![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carrionmywaywardsunIt’s a quiet, humid night, and Valor is sneaking out of a window—one that’s a couple stories up, located on the back of a row of shop houses. Valor clambers down the back facade of the building with the ease of long familiarity despite the darkness, landing almost silently before hurrying off down the road. The buildings here all tall and narrow, residences several stories tall perched atop closed shops. It seems to be a fairly nice area, with a wide paved street and brightly painted buildings.
The hour seems quite late as the streets are rather deserted, though that soon changes when Valor reaches an area brightly lit by strings of paper lanterns strung over open doorways and criss-crossing the street between buildings. Evidently an entertainment district of some kind, as the street is crowded with people drinking, smoking, and laughing. The buildings are lined with attractive young men and women enticing passersby into their various establishments. Valor navigates his way through the area to a slightly shabby gambling parlor tucked down a narrow side street. Despite the late hour the tables are full of people playing a variety of games; cards, mahjong, gateway, and more. The attendant at the front greets Valor in a familiar way and shows him to a private room toward the back.
The room is small but crowded, just barely large enough to hold a small seating area and two gaming tables. A loud cry of welcome comes from all corners when Valor enters.
“*******!”
“Holy shit, you made it!”
“Heyyy, look, it’s *******!”
A woman with long hair in a thick braid stands up from one of the gaming tables. “Alright, I’m out. *******, you take my seat. Make Gull cry and I’ll buy you a drink.”
Gull, sitting to Valor’s left, turns out to be a cheerful looking individual with a half-shaved head. They grin and wink at Valor as he takes the vacated seat. “Let’s see if you’ve still got it, *******.”
The table Valor sits at is covered in small tiles with symbols etched on one side. With a new round of mahjong starting, Valor, Gull, and the other two people seated at the table shuffle all the tiles with a cacophony of clicks and clacks before arranging them into four rows around the table’s edge, drawing tiles for their starting hands, and rolling dice to decide who gets to start.
The four of them play quickly and skillfully, drawing and discarding tiles at a rapid pace as they talk and drink. The room as a whole is quite lively; everyone seems familiar with each other and the conversation never lags. However, despite the cheerful atmosphere, there’s an undercurrent of tension in the room.
At Valor’s table, once the catching up on news has been dispensed with, the conversation turns toward what seems to be a major concern of the day: the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress, ruler of the imperial Realm upon which Valor’s home, Zhanglam, is dependent for protection. The Scarlet Empress going on sabbatical isn’t too uncommon, but the Realm is currently in a distracted state as it adjusts to her absence. There’s a fear that a neighboring city-state, Ryuken, with whom relations have been increasingly poor over the past few years, might take advantage of that distraction to invade Zhanglam. In response, Zhanglam has been heavily ramping up recruitment for their own army.
“But it’s not really going to happen, is it?” Valor says as Gull helps light his pipe. He inhales deeply and exhales. Despite seeming happy to see all his friends again, he seems uneasy about all this talk of possible conflict, fidgeting with his pipe. “War, I mean.”
“Who knows?” the woman sitting opposite Valor says, pouring herself a drink. “With the Scarlet Empress missing…”
“She’s not really missing,” Gull scoffs. “She’ll be back in a year, two years, just like always. Ryuken wouldn’t dare try anything.”
“I don’t know about that,” the man to Valor’s right says doubtfully. “My cousin says Ryuken keeps testing the border...”
“That doesn’t mean there has to be a war,” Gull says stubbornly. “We just need to hold them off until the Scarlet Empress is back from doing her secret empress things. You know, like always.”
The woman snorts. “‘Secret empress things.’ Right. Gull, sometimes you are so—”
A loud clapping fills the air, silencing all conversation. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” The woman with the thick braid calls out. “Raven and Little Crane have an announcement to make.”
Raven and Little Crane turn out to be a couple, seated side by side on one of the old couches, hands interlaced in the space between them. Both of them look rather uncomfortable to suddenly be at the center of the entire room’s attention. Raven clears his throat. “We’re, um. Little Crane and I are enlisting.”
Little Crane, the woman sitting next to him, squeezes his hand and nods. “We leave next week,” she says softly. “So...this is the last time we might be able to see you all for a while.”
No one seems to quite know how to react, whether to be happy or sad. The woman with the braid breaks the tension with another loud clap. "Okay, that's enough awkward silence," she announces. "Someone pass a bowl around so we can buy them enough wine to drown in!"
The room picks up with chatter again, now mostly congratulations and well wishes, and someone does indeed find a clean-ish bowl to pass around for everyone to contribute toward the wine fund. Valor makes his contribution before heading over to say his good-byes to them.
Outside the gambling parlor, he stops in the dim space under the awning to breathe in the clearer air. He’s shortly joined by the woman with the braid.
“Wren,” he says, a little surprised. “Heading back too?”
“No, not yet. Just wanted to talk before you left.”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Nothing, just...” She takes a deep breath, exhales. “I’m enlisting, too.”
“You? Really?”
Wren gives him a wry smile. “My parents gave me one last chance to accept Magpie Rests Between Plum Blossoms’ proposal. It was agree, or....well.” She tosses her braid over one shoulder. “So, I’ll be enlisting once my parents finish screaming at me about turning her down again.”
“Awwww, Wren, that’s…”
“It’s fine. I don’t think they were really serious, but even so… Maybe this’ll be my chance to get away, huh? Just like Raven and Little Crane.”
Valor nods toward the back room. “Are you going to tell the others?”
“Yeah. Once all the arrangements are made. But I don’t know when you’ll be back next, so…” She shrugs with one shoulder. “I didn’t want to leave without telling you.”
Valor pulls up a small smile. “Well, in case I don’t see you again… Good luck out there. Fly true.”
“You too,” Wren says softly, leaning up to give him a peck on the cheek. “Good luck, *******. Fly true.”
Valor watches her head back inside, smile fading as he lets out a big sigh, scrubbing a hand through his hair before heading home.
Important Things
- Valor looks to be in his early twenties in this memory. As with his other younger memories, he lacks the red in his hair and sickly complexion; his eyes are also brown rather than red.
- ******* is his name, but it's fuzzed out with uncomfortable static in this memory. It's not the name used in his previous memory, which was Crow. He's still using Valor ICly though.
- His first memory was of being in the army so he knows that war did eventually break out between Ryuken and Zhanglam… yay… But at this moment all the talk about the war and the knowledge of his friends enlisting just filled him with a Deep Foreboding.
- Knowledge Gain: Politics! Zhanglam is a protectorate of the Realm but not really a part of it. Zhanglam is part of the Hundred Kingdoms, an ever-shifting array of independent provinces and city-states. The Realm is your not-so-friendly neighborhood empire.
- Skill Gain: table games, including cards, gateway, mahjong, etc. Though he only knows the Zhanglam rules for mahjong (that is, the Thai variant). This includes knowledge of how to cheat at all those games.
- Skill Gain: sleight of hand (to facilitate the aforementioned cheating).
- Skill Gain: smoking
Backstory Nonsense
- Everyone in the room is a friend of his; they regularly meet in the back room of this particular gambling parlor, though he hasn’t been able to make it recently, for reasons. They all have loosely similar backgrounds, being the younger kids or black sheep of well-to-do families; a lot of their parents are friends or business associates or family in some way.
--- Raven and Little Crane have been in love forever and were going to marry until their parents suddenly called it off without explanation. This is their chance to be together.
--- Wren has been repeatedly turning down offers from a noblewoman to become one of her concubines; with every refusal, the noblewoman just redoubles her courting efforts. It’s getting embarrassing for Wren’s family but also they really want that high society connection. (Wren and Valor are amicable exes. She just wants to, like, focus on her art, man.)
Visual References Because I Can
- Carly’s Zhanglam moodboard
- Valor himself is dressed similarly to the men on the left side this photo
- Couldn’t find a better pipe reference than a kiseru and there’s only so much time I can devote to frantically googling “pipes of Asia.” Valor’s kiseru is pretty short, plain and unfussy, though carved with a pretty feather pattern (he did the carving himself).
The hour seems quite late as the streets are rather deserted, though that soon changes when Valor reaches an area brightly lit by strings of paper lanterns strung over open doorways and criss-crossing the street between buildings. Evidently an entertainment district of some kind, as the street is crowded with people drinking, smoking, and laughing. The buildings are lined with attractive young men and women enticing passersby into their various establishments. Valor navigates his way through the area to a slightly shabby gambling parlor tucked down a narrow side street. Despite the late hour the tables are full of people playing a variety of games; cards, mahjong, gateway, and more. The attendant at the front greets Valor in a familiar way and shows him to a private room toward the back.
The room is small but crowded, just barely large enough to hold a small seating area and two gaming tables. A loud cry of welcome comes from all corners when Valor enters.
“*******!”
“Holy shit, you made it!”
“Heyyy, look, it’s *******!”
A woman with long hair in a thick braid stands up from one of the gaming tables. “Alright, I’m out. *******, you take my seat. Make Gull cry and I’ll buy you a drink.”
Gull, sitting to Valor’s left, turns out to be a cheerful looking individual with a half-shaved head. They grin and wink at Valor as he takes the vacated seat. “Let’s see if you’ve still got it, *******.”
The table Valor sits at is covered in small tiles with symbols etched on one side. With a new round of mahjong starting, Valor, Gull, and the other two people seated at the table shuffle all the tiles with a cacophony of clicks and clacks before arranging them into four rows around the table’s edge, drawing tiles for their starting hands, and rolling dice to decide who gets to start.
The four of them play quickly and skillfully, drawing and discarding tiles at a rapid pace as they talk and drink. The room as a whole is quite lively; everyone seems familiar with each other and the conversation never lags. However, despite the cheerful atmosphere, there’s an undercurrent of tension in the room.
At Valor’s table, once the catching up on news has been dispensed with, the conversation turns toward what seems to be a major concern of the day: the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress, ruler of the imperial Realm upon which Valor’s home, Zhanglam, is dependent for protection. The Scarlet Empress going on sabbatical isn’t too uncommon, but the Realm is currently in a distracted state as it adjusts to her absence. There’s a fear that a neighboring city-state, Ryuken, with whom relations have been increasingly poor over the past few years, might take advantage of that distraction to invade Zhanglam. In response, Zhanglam has been heavily ramping up recruitment for their own army.
“But it’s not really going to happen, is it?” Valor says as Gull helps light his pipe. He inhales deeply and exhales. Despite seeming happy to see all his friends again, he seems uneasy about all this talk of possible conflict, fidgeting with his pipe. “War, I mean.”
“Who knows?” the woman sitting opposite Valor says, pouring herself a drink. “With the Scarlet Empress missing…”
“She’s not really missing,” Gull scoffs. “She’ll be back in a year, two years, just like always. Ryuken wouldn’t dare try anything.”
“I don’t know about that,” the man to Valor’s right says doubtfully. “My cousin says Ryuken keeps testing the border...”
“That doesn’t mean there has to be a war,” Gull says stubbornly. “We just need to hold them off until the Scarlet Empress is back from doing her secret empress things. You know, like always.”
The woman snorts. “‘Secret empress things.’ Right. Gull, sometimes you are so—”
A loud clapping fills the air, silencing all conversation. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” The woman with the thick braid calls out. “Raven and Little Crane have an announcement to make.”
Raven and Little Crane turn out to be a couple, seated side by side on one of the old couches, hands interlaced in the space between them. Both of them look rather uncomfortable to suddenly be at the center of the entire room’s attention. Raven clears his throat. “We’re, um. Little Crane and I are enlisting.”
Little Crane, the woman sitting next to him, squeezes his hand and nods. “We leave next week,” she says softly. “So...this is the last time we might be able to see you all for a while.”
No one seems to quite know how to react, whether to be happy or sad. The woman with the braid breaks the tension with another loud clap. "Okay, that's enough awkward silence," she announces. "Someone pass a bowl around so we can buy them enough wine to drown in!"
The room picks up with chatter again, now mostly congratulations and well wishes, and someone does indeed find a clean-ish bowl to pass around for everyone to contribute toward the wine fund. Valor makes his contribution before heading over to say his good-byes to them.
Outside the gambling parlor, he stops in the dim space under the awning to breathe in the clearer air. He’s shortly joined by the woman with the braid.
“Wren,” he says, a little surprised. “Heading back too?”
“No, not yet. Just wanted to talk before you left.”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Nothing, just...” She takes a deep breath, exhales. “I’m enlisting, too.”
“You? Really?”
Wren gives him a wry smile. “My parents gave me one last chance to accept Magpie Rests Between Plum Blossoms’ proposal. It was agree, or....well.” She tosses her braid over one shoulder. “So, I’ll be enlisting once my parents finish screaming at me about turning her down again.”
“Awwww, Wren, that’s…”
“It’s fine. I don’t think they were really serious, but even so… Maybe this’ll be my chance to get away, huh? Just like Raven and Little Crane.”
Valor nods toward the back room. “Are you going to tell the others?”
“Yeah. Once all the arrangements are made. But I don’t know when you’ll be back next, so…” She shrugs with one shoulder. “I didn’t want to leave without telling you.”
Valor pulls up a small smile. “Well, in case I don’t see you again… Good luck out there. Fly true.”
“You too,” Wren says softly, leaning up to give him a peck on the cheek. “Good luck, *******. Fly true.”
Valor watches her head back inside, smile fading as he lets out a big sigh, scrubbing a hand through his hair before heading home.
Important Things
- Valor looks to be in his early twenties in this memory. As with his other younger memories, he lacks the red in his hair and sickly complexion; his eyes are also brown rather than red.
- ******* is his name, but it's fuzzed out with uncomfortable static in this memory. It's not the name used in his previous memory, which was Crow. He's still using Valor ICly though.
- His first memory was of being in the army so he knows that war did eventually break out between Ryuken and Zhanglam… yay… But at this moment all the talk about the war and the knowledge of his friends enlisting just filled him with a Deep Foreboding.
- Knowledge Gain: Politics! Zhanglam is a protectorate of the Realm but not really a part of it. Zhanglam is part of the Hundred Kingdoms, an ever-shifting array of independent provinces and city-states. The Realm is your not-so-friendly neighborhood empire.
- Skill Gain: table games, including cards, gateway, mahjong, etc. Though he only knows the Zhanglam rules for mahjong (that is, the Thai variant). This includes knowledge of how to cheat at all those games.
- Skill Gain: sleight of hand (to facilitate the aforementioned cheating).
- Skill Gain: smoking
Backstory Nonsense
- Everyone in the room is a friend of his; they regularly meet in the back room of this particular gambling parlor, though he hasn’t been able to make it recently, for reasons. They all have loosely similar backgrounds, being the younger kids or black sheep of well-to-do families; a lot of their parents are friends or business associates or family in some way.
--- Raven and Little Crane have been in love forever and were going to marry until their parents suddenly called it off without explanation. This is their chance to be together.
--- Wren has been repeatedly turning down offers from a noblewoman to become one of her concubines; with every refusal, the noblewoman just redoubles her courting efforts. It’s getting embarrassing for Wren’s family but also they really want that high society connection. (Wren and Valor are amicable exes. She just wants to, like, focus on her art, man.)
Visual References Because I Can
- Carly’s Zhanglam moodboard
- Valor himself is dressed similarly to the men on the left side this photo
- Couldn’t find a better pipe reference than a kiseru and there’s only so much time I can devote to frantically googling “pipes of Asia.” Valor’s kiseru is pretty short, plain and unfussy, though carved with a pretty feather pattern (he did the carving himself).
