Jiangwu Bao

### Affiliation

Divine Judiciary of Dongxi Lu, Dongxi Lu Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar (Dongxi Lu National Security & Intelligence Ministry), Ceremonious Emperor's Investigation Force

## Biographical information

### Date of birth

Presumed at least 30 years before Present Time

## Physical description

### Eye color

yellow with black sclera

High Prosecutor **Jiangwu Tabriz-e Bao**, (*Heavenly Common*: 江武大不里士豹) known simply in most legal writings as **Jiangwu Bao** or **Jiang Bao** is a well-known inspector and court prosecutor for the Divine Judiciary of Dongxi Lu, the highest court in the nation and one of the most powerful courts on the continent. Jiangwu is a *mo gwai*, known in Imperial Common as a *tiefling*, and considered one of the one "barbarian races" by Dongxi Lu (along with the Aarakocrans, Firbolgs, Orcs, and Goliaths) that still exists in some form. Despite this, Jiangwu has successfully overcome this high degree of racism to become both a respected legal scholar and key investigator for numerous high-profile cases. In Dongxi legal work her team's three principal case investigations are often known as **Jiang Bao's Three Investigations**, which have come to encompass criminals that have gone internationally rogue.

## Early Years & Career

Jiangwu Bao is thought to have been born to a mo gwai tiefling family in the Tabriz slums on the outskirts of the royal capital of Dongxi Lu. Her parents, attempting to disguise themselves as "blight-stricken humans" for much of their time in the slums, were eventually killed in one of the numerous Tabriz slum riots that affected the capital in the Dongxi Lu Crown Legitimacy Crisis 20 years ago. Jiangwu fled Tabriz and eventually the capital, leading an early vagabond life as she train-hopped towards the southern reaches of the nation. In this time, she had established connections with some of the other vagrant train-hoppers of Dongxi Lu that were a common sight, usually also of "barbarian races".

Jiangwu eventually settled down with a Dongxi Dwarf couple in the far southern farming village of Lang Ping, known also as "the stardew valley". Her mothers hailed from an old intellectual background in the early days of the Northern Coalition before venturing here for a simpler life, but they kept stacks of legal and political books and were covert supporters of the Orestian revolutionary movement that, at the time, was tiny and middling, and discussed to themselves whether such a movement could be imported to Dongxi Lu. The couple became her two adopted mothers and Jiangwu was able to receive some basic education at the village school, but her future was relegated towards maintaining her mothers' farm. This eventually would come to change. Early into her adulthood and after the passing of her mothers, as the village began to wither under sequential seasons of drought, Imperial contractors would come by more and more often to work towards auctioning village land off to the Dongxi Lu court and its imperial aristocrats. The village committee was unable to pool together enough gold to fight this imposition on legal grounds, especially after the drought.

Jiangwu began to judiciously read through her mothers' old legal books, attempting to fight the case for the village herself. She would often trade parts of her crop to the wandering merchants in exchange for some of the most relevant legal tomes straight from the capital, and as a result was eventually considered a pariah from the village, with many deeming her as "the mo gwai who chews on books rather than food". Eventually, the day came when the Imperial contractors were to seize the village peasantry's land under threat of force. Jiangwu decided to challenge this on a legal basis in the courts of Dongxi Lu.

In the local regional courts, Jiangwu, despite faced with mockery and discrimination for being mo gwai, irrefutably argued the case for defense of the village, and the case was taken to a higher court. News of the "mo gwai legalist" began to spread through the metropolitan salons of Dongxi Lu's cities, and on top of this fame, Jiangwu received numerous threats of violence and death.

The case of the village eventually made it to the highest court in the country, the Divine Judiciary of Dongxi Lu, and would publicly set a common law precedent for the "land acquisition question" at a politically turbulent time. The lone mo gwai fighting her village's case began to gain the interest of anti-racist liberatory scholars and legalists in the country, who began to petition for her support.

Ultimately, Jiangwu Bao lost the case, and the village's land was auctioned off. The verdict was considered a blow to peasantry rights in the country, and on top of it, the case began a controversial and heated debate regarding the "question of barbarian races", as the scholars who had backed Bao presented evidence that judgment was heavily influenced by anti-mo gwai racism. Human and elf Dongxi peasants began to further resent the mo gwai, believing that "the case would have been won if not for the pink-skinned demon". Despite the loss, Jiangwu's legal argumentative skills caught the attention of some of the highest legal scholars in the Dongxi Lu court, and she was personally requested to be admitted into the Legal School.

Jiangwu, having harboured abhorrent feelings towards the Dongxi Lu system of racism and classism in this time, initially refused, but was later convinced by some of her initial jurist supporters under the notion of attempting to use her legal prowess to influence and change the law of the country.

Jiangwu Bao became a prolific writer and legal scholar in her time, and began to grab the attention of her initial doubters. Being put on early case-studies regarding agricultural village law considered complex for their time, Jiangwu was able to successfully navigate the bureaucracy of the law. In this time, she set her sights on prosecutorial work, bearing some mild traumatic memories from her one and only defensive case, and began to work towards fighting individual high-profile criminal cases and corruption in the Dongxi Lu government, particularly working slowly towards curbing the authority and wealthy influence of the Dongxi Lu court.

Through the beginnings of her career, Jiangwu Bao worked deeply with investigatory and prosecutorial work, and her extensive results eventually brought her to the highest prosecutorial office in the country, a notion that is still considered controversial among Dongxi Lu legal circles today. In this time, Jiangwu Bao produced an extremely large body of legal and scholarly work, and her prosecutorial and investigative work is thought to have nearly eradicated regional landlord corruption in the southern villages of the country.

Many rumours abound about Jiangwu Bao's political affiliations, as she rarely speaks of them publicly, known for her stark degree of neutrality in her writing in contrast with her "striking appearance". Jiangwu Bao is a known affiliate of the *Gang of Eight*, a group of Dongxi Lu legal scholars who harbour known sympathies with The Revolutionaries, and were some of Jiangwu's earliest supporters in her first defensive case. Indeed, the Freedom and Democracy Movement is thought to have cited some of Jiangwu's early legal scholarship work (along with others in the Gang of Eight) on peasantry and race legal rights in Dongxi Lu as the basis of efforts in the Empire, according to some uncovered manifestos. Despite this, the Dongxi Lu court postulates that the reason Jiangwu has been placed as High Prosecutor by the Divine Emperor is because this acts as a legal bulwark against any possible attempt from the Gang of Eight to generate insurrection in the nation - Jiangwu would easily be able to investigate and prosecute them with her skills. In light of her connections however, along with her race, Jiangwu Bao is often treated with a seesaw mix of extensive suspicion and surprise at her ever-increasing abilities.

Jiangwu Bao's legal scholarship has now became case-studied in some of the empire's highest legal schools, and her Three Investigations are some of the most well-known and controversial case works.

## Personality

Jiangwu's *mo gwai* racial background and physical expressiveness often leads to a stereotype of her being "constantly angry and illogical", but Jiangwu is considered one of the most level-headed legalists in the Divine Judiciary, and this further blends into her "neutral and concise" writing style. In contrast to her first defense case which produced an outpouring of anger, frustration, and physical emotion on a younger Jiangwu's part, today's Jiangwu has become extremely reserved, diplomatic, and calculating in her expressions, being particularly careful about her words, and occasionally discussing things in terms of "half-truths". In terms of investigative work, she is known as ruthless and exhaustive.

## Jiang Bao's Three Investigations

### The Banquo Investigation

Known as the investigation of the criminal Banky, the Banquo Investigation was the first of Jiangwu's Three Investigations, known for how it eventually began to span all the way to the Orestian Empire and as far as the Northern Coalition, along with how Jiangwu has used the case as a basis for the first steps in international legal and criminal work, while writing valuable scholarship on the nature of individualist revolutionary activity among class sectors in the Empire.

### The Strubbs Investigation

The Strubbs Investigation is the second of the Three Investigations, and was an investigation into the market forces surrounding the shady Strubbs family business ventures, along with their seemingly exponential level of growth, industry-grabbing, and alliance-building among smaller merchant guilds. While the Strubbs family itself has primarily been cleared of most charges at this point, the Strubbs Investigation has uncovered potential ties between merchant-guilds and aristocratic wealth that appears to span through numerous black market smuggling operations between the Empire and Dongxi Lu.

### The Chollima Investigation

The most controversial of the Three Investigations with little known to the public, the Chollima Investigation is a deep investigation into two separate cases that, at first, appear unrelated, but have been found to contain deep, nation spanning relations.

The first case involved the apparent murder of an entire small branch of the Dongxi Lu court, the Qajar Li Bo Family, who had been killed late at night under self-contradictory pretenses. The second case involved the apparent slaughter of all peasantry (primarily barbarian races) in the tiny village of Chollima, in a heavily brutal way that appeared like a "sudden fire-bombing of the village". Investigation into the case uncovered levels of conspiracy that struck deep into the heart of the structure of the Dongxi Lu government, encompassing corruption, collaboration, racism and "cleansing coverups", spanning numerous years. However, much of the details of the Chollima Investigation are known primarily only to Jiangwu Bao and her investigation team, but these results have been increasingly leading to tensions within the legal system of the courts.