CHARACTERS

the character list may contain spoilers but foxghost said they tried to make the list spoiler free as much as possible but still if you haven't read the novel, read at your own risk. credits to foxghost for the character list

Main Characters

Duan Ling / 段嶺：
An illegitimate child living in the Duan household in Runan, Shangzi. Ling is the character “mountain range”. Age 8 at the beginning of the story. Birthday is 6th day of the 12th lunar month.

Wu Du / 武獨:
An assassin working under Zhao Kui. A white tiger tattoo is on his neck. Wu is the wu in wuxia, while Du means alone. By one calculation Wu Du is probably 19 at the youngest in the beginning of the story, assuming that he just started working for Zhao Kui. By another calculation, according to his own word and not Xunchun’s, he was 16.

Other Characters

.A few things to note:• The border between Liao and Chen are nebulous. Think of Chen as having two northern borders, one at Huai river (the one drawn here) and one at Yubiguan that gets drawn by the mountains. The land between those borders belong to Liao, but the cities belong to Chen.• The great wall gates (the places that end in “guan”) are historic sites, but FTYX may have moved them.• Yubiguan does exist, but Joyful Reunion’s Yubiguan is just south of the Shangjing Road, past the great wall, and if you block it, Shangjing can only get reinforcements from the southwest. so that should put it just north of Beijing.• Some real places names were used and moved. I know it for Huaiyin for sure, but there may be others.• I’m not sure about the province boundaries, so I didn’t draw them. Provinces/prefecture names are in purple.• Real mountain range locations have been modified to fit the narrative.

Joyful Reunion takes place in an imaginary dynasty but it’s based on historical names and places. (I’ll add to this as more chapters are posted and more information is added, not in alphabetical order, but in order of information appearance.)Geography & politics:• Map of China in the year 1111. The Song empire is good proxy for Southern Chen.• Administrative regions of the Liao dynasty• Xianbei Mountains, located (probably) in the Greater Khingan Range.• Battle of Huai River: the battle in which the Chen empire lost, that pushed the Chen border from Yubiguan all the way south to the current border. (It’s only called “Southern Chen” because they lost the north)• The text refers to the southern areas as Yangzhou, Jingzhou and Jiaozhou, in addition to Xichuan. That would correspond the the Eastern Han map of the provinces. (Jiaozhou taking the bottom third of the Southern Chen map, then cut the top part in thirds)• Xiqiang is in different parts of the text referenced as near Korea, but also northwest of Tongguan. Northwest of Tongguan would fit the Eastern Han location of Xiqiang.• The War of Chang Forest is recorded as happening 5 years before Duan Ling’s birth, but probably happened 11 years before Duan Ling’s birth. Lang Junxia was 8 at the time.Additional info:• The poem on the cover of Book 1, Joyful Reunion, by Li Yu.• Another poem with the same name attributed to Li Yu.• Preface to a Spring Evening Banquet in a Peach Garden by Li Bai, quoted in chapter 1 and many other places, about the transient, ever-changing nature of life.• Immortals at the Magpie Bridge, by Qin Guan; the ending poem for Book 1.— source: foxghost