General Horoscopes

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These are the results of Yanyu generating horoscopes for various people. In order to do a horoscope some basic information is needed. (Yes, it's a Power 5 information shtick, but alas we can't just get a horoscope for the Obsidian Warlord or whomever unless we also have his date and place of birth.)

Contents

PCs

Zhu Cai Wen

(Done between A River Befouled and Compass Rose)

His great strength, and his most auspicious futures, come from his building connections - both to himself and between others. Because of this, he is less well suited to a single strong connection to one person, and this is kind of sad (from your point of view) - he's most likely to have lots of girlfriends but never marry.

He was set up to oppose Lucky Chang by the Butterfly, even before the run started. The Hand of Fate will likely help some, but it will not bring him to that crux by itself. If he doesn't have a good set of connections by the time he engages Lucky Chang, he will lose.


Shen Wei Han

(Done after Compass Rose)

If the location of his birth (a village in the foothills of the Roof of the World - near the Qin Chao Steppes border) is correct then he is considerably older than 30 winters.

Deng Zhihao

(Done during Book 2)

There are two different things that his life has the potential to entangle with, and both of them seem fairly likely. One is clearly the complicated path tied up with the rest of the party - there are chances for glory there, but also death; high honors or ignominy. The other path is in many ways more personal, and you think this has to do with his vendetta against the tongs. This also has different ways it can go - there is an opportunity for love, but also heartbreak and betrayal, of loyalties greatly tested and questions about family. There are at least several possible threads of his future in this tangle, in which he kills someone who he shouldn't / didn't want to / immediately regretted / something.

Arata Kasumi

(Done after Ting Ting's Gambit)

You cast the horoscope for Kasumi, and at first, it seems to say she'll grow to be a minor ladyling, marry reasonably well, be a little happy but never quite satisfied, raise more or less good children, and die.

That can't be right.

You look closer, and lo, there is a minor unlikely encounter which wildly diverts her path. Yup, *that*'s the one she followed. Much of the rest of her path seems to follow that initial unlikeliness - she has the gleeful randomness of the Monkey, but she is touched by the Wing of the Butterfly, and her small randomnesses will amplify into storms countries away.

This is a knife edge to walk - which is appropriate, because her nature is the knife - too much craziness and she will topple things she really didn't mean to, but too little craziness, too much second-guessing, and she will lose the random path that gives her such power.

She is the razor knife of the Butterfly - able to destroy what she touches and the Butterfly needs destroyed - amplified by the madness of the Monkey. She is possibly more terrifying than anyone else whose horoscope you have ever read.

NPCs

Minoru Katsu

As mentioned before, he's a Dog with hints towards Phoenix; that manifests as a nigh-unbreakable sense of duty which constrains his actions and his life quite a bit. He does seem to have a decent shot at becoming Firelord - if he marries Kuan-Xi, it's pretty much guaranteed.

If he doesn't become Firelord, his possibilities branch out a lot, though almost none of them take him off of the Shrouded Isle permanently.

Looking at the farther-future possibilities for if he does become Firelord - it's more complicated, because it depends a lot on how the future goes in the Empire-wide case. To digress a bit, his is one of the first horoscopes you've seen that seems to be impinged upon by what you *think* is the question of whether or not the PCs succeed in thwarting the Spider - it's hard to directly see that sort of thing in astrology, because the Great Cycle is the underlying assumption, and astrology isn't designed to address "what happens if the Cycle changes?" any more than football odds are designed to take into effect what happens if gravity changes.

Anyhow, you *think* that if the PCs fail (and it becomes the Empire of the Spider, or whatever happens in that future), then he's not at all the right Firelord - the Shrouded Isle would be better served by someone much more ruthless. If the PCs succeed, he's much more appropriate.

"Lucky" Chang Wuyong

He's definitely a Spider.

His early years taught him to hate being poor. A shaping event when he was young taught him to hate being the manipulatee rather than the manipulator, and taught him the value of manipulation.

These two forces drove his early path, towards the gathering of wealth and control (though it took him a while to actually get good at it).

About ten winters back, his path took a sharp uptick from "general gathering of wealth and control" to "alliance with others for much greater wealth and control", and that has continued since.

He is very ambitious, very smart, very charismatic, somewhat vindictive, and always calculating the odds.

Looking towards his future, the next ten years are momentous - they will shape both his own destiny, and that of the whole Empire.

He could become Emperor. (There are really not very many people about whom that could be said, so it really stands out in the horoscope.)

Suzuki Kuan-Xi

(Done between Over the River and Through the Woods and Touched by the Dragon)

Reading her horoscope, you get the strange feeling that you're looking at one you've seen before. Not so much that you've ever encountered one like her before, it's just that her horoscope is filled with "stock answers". Like she's in the world to fill a specific role, rather than to create and shape a destiny of her own. The role is not fixed, but it's dependent upon others, not herself. She can be someone's wife. She can be someone's prize. She can serve as inspiration or goad, but it will all be for other's benefit or harm. The main choices available to her is who these other people will be.

The more she tries to choose for her own reasons, the less successful she will be. You find yourself tearing up a little at the sadness of it.