Kai Skills Advancement

[monty]

Question.
When you begin 'Kingdoms Of Terror', you begin with three Magnakai skills as a Kai Master Superior. Say, for example, you pick 'Pathsmanship'. A couple of books on, for example'Prisoners Of Time' you add yet another skill like- 'Nexus'. Now, because you've only just chose 'Nexus' does this mean you have the advanced skills of a Scion-Kai at Nexus even though its a new skill? Or would that Nexus skill be basic with no enhancements and your skill at 'Pathsmanship' has reached the level of Scion-Kai?

Does that make sense?

[Thomas Wolmer]

You get all the "level"-added Discipline improvements no matter how long you have had the Discipline, I believe. At least that is how everyone, including me, seems to play it. I think there was some question related to this in one of the Newsletters...

[Peregrine]

That's what I've always believed too. I rationalise it as a sort of interaction of personal ability with the particular Discipline: a Kai Lord's rank reflects not only the number of Disciplines he's mastered, but also a certain... quintessence. It's that inner quality, rather than experience in using and honing a Discipline, that allows him to use the improved abilities.

This is in contrast to, say, the Discipline advancement in Mongoose's Lone Wolf RPG, where each Discipline has Tiers which are advanced in succession. It has its merits, but if Joe Dever ever considered it, I think he (rightly) rejected it as being against the streamlined nature of the gamebooks' rules.

[Zipp]

I think the way I always thought about it was that Lone Wolf was leveling (thus rank). At a higher level he is able to understand the inner workings of certain disciplines better and thus can perform them better.

[Scarecrow]

What about with Lorestones? I always assumed you receive a new Magnakai Discipline every time you get a new lorestone. Otherwise, how's Lone Wolf learning all these new skills so fast?

But at the end of Book 11 you get two lorestones. Do you get two new disciplines, or what?

[Peregrine]

Nope. You add a Discipline at the end of the book, not when you get the Lorestone, and only ever one Discipline. This, I rationalise as being the combination of the absorbed wisdom with the time taken to actually assimilate it and get used to using it.

(Just how you find time to meditate and reflect on the way from Torgar to the Daziarn, I don't know. But on the way back, you sort of launch right into your next adventure, giving you only enough time to master the knowledge of one Lorestone.

[Sol]

Lone Wolf probably knows a great deal about all of the Magnakai Disciplines in Book 6... but has only unlocked the full potential of three. This might explain how the taking of a Lorestone can allow him to attain a skill so rapidly. This may have been a slower progress in the beginning (how much time passed between Book 6 and 7?) and it may at first have taken Lone Wolf some considerable time to truly understand the wisdom he was recieving and how to make use of it, but over time he was increasingly hungry for this knowledge, and increasingly adept to the point where he was taking it in almost faster than the Lorestones could provide it (he earns a new discipline in maybe a couple of weeks at the end of Book 8, then within days at the end of 9, and almost instantly at the end of ten and later 11). I think he was SO close to his next discipline at the end of 10 that he was literally missing only a very small piece of the puzzle to the point where just touching the LoreStone provided him with the "ah-ha!" moment that he needed to pull it all together.

So fast was he accelerating that by the time he acquired the final Lorestone, he really no longer needed them anymore to advance his understanding. I mean, he went on to progress to the Grand Master level, never before seen, continuing to ride out the unbelievable momentum of his own rise to understanding. Gads, even in the New Order series, Lone Wolf's powers continue to grow.

Lone Wolf certainly needed the Lorestones to get the ball rolling, but by the end, it was really Lone Wolf himself whose experience and training was the impetus for his further rise to power.

[Sol]

Another interesting question:

Just how long did Lone Wolf spend within the Shadow Gate? Minutes? Weeks? Years?

[Zipp]

Hmmm... well, it's hard to tell, since time is variable in the Daziarn
(a year there could be two minutes here, or it could be six years here, and the next time a year passes, this variable could change)

I'd assume since the Darklords hadn't yet marched on Sommerlund, that Lone Wolf was there a year at the very most.

[LWhistorian]

In Book 12, you are told that you were gone for 8 years.

However, you were in both Daziarn and the Shadow Gate and time does not necessarily progress at the same speed in both places.

[Zipp]

Oops. Well, like I said I never actually read book 12, so...

But 8 years... shouldn't the darklords have conquered in that time? What was Gnaag's problem?

Also, don't you dissapear right before Dawn of the Dragons, too?

[Black Cat]

Zipp said:

Also, don't you dissapear right before Dawn of the Dragons, too?

Starting with book 16, Lone Wolf makes a trip into a Shadow Gate to the Planes of Darkness in every book up to book 20. The time spent in this parallel universe is different everytime. It could be just for a few minutes (book 16) or it could be for a whole year (book 19).

[LWhistorian]

Zipp said:

But 8 years... shouldn't the darklords have conquered in that time? What was Gnaag's problem?

Maybe he rolled some bad RNs and entire armies were crushed by falling masts, fell off rooftops, or just got locked in cellars...

[Sol]

Zipp said:

But 8 years... shouldn't the darklords have conquered in that time? What was Gnaag's problem?

He's a giant fly, for one. I think this explains it all, really.

Gnaag: Go forth, minions! We will capture the Dungheap at Varetta for our own!
Draakar: The ... what?
Gnaag: DO NOT QUESTION ME!

[Nathan P. Mahney]

I was under the impression that Gnaag HAD conquered pretty much all of Northern Magnamund, except for Sommerlund. It's one of the reasons that I've never really been satisfied with what I've read of the Grandmaster series. I'll have to check it out more thoroughly when I reach Book 12 (any day now...).