Dragons of the Yellow Sea
Contents
Dragons of the Yellow Sea
The players will be humans and dragons who are part of the peasant rebellion in Korea. We will play at least 2 characters each. Players should not play their own dragon or human... We're going to play on Jeju-do island in the straits. The world is loosely based on Naomi Novik's Temeraire alternate history series of novels; His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War.
General thoughts on game flavor - episodes, how characters become pivotal - Temeraire, Lawrence is a ship captain, not a tiny ship, but not an admiral, of medium importance
Game system: Maybe Serenity? Maybe Spirit of the Century. We will run one-shots to test out systems before picking one.
Characters
Character ideas
- Madeline - leans towards playing an outsider, maybe a Mongol Han Solo.
- Madeline - Japanese spy
- Bill - Yong Gi Ja, a Jade Dragon, retired from government courier service.
- Bill - Kim Cho Hea, Park Min Bai's niece, a pearl diver.
- Cyn -Park Min Bai, a shaman from Jeju-do.
- Cyn - Bob's character's hatchling dragon. fire breathing. Perky and bouncy.
- Lee - Lee Ho-Fook. 40-ish related to Bob's character. Bitter fisherman. back from foreign lands after absence of 20 years.
- Lee - Catholic priest?
- Liz - Min Ju. Surly teenager. Used to be called "Snotface" and is now called "The Rat". He grew up on the streets, he's a petty criminal, and does odd jobs around town. His mom is a disreputable, abusive drunk.
- Liz - Yong Dak-Ho, Lee's fisher dragon with leanings towards amateur naturalist/science. Dak-Ho has a collection of cool ocean stuff as her dragon bling. modern/japanese sympathies.
- Bob - Inheriting the Orange/Citrus farm (the island's traditional tribute to Seoul)
- Bob - Heather's fire breathing dragon.
- Heather - A Chinese warrior who deserted during (after? not sure) the Taiping Rebellion and later fled with her dragon across the sea to Jeju-do.
- Heather - A feral dragon native to Jeju-do.
- GM: John Kim
If we follow the conventions of dragon naming in Novik's China, Chinese dragons would have three-part names starting with "Lung" (meaning "dragon"). Korean dragon names would start with "Yong" if we construct them the same way. Dragon geneologies may become important. For human names, here's an article on Korean names. Here is a good table with some Korean name elements and their meanings.
NPCs
- Chul-Sun. "Sarge". A big hulking military battle veteran/ex bandit/secret military genius/sergeant who became a farmer and swore never to pick up another sword
- The older smuggler captain
- The local magistrate (somewhat corrupt, in the smuggler captain's pocket)
- Must make up yangban family or families
- Teacher (dragon) at the village fisher dragon school
Timeline of events
1806 child king, unrest in Korea
Slavery is slowly disappearing in Korea. All government slaves freed. (Around 1806).
Droughts. Corruption. People migrating to mainland. Aristocracy (yong-ban) is slowly losing its grip, there is a rising merchant class.
China's influence waning, Japanese influence rising. There are starting to be Japanese advisors in Korean military.
1850 - The Taiping Rebellion in China, lasts around 15 years. Ideals of equality. dragons too!
1862 - Peasant rebellion in Korea. Donghak rebellion Tonghak, religious movement, equality
Around this time there is a 10 year old king whose father is Regent. Paek nak-sin oppressive military commander. (Yi nong-nyun), intellectual who led the rebellion. Investigator sent to the scene.
Background
Government & official reading is in Chinese. Popular stuff, signs, etc in Hangul
In Confucian tradition merchants are below farmers. But that's changing.. .rising middle/merchant class.
Jeju-do (Cheju) Island to the south in the straits - 17th cent. period of taxes where men couldn't dive for pearls; women then did; women gained more economic and political power. Jeju
- Paper manufacturing... secrets of (blood rain)
- Textiles
- Fishing, deep sea
- Oranges, citrus
- Other farming
- Pearls
some kind of animistic syncretic buddhist thing - shamanic/priest etc. were women
Liz's note - I'm thinking of the Outlaws of the Marsh/Water Margin as an inspiration for this game as well though it's China not Korea and the wrong time period... it's the coolest adventure, hero tales, and a rebellion in the mountains, where dragons would fit right in.
Geography
Jeju island has a central volcano, Mt. Halla, with crater lakes. There's lots of black lava, caves, waterfalls.
OUr game will begin in Seongsam, near the island of Wu, or Udo, in the east of Jeju.
Dragon ecology
- Transport - buses! cargo!
- Herding, pastoral, goats - flatlands and mountains
- Agriculture - flatlands
- Fishing - deep sea fishers, giant tuna, coastal
- Mountain dragons - in lakes - wise dragons and bandits
- Korean cockatrice - kye-ryong (Chariot-pulling beasts from legend). (Kingdom of Silla)
Quotes:
- Bill: "He could be a lady pirate, then."
- Everyone, suddenly: "Dragons love bling! OMG they DO love bling!"
- Scene from Blood Rain:
Official: "a 60 bo circle piece of land is insribed with a perfect pentagon. A 3-square bo plot of land yield 30 doi of barley. Nine farmers give the landowner 80% of their barley harvest. If due to a drought the yield were reduced to 30%, how much would the landowner recieve?" Old guy: "That's quite a challenge. Evil guy from village:"It's 34 bags, isn't it?" Official: "using trigonometry and statistics that's the answer but that's not the answer my father wanted"
- Madeline: "Wow. Awesome. Did they just kill a chicken, live?"
- "I'm just saying, never destroy the load-bearing walls of the building you are IN." - Lee
Rules:
We are using a variant of the Spirit of the Century system.
Details in Dragons of the Yellow Sea: Rules
Sources:
- Wikipedia (list pages)
- Korea: Its History and Culture
- Art Treasures of Seoul
- Korea: An Introduction
- A Handbook of Korea
- Sensational Knitted Socks
- movie - Blood Rain. Takes place in 1808 in Korea. A commissioner from the mainland comes to a small island to investigate a murder and arson case which turns out to be one of a series of vengeance murders. Great complicated plot and characters!
- movie (not right time period or place but good) Musan The Warrior
Images
From the movie "Blood Rain" from Han Cinema
