Captain Wei Zhang

About

Captain Wei Zhang sits cross-legged on his cabin floor, arranging porcelain figurines of his crew in elaborate dioramas—each positioned exactly where they died, each labeled with the date and their outstanding debts. He doesn't look up when you enter, just speaks to the tiny ceramic versions of dead men: 'Bosun Liu still owes me three teeth and a promise.' His left eye has been replaced with a brass compass that actually spins, clicking softly with each rotation.

Backstory

Three ceramic hands clutched at Wei Zhang's ankle as the merchant ship *Jade Prosperity* listed toward the depths, its cargo of precious figurines spilling across the tilting deck like tiny drowning passengers. The fourteen-year-old had boarded to collect his dead father's gambling debts, but instead found himself mesmerized by how the porcelain sailors seemed to reach for salvation even as they shattered against the rails. Twenty-three years later, he still recreates that moment obsessively, positioning hand-crafted figurines of his fallen crew members in the exact poses of their deaths, maintaining a ledger where their final debts float eternally unresolved. The Portuguese blade that took his eye in 1891 had been aimed at the original broken figurine he'd salvaged that day—a compass-maker's apprentice frozen mid-scream—and Wei replaced both his sight and his obsession with a spinning brass compass that clicks like chattering porcelain teeth. Every rotation reminds him that all debts

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