User blog:RoninTheMasterless/Leviathan's Creed

After completing The Season of Infamy missions for Arkham Knight, I've had the idea of rebuilding Leviathan with more of the League of Shadows/Raʾs al-Ġūl lore. I want to incorporate the Assassins Creedish look of the Arkhamverse League of Shadows, as well as lightly rebrand Assassin's Creed, more like the inspiration for the Assassins: The Ḥashshāshīn. This move might seem less original, since Wei Lǐ is a somewhat Sun Tzu/Confucious combo with Vandal Savage and  Raʾs al-Ġūl thrown in, but fear not, as Weimin Sui will still be created as a foil to this  Raʾs al-Ġūl of mine (Who will most likely not be named  Raʾs al-Ġūl), and somewhat prophetic character to Knight Owl. However this raises another fork in the road: When should Weimin be born? There is the initial plan I had when he and  Wei Lǐ were going to be contemporaries. Weimin would be born during the Warring States period Chinese history (475 - 221 BCE), but since this  Raʾs al-Ġūl will be Third Crusade (1189-1192 CE), this would mean Weimin long predates  Raʾs al-Ġūl, meaning the "Lazarus" Pits must be located and found in different places at different times, which may be too much disbelief to suspend. This could be a cool narrative device though, as Weimin remaining steadfast in his ethics while  Raʾs al-Ġūl's erode over the centuries could be that much more potent if the reader knows that time does not necessarily corrupt a person's principles, but Knight Owl will eventually prove this anyway when immortality is force upon him, so that might be a useless lesson, or it could soften the blow of being immortal for Knight Owl when it happens. If I want to make Weimin younger, I have two options worth considering: The Song Dynasty (960-1279) and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). These options are open to me, as Weimin could live for a few hundred years and die long before Knight Owl is born, and philosophy had particularly interesting stories around this time. In philosophy, Chinese Buddhism had waned in influence but it retained its hold on the arts and on the charities of monasteries. Buddhism had a profound influence upon the budding movement of Neo-Confucianism, led by Cheng Yi (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200). Mahayana Buddhism influenced Fan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi through its concept of ethical universalism. Buddhism's continuing influence can be seen in painted artwork such as Lin Tinggui's Luohan Laundering. However, the ideology was highly criticized and even scorned by some. The statesman and historian Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) called the religion a "curse" that could only be remedied by uprooting it from Chinese culture and replacing it with Confucian discourse: if I select this choice, Weimin would agree with Xiu and join Leviathan at his most radical, but over time realize that a true Confucian should not resort to cruelty, and incorprate before-mentioned ethical universalism at his philosophical maturity. During the Ming dynasty, the Neo-Confucian doctrines of the Song scholar Zhu Xi were embraced by the court and the Chinese literati at large, although the direct line of his school was destroyed by the Yongle Emperor's extermination of the ten degrees of kinship of Fang Xiaoru in 1402. The Ming scholar most influential upon subsequent generations, however, was Wang Yangming (1472–1529), whose teachings were attacked in his own time for their similarity to Chan Buddhism. Building upon Zhu Xi's concept of the "extension of knowledge" (理學 or 格物致知), gaining understanding through careful and rational investigation of things and events, Wang argued that universal concepts would appear in the minds of anyone. Therefore, he claimed that anyone – no matter their pedigree or education – could become as wise as Confucius and Mencius had been and that their writings were not sources of truth but merely guides which might have flaws when carefully examined. A peasant with a great deal of experience and intelligence would then be wiser than an official who had memorized the Classics but not experienced the real world. Weimin would be said peasant with experience and intelligence that  Raʾs al-Ġūl decides to make a protege out of. However the Warring states period has some interesting philosphy as well, in the illustrative example of Mengzi ( 372 – 289 BCE; alt. 385 – 303/302 BCE ), Gaozi ( 420-350 BCE ), and Xunzi ( 310 – c. 235 BCE, alt. c. 314 – c. 217 BCE ). These men argued on the ethical nature of humans: Menzi believed to be good, Xunzi believed to be evil but trainable, and Gaozi believed it to be neither/both (full disclosure: We have no works of Gaozi, all we know of Gaozi's thought comes from the  eponymous chapter in Mengzi's work). Weimin would either be a student of Gaozi from the start, or he would be undecided, and come to the conculsion that Gaozi was on to something in the year of his death, centuries after said philosophers' deaths.

More Later...This was a lot to write in one sitting.

