Dragons of the Yellow Sea

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Korean Dragon

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.


1846 the French frigates Gloire and Victorieuse sent to investigate massacre of missionaries. The ships grounded and the crews were transported home by English ships.


1850 - The Taiping Rebellion in China, lasts around 15 years. Ideals of equality. dragons too! 1850- There are around 15,000 Korean Catholics.

1853- U.S. gunboat South America stops in Pusan. Stays 10 days without inicident.

1855 and also in 1865, a number of shipwrecked American sailors were picked up on the Korean shores.

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.

1860s-1870s American and French attacks on Korea were driven off. 1866 another French expedition was defeated at the mouth of the Han River 1866 burning of the General Sherman, an armed American merchantman. US considers war. 1871 American expedition led by Admiral Rodgers defeated

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

Climate

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. We should have a map of the town and surrounding areas - making up something reasonable.

General region: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=5&ll=35.85344,127.22168&spn=17.806098,28.432617&om=1

Closeup from Google satellite map of Seongsam, harbor, and Udo: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=13&ll=33.486292,126.921787&spn=0.071727,0.111065&t=k&om=1

Map showing elevations, very general, color: http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/124th_issue/Chejudo.jpg

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:

Excerpt from "A Brief History of the US-Korea Relations Prior to 1945" Kim Young-Sik, Ph.D.

  • 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!

Images

From the movie "Blood Rain" from Han Cinema

Blood Rain
Blood Rain
Blood Rain
Blood Rain
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