Subtle Lotus

This is my tale, the tale of Subtle Lotus, known to the Realm as the Devil Courtesan of Lao Fang.

Birth & Childhood

I was born to Autumn Pearl, a priestess who broke the rules of her temple. Oh, she did so for the best of reasons. You see, the priestesses of the Garden of Gentle Mist in the city of Lao Fang were sacred whores, devoted to Celestial Perfume of Tomorrows Unmasked. Devotees from all over the North came to them, gave in to their resplendent pleasures and then slept, dreaming prophetic dreams given to them by Celestial Perfume, who was pleased with their acts of devotion with her priestesses. Upon waking, the devotee told the priestess of his dreams, and while she prepared a sacred repast, she meditated upon its meaning. Then, as they broke their fast, she told him of the meanings of the dream, and they discussed it.

Shortly before I was conceived, my mother, Autumn Pearl, came down with an illness, and her constitution was too fragile to take the amount of maiden tea necessary for a woman who was as accustomed to it as she was. As a result, she became pregnant in the course of her temple duties _ pregnant with me.

I grew up knowing that I was very different from the rest of the young girls of the temple. Oh, I was slight and delicate and graceful, and quick to learn what I was taught, but I knew that there was a vital difference.

You see, I was born a boy.

I understood, however, that boys have nothing. Not even life, not in the temple. My mother concealed my born-gender from the censors of the city-state Lao Fang the funded the temple; it was well known that the priestesses of Celestial Perfume in the Garden of Gentle Mist must be female, and so the government was careful to make sure that taboo was upheld.

The temple was the only life I knew, and living as a woman the only way I knew. As I said, boys have nothing, and though I was a poor girl, at least as a girl I had a home, in the temple, and a family, in the priestesses there. Oh, there was no way I could serve as a proper priestess, but as a girl I could certainly live in the temple.

Youth & Training

I underwent the pains that all of the girls did. At the age of five, the priestesses gathered, with the footbath of herbs and massaged my feet until the muscles were very relaxed. They then took a small wooden dowel and placed it under the arch of my foot, and bent all of my toes but the largest back. It was terribly painful and I remember crying terribly. I understand that some mothers scold their daughters who suffer this pain, but not the sisters – they told me that each tear I shed was sacred.

They bent all of my toes back and bound my feet in long strips of linen soaked in the herbal wash. They then made me stand upon my newly bound feet, walking on the tops of my back-bent toes. It was painful, but bearable. Until the first toe broke.

I slowly progressed this way, over the next several months, as my feet were transformed into the lovely and sacred Lotuses of the Misty Garden, the trait that the women of our Garden were known for. I progressed from walking for short periods to bouts of standing exercise, and by the time I was six, I had begun training in the specialized learning of the Lotus-Footed Maidens.

The first of these was dance. The temple taught a wide variety of dances, many of them dating back to the Shogunate Era, and perhaps earlier, that could only be performed by women with bound feet, for the movements depended on the swaying gait that came with the Lotuses of the Misty Garden, and the ability to suddenly shift to a toe-stance, and to stand on nearly any of the surfaces of our bound feet, which have many possible standing surfaces, rather than just the bottom, like normal clown feet.

The second were the martial arts. Taught as a discipline to foster grace, strength and the ability to resist the pain of standing on Lotus-Feet for too long, these martial arts were taught as part of the dances. It was difficult to know where one began and the other ended; indeed, my teacher in both was the old crone Five Tiger Crone, who said that the difference between our dancing and our martial arts depended on how we left the other person. If they applauded, we were dancing. If they bled and died, we were fighting.

All of my sisters knew about me. They knew that I was born deformed, and ill-made. None of them thought of me as a boy, but as a girl with the wrong genitals – indeed, this is how I think of myself. It is the truth. I was not male to them – only pitied for my deformity. However, all of them expressed wonder at the beauty of my hair, and the strength of my slender limbs and the grace with which I did the dances.

Adulthood & Tragedy

I know that it was assumed that I should leave the temple one day when I was grown, possibly to become a dancer in the world somewhere, perhaps a mistress or concubine to a man who was either kind enough to see past my deformity, or jaded enough to be intrigued by it. All of that changed, however, when I began to have prophetic dreams at the age of fifteen.

Though I would never be a priestess of the temple, I was certainly treated as an oracle, and taught many of the deeper secrets of understanding dreams by the crones of the inner temple. They not only taught me secrets of prophecy, but of healing, teaching me to understand the nuanced flows of energy through the body and how best to give massage, pressure point and painless needle healing as well as more conventional means of aiding others.

I would have been happy there. I would have lived out my life there, dreaming important dreams, dancing ancient dances and living in communion with my sisters and our god, had not the Five Blade Brotherhood come to our city.

They were drunken and terrible, monstrous fiends. Worse still, they were Dragonblooded. They came to this town, and began their chaos with a bout of licentiousness at the local brothel, killed the madam and guards there when they objected to the their treatment of the girls, and then the rampage truly began.

When the city guards answered the cries for help, they were slaughtered. The city guards kept coming, so the Five Blade Brotherhood sought out the master commander of the city and killed him, then killed the lords of the city when they objected. The remaining guards sought sanctuary and aid from the guards at the temple, so the Dragonblooded came to the Garden, and killed the armed men.

Then, they claimed the priestesses as their own.

They were whores, after all, the Dragonblooded reasoned, refusing to see them as sacred in any way. In fact, they were treated worse than normal prostitutes, for the usual women of the night were not worshippers of some heathen god.

We prayed for help, but none came, perhaps because our god knows what happens when gods interfere in the doings of Dragonblooded: their worship is struck from the calendars of the Immaculate Order while the gods themselves are hunted by powerful monks capable of harming the gods.

Of course, we did not know this at the time, and thought that we were betrayed.

Garnet of Silk claimed, even as she was being gang-raped by the Five Blade Brotherhood, that we weren’t abandoned, but were simply being taught the truth of a different kind of dream. That of nightmares. Of course, I refuse to believe her, for she was certainly mad with pain and shame and anguish by that point, having watched her mother raped in front of her by a Dragonblooded whose anima was out of control. There is a horror I never wish to experience, I think: to watch a woman raped while she also is burnt alive.

Our temple was vast, and it was luxurious, and many of us were afraid that the Dragonblooded would burn it to the ground, but instead they desecrated it and turned it into their own whorehouse, with us as their whores. A small number of us escaped using the secret passages in the temple, and managed to hide in some of the places they did not use, while the Dragonblooded slept off their lusts and then awoke, hungry for more.

Days passed in this manner, with a small group of us hiding, protected by Five Tiger Crone, afraid to sleep for fear of them finding us. We could only hold one another as we listened to more of our sisters being used and discarded, usually dead. We prayed they would tire of their games, and just go away.

Every so often, they caught one of us. They nearly caught us all raiding the kitchens one night, but Five Tiger Crone sacrificed herself for us. Though her martial arts were powerful, they were nothing compared to the Five Dragon Style of the Earth Aspected martial artist that was part of the Brotherhood. But she bought us time to escape.

I was fetching water to take back to my sisters in hiding when they caught me.

I fought as best I could, but I was dragged back to the main temple room, which they had claimed as their boudoir. I was cast to the floor in front of them and my clothing shredded, as the first of them prepared to rape me. He stopped unbuckling his hakama when he saw that I was deformed. They sniggered amongst themselves and rained blows down on me, blows meant to punish, but not kill.

Then, they turned me over to their brother, the only one among them who had remained uninterested in their rapine and had instead busied himself in our library of scripture. He looked at me, and smiled with lust in his eyes.

He had his brethren tie me down to his bed and they fled, claiming they were unwilling to watch his preferred sex act. He smiled at their retreating backs, poured himself some wine and come to lay beside me, with a thin, wickedly sharp knife in his hands.

He did terrible things to me with that knife, and with the alcohols in the library, and with his fingers and tongue. And eventually, when he entered me, I thought I would die.

Instead, I Exalted.

The Demon Courtesan of Lao Fang

It was over quickly. He opened his eyes and looked up at my face, to find the brilliant gold circle of the Eclipse Caste glaring back at him, and the night filled with the white and gold of my anima. In one moment, he registered what I was; in the next, he was dead.

I fled deep into the catacombs beneath the library and hid there, praying and fearful.

My dreams that night were from Celestial Perfume directly, and she told me he would always be with me, that I was much like her. Grace personified and beyond the bounds of what mortals conceived gender as, though I was Exalted unto the Sun, I was the Chosen of Celestial Perfume. She guided me and taught me to use the ancient dances and kata to channel Essence, and on the third night I emerged, to kill again.

I almost killed them all, you see. But as I was killing the fourth of the six, his brethren found me, and they attacked me. Though I wield great and terrible powers, there was only so much I could do.

So, instead, I danced rather than fought, though the movements began as the kata of the Dreaming Pearl Courtesan art, which was what our martial art was called once one was able to channel Essence into its movements. I avoided them and empowered by movements, and when I fled that place, they were battling one another, each deathly in love with me. The temple was aflame from their great and terrible animas.

I have no doubt that they eventually broke free of my power, for when I returned to the city-state, it was razed by an army of the Realm. The temple doors were marked with the warning symbol of the Anathema, and no one lived here.

So, I left. Fortunately, the abilities of my new Exaltation gave me much to depend on. Wherever I go, I find a patron. I have found those who were terrible and rapacious and slew them utterly. I have even killed two Immaculate monks, though both were young in their Exaltations.

Subtle Lotus, the Demon Courtesan of Lao Fang

Caste: Eclipse; Concept: The Artful Person; Age: 18
Motivation: X; Intimacies: X
Attributes: Str 3, Dex 4, Sta 2, Cha 4, Man 3, App 4, Per 3, Int 2, Wits 2
Abilities: Athletics 3, Awareness 2, Bureaucracy 3, Dodge 3, Integrity 3, Linguistics x (X; X), Lore 1, Martial Arts 3, Occult 2, Performance 3, Presence 2, Resistance 1, Socialize 3
Backgrounds: Contacts 1, Cult 1, Influence 3, Resources 4
Excellencies: Essence Overwhelming: Dodge, Martial Arts, Performance; Infinite Ability Mastery: Martial Arts
Martial Arts Charms (Dreaming Pearl Courtesan)

• Pearlescent Filigree Defense

Martial Arts Charms (Silver-Voiced Nightingale)

• Inspiring Battle Hymn
• Terrifying Battle Shriek

Dodge Charms

• Shadow Over Water
• Seven Shadow Evasion

Performance Charms

• Heart-Compelling Method
• Husband-Seducing Demon Dance

Resistance Charms

• Ox-Body Technique

Socialize Charms

• Gathering the Congregation

Combos

• X: xm, xwp; X

Essence: 3; Personal: X; Peripheral: X; Anima Power: X
Virtues: Compassion 2, Conviction 4, Temperance 2, Valor 1; Virtue Flaw: Deliberate Cruelty; Willpower: 6
Merits: Signature Style (2 - Flowing Gracefulness)
Flaws: Dark Secret (Secret Identity - 3: lose Influence 2, Resources 4), Known Anathema (7)
Athletics Measurements: Vertical Jump: X yds; Horizontal Jump: X yds; Move: X yds; Dash: X yds.; Lift: X lbs.
Possessions: X

• Artifacts: X
• Hearthstones: X

Combat: Join Battle: X; Dodge DV: X; Soak: XB/XL (armor: +XB/+XL, Mob X, Fat X, Hard X)

• Punch: Spd 5, Rate 3; Acc X (+2), Dam XBL (+0B), PDV X (+2)
• Kick: Spd 5, Rate 2; Acc X (+0), Dam XBL (+3B), PDV X (–2)
• Clinch: Spd 6, Rate 1; Acc X (+0), Dam XBL (+0B), PDV —
• Atk: Spd X, Rate X; Acc X (+X), Dam XBL (+XBL), PDV X (+X), Range X

Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Inc.
Tactics: X prefers to approach combat in the following way:

• Pre-Combat: X
• Join Battle: X
• First Action: X
• Second Action: X
• Third Action: X
• [Contingency]: X

Social Combat: Join Debate: X; Mental Dodge DV: X; Hide Motivation: X

• Presence: Spd 4, Rate 2; Acc X/X, PDV X/X
• Performance: Spd 6, Rate 1; Acc X/X, PDV X/X
• Investigation: Spd 5, Rate 2; Acc X/X, PDV X/X

War of Ages: Magnitude: X, Drill: X, Might: X; Armor XB/XL, Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Inc; Morale: X; Move: X (Unordered), X (Skirmish), X (Relaxed)

• Spd X, Rate X; Acc X (+X), Dam XBL (+XBL), WDV X (+X), Range X

Advancement

• Book One: X