What Lo Bu, known as the Boy Too Bold By Half, would have worn, image from the Curse of th

What Lo Bu, known as the Boy Too Bold By Half, would have worn, image from the Curse of the Golden Flower

When he ascended to the throne of Yi Ti, the nomadic Jogos Nhai had become bolder and more rapacious, causing the young emperor to seek to exterminate them. He assembled a host said to be three hundred thousand strong and swept the plains with it, leaving a burning wasteland behind, unswayed by tributes, hostages, oaths of fealty or offerings of peace.

When the Jogos Nhai resorted to their traditional tactic of melting away before an army, Lo Bu divided his host into thirteen smaller and sent them to hunt down the nomads. History tells one million of Jogos Nhai perished at their hands. Thus, the rival clans of zorse-riders united and raised up a jhattar, Zhea. Though Lo Bu was courageous and skilled at arms like no other, he was not as cunning as Zhea, who in two years isolated and destroyed each of Lo Bu’s armies one by one, slaying scouts and foragers, starving them, denying them water, or leading them into wastelands and traps. Finally her riders fell upon Lo Bu’s own army and slaughtered it, the young emperor included, ending the line of the Scarlet Emperors. When Lo Bu’s severed head was presented to her, Zhea commanded that the flesh be stripped from the bone and the skull dippsed in gold and made into a drinking cup. Since that day, every jhattar has drunk fermented zorse milk from the gilded skull of Lo Bu, who is remembered as the Boy Too Bold By Half.