A round peg in a square hole, forcing herself to fit with pure willpower and every ounce of her strength, nothing held back. There is a constant tension between how Virara thinks and feels, and how her style is supposed to function, to say nothing of her race and its innate weakness of reach. When thinking of how she fights, I tried to imagine the legendary (heavily embellished) combination of Bajiquan and Piguaquan, which was described in a saying "When pigua is added to baji, gods and demons will all be terrified. When baji is added to pigua, heroes will sigh knowing they are no match against it." I derived a lot of the mindset from aggressive styles like Jigen-ryu kenjutsu and Okinawan karate. Since this is a fantasy setting, a mundane martial art made no sense, so I tried to spruce things up with a bit of mystery, and from Wuxia novels like the Condor Heroes trilogy I drew the supernatural element.
I meant to make a tab on my wiki describing the background and techniques of the style for interested parties and also for my own reference, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, so here's the abridged version.
When she was a feral child, Virara was an opportunist who beat down the weak and defenseless when she could to steal food or seize shelter for herself. She avoided large monsters and slaughtered small wild animals with her uncanny strength that developed several years into her life stranded on the island, or perhaps lay dormant within her from beyond the murkiness of early childhood and her brush with drowning on the high seas. On her island, she was more akin to a wild animal than a sentient creature and didn't have awareness of herself other than a sense of self-preservation, so she never held back and often maimed or crippled the people she struck. Eventually this made every refugee camp on the atoll wary of her, and she could no longer find food easily. She had to become more subtle, more tricky, but her innate hunger and straightforwardness got in the way of this necessity and she was eventually caught trying to pickpocket the woman who would become her Master.
Years later, after countless days of abuse and training, almost all of that feral instinct was focused into a compressed furnace of fighting instinct within her, meant to be controlled, a domestication. Even now though, the focus necessary to use such a complex style eludes her, and she uses the memorized techniques with exacting detail, but never actually follows the theoretical ethos of the martial arts. Her style is meant to either sneak attack or respond to an aggressor, not necessarily to initiate open combat, but Virara's viciousness leads her to often strike first. Virara misunderstands the concept of "ichigeki hissatsu," or "one strike, one kill," which doesn't actually necessarily mean kill in a single hit, though the style does do that often enough, but rather to make every strike count; to be capable of transitioning to a decisive blow with every move. Instead the attitude of "I have to finish this immediately or I failed" makes her hasty and sometimes careless. In what should be cold hands that kill without thought or sentiment there is a ferocious thirst that renders her fighting impure and heterodox. She understands how to replicate the techniques, but holds herself to them like scripture. This is in spite of being taught that "the novice holds themselves rigidly to learned techniques, the initiate modifies or abandons them when they don't serve their purpose, and the master manipulates the opponent into receiving them in their purest form."
It seems like, on a certain level, her Master expected that, and wanted to harness it, or otherwise felt it was inherent within Virara. It's like being allowed to roam free for years and then suddenly being cooped up in a tiny cage for an equal amount of time. As a naturally talented sort, Master was unaccustomed to training others and an indifferent mentor. There was a strong general theme of "master this technique I demonstrated once or die tomorrow when I test you," to basically everything. The conditioning itself was more akin to torture, and it is questionable whether some methods were simply done to amuse Master rather than actually benefit Virara, though they all ultimately made her strong. This attitude bled over into the way she regards other tasks in life. Virara throws all that she is into mastering something she takes seriously, at the expense of her ability to perform other or even related tasks. Sometimes that overeager desire to conquer ruins her ability to perform what she was tasked with, despite her best efforts.
That being said, her training is all that she is, and an amateur, or even a dutiful student, cannot begin to comprehend the severity of the ordeals Master put her through, and so Virara's will to endure and emerge alive is gargantuan. Most martial artists had a life outside of the dojo that granted them succor, even if that was fleeting, or if their day to day existence was similarly brutish. Virara's sense of personhood was innately tied to the art of killing itself, and there was nothing outside of the longhouse, the grove, or the later houseboat, when she was being taught. Although not a very tricky person herself, Virara has been taught to use misdirection and optical illusion unconsciously through muscle memory within the techniques to make her strikes harder to avoid or guard. She is able to shut out pain and suffer injury to land a hit if she needs to, though her small body can't resist forever no matter how strong she might be.
It'd be yet another stupidly long post for me to describe the more nuanced details of the style proper and why they clash with Virara's personality, but it's helpful to think of it as being akin to a cannon, or shotgun, while the Fist of Rhalgr is something like a machine gun. Being a relatively unknown style, those in the know believe there is a common ancestor from centuries ago, but it seems to be insubstantial rumors. Meant for assassination, it prioritizes offense above all else, and even its guards are intended to be capable of inflicting fatal wounds. Yet surprisingly it stresses defense when the initiative cannot be seized decisively. It supposedly doesn't incorporate any Aetheric training, which renders it an impractical style for a world in which people must face the scourge of monsters and magic. It may also be that there were what Virara calls "internal techniques," but her Master was so monstrously talented she had no need to learn them, and thus couldn't confer the knowledge to her "student." (More an amusing toy.) The staggering number of techniques the style contains, derived from two main styles fused together and a number of secondary styles, make memorization impossible for most, and encourages rigidity of thinking. It's easy to fall into a habit of assigning specialized techniques learned to specific situations, which is ludicrous given the sheer amount of variables involved in combat.
So on paper, it is an impractical style with no Aetheric ability, inferior to weapons-based martial arts and only mechanically equitable to other famous bare-handed schools. It could be useful, if fully trained, but what point would there be in that when the same amount of effort could teach five students how to wield a lance properly? Only its ability to kill in a single blow through circulatory shock is impressive. Yet the rumors about the woman who trained Virara, known largely only within espionage circles in Doma and the Empire, speak of assassinations done in plain view without anyone even seeing the practitioner, skin able to resist blade and fist alike with the hardness of ceremite, hands that rend bodies like wisps of smoke, and even the ability to murder with a glance. Embellishments, most certainly. Right?
I meant to make a tab on my wiki describing the background and techniques of the style for interested parties and also for my own reference, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, so here's the abridged version.
When she was a feral child, Virara was an opportunist who beat down the weak and defenseless when she could to steal food or seize shelter for herself. She avoided large monsters and slaughtered small wild animals with her uncanny strength that developed several years into her life stranded on the island, or perhaps lay dormant within her from beyond the murkiness of early childhood and her brush with drowning on the high seas. On her island, she was more akin to a wild animal than a sentient creature and didn't have awareness of herself other than a sense of self-preservation, so she never held back and often maimed or crippled the people she struck. Eventually this made every refugee camp on the atoll wary of her, and she could no longer find food easily. She had to become more subtle, more tricky, but her innate hunger and straightforwardness got in the way of this necessity and she was eventually caught trying to pickpocket the woman who would become her Master.
Years later, after countless days of abuse and training, almost all of that feral instinct was focused into a compressed furnace of fighting instinct within her, meant to be controlled, a domestication. Even now though, the focus necessary to use such a complex style eludes her, and she uses the memorized techniques with exacting detail, but never actually follows the theoretical ethos of the martial arts. Her style is meant to either sneak attack or respond to an aggressor, not necessarily to initiate open combat, but Virara's viciousness leads her to often strike first. Virara misunderstands the concept of "ichigeki hissatsu," or "one strike, one kill," which doesn't actually necessarily mean kill in a single hit, though the style does do that often enough, but rather to make every strike count; to be capable of transitioning to a decisive blow with every move. Instead the attitude of "I have to finish this immediately or I failed" makes her hasty and sometimes careless. In what should be cold hands that kill without thought or sentiment there is a ferocious thirst that renders her fighting impure and heterodox. She understands how to replicate the techniques, but holds herself to them like scripture. This is in spite of being taught that "the novice holds themselves rigidly to learned techniques, the initiate modifies or abandons them when they don't serve their purpose, and the master manipulates the opponent into receiving them in their purest form."
It seems like, on a certain level, her Master expected that, and wanted to harness it, or otherwise felt it was inherent within Virara. It's like being allowed to roam free for years and then suddenly being cooped up in a tiny cage for an equal amount of time. As a naturally talented sort, Master was unaccustomed to training others and an indifferent mentor. There was a strong general theme of "master this technique I demonstrated once or die tomorrow when I test you," to basically everything. The conditioning itself was more akin to torture, and it is questionable whether some methods were simply done to amuse Master rather than actually benefit Virara, though they all ultimately made her strong. This attitude bled over into the way she regards other tasks in life. Virara throws all that she is into mastering something she takes seriously, at the expense of her ability to perform other or even related tasks. Sometimes that overeager desire to conquer ruins her ability to perform what she was tasked with, despite her best efforts.
That being said, her training is all that she is, and an amateur, or even a dutiful student, cannot begin to comprehend the severity of the ordeals Master put her through, and so Virara's will to endure and emerge alive is gargantuan. Most martial artists had a life outside of the dojo that granted them succor, even if that was fleeting, or if their day to day existence was similarly brutish. Virara's sense of personhood was innately tied to the art of killing itself, and there was nothing outside of the longhouse, the grove, or the later houseboat, when she was being taught. Although not a very tricky person herself, Virara has been taught to use misdirection and optical illusion unconsciously through muscle memory within the techniques to make her strikes harder to avoid or guard. She is able to shut out pain and suffer injury to land a hit if she needs to, though her small body can't resist forever no matter how strong she might be.
It'd be yet another stupidly long post for me to describe the more nuanced details of the style proper and why they clash with Virara's personality, but it's helpful to think of it as being akin to a cannon, or shotgun, while the Fist of Rhalgr is something like a machine gun. Being a relatively unknown style, those in the know believe there is a common ancestor from centuries ago, but it seems to be insubstantial rumors. Meant for assassination, it prioritizes offense above all else, and even its guards are intended to be capable of inflicting fatal wounds. Yet surprisingly it stresses defense when the initiative cannot be seized decisively. It supposedly doesn't incorporate any Aetheric training, which renders it an impractical style for a world in which people must face the scourge of monsters and magic. It may also be that there were what Virara calls "internal techniques," but her Master was so monstrously talented she had no need to learn them, and thus couldn't confer the knowledge to her "student." (More an amusing toy.) The staggering number of techniques the style contains, derived from two main styles fused together and a number of secondary styles, make memorization impossible for most, and encourages rigidity of thinking. It's easy to fall into a habit of assigning specialized techniques learned to specific situations, which is ludicrous given the sheer amount of variables involved in combat.
So on paper, it is an impractical style with no Aetheric ability, inferior to weapons-based martial arts and only mechanically equitable to other famous bare-handed schools. It could be useful, if fully trained, but what point would there be in that when the same amount of effort could teach five students how to wield a lance properly? Only its ability to kill in a single blow through circulatory shock is impressive. Yet the rumors about the woman who trained Virara, known largely only within espionage circles in Doma and the Empire, speak of assassinations done in plain view without anyone even seeing the practitioner, skin able to resist blade and fist alike with the hardness of ceremite, hands that rend bodies like wisps of smoke, and even the ability to murder with a glance. Embellishments, most certainly. Right?
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AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.