Martial Arts

• “The crystalline memory-cathedrals of the Great Maker are said to contain the patterns for all Celestial and Terrestrial martial arts developed and deployed during the Primordial War (though it is both possible and likely that the Fivescore Fellowship kept some secrets even from the Machine God). Over the centuries, Alchemical heroes have only partially explored these echoing vaults of knowledge, bringing ancient fighting styles back to the cities of Autochthonia. Champions have also innovated styles of their own, some functionally indistinguishable from latter-day arts of Creation, others unique to the Realm of Brass and Shadow. Countless “dead” arts have yet to be recovered from the borders of the Pole of Crystal and would represent a prize without equal for any martial artist with the fortitude to survive the journey.
• The modular bodies and souls of the Alchemical Exalted cannot natively support practice of the martial arts. Instead, they require a special Charm to store katas and quarantine the Essence-sculpting transformations such enlightenment brings. They are capable of practicing Terrestrial and Celestial martial arts, but they find their Essence profile too profoundly rooted in the physicality of their bodies to ever ascend to the Blossom of the Perfected Lotus. Indeed, Autochthonians are unaware that any such thing as a Sidereal level of martial arts exists.
• Alchemical Exalted must always pay a one-mote surcharge for each Charm invocation when practicing any martial arts style with a Gaian elemental aspect. A number of Terrestrial styles, however, have been developed within Autochthonia that utilize the six Autochthonian elements, and Alchemicals never suffer a surcharge for using them. In the event that any being with a Gaian elemental aspect should ever learn an Autochthonian aspect martial art, he must pay a one-mote surcharge for its Charms. The effects of a Terrestrial Exalt attempting to fully harmonize with an Autochthonian element are currently unknown. A few First Age experiments with Vitriol-aspected martial arts stand as the only remotely similar precedent, and their results were disturbing enough that the program was discontinued in short order.”
• “In addition to the martial arts styles known in Creation, Alchemicals practice a number of styles created within Autochthonia. Celestial examples include Steel Fang, Hydraulic Tremor, Enlightened Armatures and Plague Rat styles. Some more notable Terrestrial styles are Thrashing Steam Dragon, Stalwart Iron Hero, Thousand-Faceted Warrior, Racing Lightning, Cascade Disruption and Endlessly Turning Wheel.”
• “[Thousand Wounds Gears Style is a] strange Celestial martial art is one of the most widespread in Autochthonia. It is unusual when compared to Creation’s fighting styles in that it revolves around the mastery of an advanced magitech weapon, the gyroscopic chakram, and responds poorly to attempts to practice it with less complex tools.
• Formulated over 3,000 years ago, Thousand Wounds Gear style explores the calculating certainty of law and artfully expresses the terrible agony that awaits transgressors. It is renowned for the horrific damage it inflicts, and its practitioners’ aptitude for rendering targets helpless before calmly slicing them to pieces. In riot situations, the art is deployed as a tool of shock and awe. In the Reaches, it serves to cripple powerful gremlins as a prelude to their termination.”
• “[Live Wire Sytle is a] Terrestrial martial art, one of Autochthonia’s oldest and most widespread. Its primary practitioners are a subset of regulators scattered across the Eight Nations known as the Flashing Wire Collective. Once, the Collective enjoyed bonds of close comradeship across international lines, but it has drifted apart in the centuries since its original founding. Now, Collective members within individual nations are fiercely competitive with their foreign brethren, often organizing competitive underground martial arts tournaments when two nations are drawn into close proximity (and using their own investigative authority to keep the rest of the Tripartite from nosing into matters).
• Alchemicals also make frequent use of this style, prizing its capacity for non-lethally disabling heretics and criminals for later questioning. They often mount retractable whips directly into their wrists with Integrated Arsenal System and employ the style’s form benefits alongside their own technological Charms.
• This style is aspected toward the element of lightning. Alchemical Exalted pay no surcharge when using its Charms.”
• “Because their artificial bodies require the assistance of a Charm to harmonize with practice of the martial arts at all, the Alchemical Exalted do not have what Creation’s Exalted would recognize as a “hero style.” Alchemicals instead express innate, instinctive battle forms with their native Charm set.
• Since Celestial martial arts styles generally only run in the Essence range of 2–4 and never beyond Essence 5, this does mean that a lack of hero style extensions leaves Alchemicals without any route to pursue high-Essence practice of the martial arts. Elder Alchemical martial artists have mitigated this weakness by exploring avenues of martial arts development that have never occurred to Creation’s Exalted—the development of martial styles focusing on the use of warstrider and siege-scaled weaponry. Examples include the warstrider beamklave-focused Light Sharpening Blade style, and Collapsing Point of Judgment style, which utilizes the light implosion bow.”
• “Sova uses formalized martial arts duels and wrestling as a release valve for societal tension; Kamak, as an exercise in finding internal comfort; Yugash, as a competitive sport. Potential students must obtain waivers to be released from their duties, and are subject to being drafted into citizen levies during wartime. Numerous schools have grown large enough to have cadet branches in other nations, resulting in intense international rivalries.”