Yeah, and her training in it is like a good 75% of her backstory, lol. She learned it from a really dreadful person. There's just so much I want to share and yet so little I can do with it yet!
I just can't help but run my fingers when this topic comes up because it's just a lot of fun to me.
It is an interesting question because we know so little about how fist fighting and unarmed combat developed. Because I felt I couldn't tell the kind of story I wanted using the in-game pugilists' guild, nor with the Fists of Rhalgr, I created a non-canon style by coloring outside of the boundaries of what is examined within game. I felt this was okay to do as it is inconceivable there are only two fist fighting styles in the entire world. Beating things with your hands and feet is the most rudimentary form of combat, and the oldest.Â
For the motions and aesthetic resemblance of the style, I focused largely on Bajiquan and Xingyiquan. The reasoning for this is that the less showy kung-fu focuses largely on punches and attacks with the upper body, which I felt was easier for a person at a severe height disadvantage. They draw strength from spinal compression and strong stomach muscles, and most of a Lalafell's mass is around their stomach. To me striving for realism in this game, rather than simply verisimilitude, is self-defeating. Still, I found it easier to reconcile in my head this way. I felt it made some degree of sense for a Lalafell to have strong leg and stomach muscle, because of where their mass is, and how high we can jump in game... :DÂ
Philosophically, I drew some from the idea of Jigenryu, wherein the practitioner is encouraged to focus entirely on perfecting a single blow to kill infallibly without regard for defense or your health. I chose this because it perfectly fits the reasoning of desperate, outmatched people who are falling before a superior enemy, like how it seems the Domans were vs the Garleans.Â
Training your body to be a weapon when you can just pick up a weapon or wield powerful magic is an inherently paradoxical choice, so I wanted to think about what kind of person would deliberately do this on Hydaelyn. Rather than wield the style, I figure it's more like a transformation. You empty your sense of self and surrender all your body's processes to muscle memory. It might be something akin to the old idea of action without thought, Mushin? It should be something terrible and dreaded by other RPers who care about what happens to her. I considered "If you empty yourself entirely and something else comes in, who remains?" It seems like a remarkably convenient way to disassociate yourself from horrible violence. Or become a soulless drone through which a singular talent is expressed, with no purpose other than to continue strengthening it. That might be important to my RP in this game, I don't know... lol
I have to make concessions for the fantasy setting though. Obviously the sorts of stuff Virara can do is impossible for someone so small. Beyond crushing things she shouldn't be able to crush and moving faster than she should be able to cover on those stubby legs, I haven't done too many exotic things in game with her writing wise. It's a far cry from the the Toad Style and Nine Yin White Bone Claw sort of ridiculousness I'm used to from wuxia. It definitely is no mundane external martial art, that much I can say.
I also wanted to sharply draw a contrast between the existing pugilism and my style. Continuous vs sudden movement. Many blows vs one or two. Action vs reaction. It serves a storytelling purpose to me because the characteristics of the style have a lot to do with NPCs involved in my character's background, and will ultimately serve to hint at the basic idea I had behind making Virara.
The basic gist of it was, as a fan of Wuxia and fighting games, I understood intuitively what I wanted to take for fantasy martial arts. The low level stuff, the kind of day to day fighting I wanted my character to exhibit at the baseline and grow from, had to be drawn from cinematic portrayals of real martial arts as well as the actual styles themselves. NPCs could be crazy enough to give martial artists from a Jin Yong novel a run for their money, but Virara has to be more restrained because she's the face I show in day to day interactions with other RPers and it is important to me to be flexible enough to scale up or down to the level of realism expected in a given scene by any given group of players.
Spoiler for length
I just can't help but run my fingers when this topic comes up because it's just a lot of fun to me.
It is an interesting question because we know so little about how fist fighting and unarmed combat developed. Because I felt I couldn't tell the kind of story I wanted using the in-game pugilists' guild, nor with the Fists of Rhalgr, I created a non-canon style by coloring outside of the boundaries of what is examined within game. I felt this was okay to do as it is inconceivable there are only two fist fighting styles in the entire world. Beating things with your hands and feet is the most rudimentary form of combat, and the oldest.Â
For the motions and aesthetic resemblance of the style, I focused largely on Bajiquan and Xingyiquan. The reasoning for this is that the less showy kung-fu focuses largely on punches and attacks with the upper body, which I felt was easier for a person at a severe height disadvantage. They draw strength from spinal compression and strong stomach muscles, and most of a Lalafell's mass is around their stomach. To me striving for realism in this game, rather than simply verisimilitude, is self-defeating. Still, I found it easier to reconcile in my head this way. I felt it made some degree of sense for a Lalafell to have strong leg and stomach muscle, because of where their mass is, and how high we can jump in game... :DÂ
Philosophically, I drew some from the idea of Jigenryu, wherein the practitioner is encouraged to focus entirely on perfecting a single blow to kill infallibly without regard for defense or your health. I chose this because it perfectly fits the reasoning of desperate, outmatched people who are falling before a superior enemy, like how it seems the Domans were vs the Garleans.Â
Training your body to be a weapon when you can just pick up a weapon or wield powerful magic is an inherently paradoxical choice, so I wanted to think about what kind of person would deliberately do this on Hydaelyn. Rather than wield the style, I figure it's more like a transformation. You empty your sense of self and surrender all your body's processes to muscle memory. It might be something akin to the old idea of action without thought, Mushin? It should be something terrible and dreaded by other RPers who care about what happens to her. I considered "If you empty yourself entirely and something else comes in, who remains?" It seems like a remarkably convenient way to disassociate yourself from horrible violence. Or become a soulless drone through which a singular talent is expressed, with no purpose other than to continue strengthening it. That might be important to my RP in this game, I don't know... lol
I have to make concessions for the fantasy setting though. Obviously the sorts of stuff Virara can do is impossible for someone so small. Beyond crushing things she shouldn't be able to crush and moving faster than she should be able to cover on those stubby legs, I haven't done too many exotic things in game with her writing wise. It's a far cry from the the Toad Style and Nine Yin White Bone Claw sort of ridiculousness I'm used to from wuxia. It definitely is no mundane external martial art, that much I can say.
I also wanted to sharply draw a contrast between the existing pugilism and my style. Continuous vs sudden movement. Many blows vs one or two. Action vs reaction. It serves a storytelling purpose to me because the characteristics of the style have a lot to do with NPCs involved in my character's background, and will ultimately serve to hint at the basic idea I had behind making Virara.
The basic gist of it was, as a fan of Wuxia and fighting games, I understood intuitively what I wanted to take for fantasy martial arts. The low level stuff, the kind of day to day fighting I wanted my character to exhibit at the baseline and grow from, had to be drawn from cinematic portrayals of real martial arts as well as the actual styles themselves. NPCs could be crazy enough to give martial artists from a Jin Yong novel a run for their money, but Virara has to be more restrained because she's the face I show in day to day interactions with other RPers and it is important to me to be flexible enough to scale up or down to the level of realism expected in a given scene by any given group of players.
Spoiler for length
ã€Œè’¼æ°—ç ²ã€ã‚’使ã‚ã–ã‚‹ã‚’å¾—ãªã„!
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
