mother used her remaining connections to arrange for Shining Silver to be in the right place at the right time - namely the small village of Heron Marsh. Heron Marsh had the auspicious fortune of playing host to both Shin Fai, a trusted agent of the Minister of the Left, and a group of brigands led by Ravenous Wolf, a member of the Blade Dogs. So impressed was Shin Fai with the skill with which Shining Silver dispatched Revenous Wolf, destroying his rebellious disregard for the rule of law with one careful flick of her sword after a lengthy exchange of words and blows, he saw to it her name was passed along and she was assigned to aid the great Magistrates who would save the Emperor. Cerulean Sky lost no time in impressing upon her the importance of her success, and the consequences for failure.
Notes:
- Orphan of mysterious and highly Unorthodox parentage.
- Might have blood siblings who disapprove of her uprightness.
- Adopted as a serving girl to a disgraced martial arts school. One of its previous masters betrayed an aspiring Saint Beast of excellent reputation before a grand tournament both were entering. The mysterious circumstances, the killer's flight, and the techniques employed have left a terrible cloud of suspicion.
- Grew up believing the disgrace was unjust, the result of a scheme or misunderstanding.
- Was sent out into the Jiang Hu to restore the school's good name at the age of 18.
- Having impressed one of the Minister of the Left's subordinates with his virtue and martial prowess, he has been assigned as an aide to the Magistrates seeking the Emperor. He believes this is his best chance to see the honour of his school restored.
- May at some point adopt a female Unorthodox secret identity, and learn Daoist sexual magic for gender swapping to maintain her cover.
- Orphan of mysterious and highly Unorthodox parentage.
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