Name: Senli.
Age: 26.
Appearance:
Senli often dresses in her
hanfu (pictured above). She also has a
cream-colored jingmo (kung fu uniform) she wears to practice her martial arts and when she expects to fight, and a
hooded wool cloak she rolls up in at night. She has a mala (Buddhist prayer bead necklace) of simple wooden beads she wears as a necklace or wrapped around her wrist.
Biography:
Senli was abandoned on the steps of a Buddhist convent as a baby. She was raised by nuns, and taught Wushu, Tai Chi, and Wing Chun martial arts, including the use of the jian (Chinese longsword), bladed chain whip (a long chain with a crosswise handle at one end and a small blade at the other), "iron flute," fan, chopsticks and staff, along with other traditional arts such as calligraphy and the flute (music). When she was 15, a corrupt Qing magistrate claimed that the convent was a hotbed of sedition, but what he really wanted was to pillage it and sell the women into slavery and prostitution. He attacked with a military detachment, and in the chaos, Senli escaped.
She began a career as a
youxia, a wandering righter of wrongs. In addition to fighting ordinary criminals like bandits and opium dealers, she began a patient, subtle campaign against the magistrate. One by one, she exposed the corrupt dealings of his political allies, and got them removed from power or dealt with them herself. Finally, the magistrate himself was brought down. However, he had placed a high bounty on her, and a gang of martial artist assassins had offered to capture her for him. They tracked her down and overpowered her, but when they brought her in, the magistrate was gone, and with him, the promised bounty. Hoping to get at least something for her and get rid of her for good at the same time, they sold her to a foreigner who would take her far away from China: a British dealer in opium and human trafficking who bought her to be someone's exotic and expensive mail-order bride.
She was sold to the son of a Southern plantation owner who had brought some slaves to the frontier in hopes of adding to the family's holdings. Horrified by what she saw of slavery, and traumatized by her own treatment at her "husband's" hands, Senli struggled to learn enough English to conspire with the slaves and find freedom. Whenever her husband was not watching, she practiced her skills, which he did not suspect she had. During her captivity, she became pregnant against her will, but as soon as the baby was born, her husband strangled it; when his plantation was built and successful, he'd marry a White girl from a good family to be the mother of his children.
Finally, the time came to strike. Senli made sure her husband was thoroughly drunk, then slipped out of bed and into the night. She assassinated his most dangerous overseers and used their keys to un-chain the slaves, who rose up in revolt. By morning, her former husband found himself staring into the hateful eyes of those he had oppressed. Senli left it to the slaves to exact their revenge. His beaten and mutilated corpse was found hanging from a tree, dealt with exactly as he had treated slaves who attempted to escape or resist. His partially constructed plantation house was burned to the ground.
Senli fled North with the former slaves until they escaped into Free territory, then parted ways. Unlike them, she did not have a community in the Northern cities to welcome her, nor could she even call herself an American citizen. Instead, she headed out into the frontier, where she could resume her path as a
youxia, and perhaps someday find students and form a convent or monastery in some faraway, isolated location. Alone in nature, she found peace and recovery, until the winds literally blew her into a tiny town named Hopesville.
Weapons: Staff, bladed chain whip (its blade is an elongated teardop with the chain attachment at the wide end; it is sharpened along the forward edges and point, and decorated with a yin-yang and Chinese characters for her convent, so that it can be worn disguised as a necklace). Her flute is made of steel, and she knows martial arts techniques that use it as a weapon; she can also weaponize her chopsticks. Bowie knife (taken from one of her husband's overseers).
Occupation: Will work for food and shelter...
Other: Before Enlightenment, paint wagons. After Enlightenment, paint wagons.
Senli also has a monk's carrying bag, a small hatchet, flint and steel, a brass bowl, wooden spoon, and chopsticks.
