This is the backstory of a character I am playing in a role-playing game, for a campaign called “Right of Rule,” based in a world by our game master Dru Pagliassotti. The basic scenario is “post-apocalyptic Tibetan diesel-punk,” and add to that a heavy Yakuza vibe, some dinosaurs-among-us, and physics-based magic called “chirate” and you have a good sense of the world. The other characters tend to be socialites and educated, so I decided to go after an illiterate kung-fu wizard. The problem with magic in this world is that it is chaotic and tends to damage the mage as much as his target, so I felt that to explore that part of the world I needed someone who had little to live for but an incredible passion to pursue.
This is written mostly for the other players, and so the description world is deliberately left a little sparse. I hope it still makes sense.
As was the custom among the Taanxiu, Tan Souchart was given his name two months before birth. “Born to a good life” his father Tan Bei explained. “A name that will give guidance to the architect of his machine.” Tan Bei’s wife, Xieh, chided him for assuming that she was to bear a third son for him, but a month later after a harrowing premature labor, Tan Bei’s expectations were proved right. Souchart was born.
The midwife pretended not to notice when Tan Bei left the birthing room and hid under a tree for an hour while his exhausted wife fluttered between consciousness and delirium. The babe that emerged was indeed male, small, but well shaped, with all limbs, fingers and toes accounted for. His spirit engineers saw fit to set his machine in motion, and his heart began ticking out the billion cycles we are each alloted. The bellows of his lungs powered a cry that bespoke of health, but that single pronouncement of terror at being exposed to the world outside the womb was the only sound Souchart made for five days. Though his silence was unusual, the babe was healthy.
What made Tan Bei run was not Souchart’s form, but his countenance.