Hu Li Jing's page

About Hu Li Jing

Born across the world in old Imperial Lung Wa, Hu Li Jing had never heard of Nirmathas, let alone a tiny town called Kassen. But when she was twelve years old, her father was executed on false crimes of “tax evasion” by a rogue inquisitor with a personal vendetta against the Hu Li family, Jing and her family had to flee that very night. Her mother, Hu Li Xian, contacted her old war buddies from her days in the imperial navy to secure their family passage across the Embaral Ocean to Avistan, eventually finding their way to the tucked away settlement of Kassen.

Five years have passed, and Jing almost feels like a native of the Southern Fangwood. She has lived in a house her mother built a mile outside of town and has raised her five younger siblings while her mother in an herbalist and hunts and gathers in the surrounding woodlands. At fifteen years of age Jing took lessons from Trunt Zecks, the local gnome alchemist, on incendiary devices and mutagenic concoctions; her father was in the artillery regiment of the navy in Tian Xia, and she hopes to honor his memory and forge a stronger connection with the parent she lost five years ago.

The Hu Li’s keep to themselves. The townsfolk are not unwelcoming, but their culture and language are still considered “foreign” to most of Kassen, and Xian is more than willing to reciprocate the feeling. The Hu Li family is only close to a few people in town, namely Ilimara Oniri, who knows the religious ceremonies for a few of Tian gods, and the hunter Arnama Lastrid, who ranges with Xian during the bitter winter months. Jing will be the first from their family to attend the rite of passage, and her excitement can barely be contained. She longs not only to live her own life away from her family (though she loves them dearly), but the idea of taking off on her own with nothing but the flasks on her belt and the knowledge in her head intoxicates her.

The morning of the pilgrimage to the Crypt of the Everflame, Jing dons her father’s old naval dress uniform. It’s a bit long in the shoulders, but her mother says Jing will grow into it. She covers her formulae book in wax paper, the meticulously copied pages of alchemist extracts from Trunt’s notes already known by heart to Jing. One last time she locks and unlocks the crank on her mother’s crossbow. Today, Jing will have only her wits to proudly bear the Everflame back to Kassen; that, or spend her first time away from home in failure and disgrace. Her wits, her family’s heirlooms, and whatever else her four companions will bring to this journey as well…