Wei Feng
Wei Feng was born a nomad, but his tribe's traditional hunting grounds were broad and flat, affording them an easy bounty of grain and game from the land. This also made his tribe less itinerant than most, so they were easy to find, and as a result, built up significant trade ties with the Shin.
As a young boy, Wei was fascinated by plants and herbs, and so he was (atypically) put to work gathering them. Often, he'd wind up selling his crop to a Shin doctor. By the time Wei was thirteen or so, he knew this doctor very well, and was always pestering him with questions. The doctor recgonized Zhi's mind as one well-suited to the healer's art, and made an unorthodox request to Wei's parents: that he be trained in Wen Xi, close to the Shin's capital, as a gesture of goodwill.
Wei had difficulty acclimating to the insane pace of the capital; he was overwhelmed by culture. Yet, he focused on his learning to compensate, and as a result, was the best student in the class. His knowledge of the human body and its energy flows was practically encylopedic, and those who came to him for aid during his training were well-served and usually better off.
Wei returned after almost a decade, to a tribe and people that had changed little. Again he had to adjust, this time back to the slow life of a tribesman, but this adjustment he enjoyed. He acquired a reputation as a wise and skilled healer, and soon, neighboring tribes sought him out to aid their sick, or to measure their young, even to inspect their crops and horticulture.
Wei was visiting another villiage when the Mad Emperor struck against his countrymen. He returned with all speed to his home, where he found naught but devastation; his skills had made his tribe's home something of a hub, so the Shin sought to strike there early. He fled with what remained of his family and friends, using his fluency in the Shin language to sheild them when possible. They made for Konn, as he understood it was a refuge.
When Konn fell, something within Wei, a hope that the Shin were simply misunderstood and that all this death was only a mistake, died. He realized that prosperity must be met with misery, or else the world will fall out of balance, and that the Emperor was simply an agent of this force. He began to see around him the energies, positive and negative, that contributed to the whole of the world, and he realized that his skill in saving the sick and weak had upset the balance. He now fully understood the reticence of the master Shin doctors, how they would so rarely use the most potent treatments, even when it would save a life. He fled to Uusam, with the rest of the Konn refugees.
Wei's doctoring became more restrained - he would often advise that it was fated that an ill person should die, and only rarely would he use his potent herbs to cure an infection or disease. Even so, his reputation in Uusam grew - there were none who knew more of the human body, its ailments, cures, and banes than he. He would often train warriors of the most fortuitous places to strike - his cost was only that they use the knowledge to promote balance, to aggressively end aggression.
Wei Feng.
Wei showed talent as a child in herbalism and healing and was sent from Huen Rae to the Shin academic center in Wen Xi to become a doctor and acupuncturist. While there, the young Wei became enchanted with Shin culture. He traveled to the nearby Shin capital city, saw the Forbidden City, visited the museums, ate the fine food, and soaked up the prosperous life. During his training, he became friends with Xu Wu, another student whose father, Mu Wu, was in the Shin military. Mu Wu asked Wei if he would like to make some extra money after he returned to Huen Rae, nothing too taxing, just some reports on the state of the nation: politics, economy, military movements, the mood of the populace. The sum was impressive for the amount of work done, and what harm could be done. Of course they swore him to secrecy.
Wei excelled at his training and when he returned to Huen Rae he became a renowned healer. As a doctor he often traveled within northern Huen Rae, and thus was able to furnish detailed reports to his friends in Shin. Actually, he imagined himself as something of a historian; his reports were quite dense. He wrote them faithfully for 25 years. In 790ND, a request was sent to him from Shin. His reports had documented the rise of Hue Fen, an elder who preached for increased military strength to defend the relatively open borders of Huen Rae. Wei thought this preposterous because it had been hundreds of years since the last attack. True, the northern border lands were sometimes subject to Mung raids, but there the mounted rangers were usually able to drive the Mung off after a week or so. Mu Wu, in a letter including a triple payment, asked Wei to publicly discredit Hue Fen. As a respected doctor in the community, Wei’s words held weight and joined in along with other voices. Hue Fen lost support and retired back to farming by the years end.
Strangely, after this demonstration of loyalty, the payments stopped coming in 793ND. Wei continued to send his reports, thinking that the payments were somehow misplaced. However, after a year with no return correspondence, he decided that his superiors were done with him and he stopped sending his reports. Instead, he wrote them for himself out of long habit, and kept them in his home. He fashioned himself a historian, after all. Then the borders closed in 795. This sent a chill down his spine, but what could he do, save continue his profession as a doctor.
The import of his reports became painfully obvious when Shin invaded Huen Rae in 800 ND. Obviously Shin was done with him, he could not turn loyalty towards the invaders. He kept his secret, and fled with the other refugees North to Konn (detailed below). All the time he worried that his betrayal would be revealed; all the time he worried that Shin agents would be hunting for him.
The Uusam recruited Wei to this mission because of his skills as a doctor and because he has demonstrated during the Konn war that the knowledge of a doctor can also make one proficient at killing. Why did he accept? He wants to know what happened, why was he cut off. He's not sure where his loyalties lie; he's not sure if he's signed up for this for penance or a jilted spy's revenge. Maybe he wants revenge for his countrymen. Maybe he wants revenge for himself for his own crimes. Maybe he just wants to find Emperor Jin and ask, “Why?”
Fallout from the Mad Emperor’s war.
Wei Feng was troubled by news of a whooping cough spreading among the children of Zilaou, at the southern edge of the Zi Forest in the north of Huen Rae. Perhaps bad humors had spread from the northern Rae swamps. It was his moral duty to travel the two week trek from his home in the Huen Valley to Zilaou. He knew that other healers from the city of Huen had twice as far to travel and time was of the essence. Luckily, he arrived in the first weeks of the outbreak and managed to contain the sickness before it spread and save most of the affected children.
Afterwards, he rode leisurely home to his small village; it was a beautiful summer for a leisurely ride. After a few days pangs of guilt made him spur his mount, the farmer he had borrowed it from would be needing the horse for the summer harvest soon. The next day, about half way home, Zilaou saw the first refugees.
They were on foot, ragged, haggard, with vacant eyes. His neighbors, his friends. “Master! The village is overrun by Shin warriors. Those who fought were slain, most were taken captive. We alone escaped with our lives and freedom, such as it is.” There were 30 villagers out of 1000 in the village and surrounding farmlands. Wei’s instinct was to ride home with all haste, but there were wounded to be tended to here, now. Ten of the refugees had serious wounds. A young man was sent on the horse to warn Zilaou and the rest began walking north. Soon riders from Zilaou came past, delivering medical supplies on their way south to scout the Shin advance. By the time Wei and his band had reached Zilaou, word came: the Shin were 3 days march away. Many fled into the forest. Wei led those who fled on the road, north and east to the Konn gate and safety. But they had to pass through Mung lands.
Konn warriors normally safeguarded merchant passage along the northern road. But the refugees was unexpected and their sheer number too great for the guard. Many of the younger women were taken. Wei could not stop the Mung, they were so many. And the other Huen Rae were not accustomed to battle. He shuddered to think what had become of those innocents. Nevertheless, he had still a large flock to shepherd to safety. They reached the North Gate of Konn after weeks of walking and were welcomed. Some found work, others moved on to Grundle or Uusam to find richer pastures where their farming skills would be useful. Wei stayed in Konn, there was always work for a doctor, and no safer place in all the world behind the Konn walls.
How wrong he was.
Within a year, the Shin army stood at the southern gate, trying to break through for weeks with little progress. It was rumored that additional forces marched to besiege the North and East gates as well, but that would take time. Time enough to form the great alliance. Konn, Uusam, the Mung and even Grundle forces assembled and drove through the southern gate, smashing the Shin army. Victory was complete, or so it appeared. There was talk of liberating Huen Rae and deposing the mad emperor. Plans were being made, until the great treachery, when the Mung turned and overtook Konn for themselves. The mayhem that followed was the opening that Shin needed, not so weak as they appeared, they swarmed through the southern gate, and wiped out all in their way.
Wei was there. He tended the wounded during the siege, and after the victorious battle of the great alliance. He saw the slaughter of treachery, and how the devil fed off that treachery. Again he fled the Shin advance. This time through the east gate with the remains of the Uusam and Grundle armies.
