Tales of Perpetual Peace/Wu Mengde

Plays in Tales of Perpetual Peace

Rank: 4th

Archetype: Doctor

Concept: Black Lotus Mad Doctor

Vital Stats

Chi Lake River/Aura Chi Threshold with Armor Cultivation Chiv/Mal Joss

12 normal, 2 corrupt 7 2 14/28/42 19/38/57 4/12 normal, 7/20 corrupt 3/5

Learning Politics Tactics Confidence Inspire Medicine Wu Wei

+5 +5 (+5 Corruption) +10 (+5 Personal Combat) +5 (+5 Cool Under Pressure) +5 (+5 I'm a Doctor!) +10 (+5 Mad Science, +5 Five-Petal Lotus) +5 (+5 Resisting Vile Rain Curses)

Honor Benevolence Righteousness Loyalty Force

1 5 1 1 5

Revenge Individualism Obsession Ruthlessness Ferocity

1 2 3 5 1

Gear

• Light Armor

Chi Conditions

Chi Deviations

• Scalpel Heresy - Wu is driven to explore and master the darker aspects of any profession he turns himself to. He must always have some heretical experiment or dark scheme on the back boiler. Though he does not have to spend all his hours toiling on them, convincing him to give one up can be an exercise in futility.

'Natural State' Conditions

• Thrive on Chaos - A generations-old Curse laid upon Wu's family centuries ago. Passed down from his mother. An Action Bonus that pushes the character into anarchic, unconventional, contradictory, or un-chivalrous actions. For example, it would not benefit the character in a formal duel...unless he tried to exploit the letter of the rules or cheat outright. Basically, actions that would be seen as characteristic for Cao Cao, the archetypical Hero of Chaos. Always provides the bonus when interacting with characters whose fates would naturally produce contradictory outcomes for the bearer: a kingpin that could either promote the character or have him executed, etc.

• Internal Alchemy - Extensive modification of Wu's internal organs has led to a more streamlined and efficient design. He is able to squeeze more performance out of his 'parts.' So long as Wu performs regular medical actions on himself or pushes his body to its limits, he receives Improved Chi Breath.

External Styles

Ravenous Wings

Speed Footwork Strike Damage Block Toughness

+5 (+10 Unarmed/Saber) +10 (+15 Unarmed/Saber) +10 (+15 Unarmed/Saber) +10 (+15 Unarmed/Saber) +0 +5

Laughs At: Fears:

Leaving No Remains

Internal Styles

Poison Dragon River

1. Poison Waters
Misfortune finds no purchase, like swords striking empty water.

• For every 6 Ripples you have (rounded up), you may ignore 5 total points of penalties not from Chi Conditions, to a maximum of 10 points at 7+ Ripples.
• You may prevent the next Ripple you inflict on yourself.

2. Death Awaits Downstream
Analysis. Intent. Action. The serpent completes all in a single fluid motion.

• When floating a set into your River from your initiative, you may use that same set to evaluate a character’s external style.
• If it is the first round of combat, all styles you have successfully evaluated Fear yours.

3. World-Spanning Wyrm Coils
Where the River is, there is the Dragon: poison inescapable, seeping for a thousand li!

• Your target has -10 Toughness
• Your attack ignores the first 5 points of armor

3. Dragon's Liver Chirugery
Through prodigious medical ability, your internal organs shift positions. Wounds seal themselves, cartilage reinforces organs, blows find your heart but strike naught but bone!

• Whenever you activate this technique you gain a Ripple.
• You have +10 to Chi Aura and Chi Threshold. This does not stack with Armor.
• If you activate this technique in a scene, you receive its benefits during the post-combat rippling roll.

4. Force of the Dragon
From the heart flows all power. What might be said of a dragon’s heart? Only power unknowable.

• For every 3 Ripples you have (rounded up), your attack inflicts an additional Ripple, strikes an additional target, or reaches one Zone further out.
• You may not benefit from a particular effect more than 3 times (so max 3 additional Ripples, targets, or Zones)

5. Erasing Heaven
If a dragon dies, is it reincarnated? On the day Poison Dragon River awakens from its slumber, it will ascend to the heavens in the form of a great thunderhead streaked with darkness. Sun and sky will be erased by its expanse. Reaching enlightenment, it will become a Black Storm Buddha, and all the world will drown under its fury.

• Round-long duration.
• Whenever you activate this technique you gain a Ripple.
• You have a +20 bonus to your Speed, Footwork, Strike, Block, Damage, or Chi Aura.
• For every 3 Ripples (rounded up) you have, you may boost this technique, adding the bonus to another statistic for every two Chi you spend. You may boost during activation and whenever you suffer Ripples.

Loresheets

Secrets of Treatment

• Inflaming and Soothing
• Elemental Progression Technique (1)

Extraordinary Medical Techniques

• Opening the Veins and Arteries (2)
• Flesh-Sculpting Treatment (5)
• Vigorous Exercise Regimen (2)

Dancing Red Demon

• 3 Status: You have already put a tremendous amount of study into the disease, and have gained a reputation among your fellow Doctors and the Imperial Bureaucracy as an Red Demon Expert. Doctor Wu is often invited as a consultant to the Imperial Bureaucracy. Matters of quarantine, infection, and public health are often influenced by his input. With fear of the Dancing Red Demon in vogue, Wu has also seen his social star rise: already an established medical expert, he is now often invited to gatherings of the idle rich, who have little to do but titter in paranoid fascination at the events ravaging the country.
  • 0 Bonus: You have a +5 bonus to any Learning or Medicine rolls relating to the disease.

Vile Rain Cult

• You have read The Gospel of Corruption.
  • 0 Bonus: You may take either a Learning Specialty: Vile Rain Cult Lore or a Wu Wei Specialty: Resisting Vile Rain Curses for free.

The Doctor's Life in Perpetual Peace: The Cutting Edge of Medicine

• 0 Bonus: Once per story, you may gain access to the famous Shennong's Garden, a veritable archive of every herb, flower, root, and leaf ever used for medicinal purposes in Shen Zhou. This access will give you substantial aid in combating rare or powerful medical conditions.
• 0 Bonus: You have Devoted Students! Though they are only just beginning the arduous road toward becoming competent doctors, they can nevertheless provide you valuable assistance with proper direction. Once per chapter, you can call on them to significantly reduce the amount of time necessary to perform a Medical procedure, or to provide the equivalent of a +5 Quality Tool bonus.

Black Lotus Society (3)

• 4 Status: With his having the ear of those in power, Wu is a crucial lynchpin of Black Lotus power in Perpetual Peace. Under the veneer of educated polish, he is known to be as twisted as he is brilliant (both, of course, advantages in the Society!). The young doctor is in charge of local distribution of Black Lotus drugs and of generally advancing Lotus interests in the capital. As a foremost researcher and highly placed agent of the Society, he is given wide lassitude in the pursuit of...experimental results. The Society is not aware that Wu Mengde donates a significant portion of their citywide revenues to orphanages, hospitals, and street-side beggars.
  • 0 Bonus: You may choose a Inspire Specialty: Deceit or Politics Specialty: Corruption.

• 3 Treasure: Black Lotus Relic - The Ouroboros of Unkapia is an obscure text said to have been penned by the long-dead Black Storm Buddha himself. Within are meditations upon life, morality, and the nature of reality. More relevantly, its philosophical wanderings are interspersed with a veritable labyrinth of unsavory and esoteric medical techniques. On the application of the Doctor's Arts to illicit ends, it is nothing less than a tour de force: the nexus at which cultivated breath, brilliant medical insight, and true malevolence converge. (Acts as a Quality Medical Manual and opens up additional loresheet secrets for medically related martial arts/extraordinary techs)
  • 0 Secret: The Black Storm Buddha was the master of Poison Dragon River style. You may learn all of its techniques.
  • 2 Secret: You master the Dark Dragon's Claws! Fighting Unarmed now also counts as fighting with a Saber.
  • 2 Secret: You discover the Dark Dragon's Breath Technique! You can combine a Focus on Breath action with an Opening the Veins and Arteries Wave targeted on yourself. You may use the same result from Focus on Breath for the Wave; that Wave can be broken as normal, but doing so has no effect on your Focus on Breath Action.
  • 3 Secret: You learn the Vile Snake Husk Reincarnation Technique! You may spend an hour or more to create a husk-disguise for yourself or another. This disguise is as convincing as a full Flesh-Sculpting Treatment, but can be destroyed by an Injury condition of greater than Trivial strength. It can also be shed voluntarily. As with Flesh-Sculpting Technique, characters can see through the disguise with an appropriate Awareness or Wu Wei roll, but have a -15 penalty to that roll.

The Five-Petal Lotus

• 3 Secret: You learn important medical secrets regarding the five-petal lotus! The Difficulty for treating its conditions are lowered one step, down to Memorable (40) for Minor Conditions and Fantastic (60) for Major Conditions.
• 2 Treasure: You have access to a steady supply of Five-Petal Lotus. Most of Wu's inventory is sold off, but he retains a reserve stock to stay flexible.
• 0 Bonus: If you are a member of the Black Lotus Society, have the Secret Art of Medicine, and have at least Status 4 within the organization, you may take the Medicine Skill Specialty: Five-Petal Lotus for free, to create them, cure and manipulate their effects.
• 2 Bonus: Seeing the effects of the Fire Petal in incense form on a large group of people has given you added insight into its uses (and abuses). You have a +5 loresheet bonus to dealing with drugs derived from the Fire Petal specifically; this stacks with a general loresheet bonus related to the Five Petal Lotus.

Secrets of Destiny: Husband and Wife

• 4 - 2 Fortune + 0 Disadvantage: Complicated Love Life: Upon his parents' death, Wu was informed that his family, a middling clan of above-average means, had through epic travails arranged an incredible - nay, unbelievable match! As his opinions and the clan's are often at odds, Wu understandably feels great trepidation over this turn of events. With the Quarentine cutting off information from outside, he knows not the identity of this woman or even any particulars of her personality, besides the fact that she is supposedly a powerful member of the Wulin. He hopes she is not some sort of Invisible Hell Killer or Eagle Talon Detective.

The Li Clan

• 3 Involvement: You've finally been forced to take the next step toward your arranged marriage with Li Meixiang, and you've got Li Bao-jia's attention to boot. For better or worse, your future is being yoked to that of the proud Li Clan.

The Three Harmonies Union

• 2 Involvement: Your bold manuever cut off Northern Tiger Yu's best chance to get into the opium trade, for the time being; but Yu can hardly be expected to shrug off the loss with equanimity. He's bound to look into the affair at the Double Prosperity more closely ... .

Three Harmonies Union: The Harmonious Council

• 3 Fortune: Your interrogation of the Tujue smuggler gives you a glimpse into the internal politics of the Three Harmonies Union. Northern Tiger Yu is getting into the opium trade without the knowledge of his fellow (and elder) councilors, Master Hong-bo and Bright-Eyed Crane, who had previously kiboshed the notion of involving the Union in that business. Perhaps they're not so harmonious after all? (While this fact remains both true and secret, you have a +5 bonus to any Politics or Inspire rolls involving the Union where you can plausibly leverage this information.)