I've been giving this some thought as I'm contemplating having my character train as a ninja or samurai, undecided.
My interpretation is a bit like you suggested; the handsigns are a sort of shortcut of their own. It's like a sensory aid that helps them remember how to channel the correct energy they need in a particular way, quickly and silently, rather than having to stand still and focus.
The way I think of it is that it's a sort of association game. Ninjas probably train or learn to call on the particular type of energy, e.g Earth, Man or Heaven, but learn to do it so that whenever they perform a certain sign, the calling of that energy becomes like a second-nature reaction.Â
The meanings of those mudras might be quite literal, too. They might genuinely be bending their own aether if they use Jin, of that of the ground or world around them if they use Chi.Â
It's not worth thinking about overly heavily since trying to wrap your head around a fundamentally supernatural, illogical thing like this is just asking for a headache, so I wouldn't think it's too smart an idea to try and break it down too much more.
As for additional techniques, I'm a fan of creative liberty - but here it'd be limited. The amount of techniques ninjas can do is more than what players can perform, we know that because of what we've seen in quests and such. But there's only three three mudras that most ninjas are aware of, and so there's a finite way to combine them and it's already clear which each sequence can do. So either other ninja techniques don't always rely on mudras, or there's simply more to mudras than we know concerning techniques and such.
My interpretation is a bit like you suggested; the handsigns are a sort of shortcut of their own. It's like a sensory aid that helps them remember how to channel the correct energy they need in a particular way, quickly and silently, rather than having to stand still and focus.
The way I think of it is that it's a sort of association game. Ninjas probably train or learn to call on the particular type of energy, e.g Earth, Man or Heaven, but learn to do it so that whenever they perform a certain sign, the calling of that energy becomes like a second-nature reaction.Â
The meanings of those mudras might be quite literal, too. They might genuinely be bending their own aether if they use Jin, of that of the ground or world around them if they use Chi.Â
It's not worth thinking about overly heavily since trying to wrap your head around a fundamentally supernatural, illogical thing like this is just asking for a headache, so I wouldn't think it's too smart an idea to try and break it down too much more.
As for additional techniques, I'm a fan of creative liberty - but here it'd be limited. The amount of techniques ninjas can do is more than what players can perform, we know that because of what we've seen in quests and such. But there's only three three mudras that most ninjas are aware of, and so there's a finite way to combine them and it's already clear which each sequence can do. So either other ninja techniques don't always rely on mudras, or there's simply more to mudras than we know concerning techniques and such.
