Fireball Zuo

The Temple at Three Finger Rock

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Finding a decent refuge in the midst of Chaos’ Wrath is not something you’ll soon forget.

by Chi “Fireball” Zuo

The badlands running along the Wastes and between the Five Cities have got a lot of cuts in them – gorges or arroyos. I don’t know what they are, but they look like giant knife wounds that never healed. One Wastes-drifter I met called them defiles, told me there’re riverbeds, but the rivers all dried out. Maybe. Don’t really matter much, but they’re a good place to get out of the sun . . . or get out of sight.

There’s a trade route that runs from Yung Zhi to Monsoon, cuts straight across the badlands not going near the Salvation. It’s really a bunch of game trails and worn out paths rather than a real route, but it’s easy enough to follow if you’ve got eyes. You have to be careful, because those trails’ll slip right into a gorge without a warning. There’s one, though, that you can’t miss. It’s got a big boulder at its head that looks like a fist with its index, middle, and pinkie fingers pointing skyward. That one’s called Three Finger Rock. I know it’s called that because the monks told me.

See, right below Three Finger Rock, in a gorge the monks call the Arm, is a temple. The temple ain’t got a name of its own – the monks just call it the temple. I just about fell right into it the time I was hunting down Slim Joyce Bosang out of Yung Zhi. Slim Joyce had that knife she was known for up to the throat of one of these old, bald boys and she’s cursing up a storm. I had given up on the “alive” part of the bounty until that old boy grabs her hand and kind of twists it so she drops the knife, then she drops to her knees, and he’s lecturing her the whole time.

Yeah, I recognized that move all right. After I trussed up Joyce right good, I had some tea with the monks. I told them of my tutor and the headmistress of the temple remembered him. Turns out, this was the Wudang temple where he had trained, but he had been a poor student and had flunked out. Seems he had stuck around a few years as a caretaker and gardener, before disappearing one night.

The temple itself ain’t all that amazing, except that it’s cut out of the rock of the gorge. The monks all live in there, and there’s this spring that serves up nice, clean water. That spring is enough to keep them all from drying up and feeds the vegetable garden they’ve got just outside the gate of the temple. It seemed a right comfortable place, and they offered to train me up better than my old tutor, but I had to decline. There’s no booze, no meat, and the monks are all celibate. I didn’t stick around long.

So if you find yourself on the trails between Yung Zhi and Monsoon, keep your eyes open for Three Finger Rock. It’ll be right easy to find the temple and the monks’ll be happy to serve you up a salad and some nice clean water. Don’t try to push them around, though. Even their failures make a name for themselves in the Five Cities.

Submitted by Fraser Ronald

The Grotto

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Sometimes you find the smallest piece of paradise when you look hard enough…

by Chi “Fireball” Zuo

You know you’re hitting Monsoon when the Salvation goes over that metal bridge, painted jade in most places. I’ve heard it called Jade Bridge and that ain’t a surprise. It’s pretty distinctive. I mean, there are other suspension bridges, and that one sure ain’t the biggest, but it’s that paint. You’re just not expecting that colour.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the Salvation’ll slow to get supplies, water, what-have-you before it crosses the bridge – before it gets into the General’s territory. There’re a bunch of stairs cut into the face of the cliff. There’re pretty old so they’ve been worn smooth. Take them slow and careful. Down at the bottom, and it’s a ways, easily hundreds of stairs though I’ve never counted, is an old temple and monastery. There ain’t no monks there now, but there’re people. There’re good people, honourable and fair which is something you just don’t see all that often in the One Land.

This is the Grotto. It’s a village, yeah, but the reason I stop and visit whenever I can are the hot springs. The monastery was built against the cliff, right at the bottom of the stairs, and the village was built facing it. Behind the ruins of the monastery, in a cave, are the hot springs and the pools they feed. Soothing don’t quite tell the story. It’ll wash the grime off the body and the tired off the bones.

They also make a fish soup in the village that’s spicy and’ll clear the head right up if you’ve been drinking hard the night before. The river don’t always run strong, and sometimes it ain’t nothing more than a creek, but when the rains come and the river flows, the fish in your soup’ll be fresh. It’s something special.

I don’t know why no one’s bothered to pillage the place, or come for taxes. Because they’re too poor? Because of the stairs? The villagers’ll tell you there are six hundred, but I ain’t so sure of that. Anyway, there’s peace there and a place to fill your belly. You can sleep without worrying someone’s going to steal your belongings. It’s just right special.

I swear, when I die, I figure I’ll find myself in the Grotto, soaking and eating that soup. Yeah, that’d be okay.

 

Submitted by Fraser Ronald

Fireball Zuo

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The bounty hunter who took down Ho Sun and Black Scorpion (or so it is told) tells her own origin story..

by Chi “Fireball” Zuo

What does it matter where I came from? It matters what I can do, right? Okay, fine, you’ve been straight with me so I’ll be straight with you.

My parents were from Monsoon. That’s where I was born. But they wanted something more. I mean, who doesn’t, right? But most folks just leave it there, with the wanting and never get around to the doing. They did. They escaped. They found themselves among bandits, among some very unsavoury folk, but they persevered. They found me a teacher, an old monk that had once trained at a Wudang temple. He was probably a fraud but I was a kid. What did I know? He knew enough, turned out, for me to harness my qi.

Those bandits taught me lots. They taught me how bad people can be. They also taught me how to protect what was mine, how to fight dirty, and how low a person can get. My family lived with them quite a few years, my parents taking care of the armour and weapons, even teaching some shooting and swords.

Of course, you live with bad people, bad things are gonna happen. So they killed my parents. One drunken night, a bunch of them just came in and started taking our stuff. Maybe my parents thought that they had standing in the gang, I don’t know, but they tried to stop it. The bandits just gunned them all down right there in front of me.

I was twelve. I killed them all. Six of them in about as many heartbeats. I killed them with my fists, I killed them with their own guns, and the last I skewered on his own sword, a sword my mom had fashioned for him. All six of them dead. My parents dead as well. I packed up what I could and took off. I don’t what I was thinking, probably wasn’t thinking anything, I just went. Don’t know what happened to my teacher. Don’t much care. I had surpassed him years before this.

A few days later I took my first bounty. I had to hide my face back then – who’d hire a little girl – but the village was looking for someone to bring a bandit leader to justice and I knew him. I knew him well. So I hunted him down and brought him back – alive – to the authorities. They paid well enough and then they hanged him. Justice, y’know?

With the money from that bounty, I got my rifle cut down, turned into something like a pistol. It worked well. When I was sixteen, I had a second one made. I call them my Serpents. I had a reputation by then so I didn’t need no more disguises. Fireball Zuo, they called me ‘cause of how I used by qi. I liked it. I’ve been doing this going on fifteen years near as I can figure. I don’t have a grave to honour my parents – they did right by me, more than most I reckon. I honour them by being good at what I do. Justice is what some call it. That’ll do, I guess.

“Fireball” Zuo

When the smoke clears and the bodies lie motionless, there stands a firm and dedicated woman in a long, tan duster with a freshly lit cigar in hand. Fireball Zuo is considered one of the world’s elite bounty hunters and her name strikes fear into anyone hiding out from a warlord.

Homeland: Monsoon
Qi Power: Infuses objects with fire
Unique Features: Her pair of deadly sawed-off lever-action rifles, the Serpents, combined with her qi power to infuse each shot with explosive fireballs are known across the One Land.

Bounty Hunter d8+1/5/3
Wudang Disciple d6/3/2
Child of the Wastes d6/3/2

Always Gets Her Mark (Motivation): With a fierce determination that borders on compulsion, Fireball Zuo prides herself on always collecting on her bounties. Whenever she completes a bounty and gets paid, she also receives +1 Vitality per lead character.
Bloody Flashbacks (Hindrance): The death of her parents left a mark on Fireball Zuo’s psyche and it can easily return in the form of flashbacks. Whenever she witnesses an innocent’s death, she can only cause damage complications until the end of the third round after this hindrance is triggered.

Resource Slots: The Serpents (2x lever-action rifles cut down to the size of pistols; +1 steps or +2 damage each); Well-Connected (+1 steps); + 1 more
Vitality: 20
Bonus Challenges: Fireball Zuo has a number of bonus challenges she can use. These bonus challenges work exactly as regular challenges but can also be used for additional perks provided here. She starts each scene with 1 bonus challenge per lead character.
Damage Trigger: Whenever Fireball Zuo takes damage, she can immediately use a free detail with a d8 for any complication rolls.
Explosion: By spending 1 bonus challenge, Fireball Zuo can create an explosion with her qi power when fired from both Serpents and target a group of extras without spending Vitality or target multiple lead and supporting characters if they stand adjacent to each other. By spending 2 bonus challenges, she can instead create an explosion after an effective complication roll against one target (and make an additional complication roll using the same dice value as the first roll) that targets multiple characters or a group.
Failure Is Not An Option: Once per scene, Fireball Zuo can spend 1 Vitality to roll two dice for any complication roll specifically tied to that goal. You can choose from either of the two dice.
Rapid Reload: By spending 1 bonus challenge, Fireball Zuo can reload one of her Serpents (thereby removing any appropriate restriction complication) and fire it with an extra description in a round. This perk can be used at any point in a round, even if Fireball Zuo has already provided a description, so long as one of her Serpents is out of ammunition.

Submitted by Fraser Ronald