Rotes & Procedures

Martial arts aren’t merely vehicles for kicking and punching techniques. Certain arts, like European fencing, employ sophisticated mathematics and intricate philosophies that compliment and inform the fighting arts. Many teach the student how to wield, counter, and even manufacture weapons, and almost all of them stress the personal reflection and restraint that helps the artist resist fighting unless absolutely necessary. This last element is simple self-preservation, because a skilled martial artist who can’t control himself is a hazard to everyone and everything in reach.

Chapter Nine of the Mage 20 rulebook features an extensive treatment of “standard” martial arts, Kuei Lung Chen, and the Akashic Art of Do. (See pp. 423-430.) That treatment, though, mostly covers the physical applications of martial-arts training. Mages who specialize in martial arts as a practice, however, explore the metaphysical side of those arts, too. Through such arcane techniques, they can catch arrows, shrug off damage, throw bolts of energy, fly, and far more. Game-wise, those characters use martial arts as a practice that focuses their Arete and Sphere-magick. Martial expertise bends Reality to their Will.

Despite the Akashic Tradition’s long association with martial arts, any mage with the background and discipline to pursue those arts can use them as a practice. By the 21st century, the Technocratic

Union has adopted esoteric martial arts into its toolkit – such arts are, of course, technologies at heart. Black Suits and other field operatives receive intense training in such disciplines, and although they don’t do silly things like fly through the air on chi power (that’s absurd, citizen!), the best of them can shatter walls and shrug off bullets in the grand martial-arts tradition.

Most Awakened characters pursue more than one practice, and build their focus from a combination of practices and instruments that suit the character’s paradigm – that is, his belief about the way the world works. It’s totally appropriate for a Mage character to use a fusion of reality-hacking, hypertech, and martial arts, so long as he’s not hacking the NSA with a well-placed kick. A combination of practices makes for a very flexible character; that way, he can crack servers or spines with different sorts of attacks. Oh, and in the 21st century, many martial artists also practice yoga – a foundational practice for centuries within many Indian, Tibetan, and South Asian martial arts.