[RPG] The Wings of Hall OOC

[Hollow nyan-chan]

Anyone can contact Halo then?

[InfinityStream]

Someone should.

I think Krozam is the only one that can contact him outside of Doki.

[Krozam]

Nope, I don't know how to contact him outside Doki.

In other news, I should have reliable internet now, so I'll see where we stand now, I haven't really looked in here for a week.

[Krozam]

I'll be starting a new round in a few days. I already have the post almost written, just needs some polishing. Soul has yet to post, that fact somehow eluded my attention, and right now he's busy IRL for the next couple of days, so I'll wait until he posts (hopefully within 3 days). Halo promised to try and post soon. I don't know what's up with semiramiese, I'll ask about that when I get the chance. Hopefully this slump will be over soon and we can get back to normal schedule, where at least one player posts each day.

[tigershark13]

i'm back and should be posting reguarly now

[Krozam]

Here's the ki-text I was working on - not complete, but I ran out of ideas. Figured I should post it before our first battle, ready or not. May be edited later, especially the levels of the higher-level abilities are still tentative.

Ki

Ki is a form of energy constantly flowing in (presumably) all living bodies, human or otherwise. It is a large part of one's life energy, and one cannot normally live long without enough ki, or with the ki flow somehow blocked. If your ki-center (located somewhere between the sternum and navel) is damaged, it will cause various health problems and can be fatal. With training, ki can be controlled and harnessed for use in battle. However, this training is a process that demands patience and time.

The theoretical part of the training includes lessons in regular anatomy, ki paths (the pathways that ki flows in your body) and a number of mental exercises. The mental side of practical part includes meditation, putting those mental exercises into practise, and learning to feel your ki flow (greatly eases control). The physical side of it includes learning to control your body, various muscles you'd normally not be able to control at will, and of course actually using ki in mock battles and various physical exercises. In many cases most of the learning happens through learning some kind of a martial art. The most skilled ki-users in the world can be found in monasteries where martial arts and meditation are daily practises.

All of this takes years, especially if you learn beyond the basic control. I'll list some ki-abilities and give them each a level, which represents how advanced they are generally understood to be. There are no skill paths, learning one ability doesn't close any doors, and neither do the levels mean that you can't jump to a lvl 4 ability right after learning the basic lvl 1 abilities. Few ki-masters ever learn all of the known abilities, and just because you've learned one lvl 2 ability doesn't mean that it won't take you a year or more to learn another lvl 2 ability. As for how long these abilities take to master, I'd say that on average, lvl 1-3 abilities each take a year and a half, lvl 4-6 take 2½ years, lvl 7-8 take 4 years, beyond that it might be 6-10 years for each. You may learn to use the ability passably in half of the time, these times indicate how long it usually takes to fully master the ability. Of course, the more time you dedicate to learning and the more talented you are, the faster you learn. Most ki-users choose to focus on few abilities instead of dabbling in everything, although both ways have their advantages. In practise the line is hazy, but as a guideline I'd say that one is considered a master-level ki-user after mastering at least seven abilities, one of them a lvl 7 or higher - so, that usually means 15-18 years of intensive training.

I've named the abilities, but I'm not going to translate the names. Each name has two words, and the second word sort of divides the abilities to five groups. Here are the key words to each group:
Dou = flow
En = focus
Kata = strong release
Chuu = soft release
Yuu = channel

Lvl 1:
- Teikan Dou: Accelerating your ki-flow, improves your reflexes and endurance.

Lvl 2:
- Ganshuu En: Infusing your muscles with ki, improves your strength, and hardens your flesh somewhat.
- Yok Dou: Accelerating ki-flow locally, enabling - among other things - the sharpening of sight and other senses.

Lvl 3:
- Fuku En: Directing ki into a wounded bodypart and holding it there, reduces/stops bleeding and accelerates healing.
- Jun Kata: Focusing ki into your palms and releasing it in short bursts at the right moment for blocking purposes.

Lvl 4:
- Sou Kata: Gathering ki to your hands or feet and releasing it explosively, enables very powerful strikes and leaps. With good control, this can also be done in a soft way, a palm strike can throw someone back strongly but without causing much direct damage.
- Seisen Chuu: Directing ki through your hands into another living being and controlling it to some extent: ki-healing, mostly.

Lvl 5:
- Attou Kata: Short-range (but ranged nontheless) ki-blasts. Usually not terribly damaging, but convenient for throwing people around.
- Nyou Yuu: Channeling ki through a non-living object, for example a weapon. The higher your skill-level, the more control you have over the channeled ki.
- Eian Chuu: Controlling another's ki-flow through touch (but not very quickly), to some extent. Allows you to put someone to sleep, to mess up their ki paths, to make their own ki heal them etc.
- Zai Dou: Clearing your ki-paths, the ability to undo most damage done to your ki-flow. The worse the damage, the higher level of skill is required to undo it.

Lvl 6:
- Ryutou Chuu: Releasing ki all around your body in a controlled manner, enables most aura abilities. The effect of the aura depends on the ki flow pattern. They stimulate the ki-flow, infuse the muscles or affect mentally the people around you. Some auras are considered higher level abilities.
- Gai Kata: Gathering ki in your hand and releasing it through a passing physical touch in various flow patterns: enables stunning, killing and various other kinds of touches. Some of the techniques are considered higher-level, for example damaging someone's ki-paths and ki-center without killing them.
- Han Kata: Sharp, powerful ki-blasts through your hands or feet, you can literally punch a hole in somebody, or break a wall.
- Shokan Dou: Through refined control of the ki-flows in your brain it's possible to gain several mental advantages, such as a high resistance to pain.

Lvl 7:
- Juu Yuu: Releasing concentrated, powerful but controlled ki, allows you to control your opponents' movements to some extent, for example throwing them around without ever physically touching them.
- Tenyuu Kata: Disrupting ki-flows in the air, allows breaking auras and other applications of ki that spread ki outside the body, without expending much of your own ki. It's possible to achieve the same on a lower level, but only by overwhelming the ki-flow with your own ki, which is usually very consuming.
- Hibi Yuu: Releasing a substantial amount of ki and restraining it close to your skin, it's possible to gain a fairly effective but consuming ki-armor. On a higher level the ki can be kept in constant movement, improving the armor's effectiveness considerably. Less ki is needed for this improved version.
- Seki Dou: Opening your ki-center, releasing your ki-reserves in a rush. Gives you an incredibly powerful ki-flow for a while, but releasing much of this ki is naturally consuming, plus the strong ki-flow may damage your ki-paths, and worst of all, if you use this for an extended amount of time or lose control even for a moment, your ki-center is likely to be damaged. It's a last resort thing, it can take away your ability to use ki for battle or even be fatal, but it can also save your life in a fight against a superior enemy.

Lvl 8:
- Kuuka En: Forming ki-concentrations that don't break immediately after leaving the control of the user, allows throwing explosive balls of ki and some other applications.
- Kyou Yuu: Releasing highly concentrated ki in controlled patterns: you can stomp your foot and cause the earth all around you to crack and convulse, or strike a boulder and have it break more or less cleanly into two halves.

Lvl 9:
- Roku En: Forming solid "objects" from ki and keeping it in control for lengthy amounts of time, for example making a blade out of ki.
- Jisatsu Yuu: Absorbing uncontrolled or badly controlled ki, allows you to absorb ki from someone who doesn't have full control of his own ki flow, or from some applications of ki which spread it outside the body (such as an aura). Also allows you to absorb back your own ki in many cases where you release it outside your body.

Lvl 10:
- Tai Kata: Releasing ki quickly and controlledly from almost any part of your body, allowing you to block strikes from any direction with short ki-bursts that don't consume much ki. Less effective and more limited versions of this can be achieved on lower levels, but this level of control is the highest anyone has ever achieved.

If you need examples of how some of the abilities work, just ask, I can provide them.

A few clarifications.

[Listomar]

The order has gotten a bit wonky.. who still hasn't posted their post this turn?

[Hollow nyan-chan]

i think it's the Morghandy Sloane am Albion aka semiramiese but not sure.

[InfinityStream]

Lv. 4 seems to fit my Ki - Based character fine...

And yes, it's

Morghandy Sloane am Albion aka semiramiese

's turn.

[Krozam]

Looks like semiramiese won't be joining us just yet. I'm just waiting for Soul to post (hopefully today), since somehow his turn avoided my attention until a while ago.

Also, I edited the ki-text already, increased the requirements to become a master-level ki-user.

[InfinityStream]

Wait, so I'd be a master since learning Ki control was essential to keeping myself and someone else alive?

**Nods**

Yeah, I consider myself Master. :3

[Krozam]

Setsuna is a bit of a special case. I imagine his ki-control is master-level, since he struggles daily with abnormally strong ki-flow, but he probably doesn't fill the requirements in numbers of techniques mastered. His highest-level technique is probably lvl 5, "Channeling ki through a non-living object, for example a weapon." but he probably has an exceedingly good control of this technique, also aided by his special blade. He'd also be really good with the lvl 4 technique "Directing ki through your hands into another living being and controlling it to some extent: ki-healing, mostly." since it's an application of this technique that he used for years to feed ki to Xia.

Sound good?

Think I should come up with names for each of these techniques?

[InfinityStream]

Names would be good :3

But of course, just giving them level numbers is pretty cool too :3

[Hollow nyan-chan]

each level has their own abilities from what i understand. It would be nice with some names for the abilities tho ^^ but nice post about the ki Krozam

[Krozam]

Alright, they have names now. The words were mostly taken from my kanji dictionary, the chinese readings, but I didn't pay any attention to their meanings, so they don't really have any meaningful translations (well, they do in the language of this fantasy world, but I can't be bothered to invent them). The second word of each name sort of defines the type of the ability, and I've provided "key words" for each type, to help you understand the basis of the division.

If you want, the ki-users among you can now list their known and mastered abilities in their character bios.