Agreed, but we can do these things simultaneously, too. Missions don't necessarily follow along a linear path - I'm still finishing some threads from when I wrote as a Padawan, and that was from months ago :P
Posted. You can skip past the part where we go forth and issue your character with equipment, btw - I know some writers find those little details tedious, but it's what our characters would do in this situation, so it's what we must write ;)
Hah, well, that explains a lot, Teynara thought, doing her best to restrain the chuckle that might otherwise have issued from between her lips, provoked at the thought of this young woman being a military brat, as they used to call them. She doesn't seem anything of the sort - neither the...
Sorry to say I could be of no help there whatsoever: my historical knowledge doesn't generally extend to China or Asia in general, beyond Russian Socialism/Communism and the Cold War, so I can't offer anything to you there. Just hope it doesn't prove too difficult for you to work out.
So far, so good. Not been keeping up with the thread? We're only doing a post each per day at the moment, so it's slow, but the writing is good, for all that.