[ he is not a morning person, but he's....coping. he's here, sipping away at some coffee, looking absently and almost hatefully into the distance while he's still waking up. ]
gu yun's of a similar mindset - he doesn't drink coffee, but, he makes quick work of a tea kettle. it's a quiet, peaceful morning, all things considered.
too bad memshare doesn't think so!
--
the memory begins with an ear piercing shriek of an alarm, and the feeling of you kicking a door in. you're dressed in fine silk, your hair loose around your shoulders - the clothes of shen shiliu, the layabout of yanhui town, a troublemaking, half-blind half-deaf who seems to do nothing but give his older brother headaches.
your 'older brother' has just risen from where he was working, face buried in a suit of heavy iron armor, and he turns to look at you, immediately reaching for the sword that hangs on its hip and lifting it -
you raise your hand. ] It's me.
[ and the sword lowers. the man who stands before you is shen yi, not your older brother - a general of the black iron camp, your closest friend, your subordinate. and you, you are not the layabout shen shiliu.
shen yi lowers his voice. "The barbarians came sooner than we thought?"
you make a noise, affirmative, and push past him, moving for the inner chamber - with a flick of your hand, you find the false joint on the bed in the room, and it splits in half, revealing a wooden board underneath. as you push it aside, you see it; your own iron armor awaits you, shined to a flawless black the color of ink. you reach into a chamber in the armor and find your fingers curling around the black iron tiger emblem that denotes your rank, your status, your importance, and pull it up, as you lift the armor free from where it awaited you.
today, your back is more like an iron spear than a strengthless noble. you speak. ] Ji Ping.
[ a cold wind blows through the house, and your second in command immediately drops to one knee. Your subordinate is present. ]
Let's take advantage of their confusion, and conveniently haul in the net. I'll entrust His Highness the Fourth Prince to you. [ and you, instinctively, think back to three years beforehand, when you scooped up a little boy from the jaws of a wolf - chang geng, your ward, the fourth prince.
there is no one else you would trust with such an important task. ] Escort him out of town, first.
[ shen yi rises, the gaze under his brow is fierce, just as fierce as yours. Roger, he says.
you nod, and turn back to the armor itself, pressing your hand to a golden box at its back. the armor opens with a hiss of steam; purple liquid seeps through the visible pipes, the veins at the back.
the two of you are the heads of the black crows; general shen yi and marshal gu, the marquis of order, the most feared men in great liang. the two of you have defeated armies together. this is the moment you've been waiting for. you will not lose this town to a group of barbarians.
[ well.. he is Pride, after all, ] I am. [ like why lie, ] My title is that of the Marquis of Order - I am the commander of the Black Iron Camp of the army of Great Liang, which covers our and and air forces.
[ like. all of them. whew.
anyway! this is one of many times he's had to explain this now, but gu yun still feels odd doing so, sometimes - it's so normal at home that it's wild to think anyone wouldn't know it. ]
...As for the liquid, it's called ziliujin. It's a natural resource that can be found underground, and burned to produce power, usually in combination with steam, though it is an incredibly rare, precious thing to have. [ so... fantasy oil, kinda. ]
I'm not familiar with the Great Liang--but it sounds quite grand, an entire country, perhaps? My, if you commanded such a wide swath of forces, you must have been quite powerful indeed.
Especially with the power of this...ziliujin. No doubt with its rarity, you were deemed one of the special few who deserved to have it on hand, hmm?
It's not so much about me having it on hand. It's the army itself. The distribution of ziliujin falls into the hand of the emperor - His Majesty is the one who decides what is done with it.
[ fantasy oil, and all that. gu yun's a pretty (ha) prideful guy, but, his pride comes heavily with the love of his country and his camp, too, so. filial piety bleeds into his bones, and he's not about to consider himself above the emperor.] I was undercover, waiting for an invasion I expected to come. If I'd been without, I may have been in deep shit.
[ A man with great power who also gets his hands dirty in the day to day hard work? Sure, they were already both on Pride to begin with, but Vlad is truly sensing a KINDRED SPIRIT here. ]
[ he hums, almost a little playfully, as if trying to decide to tell the story or not, before ultimately: ]
The Fourth Prince had been missing for some time. His mother, a former princess of the barbarian tribes to the north, committed treason against the Emperor and the nation, and the emperor loved her enough not to have her executed - only exiled. She fled with the fourth prince when he was a baby to avoid any further punishments, and disappeared over the border - but not long after, we got news that she returned to a tiny town called Yanhui, not far from where my men are stationed. We'd been attempting to track him and the princess down for years - eventually, I was able to locate the prince, who had no idea of his origins or his story, only that his mother had been impossibly cruel to him throughout his life, and that instead of returning home, the princess chose to stay in Great Liang and attempt to coordinate a coup. The tribes were planning to invade my nation through Yanhui town, and meet back up with the princess as well as the Fourth Prince, and they snuck in on a large airship, disguised as soldiers from Great Liang, then launched a brutal invasion of the town.
[ i just need you to know this plot is very confusing as to "what is icly known" and "what is not icly known" SO I DID LOTS OF REREADING FOR THIS IM SORRY IF ITS UNCLEAR ]
I'd been undercover in Yanhui for a year or so, watching over His Highness as his yifu and keeping an eye on the princess's plans. The princess must have known we were there, once the barbarians invaded, though - sensing her imminent capture, she committed suicide before we were able to capture her and return her to the capital for interrogation. We couldn't risk losing the Fourth Prince in the process, so we had to bide for time, until we were able to act and prevent such an invasion from getting any further off the ground.
Waiting turned out to be key, anyhow. The invasion was led by their Wolf Prince, a wanted figure with aggressive tendencies towards Great Liang. My men and I were able to capture the wolf prince, bring him in for questioning, and bring His Highness back to the capital and his remaining family as originally planned.
[ ...wow. the complexities of war and politics! This is a hell of a lot to absorb and Vlad isn't sure he fully gets it, but he thinks he's got the gist. ]
I'd say so. [ he smiles at that, waving a hand! this is a backtag and he has two hands. ] We were able to capture two birds with one stone, so to speak, and I no longer had to pretend to be a layabout and live with my second in command.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
w2... tuesday!
are you a morning person. a morning ghost. where are you, my good dude. ]
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gu yun's of a similar mindset - he doesn't drink coffee, but, he makes quick work of a tea kettle. it's a quiet, peaceful morning, all things considered.
too bad memshare doesn't think so!
--
the memory begins with an ear piercing shriek of an alarm, and the feeling of you kicking a door in. you're dressed in fine silk, your hair loose around your shoulders - the clothes of shen shiliu, the layabout of yanhui town, a troublemaking, half-blind half-deaf who seems to do nothing but give his older brother headaches.
your 'older brother' has just risen from where he was working, face buried in a suit of heavy iron armor, and he turns to look at you, immediately reaching for the sword that hangs on its hip and lifting it -
you raise your hand. ] It's me.
[ and the sword lowers. the man who stands before you is shen yi, not your older brother - a general of the black iron camp, your closest friend, your subordinate. and you, you are not the layabout shen shiliu.
shen yi lowers his voice. "The barbarians came sooner than we thought?"
you make a noise, affirmative, and push past him, moving for the inner chamber - with a flick of your hand, you find the false joint on the bed in the room, and it splits in half, revealing a wooden board underneath. as you push it aside, you see it; your own iron armor awaits you, shined to a flawless black the color of ink. you reach into a chamber in the armor and find your fingers curling around the black iron tiger emblem that denotes your rank, your status, your importance, and pull it up, as you lift the armor free from where it awaited you.
today, your back is more like an iron spear than a strengthless noble. you speak. ] Ji Ping.
[ a cold wind blows through the house, and your second in command immediately drops to one knee. Your subordinate is present. ]
Let's take advantage of their confusion, and conveniently haul in the net. I'll entrust His Highness the Fourth Prince to you. [ and you, instinctively, think back to three years beforehand, when you scooped up a little boy from the jaws of a wolf - chang geng, your ward, the fourth prince.
there is no one else you would trust with such an important task. ] Escort him out of town, first.
[ shen yi rises, the gaze under his brow is fierce, just as fierce as yours. Roger, he says.
you nod, and turn back to the armor itself, pressing your hand to a golden box at its back. the armor opens with a hiss of steam; purple liquid seeps through the visible pipes, the veins at the back.
the two of you are the heads of the black crows; general shen yi and marshal gu, the marquis of order, the most feared men in great liang. the two of you have defeated armies together. this is the moment you've been waiting for. you will not lose this town to a group of barbarians.
you will not lose the prince. ]
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Goodness, you certainly weren't lying about being a military man. You must have been quite powerful.
What was that...purple liquid running through the armor?
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[ like. all of them. whew.
anyway! this is one of many times he's had to explain this now, but gu yun still feels odd doing so, sometimes - it's so normal at home that it's wild to think anyone wouldn't know it. ]
...As for the liquid, it's called ziliujin. It's a natural resource that can be found underground, and burned to produce power, usually in combination with steam, though it is an incredibly rare, precious thing to have. [ so... fantasy oil, kinda. ]
no subject
Especially with the power of this...ziliujin. No doubt with its rarity, you were deemed one of the special few who deserved to have it on hand, hmm?
no subject
[ fantasy oil, and all that. gu yun's a pretty (ha) prideful guy, but, his pride comes heavily with the love of his country and his camp, too, so. filial piety bleeds into his bones, and he's not about to consider himself above the emperor.] I was undercover, waiting for an invasion I expected to come. If I'd been without, I may have been in deep shit.
[ lol ]
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[ A man with great power who also gets his hands dirty in the day to day hard work? Sure, they were already both on Pride to begin with, but Vlad is truly sensing a KINDRED SPIRIT here. ]
no subject
The Fourth Prince had been missing for some time. His mother, a former princess of the barbarian tribes to the north, committed treason against the Emperor and the nation, and the emperor loved her enough not to have her executed - only exiled. She fled with the fourth prince when he was a baby to avoid any further punishments, and disappeared over the border - but not long after, we got news that she returned to a tiny town called Yanhui, not far from where my men are stationed. We'd been attempting to track him and the princess down for years - eventually, I was able to locate the prince, who had no idea of his origins or his story, only that his mother had been impossibly cruel to him throughout his life, and that instead of returning home, the princess chose to stay in Great Liang and attempt to coordinate a coup. The tribes were planning to invade my nation through Yanhui town, and meet back up with the princess as well as the Fourth Prince, and they snuck in on a large airship, disguised as soldiers from Great Liang, then launched a brutal invasion of the town.
[ i just need you to know this plot is very confusing as to "what is icly known" and "what is not icly known" SO I DID LOTS OF REREADING FOR THIS IM SORRY IF ITS UNCLEAR ]
I'd been undercover in Yanhui for a year or so, watching over His Highness as his yifu and keeping an eye on the princess's plans. The princess must have known we were there, once the barbarians invaded, though - sensing her imminent capture, she committed suicide before we were able to capture her and return her to the capital for interrogation. We couldn't risk losing the Fourth Prince in the process, so we had to bide for time, until we were able to act and prevent such an invasion from getting any further off the ground.
Waiting turned out to be key, anyhow. The invasion was led by their Wolf Prince, a wanted figure with aggressive tendencies towards Great Liang. My men and I were able to capture the wolf prince, bring him in for questioning, and bring His Highness back to the capital and his remaining family as originally planned.
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Well...all's well that ends well, I suppose.
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I'd say so. [ he smiles at that, waving a hand! this is a backtag and he has two hands. ] We were able to capture two birds with one stone, so to speak, and I no longer had to pretend to be a layabout and live with my second in command.
no subject