Name: Song Moon-sik. Goes by Moon.
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Belongings: - A
hyang-bipa, a pear shaped stringed instrument.
Bipa-A
daegeum, a bamboo flute with a unique timbre.
Daegeum-A small carrying jug attached to the hip filled with beverages. Frequently soju.
Martial Art Style: She calls it
Daenseu. It is the style known as
Taekkyeon. Taekkyeon uses the whole body in its techniques and motions, but teaches and focuses on several kick varieties, such as low kicks, knee kicks, jump kicks, and sweeps. The movements of Taekkyon are fluid with the practitioners constantly moving. One of its most striking characteristics is a constant bending and stretching of one's knees, giving the art a dance-like appearance. Taekkyeon uses a lot of high, medium and low kicks. Sweeps with straight forward low kicks using the ball of the foot and the heel and flowing crescent-like high kicks. There are many kicks that move the leg outward from the middle, and inward from the outside using the side of the heels and the side of the feet. The art also uses tricks like inward trips, wall-jumping, fake-outs, tempo, and slide-stepping. The art is also like a dance in which the fighter constantly changes stance from left to right by stepping forward and backwards with arms up and ready to guard, blending arm movements with leg.
TaekkyeonPersonality: Moon is soft spoken and often prefers to remain quiet than to speak up or act. She's not timid or shy, she just prefers not to raise her voice above a certain threshold when in conversation or in public. Possessed of a natural elegance from the manner in which she carries herself, Moon gives the air of someone in the nobility despite remaining cryptic about her life prior to Dragon's Peak Temple. What isn't so elegant about Moon is her love of drink, of alcohol in particular. Often she will enjoy more than her fair share of drink when the mood strikes. When she drinks, she retains her soft spoken nature, but speaks more bluntly and with slight more rude phrases. Despite Moon being genuinely friendly towards others, she doesn't consider herself as one with many comrades due to how often she simply, but politely, refuses the company of friends outside of sparring partners. It's apt that her name is Moon; she often seems as if she is constantly gazing towards it with how she communicates with others.
History: Moon was raised primarily by a midwife who was called upon to aid Moon's mother in the birth process due to her father fighting in the war. Moon's mother was inattentive, spending her time endlessly pining for the return of her husband. Moon forgave her. Her mother was a young adult, practically a child herself when she gave birth to Moon. A young girl in love who remained blindly devoted to her husband. Moon's mother worked as a maid for the village inn which frequently housed soldiers on their way to the recent battlefields. Moon's birth village wasn't terribly far from the Imperial City, and it was because of that distance that the midwife thought it best to groom Moon for a potential place within the Imperial City. It would be a better life than cleaning up after brusque soldiers all night.
The midwife instructed Moon on etiquette and music in hopes that the Imperial court would have need of a court musician or at the very least a proper servant with proper manners and posture. This training continued into Moon's early teen years. Moon and the midwife struck out for the Imperial City while Moon's mother slowly slipped into depression over the belief that her husband had died in the war. He hadn't, he had simply bedded up with another young, easily impressed girl in love.
Moon didn't stay long in the Imperial City. There was little need for a musician and Moon wasn't going to seek the employment of any place that required her to use her looks to earn pay. Moon decided simply to pick a spot near the city market and began to play her instrument. This continued until she was forcibly removed by an angry merchant and his angry hired help. The guards turned a blind eye, Moon had technically been performing without permission after all, and Moon was forced to defend herself. She did so by bashing the merchant with her bipa.
Her defense was spotted by a prospective student making the trip to Dragon's Peak Temple who, admittedly, was more interested in Moon for her appearance rather than her potential as a martial artist. Nevertheless, he invited her to tag along and offered to pay for repairing the bipa. Moon was tricked just enough to accompany him, provided that her instrument got repaired first.
Moon arrived at the temple at age sixteen. In her five years since being a student, she has shown no willingness to increase her position or rank within the temple, despite showing an affinity for her chosen style. Moon opts to spend her days plucking away at her bipa or lounging around under trees than to continually spar and rise in ranks. Some newer, more eager students see her as lazy for this, and that perspective lasts just long enough for them to lose in a challenge towards her. Moon is content to just sit under the trees and play her instruments, and until such a time where that isn't allowed, that's all Moon will enjoy doing.
