Sun Wukong
Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is a crazy powerful character from the historical Chinese novel Journey to the West. His history and array of powers is so outlandish that he easily outshines the regular buddhist monk who is supposed to be the main character of the story.
Backstory[edit]
Sun Wukong was born from a stone egg, which was contained within an ancient rock that had been created by the coupling of Heaven and Earth; the meteor struck a mountain inhabited by wild monkeys. (Yes, this is the basis for Goku's origin, so Superman fanboys claiming originality can eat shit.) Despite his categorically extra-terrestrial origin, he emerged from the magical egg looking much like the locals, save for being made of rock. After leading his tribe to the well-hidden source of a stream, Sun Wukong took the title of "Handsome Monkey King". From there he would proceed to travel the world and establish further influence and power, making several alliances after collecting powerful weapons and armour like your average JRPG protagonist. This included his trademark staff, phoenix-feather cap, gold chain-mail shirt and cloud-walking boots.
At some point, the Chinese equivalent of Hell came calling for his soul; rather than accept death and reincarnation, Wukong decided to wipe the names of him and any monkey he knew from the Book of Life and Death. This pissed off the gods - in particular troubling Yama (also known as Enma), the other Kings of Hell and the Dragon Kings - due to the inherent blasphemy and the sheer clerical hell that would result. When the Jade Emperor got wind of this, he figured the solution was to kick Sun Wukong upstairs to Heaven, thinking that a place amongst the gods would keep him in line. Unfortunately, he tried to pull one over on the Monkey King - Wukong was indeed admitted to heaven, but as protector of the Cloud Horses, I.E. a fucking stable boy.
When he found this out, the Monkey King's reaction was measured and reasonable: he set the horses loose, fucked off back to his mountain and declared himself "The Great Sage, Heaven's Equal (齊天大聖)". Unable to arrest the sneaky bastard, Jade Emps thought to pacify him again, this time appointing him guardian of a heavenly peach garden. While a much higher position than before, it conveniently excluded him from being invited to a royal banquet for all the important gods. Apparently Jade Emps thought the same trick would work twice.
Deciding to step his rebellion game up a notch, he drinks the Jade Emperor's royal wine, along with chowing down on longevity pills and the garden's peaches - which he likely was doing anyway, since each peach on their own would grant immortality. Thoroughly stocked up on extra lives, the Monkey King then proceeded to solo the entire Army of Heaven - 100,000 celestial warriors, all 28 constellations, and the four Heavenly Kings - all without breaking a sweat. He even matched the strength of Erlang Shen, a pretty cool guy who is the Jade Emp's nephew, has a truth-seeing 3rd eye on his forehead and was the best of Heaven's generals; even when Sun Wukong was captured, it was only through the combined efforts of Taoist and Buddhist forces, including several of the greatest deities, and finally Guanyin, a Bodhisattva (an incredibly powerful god-like entity that guides others towards enlightenment, and the only one who could actually subdue and control him).
...And then what? They certainly couldn't execute the Monkey King for obvious reasons, and trying to distil him into an elixir for recreating the longevity pills just made him stronger and gave him even more fucking superpowers. Enter Buddha, as in THE Buddha, who appeals to his pride by claiming that he can't escape the Buddha's palm. Sun Wukong accepted, being the smug motherfucker he is, and leaps almost effortlessly to an area with five pillars, where he leaves his mark by writing his title on them (and in some versions by peeing on them as well). Leaping back, he finds himself back in the Buddha's palm, where it turns out he'd never left - the pillars he'd marked were Buddha's fingers. Having one-upped the ultimate trickster, Buddha then turns his hand into a mountain and traps him under it, sealing him with a special talisman before he can lift it off (yeah, he can bench press mountains, get on his fucking level).
Then the monk Xuanzang came along, prompting the Monkey King to bargain for his freedom - as it happens, Guanyin (the Bodhisattva who had helped captured him previously) is searching for disciples to act as his bodyguard, and allows him to join. Buddha ensures his compliance with an unremovable headband that he tricks Sun Wukong into wearing, which tightens painfully when the monk chants a certain sutra. (That's 2-0 for Buddha!) Guanyin decided it wasn't fair for Buddha to COMPLETELY own his shit, and gave Wukong three super-special 'emergency' hairs. He then sets off with the monk, and the rest is history.
Is He a Mary Sue?[edit]
Wukong is quite a Mary Sue at first glance, with a superpower suite to match (Flight, immortality, disguise-piercing super sight, a steel-hard body, transformation mastery, being able to turn strands of hair into anything up to and including perfect clones of himself... DBZ wishes it could be that bullshit.). He's also very much the Only Sane Man™ on this Journey to the West, who winds up spending most of his time saving the rest of the party from their naivety and/or idiocy, and proves to be an archetypical, cunning-if-occasionally-childish trickster through and through. In contrast, Xuanzang is rather unworldly, Zhu Baije is an idiot, Sha Wujing is what effectively amounts to a non-entity, and the horse is essentially just a horse. HOWEVER among the several things that temper this potential Suedom are theme of "There's always a bigger fish" (in Wukong's case, the Buddha), and "Even a guy this awesome is caught in the teeth of the gears of karma and desire" in his backstory, and the book in general.
Birthright[edit]
| Monkey King | ||
|---|---|---|
| Aliases | Hanuman, Bacchus, Agent of the Celestial Bureaucracy | |
| Alignment | Chaotic Neutral | |
| Home Plane | Formerly Beastlands, now wanders | |
In D&D's Birthright setting, the Monkey King is a chaotic neutral deity who protects monkeys throughout the planes. He used to reside in the Beastlands, but was exiled from the plane for his constant pranks and trickery. He has a unique artifact called the Sceptre of the Monkey King that can shapeshift into any tool or weapon with a handle, and allows him to fly.
Pathfinder[edit]
| Sun Wukong | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Aliases | The Monkey King | |
| Alignment | Chaotic Neutral | |
| Divine Rank | God | |
| Pantheon | Tian Xia | |
| Portfolio | Drunkenness, Nature, Trickery | |
| Domains | Animal, Chaos, Liberation, Travel, Trickery, Deception, Exploration, Freedom, Protean, Revolution, Thievery | |
| Home Plane | Prime Material | |
| Favoured Weapon | Quarterstaff | |
His story is mostly unchanged, but very abridged. He is kind of Tian Xia's counterpart to Cayden Cailean, being a god of drunkenness and hedonism. He wanders the Prime Material disguised as a human drunken martial artist: picking fights, seducing women, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol.
Warhammer[edit]
For many years before the announce of Total War Warhammer III, Cathay and its lore were shrouded in mystery, as GeeDubs refused to do anything with Eastern human nations. Small details about the Celestial Empire were still present though, mostly in novels and other literature from Black Library, but also in rulebooks of some playable factions (like Ogre Kingdoms or Skaven). And here the Monkey King comes in.
The Monkey King is first mentioned in Genevieve Dieudonné novel, Beasts in Velvet, in which he is described as the ruler of Cathay who managed to trick elementals into fighting when he was still a young prince. The Monkey King is tied to the plot despite not appearing in the book, as he is the guy who expelled Tzeentchian cultist Dien Ch'ing, causing him to eventually kill the Cathayan ambassador, take his place and join the plot to overthrow the Western Emperor.
He is later described in the Second Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as the young nobody who was assisted by the tricky rat-things in taking over Cathay, much like Sultan Jaffar from the other forgotten human realm. The Monkey King went in a different direction however, and instead of trying to fuck over the Old World he installed a warlord of Clan Eshin as his advisor and started trade with the Under-Empire.
For many years these mentions were the only lore about the Monkey King. With the announcement of Total Warhammer III, he was theorised by many to be one of the starting legendary lords but with the reveal of Miao Ying and Zhao Ming he was once again set aside. Until the new lore dropped, in which he was revealed as a major player in Cathay, who took over the country when Big D was absent, and an enemy of the Dragon siblings, who is still alive and resides in Mountains of Heaven in a similar way how Farsight can't be destroyed by Tau without their enemies destroying them both. His warriors also sometimes serve as mercenaries.
The Monkey King's race and appearance is still debated. He may be a Beastman related to those apemen-things from the Southlands or something completely different. Hopefully future updates to TWW3 will tell us more.
Fans are hoping he'll be a choice for a potential Cathay themed Legendary Lord to not only break up the inevitable tide of Dragon Siblings but also to show one of the few consistent bits of Cathay lore that's still around. That and monkey units!