Prometheor

Nini Wu

In the dream, the year is 2050 and the moon has just been struck by a meteor.

In the dream, the meteor emits a complex pattern of radiation that catalyzes the next step of sentient evolution for all of Earth's dreaming creatures.

In the dream, a group of monks in the Himalayas have become the enlightened beings they've always sought to be.

Nini was just a cub when the Prometheor struck the moon. Her first memory was the monks approaching their pen. She had no idea what kind of life she led before that. The monks offered the tigers their freedom and quickly left. Nini's mother, and therefore Nini herself, followed the monks.

Every creature on the planet that could dream was undergoing a rapid mental evolution. The tigers were learning to communicate with the monks. Nini was learning so much, though these were confusing times. Later, she would realize mankind was desperate to save their dying world.

Nini spent much of her formative years in the company of Chu Wren, her favorite monk. They would spar and learn from each other. She would ask him to read from the Art of War by Sun Tzu near daily. The passages therein shaped the mind she would wield for decades to come.

A few years passed in this way and Nini was well on her way to becoming a smart adult tiger, but the confusion of the early years began to reassert itself. Mankind's change in behavior came too late. When they were at their most desperate, when the danger of staying outweighed the danger of leaving, mankind's diaspora to the stars began, and by 2055, the solar system was completely evacuated, all but the Neomonks on the moon, quietly worshipping the Prometheor.

She used to watch the stars and wonder about her place in the universe. Men say a tiger cannot change its stripes, but what does that mean for men? Would they nurture what they found in the cosmos?

"The Rise of Nini the Tiger" did not go past her evacuation from Earth. Sometime after, she became a crucial member of the Wu dynasty military machine and history was scrubbed. Leo spent entire afternoons poring over the history of the Wu dynasty during the years Nini served, which were many.

When she was growing old, and her end was imminent, she instructed those present that her soul be preserved in a prometheite crystal, as she knew mankind could do. She asked that the crystal be attached to the hilt of a Jian sword.

Heirs to the Wu birthright carried the sword for generations until, for some mysterious reason, Wu Gengha Tan detached the gem and swallowed the crystal whole. He then instantly mummified his own body in an unprecedented dream.

He questioned Gengha Tan's motives in swallowing the gem. Afterward, the mummified body became a worshipped religious icon. A man in his position would have had an adept prescient advisor, so he would have known that that's what would happen to his body.

Was he trying to keep it out of humanity's hands?

The most recent dream he could find concerning Gengha Tan's remains described the staggering amount of security employed to keep the mummy safe. There were enough highly trained deadly lucid dreamers to allow for one hundred sword fighters to be on guard at all times. To say nothing of the fortified maze the site of worship became.

That is until Fabian Eastriddle put into effect his plan to steal the gem.

So the Wu dynasty wasn't 'officially' hunting him, and he wasn't 'technically' a criminal, but after he stole the Tiger, he went on the lam and ended up on Koanoa.

So, on the day the four of them stood in his tiny hab and Fabian said, "It needs the heart of a warrior," he meant Nini the Tiger.

And when he said, "You have sixty seconds to gather everything you need to complete the arcblade," he meant starting now.