Chokhan Fifteenth Son Shatters the River
The late Immaculate monk, Chokhan Fifteenth Son Shatters the River - Chokhan XVSSR on official documents, and "Chokhan Kussir" to his close friends - is the heir to a long, distinguished, and obscure family of non-Exalted scholars and soldiers in the Empire. The family's fortune was established in the final years of the Usurpation wars, when a lowly footsoldier named Lukar, the fifteenth son of a peasant family, took up a truncheon and struck the blow that killed a Forsaken Anathema that history refers to only by the sobriquet Torrent Of Woe. For this great deed, Lukar was given his name, a small fortune, and the Anathema's own Orihalcum armor as a battle-prize. The armor was immediately "donated" to a museum exhibit built at a Monument to the Fallen Soldiers of the War, as such an artifact was far too great a prize to remain in the hands of even the most decorated mortal. Officially, though, the armor remained the property of the XVSSR family.
Centuries later, the XVSSR line is all but spent, and only one son, Chokhan, remained to carry on the family name. He chose to end the family's line gracefully; he himself pursued a celibate life as an itinerant scholar in the Immaculate Order. Chokhan typically spent the winter months in study on the Blessed Isle, and the spring and summer months riding circuit in and around Marukan. Starting in his thirtieth year, he took to vanishing during the autumn season, eventually reappearing in the Blessed Isle in time for the first snows of winter. He always returned from his autumn sojourns carrying great bundles of ink-brush calligraphy art that he gifted to friends and colleagues.
Chokhan told no-one where he spent the autumn months, and no-one thought to question so faithful and humble a member of the Order on such things. And because no-one thought to question him, not one word of scandal reached his colleagues in the Order.
In his twenty-fifth year, Chokhan had a brief affair with a young Marukani follower of the Order. Upon his return to the region the following year, he was shocked to learn that this woman had given birth to his son. Ashamed of his conduct and yet not willing to abandon responsibility for what he had done, he set about to prepare a place for his son in this world. He quietly arranged to have the XVSSR family's assets liquidated, and with this funds he bought a small but wealthy tea-growing estate, the Estate of the Nameless Ravine high in the Marukan mountains, intending that his son would inherit the business upon his death.
There he built his calligraphy studio, and he spent a quarter of the year living there and tutoring his son. He hired discreet and responsible stewards and staff to run the estate and look after his son the other three-quarters of the year. He named his son Nameless Ravine to reflect both the ambiguity of his son's heritage and to tie him to the land that would be his one day. The XVSSR family name would die with Chokhan; Nameless Ravine would not carry it on. When Ravine turned fourteen, Chokhan brought his son with him to the Blessed Isle in winter times, as his secretary. There, he continued Nameless' education.
In the winter of the forty-fourth year of his life, agents of prophecy within the Immaculate Order foretold that the last descendant of Lukar Fifteenth Son would become host to a reborn anathema. Unaware that Lukar's line lived on in Nameless Ravine, the Wild Hunt visited Chokhan and informed him of the dire - but inaccurate - fate that would befall him. Ever the dutiful Immaculate, Chokhan reconciled himself to his transgressions, sent a final few letters of thanks and farewell to a few select friends, and then took his own life with a cup of poisoned tea.
Nameless Ravine's exaltation into the Dawn Caste occurred three days later.
