Hwa Ling

This is a Character Illustration for the "Serenity Role Playing Game", published by Margaret Weis Productions. The RPG is derived from Joss Whedon's movie "Serenity", based on the TV Series "Firefly". This character is one of the crew from the ship "Aces and Eights", a cast of characters created for the book. Hwa Ling is body guard to ship owner, Jack Leland, painted in oils on gesso board in 2005.

Character Decription from the Serenity RPG:

Hwa Ling was born to violence as Jack was born to poker. Her father and mother were both members of the 14K Triad, a Chinese "Tong" that has been around since 17th century China on Earth-That-Was. Her brother was killed in a gang fight and Hwa Ling might well have met the same fate but that she was, oddly enough, saved by the draft board.

When the Unification War started, the Alliance was forced to draft young men and women into the military. The twenty-year-old Hwa Ling was called up. Taking note of her exceptional skills as a martial artist, the military sent her to cammando training. Hwa Ling participated in numerous secret and dangerous missions during the war.

After the war ended, Hwa Ling was planning on making the military her career when she received word from her mother that her father had been brutally tortured and killed by a rival Tong. Hwa Ling took leave to attend to "family matters". She and her mother avenged her father's death, with the result that both were arrested for murder. Nothing could be proven against them, for no one dared come forward to testify. She was freed, but the military didn't like the scandal and handed her discharge papers.

Hwa Ling went to work as a security guard for one of the large casinos on Osiris and this was where she met Jack Leland. He admired her martial abilities, but what particularly caught his notice was her professional demeanor, her aloof detachment.