Hanat-Osul
Elder Member
Description
Maybe if he weren't so disheveled, Chiu-Lan would be really good-looking. Â Perhaps if his fingers weren't perpetually ink-stained, his hair a tangled mass on his shoulders and his clothes unkempt and and dotted with wine stains, women would seek him out. Â And maybe he'd have better luck finding a date if he didn't always have his face in the battered leather courier bag slung across his back, looking for a pen or a certain scrap of paper. Â But a journalist has other things to think about than girls, eh? like the search for Truth? Â Yes. Â That's what it's all about, after all...
Chiu-Lan is a native of the Imperial City with brown hair and piercing green eyes. Â He is not quite tall and a little bit lean and he wears the cheap cotton robes of a typical urban scribe. Â He always has a brown leather courier bag that's seen better days on his person, and when the situation could get rough, he carries a short powerbow and a quiver of arrows.
History
The Kasu family was a wealthy one, decades ago - or so Chiu-Lan's father told him more times than he could count - but by the years of his boyhood they had slipped down several rungs on the ladder of success. Â So it was VERY IMPORTANT that he, like his siblings, learn the family business (calligraphy) and put it to profitable use (by charging illiterate peasants stiff fees to write their letters for them). Â Detest it as he did, they boy had a talent for the work - perhaps more so than any of his brothers or sisters - so it was especially galling to his father that the boy wouldn't do it.
Chiu-Lan's was a house of paper: the notes left by his mother ("Sweet son, please do Mumsy a great favor and clean your foul room, Â beloved little piggy"), the bills and receipts kept by his father, his older siblings' journals and poems and love-letters, the thin walls of their cramped apartment in the Imperial City. Â This did not suit Chiu-Lan; he preferred the bustle of the streets, the shouts of the vendors and the displays of travelling freakshows. Â The glances stolen through palanquin curtains and high Manse walls at the distant lives of the mighty. Â
These glimpses of teeming life outside the family home were what drove the boy to spy on his father and uncover the truth: that they were prospering, and the old man was too cheap to share it with his family. Â Chiu-Lan offered him a deal: in exchange for his silence, he would be free from the calligraphy business and could do as he wished. Â At 13 years old, when his father eyed him warily and agreed, he had his first taste of how information alters destiny.
He was a busy child. Â Chiu-Lan read books constantly, hung around in taverns to soak up rumors and local gossip, and befriended all manner of criminals, disgraced scholars, and charm-peddlars. Â He took a lot of notes... and sometimes, when someone asked him nicely and offered jade coins, he sold them. Â He had an uncanny knack for showing up where interesting things were about to happen, which stemmed from extremely vivid symbolic dreams, and he learned to trace the lines of influence back to their sources with careful questions and coins in the right hands.
By 16, he was employed by members of 4 of the Great Houses, spreading, collecting, and quashing various rumors, a sly little spin-doctor already addicted to the bustle of political life. Â His fate loomed inescapably: he'd get married to some patrician's daughter, get a post in the Thousand Scales, crawl his way up the ranks, amass a fortune and spawn some clever brats to replace him. Â This did not please Chiu-Lan; the game was already starting to lose its luster. Â He was distracted for a while by a Nellens girl, and then a Cathak, but they each started asking about rings and dresses, and Chiu-Lan bailed. Â At 17, he was miserable: he was bored to tears with his job, felt nothing but contempt for his employers, and had to swallow a savage lump of self-hatred when he witnessed six men go to the gallows because of a rumor he'd started. Â The nightmares started, and he began to slip.
He may or may not have been headed for a life of slow ruin when a fifth employer approached him: a man in his middle years with a scar under his eye and a knife-sharp smile. Â He didn't like the guy, but the job was novel and challenging: instead of muddling or re-creating the truth, he would seek it out and make it public. Â It also paid better; so much better that his jaw dropped when the old man made his initial offer. Â "You've been working for less?" he asked, amused. Â "Somebody ripped you off, my boy. Â Several people, by the look of it." Â Chiu-Lan took the job, and promptly vanished into the background noise of the streets.
For months he was smoke, a ghost. Â The only evidence he still lived was a series of cryptic notes for his brothers and the occasional sighting by a tavern buddy who saw him slipping into dimly-lit back rooms always with money or papers in his ink-stained hands. Â Some began to wonder if he'd become a drug dealer, a sorceror's apprentice, a spy for the Guild, an agent of the Eye. Â He smiled, when he was spotted, and told them nothing.
He Exalted (as his cruel-wise mentor knew he would, oh yes) when the final piece of the puzzle fell into place: a messenger from Nellens to Cynis carrying vital documents happened to cross Chiu-Lan's path in a low-rent beer hall, stopping in for a quick drink on his way. Â He spotted the man's House insignia beneath the folds of his cloak, glinting green somehow in the candlelight, and bought the man five drinks before he knew what was going on. Â "Gotta get moving," the courier said, laughing, and Chiu-Lan let him go. Â He was still laughing ten minutes later when the boy shot him in the back of the head with a fowling arrow and stole the satchel that had that one last letter he needed. Â Then, trying hard not to smile, Chiu-Lan walked right up to the office of the magistrate and delivered incontrovertible proof that members of House Nellens, Cathak, Cynis and Sesus had conspired to murder the satrap of a Tepet holding and split the profits after a loyal puppet took his place. Â When the sun rose the next day, he watched from the roof of his father's house as hard-eyed legionaires hauled the conspirators through a jeering crowd towards the hangman, and his destiny was known to him.
Present
The grey-haired man was a member of Kejak's Inner Circle, Gruad Gray-Face, and he meant Chiu-Lan for the Bronze from the beginning. Â For his part, the boy took naturally to the Byzantine political climate of Yu-Shan, but the thought of shilling for a faction disgusted him: "How can I take a side on the Solars," he demanded (frequently, and in public), "when I've never met one? Â I'm not joining shit." Â His assignment to the Capital Convention made him a thorn in Gruad's side, as the elder Sidereal soon discovered he could no more control Chiu-Lan than he could beat water into shape [which is to say, he was too busy]. Â His sifu - Balom Yi, Chosen of Serenity - has thus far spared Chiu-Lan the worst of Gruad's displeasure, but as one of Gruad's pet censors was recently overheard to remark, "Old bum can't keep that little sneak safe behind his belly forever."
His primary job is gather, sort, and analyze information collected in the Imperial City, predicting important shifts in the political climate and unearthing the occasional conspiracy. Â Gruad frequently uses his connections in the Capital Convention to get Chiu-Lan assigned to field work far from the Isle... which, admittedly, has given the young Sidereal a chance to develop a taste for adventure. Â But every time he gets back, he has to scramble just to catch up on his assigned tasks, let alone pursue his personal projects. Â Gruad is quite aware of this, as he himself is the subject of Chiu-Lan's unrelenting scrutiny.
His Circle is mixed, Gold/ Bronze, with two real partisans and two fence-straddlers with leanings one way or the other. Â Chiu-Lan refuses to participate, always citing the higher goal of Truth no matter how often of how vehemently he draws shouts of, "Naive idealism!" for doing so. Â The Truth is his goddess, and he will not hear her name impugned...
Chiu-Lan Kasu, Chosen of Secrets
Nature: Visionary
Strength 2 Â Â Â Charisma 3 Â Â Â Â Perception 4
Dexterity 3 Â Â Manipulation 3 Â Â Intelligence 3
Stamina 2 Â Â Â Appearance 3 Â Â Â Wits 4
Caste: Investigation 4 (Dig up dirt +1), Larceny 3, Lore 3, Occult 3, Stealth 4
Favored: Archery 4, Awareness 3, Linguistics 4 (Calligraphy +1), Socialize 3
Other Abilities: Athletics 2, Bureaucracy 2, Craft: Fate 2, Dodge 2, Martial Arts 2, Performance 1, Presence 2, Resistance 1
Backgrounds: Artifact 2; Celestial Manse 1; Connections: The Imperial City 3, Division of Secrets 2; Salary 1; Savant 3; Sifu 3
Colleges: The Key 2, The Mask 1, The Quiver 2, The Sorceror 2
Charms: Absence; World-Shaping Artistic Vision ("Secrets Yearn to be Unearthed"); Systematic Understanding of Everything; Mark of Exaltation; Prior Warning; Burn Life; Blinding the Boar; Opportune Shot, Any Direction Arrow; Marvelous Inclusion of Details, Efficient Secretary Technique, Research Assistant Invocation; Heroic Essence Replenishment; Honorable Theif Spirit
Merits: Acute Sight (1 pt.), Prescient Dreamer (2 pts.), Priest ("goddess of truth" - 1 pt.)
Flaws: Rival (Gruad Gray-Face - 4 pts.), Unbidden Oracle (1 pt.), Nightmares (3 pts.), Superstitious (2 pts.)
>>Artifact: "Truth Before Law" (starmetal short powerbow)
>>Sifu: Balom "Belly" Yi has mastered the Wood Dragon Style, Mantis Style, and the Charcoal March of Spiders
>>Priest: Sometimes when Chiu-Lan prays to this "goddess of Truth" he insists is real, things happen, despite the fact that no such goddess is known to exist. Â Most people who are aware of this fact choose to ignore it.
>>Rival: Gruad is a member of the Inner Circle of the Bronze Faction. Â He is a very busy man these days... but he reserves a special dislike for Chiu-Lan, whom he regards as an ungrateful child who spurned his wise guidance. Â He is firmly entrenched in the Capital Convention and holds a lot of sway in the Realm, especially in the All-Seeing Eye and several of the Great Houses.
>>Nightmares: Chiu-Lan still dreams of the six men who were put to death because of his misinformation. Â He has their names memorized. Â The dreams vary according to the circumstances of his life, but the men always wear their nooses and regard him with complete disgust.
>>Superstitious: He actually believes that there is a goddess of Truth. Â No such spirit (to the best of anyone's knowledge) exists... but his prayers seem to be going somewhere.
Maybe if he weren't so disheveled, Chiu-Lan would be really good-looking. Â Perhaps if his fingers weren't perpetually ink-stained, his hair a tangled mass on his shoulders and his clothes unkempt and and dotted with wine stains, women would seek him out. Â And maybe he'd have better luck finding a date if he didn't always have his face in the battered leather courier bag slung across his back, looking for a pen or a certain scrap of paper. Â But a journalist has other things to think about than girls, eh? like the search for Truth? Â Yes. Â That's what it's all about, after all...
Chiu-Lan is a native of the Imperial City with brown hair and piercing green eyes. Â He is not quite tall and a little bit lean and he wears the cheap cotton robes of a typical urban scribe. Â He always has a brown leather courier bag that's seen better days on his person, and when the situation could get rough, he carries a short powerbow and a quiver of arrows.
History
The Kasu family was a wealthy one, decades ago - or so Chiu-Lan's father told him more times than he could count - but by the years of his boyhood they had slipped down several rungs on the ladder of success. Â So it was VERY IMPORTANT that he, like his siblings, learn the family business (calligraphy) and put it to profitable use (by charging illiterate peasants stiff fees to write their letters for them). Â Detest it as he did, they boy had a talent for the work - perhaps more so than any of his brothers or sisters - so it was especially galling to his father that the boy wouldn't do it.
Chiu-Lan's was a house of paper: the notes left by his mother ("Sweet son, please do Mumsy a great favor and clean your foul room, Â beloved little piggy"), the bills and receipts kept by his father, his older siblings' journals and poems and love-letters, the thin walls of their cramped apartment in the Imperial City. Â This did not suit Chiu-Lan; he preferred the bustle of the streets, the shouts of the vendors and the displays of travelling freakshows. Â The glances stolen through palanquin curtains and high Manse walls at the distant lives of the mighty. Â
These glimpses of teeming life outside the family home were what drove the boy to spy on his father and uncover the truth: that they were prospering, and the old man was too cheap to share it with his family. Â Chiu-Lan offered him a deal: in exchange for his silence, he would be free from the calligraphy business and could do as he wished. Â At 13 years old, when his father eyed him warily and agreed, he had his first taste of how information alters destiny.
He was a busy child. Â Chiu-Lan read books constantly, hung around in taverns to soak up rumors and local gossip, and befriended all manner of criminals, disgraced scholars, and charm-peddlars. Â He took a lot of notes... and sometimes, when someone asked him nicely and offered jade coins, he sold them. Â He had an uncanny knack for showing up where interesting things were about to happen, which stemmed from extremely vivid symbolic dreams, and he learned to trace the lines of influence back to their sources with careful questions and coins in the right hands.
By 16, he was employed by members of 4 of the Great Houses, spreading, collecting, and quashing various rumors, a sly little spin-doctor already addicted to the bustle of political life. Â His fate loomed inescapably: he'd get married to some patrician's daughter, get a post in the Thousand Scales, crawl his way up the ranks, amass a fortune and spawn some clever brats to replace him. Â This did not please Chiu-Lan; the game was already starting to lose its luster. Â He was distracted for a while by a Nellens girl, and then a Cathak, but they each started asking about rings and dresses, and Chiu-Lan bailed. Â At 17, he was miserable: he was bored to tears with his job, felt nothing but contempt for his employers, and had to swallow a savage lump of self-hatred when he witnessed six men go to the gallows because of a rumor he'd started. Â The nightmares started, and he began to slip.
He may or may not have been headed for a life of slow ruin when a fifth employer approached him: a man in his middle years with a scar under his eye and a knife-sharp smile. Â He didn't like the guy, but the job was novel and challenging: instead of muddling or re-creating the truth, he would seek it out and make it public. Â It also paid better; so much better that his jaw dropped when the old man made his initial offer. Â "You've been working for less?" he asked, amused. Â "Somebody ripped you off, my boy. Â Several people, by the look of it." Â Chiu-Lan took the job, and promptly vanished into the background noise of the streets.
For months he was smoke, a ghost. Â The only evidence he still lived was a series of cryptic notes for his brothers and the occasional sighting by a tavern buddy who saw him slipping into dimly-lit back rooms always with money or papers in his ink-stained hands. Â Some began to wonder if he'd become a drug dealer, a sorceror's apprentice, a spy for the Guild, an agent of the Eye. Â He smiled, when he was spotted, and told them nothing.
He Exalted (as his cruel-wise mentor knew he would, oh yes) when the final piece of the puzzle fell into place: a messenger from Nellens to Cynis carrying vital documents happened to cross Chiu-Lan's path in a low-rent beer hall, stopping in for a quick drink on his way. Â He spotted the man's House insignia beneath the folds of his cloak, glinting green somehow in the candlelight, and bought the man five drinks before he knew what was going on. Â "Gotta get moving," the courier said, laughing, and Chiu-Lan let him go. Â He was still laughing ten minutes later when the boy shot him in the back of the head with a fowling arrow and stole the satchel that had that one last letter he needed. Â Then, trying hard not to smile, Chiu-Lan walked right up to the office of the magistrate and delivered incontrovertible proof that members of House Nellens, Cathak, Cynis and Sesus had conspired to murder the satrap of a Tepet holding and split the profits after a loyal puppet took his place. Â When the sun rose the next day, he watched from the roof of his father's house as hard-eyed legionaires hauled the conspirators through a jeering crowd towards the hangman, and his destiny was known to him.
Present
The grey-haired man was a member of Kejak's Inner Circle, Gruad Gray-Face, and he meant Chiu-Lan for the Bronze from the beginning. Â For his part, the boy took naturally to the Byzantine political climate of Yu-Shan, but the thought of shilling for a faction disgusted him: "How can I take a side on the Solars," he demanded (frequently, and in public), "when I've never met one? Â I'm not joining shit." Â His assignment to the Capital Convention made him a thorn in Gruad's side, as the elder Sidereal soon discovered he could no more control Chiu-Lan than he could beat water into shape [which is to say, he was too busy]. Â His sifu - Balom Yi, Chosen of Serenity - has thus far spared Chiu-Lan the worst of Gruad's displeasure, but as one of Gruad's pet censors was recently overheard to remark, "Old bum can't keep that little sneak safe behind his belly forever."
His primary job is gather, sort, and analyze information collected in the Imperial City, predicting important shifts in the political climate and unearthing the occasional conspiracy. Â Gruad frequently uses his connections in the Capital Convention to get Chiu-Lan assigned to field work far from the Isle... which, admittedly, has given the young Sidereal a chance to develop a taste for adventure. Â But every time he gets back, he has to scramble just to catch up on his assigned tasks, let alone pursue his personal projects. Â Gruad is quite aware of this, as he himself is the subject of Chiu-Lan's unrelenting scrutiny.
His Circle is mixed, Gold/ Bronze, with two real partisans and two fence-straddlers with leanings one way or the other. Â Chiu-Lan refuses to participate, always citing the higher goal of Truth no matter how often of how vehemently he draws shouts of, "Naive idealism!" for doing so. Â The Truth is his goddess, and he will not hear her name impugned...
Chiu-Lan Kasu, Chosen of Secrets
Nature: Visionary
Strength 2 Â Â Â Charisma 3 Â Â Â Â Perception 4
Dexterity 3 Â Â Manipulation 3 Â Â Intelligence 3
Stamina 2 Â Â Â Appearance 3 Â Â Â Wits 4
Caste: Investigation 4 (Dig up dirt +1), Larceny 3, Lore 3, Occult 3, Stealth 4
Favored: Archery 4, Awareness 3, Linguistics 4 (Calligraphy +1), Socialize 3
Other Abilities: Athletics 2, Bureaucracy 2, Craft: Fate 2, Dodge 2, Martial Arts 2, Performance 1, Presence 2, Resistance 1
Backgrounds: Artifact 2; Celestial Manse 1; Connections: The Imperial City 3, Division of Secrets 2; Salary 1; Savant 3; Sifu 3
Colleges: The Key 2, The Mask 1, The Quiver 2, The Sorceror 2
Charms: Absence; World-Shaping Artistic Vision ("Secrets Yearn to be Unearthed"); Systematic Understanding of Everything; Mark of Exaltation; Prior Warning; Burn Life; Blinding the Boar; Opportune Shot, Any Direction Arrow; Marvelous Inclusion of Details, Efficient Secretary Technique, Research Assistant Invocation; Heroic Essence Replenishment; Honorable Theif Spirit
Merits: Acute Sight (1 pt.), Prescient Dreamer (2 pts.), Priest ("goddess of truth" - 1 pt.)
Flaws: Rival (Gruad Gray-Face - 4 pts.), Unbidden Oracle (1 pt.), Nightmares (3 pts.), Superstitious (2 pts.)
>>Artifact: "Truth Before Law" (starmetal short powerbow)
>>Sifu: Balom "Belly" Yi has mastered the Wood Dragon Style, Mantis Style, and the Charcoal March of Spiders
>>Priest: Sometimes when Chiu-Lan prays to this "goddess of Truth" he insists is real, things happen, despite the fact that no such goddess is known to exist. Â Most people who are aware of this fact choose to ignore it.
>>Rival: Gruad is a member of the Inner Circle of the Bronze Faction. Â He is a very busy man these days... but he reserves a special dislike for Chiu-Lan, whom he regards as an ungrateful child who spurned his wise guidance. Â He is firmly entrenched in the Capital Convention and holds a lot of sway in the Realm, especially in the All-Seeing Eye and several of the Great Houses.
>>Nightmares: Chiu-Lan still dreams of the six men who were put to death because of his misinformation. Â He has their names memorized. Â The dreams vary according to the circumstances of his life, but the men always wear their nooses and regard him with complete disgust.
>>Superstitious: He actually believes that there is a goddess of Truth. Â No such spirit (to the best of anyone's knowledge) exists... but his prayers seem to be going somewhere.
