Fang Su Won

Archer's Circle
Compatriot of the House of Yizhi

Description


~Fang is a good-looking, easy-going Korean woman in her mid to late 20s. However, she keeps the incredible physique and evident attitude of a highly-trained eighteen year old athlete. She is often found in a pair of loose-fitting, black latex pants and a short-sleeved shirt of similar material and color. Her feet are shoed in lady’s short-topped black leather boots. A black leather vest is slung over her shoulders, and a single kanji-like symbol (kaja for those who would know) is emblazoned on the back in silver. Long hair with some light maroon coloring hangs down her back in a tight ponytail. A red headband is wound around her head to keep her bangs out of her eyes. Dark-brown eyes dance with a unquenchable ferocity and drive, eased only by a friendly, lopsided grin. Her hands are always found bound in thick white hand-wraps. Fang often carries a six-foot long metal staff, strange Asian runes engraved up and down the ironshod rod. Even mundanes can sense something disturbing about the staff, and she is often avoided because of this. The black rollerblades (with flourescent red wheels) often strapped around her feet instead of the boots finalizes her unique appearance, and she glides down the street, avoiding pedestrians and traffic with equal ease.~

OOC: Appearance 3

"Some say right is defined by morality and the presence of justice. Others say it’s defined by strength; if you can force people to think you’re right, you are right. But I’m just and strong. You’re in deep shit, devilspawn!”

History


Youth

Won Su Fang was born in a well-to-do family in Seoul, Korea. Won Yip was a high-ranking executive for Lee’s Science for Tomorrow (LST), a corporation connected to Aesop’s Research Company (ARC), which is a subsidiary of the Pentex mega-corporation. He was a generous man, attending various charity functions, and supported more than one democratic movement in the city (that is, democracy for North Korea). And unlike some people who work for Pentex, he was genuine. He loved his wife, Pyi, and their only child, the spritely Fang. Fang was never quite spoiled, but her parents didn’t hesitate to get her involved with whatever they could afford. She took ballet courses for the first few years of her childhood, but then voiced interest in the martial arts. Although tae kwon do seemed like the appropiate choice, Fang demonstrated a much greater inclination to hwarang-do after seeing a well-done commercial for it on television.

Indeed, Fang always showed a far greater interest in athletic activities than academic ones. She never flunked school, but never excelled either. She always applied herself to her physical fitness. At first, it was just hwarang-do, but when she the age of ten, it was rollerskating, too. For the next few years, her doting parents governed their daughter’s life with careful distance and closeness; it’s never easy to properly raise an adolescent child, but the Won’s were doing just fine. Life was just fine for the family, really.

That’s, of course, when things go to hell in a hand-basket in this dark world. Won Yip was only a high-ranking executive -- personnel supervisor. And he supervised employees were as in the dark as he was about the company’s true activities. It was 1987 when one of his employees paranoidally reported seeing and hearing some strange things coming from behind the restricted doors, Yip’s curiousity got the better of him. Especially when that employee was fired from higher management -- going right over Yip’s head! Inflamed, he stole a key to the restricted area and did some snooping. And what he saw horrified him. Animals were being experimented on, and turned into some sort of mutant freaks. The images he witnessed, the scientists’ cruelty and “animals’” hatred, would terrorize his sleep for the rest of his life…

Tragedy & Training

The whole next week of it. His snooping did not go unnoticed, and LST decided to test some of the mature “freaks” out on the security breach. Won Yip and his whole family were targeted one night at their suburban home as they relaxed in front of the television. The freakish assailants descended on the household without warning, breaking in through the windows and lunging at the three Koreans. Fang still recalls the horror of their attack -- humanoid bat creatures with mouths full of fangs, leathery wings folded as they jumped through windows, and razorkeen claws reaching out for her and her parents’ flesh. She, like her parents, were paralyzed with fear. Somewhat fortunately for the Won’s, a third party had been hearing strange things about LST’s research and was investigating as well. Not the police -- better than the police -- it was none other than Yi Sin Gun, one of the most famous Shih demon hunters in Korea of the day. Although, even then, Yi Sin Gun’s reputation was becoming tarnished by an unwarranted cruelty in his judgements and punishments, he was still unmatched. He tracked the “flying things” from the observed facility to their destination, and almost lost the black-furred beasts against the night sky several times.

But as the monsters attacked through the windows, Gun kicked through the door. A flash of metal and the monsters were being repelled -- not, unfortunately, before they had rended Fang’s mother and father’s throats open. The Shih warrior drove the freaks back with throwing knives, and then took the four outraged freaks on with nothing but his iron quartarstaff -- and they were all beaten back by the master martial artist and were nearly killed before opting to flee. (Back in the lab, all but one did die from the injuries.) Gun looked to the preteen girl, curled into a fetal position of wailing fear, and took her under arm, fleeing before the authorities arrived to clean up the mess.

The surprisingly gentle man spoke at length with Fang in the isolation of one of his personal hide-outs. There she was forced to accept the reality of the shen, having seen them (or something like them) with her own eyes. There she was kept, and forced to accept the passage of her parents, and the fact that her life had been forever changed. There she was kept until she came to the only natural conclusion -- they must pay. And so Gun taught her who they were -- corrupt supernaturals (not all supernaturals) and demons. And the middle-aged Shih began to teach the girl the fighting ways of the Shih, complimenting her hwarang-do with mo chi kung fu learned from his own master decades ago. She learned how to meditate properly, and began to develop her ch’i beyond average human capacity. And soon with the secret techniques of the Shih, her ch’i developed faster than even most martial artists.

Still, with all the harsh training and discipline she underwent, she was still a teenaged girl. Though she had her share of spite for the evil shadows of the world, plaguing defenseless men and women and children, she was not a consumed fanatic. She often annoyed her mentor and, as it were, her surrogate father, by going out into the city to enjoy herself as teenagers do. She only slipped out when he was out hunting, and consequently there was little he could do aside from tying her down. Not even locking her in would help, since he made the mistake of showing her how to pick locks in the event of capture!

So Won Su Fang grew up, half your average streetwise teenage girl in Seoul, the other half a well-disciplined and attentive student to the secret arts of demon-hunting. When rollerblading came around to Korea in the early 90s, she discarded the old-fashioned ‘skates for the new style. She became a terror on the streets, learning all the tricks she could from local experts, and she even began to adapt some of her combat skills. She was known as the “form on wheels”, since she would perform her hwarang-do techniques while gliding down an empty street or alley on rollerblades. Although Fang enjoyed her adolescence, she purposefully avoided making any close friends. She knew they would ultimately be at risk, because she had in fact accepted her new life as Shih.

First Circuits

Her first test came at the age of eighteen. Gun had learned of a Wu of newly-reborn Kuei-jin with anarchist tendencies who were carelessly hanging out in the same haven night after night. Their wild games threatened the security of people on the streets, and had inadvertently caused the death of an elderly woman with a heart condition. They had been warned by the Ancestor to calm down a little; still they continued. So they were warned by Gun to quit or else, and still they embarked on their pointless “fun”, unafraid of a mere mortal. Gun decided it was time for Fang to show her stuff on the small band of four unenlightened leeches.

It turns out, however, that Fang knew the gang from before the Second Breath. They hadn’t changed a bit, and it was their recklessness that got them all killed en masse in the first place. Don’t play on the train tracks…wise adage. And they were about to encounter another implacable freight train… She simply walked into the haven, greeting her old acquaintances affably. From the shadows, Gun watched. The Kuei-jin were receptive to her arrival -- dinner had arrived, after all. And after brief small talk, she calmly and politely informed the gang of their transgressions and that their chance to repent had been lost. Her brash implications were lost on the gang at first, and she took the initiative, springing into battle with a sword. One’s head was nearly taken off before the others could even blink. The battle that ensued was such a brief flash, Fang does not recall the details to this day. She suspects Gun was there and helped a little from the shadows. If he did, he never admitted it. Ultimately, however, all four souls were sent back to Yomi Wan and Fang had passed her first test, becoming full-fledged Shih in the eyes of her teacher.

Gun returned to his wanderings all over Korea, leaving the new Shih in charge of watching over Seoul as best she could. He had some business up north, he told her, and simply up and left one day. She was aghast at first, but soon picked up the responsibility she had been left with. Over the next few years, she became acquainted with many of the shen of the city, and put down several renegades. All were amazingly cautious around her, a fact she found surprising -- she was not a famous hunter like Yi Sin Gun. Of course, she learned next to nothing about the shen’s true traditions and societies. She never met any of their leaders, and kept a low profile among the supernaturals. Try as she might, the shen were so tight-lipped in Seoul they wouldn’t even share any knowledge they might have about the things that murdered her parents. Apparently, she reasoned, she would have to perform some favor for them to earn that knowledge. But she was not about to bargain with demons! So satisfaction eluded her and she waited patiently, waited, watched, and policed.

In 1997, her life changed again. Out of nowhere, Yi Sin Gun returned. He seemed to have aged at least a decade even though it had only been a few years. Of course, age was beginning to show even on Fang’s young face: the trials of her duties. But Gun looked different. He looked desperate and haunted. “Take this,” is all he said, and pushed his famous ironshod staff into her hands. Then he fled again, leaving his apprentice in shock and confusion. Only days later, Gun’s body was being dredged out of the river…

Fang took the weapon in hand, marveling over its workmanship and sturdiness, and most of all how light it felt in her hands as if it had adjusted its own weight and heft to the woman. The six foot staff seemed imbued with a mighty power, a power she had felt as long as she could remember. Fang had to admit, she envied Gun for holding what he only called the Iron Staff. And now she had it. She began to practice with it, adapting her forms and techniques from the traditional wooden staff.

But only a week passed before she felt something unreasonable begin to overtake her senses. She felt as if she were being…watched…and hunted. The urge to pick up and go, to leave the city she had been born and raised in, was overwhelming. So that’s what Fang did, beginning to wander all over South Korea as her mentor had. She became known as the “street-gliding” demon hunter, because she got by everywhere on her rollerblades. And bad-mannered shen were taught lessons by the young but amazingly talented woman. Sometimes it was just a solid, agonizing thwack on the buttocks from the Iron Staff as she’d soar by on her skates. Other times, she fearlessly challenged (or accepted challenges) to one-on-one, hand-to-hand matches - and won almost every time. So good was she that the few times she came out as less than the clear victor, she could only blame something else. Soon, Fang decided to leave Korea altogether, since the bad feelings never quite left. She traveled to Japan first, and eventually Hong Kong, carefully avoided non-democratic nations in Asia.

America

Eventually, however, Won Su Fang decided that she couldn’t escaped the creepy sensations in the Middle Kingdom. With nothing but her rollerblades, a few throwing daggers, the Iron Staff, and her only set of clothing, Fang immigrated to the States. The West Coast was interesting at first, but she felt way too out of place to stay for long. She traveled onward, and finally settled in Kansas City’s Little Asia. There she remains, for now, having found a strange organization of shen present. Such a thing demands observation! She even joined the Court of Infinite Ages with other Shih, membering the Ministry of Culture to presumably help keep propiety in the local martial arts scene, to oppose Westernization and corruption of the martial arts' sanctity. Of course, her true purpose was to keep a close on these shen. For several months, she worked with the other Shih, developing her great martial skills further while encountering, dealing with, and pondering the quandry of the existence of the Kin-jin. When the Infinite Ages came undone and she joined the House of Yizhi instead, this did not change. And yet, while the hunted feelings have faded somewhat, they still lingered, haunting her dreams and wakefulness alike…

Artifacts


Iron Staff
Level: 5
Origin: This powerful, magical weapon was handed down to Fang from her fallen mentor, Yi Sin Gun. She is ignorant of its true origins, as were all the Shih that held it prior...
Description: This is a six foot long ironshod staff that never seems to rust. It is inscribed with strange, kanji-like symbols whose meanings are lost upon even the most ancient of shen scholars. The weapon emanates a dark, violent power.
Effects: 1) inflict aggravated damage, 2) drain Power, Gnosis, or Angst from Yomi-tainted spirits and bakemono, 3) nullify all Charm/Arcanos use for a short duration per hit
Chi Costs: Artifact: 1 Yang; #1: 0, #2: 0, #3: 0
Activation: Brandishing the staff and executing a fierce kiai channels the Shih's energy into the weapon.

Significant Other


Fang So Won trained with Mai Nakamura for several years now, the two Shih working together in the Court of Infinite Ages and later the House of Yizhi. Fang always envied Mai’s rather unblemished beauty. She had no clue that Mai was exploring avenues of rare pleasure with the mage, Lady Nekoko. So when Mai began to come onto Fang at the end of 2006, the Korean woman was overwhelmed…and curious. Curiosity blossomed into much more: a relationship of desperate passion, as the two Shih seek to cram in enough happiness while pursuing their condemning obligations.

Mai

Weakness
Hubris


Like the girl from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Fang believes herself all but unbeatable. This feeling was multiplied with the Iron Staff in her possession, and her skill is such that only the strongest demons could prove otherwise. And it's inevitable that some day, she may meet that demon...

Likelihood of Corruption


High.

External sources cannot corrupt the proud Shih so easily. Of course, her pride is a profound flaw that a clever devil could expand and corrupt. But even that is not the greatest risk Fang faces: it's the diabolic power of the Iron Staff itself...

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