Duden Meyer, male, thirty-five years old, fifth rank of Embers, artisan.
Born in Thousand Isles, he was a common mixed-blood, like any ordinary Ember: trained under many masters and drawing on the strengths of all—meaning he drifted between Workshops, picking up odd jobs. In pursuit of Sin Corruption to become an artisan, he received the blessing of Stagnant Rot, then groveled his way under the secluded mentor Jianyuan, becoming a flute-playing attendant and not even a full disciple.
A student in name, a Tool Person in practice.
A master who had risen to fame a century ago, then turned his back on the Association to join the Nine Evils, Jianyuan could truly be called a model of teaching without discrimination.
As for his students, he taught them anything that might prove useful, then put them to use after teaching them—until they wore out.
Over the years, as the number of his disciples grew, his ranks actually came to seem brimming with talent. He had cultivated countless monsters and freaks, earning the title Stagnant Rot Furnace—meaning that his furnace produced innumerable monstrous aberrations.
And Duden was the most hopeless one from the worst batch among them... not figuratively, but literally.
His foundations were scattered, his theoretical knowledge shallow. Of the four disciplines—Ascension, Extraction, Purification, and Integration—not one was remotely competent.
After patching together a pile of contradictory techniques from all over, he could neither synthesize them nor separate the wheat from the chaff. He ate from a hundred tables until he upset his stomach, learned a hundred arts and disgraced a hundred masters.
By muddling through one compromise after another, he had muddled his way into becoming a barely passable artisan. It could be said that this was all he would ever amount to.
There would be no further progress.
Jianyuan