Unnamed Wuxia Sandbox Setting: Western City and Character Origins Part 2

It is the gateway into mysterious, unknowable lands. From it arrive strange foreign folks and untold riches which pours into Tianxia. To outsiders, it is the land of barbarians, foreigner, strange sorcerers, priests of unknown gods and more. It is the Western City, one of the twin cities and a stop in what is essentially a fictionalized segment of the silk road. In a setting heavily inspired by a faux historical China, the strange foreign ways of the odd folks from faraway lands are actually more familiar to us than it is to the characters. It is the influence of ancient India and Arabic culture, Buddhism and even Hellenism through the strange cultural pollination of Greco-Buddhism.

The West City

Art by I B0X

The West City is a place of great extreme and unique culture in the otherwise quite traditional realm of Tian Xia, thanks to its influence of strange foreign realms and culture.

It is a decently large city (by the standards of its era and region, of course) where Imperial power is mostly only symbolic. Sprawling markets cover the city where people trade all sort of goods. It is a place of great opulence and intense misery at the same time, where one's only true master is either their wits, their blade, their martial arts of whatever strange foreign sorceries they've learned. Alliances are ever-shifting in the West City and its not uncommon for a powerful group to rise only to be ousted a mere decade later. So long as said groups in power know how to negotiate with imperial authorities to ensure enough of the goods enter and leave the region through the city, they can find quite a lot of leeway in what they are allowed to do and what they are allowed to take. So far no one has dared to provoke Imperial forces directly. Many of the common folks believe its only a matter of time before the true rulers of the West City start to boast of their power to symbolically hold the emperor 'by the balls'. There aren't enough soldiers in the region for it to happen, they say.

Artist Unknown

The Righteous Bulls

Skill: Any Warrior and/or Thief

Style: Ascending Dragon Fist, Golden Fist or any common External style

Virtues:

• Zhong (Loyalty)
• Hen (Ruthlessness)

Officially, the Righteous Bulls are either of two things: either they a group of patriots and warriors who help enforce the rule of the Emperor in a wretched hive of scum and villainy or they are a not-so-secret society of extortionist, bandits and violent thugs who are feared by the people and only tolerated by the government through the stability they help bring to the shipments to and from the city. The Righteous Bulls are the quintessential tong of the mini wuxia sandbox, although they are not necessarily the oldest by any means. The current Righteous Bulls have only been established in a recognizable state in the last generation following much conflicts and civil war between various would-be bandits, secret societies and/or ex Imperial soldiers. The whole mess more or less reformed as the modern Righteous Bull which boast one of if not the largest membership of any gang in and around the Western City.

The downside of the Righteous Bull is that despite their large amount of warriors, their kung fu is overall quite weak. The masters found in the Righteous Bulls are less mystical masters of cultivation and more glorified criminals and/or retired soldiers. The Righteous Bulls (comparatively speaking) care very little for the Jianghu beyond the direct concern of a member or if some group is directly in the way to their loose rule of the Western City. In practice they often end up starting wars with other factions when they try to 'appropriate' something which another group has eyes on or if they attack the wrong person. The eventual collapse, followed by reshaping of the Righteous Bulls is inevitable but Tian Xia has no shortage of brute, bullies, misguided patriots and would-be killers for them to ever vanish.

• Because they are primarily meant to be an antagonistic faction, the Righteous Bulls make a good choice of Sworn Enemies for a character. The list of people they have pissed off is quite large, ranging from mostly-benevolent groups wiped nearly to the last man in the expansion of their power base to former gangs and sects which used to be part of them but now aren't for a variety of reasons. It could be they were wiped out or alternatively tried to assume control of the Righteous Bulls and were expelled.
• Any character wanting to swear revenge of a group could pick the Righteous Bulls as his target, since they have a bucket list of shady things they have done, including slave-trading. However, the Righteous Bulls do sometimes display a somewhat twisted and basic code of honor and some may end up adopting the orphans they create.
• A more neutral character might be someone affiliated with the Righteous Bulls, more akin to a 'freelancer' than a proper member. However this is automatically going to make the character closer to an enemy of those who dislike the Righteous Bulls.

Blind Beggar by Thomas Kuebler

The Beggar Fraternity (West City Branch)

Skill: Any but usually Martial Arts and/or Scout

Style: Bandit-Beating Staff

Virtues:

• Zhong (Loyalty)
• Kuan (Benevolence)

The Beggar Fraternity/Sect wasn't included in the previous post despite being from all over the land for a simple reason: in the region of the Unnamed Wuxia Sandbox they are very clearly 'aligned' with the Western City, although their loyalty is peculiar and puts them at odd with the Righteous Bulls constantly. All across Tian Xia, the Beggar Fraternity is a refuge for outsiders and despite its name, it has members all across society and not just among beggars. Given their status and nature, they and the worst bullies of the Righteous Bulls have clashed time and time again. In spite of clashing with the Bulls, the Beggar Fraternity's more open minded nature has made them enemies of the Eastern City's dominant clans and sects even if in practice they can't really control the movements and membership of the Beggar Sect.

While the Beggat Fraternity has members beyond the West City folks, most of these members are far away and exist beyond the scope of the game unless needed. What's important is to understand the 'beggars' are a secret society and perhaps the most open minded toward the ideas and folks from beyond the Empire. This, however, is not always a positive.

• The Beggars are enemies to the Righteous Bulls and any Beggar Fraternity character is an enemy to the Righteous Bulls as well as to a variety of factions of the East City. Fortunately for them, the beggars are difficult to spot and identify.
• A character who is a member of the Beggar Fraternity could very well be someone important in hiding/in exile. This work both as a potential character origin but is also to the detriment of the Beggars, whose ranks and wards hide many dangerous individuals from beyond the Empire.
• Because they welcome many into their ranks (sometimes without knowing), the Beggars may end as enemies to any character should said character have a rivalry toward someone who has since become a beggar.

Artist unknown.

The Exiled Clan

Skills: Martial Arts, Scout and/or Mystic

Style: Path of One Hundred Flying Eagles

Restriction: Must be related to the Exiled Clan or marry into it

Virtues:

• Piety
• Zhong (Loyalty)
• Yi (Righteousness)

Where this clan come from is a mystery when it come to determining it as a fact. The stories which are told about them are nothing but myth and hearsay. Called the Exiled Clan, the Exiled Bowmen/Archers Clan or the Foreign Princes, they are a Clan, which differs from a sect through being connected by blood. The Exiled Clan are of common blood with the folks of Tian Xia but this is because their ancestors were mongrels: legend speak of their ancestors, one foreign royalty and one a great hero of the warrior world of Tian Xia. Which one was husband and which was wife, as well as which came from where vary from retelling to retelling, with some version claiming the foreign royalty wasn't even human but some foreign supernatural being, such as the Asura and Rakshasa which is what impart the supposed great skill and beauty of this aloof clan.

In the past century the Exiled Clan was it is peak but it has since dwindled, from tragedy-to-tragedy which always seem to curse its bloodline. They have left behind many lost relics and scrolls which the clan would love nothing more than recover. Currently they have retreated to the Western City but this is only putting them at odds with the Righteous Bulls and their old rivals based in the Eastern City. When not in the city, its members travel the region a lot and usually get into trouble for it. The bow is central to their techniques. The Exiled Clan are respected as warriors and master archers as much as they are utterly despised for their unorthodox roots and culture.

• Playing a member of the Exiled Archer Clan instantly gives a player some allies and connections but it come at a steep cost. The common folks respect and loathe this clan in equal measures. In addition, the clan demands intense loyalty to its members and a member might be stuck in an arranged marriage or be put into an impossible situation at any possible time.
• A player may choose to make their character the last 'princess' of the Exile clan: there used to be a father-to-son line of succession for the core of the clan and yet it broke, leaving the last 'princess' in a precarious position within her clan. Naturally she's going to be a gifted warrior and/or mystic of some kind and blessed with unearthly beauty.
• The Exiled clans are automatically enemies to the Eastern City factions, who see them as unruly rogues tainted by foreign influence at best and cursed with unnatural blood at worst. This enmity goes back to the last century and the zenith of the Exile Clan and them slowly upsetting the balance of power and Tian Xian culture within the region.

Artist Unknown

The Foreign Sorcerers

Skills: Mystic, Scholar or Sorcerer

Style: None, uses Magic

Virtues:

• Unknown

Neither an organized clan or sect in any shape or form, the Foreign Sorcerers is what the common folks call the strangest of all foreigners: strange men and women from faraway lands with inscrutable motives and terrifying powers, They come from a variety of lands, from the Bharata Kingdoms to great deserts or even a far away sea. The Yi-Sorcerers are almost a reversal of the concept of the 'evil foreign sorcerer' in their own way given they are foreign from the point of view of Tian Xia and its warrior societies.

The Sorcerers fond in the Western City occupy a rather precarious place within the Jianghu which may somewhat explain their growing streak of ruthlessness and terror. Even the least malevolent of their kind is an outsider to Tian Xia for a variety of reasons, be it their ethnicity, their beliefs, their techniques or their religion. Even those which have found apprentices within the common folks or nobility of Tian Xia are forever marked as outsiders compared to the Daoist priests and Buddhist Monks. Others are even stranger, having once been Daoist Priests themselves but slowly developing heretical teachings and techniques. It is these corrupting teachings which has earned the ire of the puritans of the Eastern City, who fear the growing ranks of corrupt sages and heretical priests. In turn, trapped in the world of rivers and lakes, the sorcerers must find ways to survive.

• The growth of heretical teachings in the region is explained by the creeping influence of foreign ideas. Picking one or more Sorcerer as Sworn Enemies for a character may very well take them outside the West City, as many of them have fled into the countryside, forest, mountains or desert.