gouken | 敖玄 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brokenline) wrote2013-08-14 05:33 pm
brokenline) wrote2013-08-14 05:33 pm
history
The world that Ao Xuan hails from is more or less like ours— only supernatural creatures are real, and myths, though wrongly interpreted by humans, are by and large true. While the west largely separates itself between two courts, the east is ruled by the Heavenly Bureaucracy, and serve under the Jade Emperor.
There have always been dragon kings ruling the four seas— East, South, West and North— semi-deities who command aquatic armies, manipulate storms, bring the rain, and all answering to the command of the heavens. Ao Xuan was born the seventh son of the King of the Eastern Sea, by one of his more favoured concubines. Said concubine would bear him another child; a daughter named Yuhe, before leaving his harem and joining the heavenly army.
Gouken's youth was quiet— he did what he wanted as long as it inconvenienced no one, he developed a love of music and theatre and collected stories from travelers about the world outside. He passed all this onto his sister, who had more of a spark than he did. All of those things were idle thoughts to pass the time to him but lit a fire under her.
He was never meant to be the crown prince— too young, too unambitious— but his elder brothers had drunkenly angered a goddess, and their father could not let that stand. Meant as a punishment to them, he named Ao Xuan his successor, and in an unrelated incident, was assassinated not too long after. Ao Xuan became Dragon King of the Eastern Sea and saw that as an excuse to finally leave the place and see the world outside. He soon gained a reputation as a wanderer who would spend months at a time on land, delegating his duties in the kingdom.
During one of these travels, he met a young tengu on a mountain and was charmed by him immediately. Upon learning that the boy, called Kaishou, had never been anywhere but that mountain, invited him to leave with him. Their adventure was short-lived— Kaishou was returned to the mountain, and Ao Xuan started visiting him regularly, not wanting him to be lonely.
Around this time, his sister Yuhe found herself in trouble with the heavens— she'd allegedly stolen a precious artifact of a goddess, attacked her attendants, and refused to return it. When Ao Xuan tried to intervene and persuade her to give up the artifact, she denied having done the crime and ran to escape conviction. Ao Xuan pleaded with the emperor to have her crimes punished under his kingdom's rule and was told that it would be so.
However, the other three dragon kings (his uncles), under orders of the emperor, caught the girl and had her executed under heaven's law without Ao Xuan's knowledge or consent. He found this generally unamusing and something snapped within him, all the revolutionary ideas he'd had stewing in him during his life spilled to the surface.
Ao Xuan, better known as Gouken during this time, declared war against his uncles and lead a vicious crusade to overthrow their kingdoms, which lasted until the Bureacracy finally saw fit to intervene. He formed a faction against the divine decree, turning his power-grab into a full-on coup. With the help of his subjects (most notably Kaishou), he escaped execution and lead a year-long resistance, during which time was first referred to as the Rebel King.
Gouken was eventually captured, but instead of execution, he was sentenced to imprisonment on land. He was to be sealed inside a secluded cave, never to be near the ocean again for all eternity.
Eternity was to last six hundred years— that's how long it took before a group of hapless human tourists found him and released him back into the world. He spent some time under the radar as a normal human under the Japanese name of Usui Ryouma, while rumours circulated and bounties were placed on his head. He reunited with Kaishou, and rekindled an It's Complicated relationship.
After a bit of a nasty fight in which the words "You are nothing to me," may or may not have come up, Kaishou was taken captive by a warrior clan who'd been tasked with investigating Gouken's current whereabouts. (The clans held a Dragon*Conference about it. It went really poorly, but there were shrimp crackers.)
There have always been dragon kings ruling the four seas— East, South, West and North— semi-deities who command aquatic armies, manipulate storms, bring the rain, and all answering to the command of the heavens. Ao Xuan was born the seventh son of the King of the Eastern Sea, by one of his more favoured concubines. Said concubine would bear him another child; a daughter named Yuhe, before leaving his harem and joining the heavenly army.
Gouken's youth was quiet— he did what he wanted as long as it inconvenienced no one, he developed a love of music and theatre and collected stories from travelers about the world outside. He passed all this onto his sister, who had more of a spark than he did. All of those things were idle thoughts to pass the time to him but lit a fire under her.
He was never meant to be the crown prince— too young, too unambitious— but his elder brothers had drunkenly angered a goddess, and their father could not let that stand. Meant as a punishment to them, he named Ao Xuan his successor, and in an unrelated incident, was assassinated not too long after. Ao Xuan became Dragon King of the Eastern Sea and saw that as an excuse to finally leave the place and see the world outside. He soon gained a reputation as a wanderer who would spend months at a time on land, delegating his duties in the kingdom.
During one of these travels, he met a young tengu on a mountain and was charmed by him immediately. Upon learning that the boy, called Kaishou, had never been anywhere but that mountain, invited him to leave with him. Their adventure was short-lived— Kaishou was returned to the mountain, and Ao Xuan started visiting him regularly, not wanting him to be lonely.
Around this time, his sister Yuhe found herself in trouble with the heavens— she'd allegedly stolen a precious artifact of a goddess, attacked her attendants, and refused to return it. When Ao Xuan tried to intervene and persuade her to give up the artifact, she denied having done the crime and ran to escape conviction. Ao Xuan pleaded with the emperor to have her crimes punished under his kingdom's rule and was told that it would be so.
However, the other three dragon kings (his uncles), under orders of the emperor, caught the girl and had her executed under heaven's law without Ao Xuan's knowledge or consent. He found this generally unamusing and something snapped within him, all the revolutionary ideas he'd had stewing in him during his life spilled to the surface.
Ao Xuan, better known as Gouken during this time, declared war against his uncles and lead a vicious crusade to overthrow their kingdoms, which lasted until the Bureacracy finally saw fit to intervene. He formed a faction against the divine decree, turning his power-grab into a full-on coup. With the help of his subjects (most notably Kaishou), he escaped execution and lead a year-long resistance, during which time was first referred to as the Rebel King.
Gouken was eventually captured, but instead of execution, he was sentenced to imprisonment on land. He was to be sealed inside a secluded cave, never to be near the ocean again for all eternity.
Eternity was to last six hundred years— that's how long it took before a group of hapless human tourists found him and released him back into the world. He spent some time under the radar as a normal human under the Japanese name of Usui Ryouma, while rumours circulated and bounties were placed on his head. He reunited with Kaishou, and rekindled an It's Complicated relationship.
After a bit of a nasty fight in which the words "You are nothing to me," may or may not have come up, Kaishou was taken captive by a warrior clan who'd been tasked with investigating Gouken's current whereabouts. (The clans held a Dragon*Conference about it. It went really poorly, but there were shrimp crackers.)