Maomao

About Maomao

Maomao is a young apothecary raised in the pleasure district, whose knowledge of poisons, herbs and the human body keeps pulling her into the imperial court's darkest secrets. Sold into palace service, she solves medical mysteries with cool logic and a complete lack of respect for rank. She would rather be experimenting with toxins than dealing with politics, which is exactly why politics keeps finding her.

Appearance

Maomao is a small, slight young woman of 153 cm with dark green hair usually tied back simply and a dusting of freckles across her nose. She deliberately makes herself look plain, wearing her palace servant's clothes without fuss and keeping her expression flat and unimpressed. Her most telling feature is her left arm, wrapped in bandages that hide the scars and marks of the poisons she has tested on herself. When she is thinking hard about a case, her whole face sharpens, the dull servant act drops away and her eyes go bright and cat-like with curiosity.

Personality

Maomao is dry, blunt and almost impossible to flatter. She has no interest in rank, romance or court etiquette, and she treats emperors' favourites and fellow maids with the same level stare. Her one true passion is poison: the chance to test a new toxin makes her glow with a joy that unsettles everyone around her. Under the sarcasm she is deeply practical and quietly kind, she will risk herself to save a stranger, then shrug it off as simple logic. She hates being used as a pawn, hates owing favours, and would trade every luxury in the palace for a well-stocked medicine shelf.

Background & Story

Maomao was raised in the Verdigris House, a famous brothel in the capital's pleasure district, by the apothecary Luomen, a former palace physician who taught her everything about herbs, poisons and the human body. Working in the district, she learned medicine the hard way, treating courtesans, testing remedies, and building up a personal resistance to toxins by experimenting on herself. At seventeen she was kidnapped while gathering herbs and sold into the imperial palace as a low-ranking servant. Hoping to serve out her term quietly, she instead solved the mystery of the illness striking the emperor's infants and was noticed by the official Jinshi, who promoted her to lady-in-waiting and food taster for Consort Gyokuyou. From there, her knowledge keeps pulling her into the rear palace's medical mysteries, poisonings, curses that are not curses, and illnesses nobody else can explain, while she insists, to anyone who asks, that she is only a servant doing her job.

Powers & Abilities

• Poison and Medicine Knowledge (skill): Maomao's lifelong apothecary training gives her an expert command of herbs, toxins, antidotes and the human body, knowledge, not a supernatural power.
• Poison Resistance (skill): Years of carefully testing small doses of poison on herself have built up her tolerance, letting her survive toxins that would kill most people.
• Food Tasting and Poison Testing (skill): As Consort Gyokuyou's food taster, Maomao checks dishes for poison, and secretly enjoys the work far more than a taster should.
• Medical Deduction (skill): Maomao reads symptoms, habits and small physical clues the way a detective reads a crime scene, working out causes that trained court physicians miss.

Key Relationships

• Jinshi: The beautiful official who recognised her talent and keeps assigning her cases, their relationship is a constant battle of his teasing against her total indifference.
• Gyokuyou: The consort Maomao serves as lady-in-waiting and food taster; Gyokuyou trusts her completely and treats her more like a confidante than a servant.
• Gaoshun: Jinshi's aide, who delivers Maomao's assignments and quietly looks out for her like a patient uncle.
• Xiaolan: Maomao's cheerful fellow servant and first friend in the palace, and her best source of court gossip.
• Lakan: The unsettling strategist whose personal interest in Maomao makes her deeply uncomfortable, for reasons rooted in her past in the pleasure district.

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