eadmaster Yul-Ho
The current leader of the Hwa and master of the Yedang. He believes the founder’s lost gift was real, and he wears himself down trying to be worthy of it.
Name
Yul-Ho (율호). Yul (율) carries two meanings at once, law and rhythm, the code he keeps and the dance he drills. He holds no epithet of his own. Among an order that remembers its founder as the Brushhand, that absence is a wound, and not one he names aloud.
The man who tries too hard
Yul-Ho believes the gift was literal, that Ye-Jin truly wrote fire and lifted the strength of those near him, and the belief drives everything he does. He wants to stand where the founder stood. He cannot, so he reaches for the nearest thing in his grasp, which is rigor. He has laid his own strictures on top of the Ogye, holds recruits to a standard the founder never set, and reads the code harder than it was written. He is not cruel for the pleasure of it. He is a man trying to earn a name by being more correct than anyone who came before him.
The harm he does
Small in scale, real in effect. Recruits break under a discipline pitched well past what the path needs. The Hwa’s mercy was always thin, and in his hands it is thinner. The offered duel is emptiest with him of anyone, because he is among the finest blades in Seonhwa and offers it anyway, certain the whole time that he is being honorable. He cannot see the farce because he has built his life on the belief that the form is the substance.
Among the council and the Guardians
Grandmaster Tae-Sung’s discipline he admires, though Tae-Sung finds his striving a little airless. First Shield Beom-Seok he grates against constantly. The recurring Hwa and Guardian scraps, a citation refused, a yard, blows traded, no fault admitted, have more than once had Yul-Ho at the center of them. He believes he is upholding the order of things. Beom-Seok believes he is a man playing at judge.
What he wants
To prove the scrolls true, or failing that, to be the Hwa who comes nearest. He does not know that the proof he is chasing waits at the far end of the path, in the mark and the pillar shard, and that the one who reaches it first may not be him. If a younger Hwa wakes the old power before he does, it will be the making of the order and the breaking of the man.
See also
- Hwarang (Hwa)
- First Master Ye-Jin (The Brushhand)
- The Yedang
- Transcendence (Beyond Level 99)
- Grandmaster Tae-Sung
- First Shield Beom-Seok
- The Council of Seonhwa
- Maggi
Source: owner direction establishing the modern Hwa leader who tries too hard, enforces a stricter code, believes the legend, and does small-scale harm. Newly developed canon, building on the Hwarang subpath in the original ETK lore bible (retired).