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Post by Al on Oct 28, 2008 16:32:10 GMT
Unwashed Boar was particularly shunned by his peers, and Hiding Ostrich could never find anyone willing to adventure with him but Easy Fox always found herself the most popular of the kai lords.
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Post by ita1crx on Oct 30, 2008 14:00:15 GMT
I thought only men could be Kai?
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Post by Doomy on Oct 30, 2008 14:17:28 GMT
I believe the books featuring the Second Order show male and female Kai Lords (Ladies?). There is also a woman in the monastery in The Skull of Agarash, though it's debated whether she is actually a Kai. As for the First Order, there's the cover of the RPG. I suppose Joe must have approved that at some point.
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Post by Wise Eagle on Oct 30, 2008 18:17:38 GMT
I thought only men could be Kai? There should be no reason at all for believing that. All background information there is about Sommerlund clearly indicates the opposite.
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Post by outspaced on Oct 30, 2008 18:49:21 GMT
Well, to be fair, not all background information about Sommerlund clearly indicates the opposite. The Magnamund Companion is quite vague and ambiguous about intake to the Kai Monastery.
Personally, since they are the Kai Monks, I'd hazard a guess that Joe originally made it a male-only order, but that both Grant/Barnett and the Mongoose editorial staff considered that limiting in terms of potential sales, and so altered it. Joe clearly isn't too fussed either way, which is why the Kai Monastery has now been Politically Correctified to show no gender bias. Probably even other races, such as the Drakkarim, Vassagonians, the Agarashi, and the Darklords could now train at the monastery and learn Kai Disciplines.
(I don't particularly feel too strongly about this in RPG terms, but I do think it very odd that young girls would be sent away from their parents to a monastery (not a nunnery) to learn combat and battle-techniques so they can take charge of a battalion in a war situation!)
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Post by ita1crx on Oct 30, 2008 19:04:55 GMT
I thought it was the eldest son of the warrior lords that went to the Kai Monastary.
Now I can not find that reference.
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Post by Doomy on Oct 30, 2008 20:10:12 GMT
I just looked at the Story So Far in FFTD, where the word "children" is used instead of "sons".
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Post by darktelepath on Oct 30, 2008 20:56:29 GMT
Probably even other races, such as the Drakkarim, Vassagonians, the Agarashi, and the Darklords could now train at the monastery and learn Kai Disciplines. Not really. From the Companion, only some Sommlending "who possessed a great strength that lay undeveloped within them. Greater powers of mind and body, and combat skills far beyond the reach of other men were attainable to these special few. These remarkable warriors became known as the Kai Lords of Sommerlund." So it makes them seem more like Jedi Knights than anything.
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Post by outspaced on Oct 30, 2008 22:44:27 GMT
And yet the Q (allegedly Cloeasian), Viveka (Durenese?), Petra, the guy running an inn in Ragadorn, and just about everyone else has latent Kai powers according to the Legends. (Purely a personal point: not being the biggest Star Wars fan in the world, I see the Kai more in terms of the Shaolin Monks crossed with the Knights Templar rather than a tedious, two-dimensional order of bad actors who speak horrible lines of dialogue--but that's just me. )
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Post by Wise Eagle on Oct 30, 2008 23:03:23 GMT
The Magnamund Companion is quite clear that there is no gender bias in Sommerlund when it comes to soldier/warfare: With the threat of war so constant, every child (girl and boy) was trained in the use of weapons from an early age. This training was organized by the barons and took place in the grounds of their castles. Any child who displayed a natural instinct for combat was placed into the household of a Knight of the Realm, where they were groomed for the Sommlending army. When Sun Eagle founded the Kai Monastery a couple of hundred years later, it would only be natural to carry on with this tradition. Threat of war was not any less then than it was when the Sommlending arrived.
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Post by moonblade on Oct 31, 2008 1:24:01 GMT
Slightly on-topic (or at least near it): while the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star seems to imply "brothers only," did anyone besides me get the impression while reading Skull of Agarash that the junior wizard speaking to Banedon is actually female?
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Post by outspaced on Oct 31, 2008 10:24:21 GMT
The Magnamund Companion is quite clear that there is no gender bias in Sommerlund when it comes to soldier/warfare: With the threat of war so constant, every child (girl and boy) was trained in the use of weapons from an early age. When Sun Eagle founded the Kai Monastery a couple of hundred years later, it would only be natural to carry on with this tradition. Threat of war was not any less then than it was when the Sommlending arrived. Hmm. I'd never looked at it that way. I'm still not absolutely 100% convinced, but you do make a very good case there, Wise Eagle. Even pre-MS5050 there could well have been female Kai Lords (Ladies?). I'm still thrown by the use of "monastery", but maybe that's just the closest translation from Sommlending into English. Ahem.
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Post by Wolfus on Oct 31, 2008 10:39:34 GMT
(Purely a personal point: not being the biggest Star Wars fan in the world, I see the Kai more in terms of the Shaolin Monks crossed with the Knights Templar rather than a tedious, two-dimensional order of bad actors who speak horrible lines of dialogue--but that's just me. ) BLASPHEMER!!!
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Post by Ghost Bear on Oct 31, 2008 10:46:18 GMT
I'm still thrown by the use of "monastery", but maybe that's just the closest translation from Sommlending into English. Ahem. I think it's probably due to the connotations of the word Monastery. The target demographic of the books (and probably most of us here) were more likely to accept the idea of a 'Warrior Monastery' than a 'Warrior Nunnery'. I also think you're right in that the Kai as a warrior order were inspired by the Shao-Lin (in part), so Monastery would be the natural term to use. And I think Monastery sounds a lot cooler than 'Training School' or 'Academy' or something. -GB
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Post by huanchoo on Oct 31, 2008 16:59:16 GMT
A Kai Academy sounds OK...
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