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Post by Storm Dancer on Jun 7, 2004 7:51:53 GMT
I would say, in the vein of kai apprentices, there should be grey star's apprentices as well. In each book we either get to choose our char, or there should be a book for each publishhed separately. Oh and btw, IMO, dever should have started the new kai order with the kai apprentice starting out as a basic kai, not a grandmaster right from the bat! It took LW his entire life to attain gm status, and the new kai's only 5 years! I kinda liked that. Even though I suspect the whole GM series was a bit of an afterthought, it's always been my favourite one - mainly because by that stage you're pretty much an immortal superhero Besides, LW had his training interrupted by having to do lots of pesky quests - and having to learn the skills on your own has got to be harder than having a good teacher on hand. Makes me wonder, though - if GMs age at 1/5 the normal speed (who knows what age retardation a Supreme Master would have?!) and the New Order learn so fast, how long are they going live for? Could be kinda funky - though watching all your friends grow old and die could be a bit hard
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Post by Black Cat on Jun 7, 2004 17:48:50 GMT
I like that: Grey Star's apprentice meets Lone Wolf's apprentice! Maybe someday... Oh, by the way, if you don't want to see your friends dying before you because they're getting old faster than you, ask them to join the Second Kai Order! ;D
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Post by Archdruid on Jun 7, 2004 22:04:03 GMT
I kinda liked that. Even though I suspect the whole GM series was a bit of an afterthought, it's always been my favourite one - mainly because by that stage you're pretty much an immortal superhero Besides, LW had his training interrupted by having to do lots of pesky quests - and having to learn the skills on your own has got to be harder than having a good teacher on hand. Makes me wonder, though - if GMs age at 1/5 the normal speed (who knows what age retardation a Supreme Master would have?!) and the New Order learn so fast, how long are they going live for? Could be kinda funky - though watching all your friends grow old and die could be a bit hard Ah, but what if all your friends are New Order? Then you can just sit on the monastery's front porch, drinking Kourshah, whittling, and mocking your slowly disintegrating enemies.
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Post by Black Cat on Jun 8, 2004 23:41:49 GMT
Makes me wonder, though - if GMs age at 1/5 the normal speed (who knows what age retardation a Supreme Master would have?!) and the New Order learn so fast, how long are they going live for? Well, I made some calculations. At the beginning of book 21, it is the year MS 5083. The Grand Master was born in MS 5063, so he is 20 years old at that time. With the 1/5 factor, he'll look like a 40 years old man by the time he reach the age of 120 years! Let say the average life expectancy in Magnamund is 75 years old, the Grand Master could live for...300 years!
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 9, 2004 3:10:19 GMT
Compared with which, Lone Wolf is... *possible spoilers for a whole range of books* well, let's see, it's MS5075 in tPLoR, after five years of peace, making it MS5070 in tMoD (or perhaps earlier, depending on how long the "swift" victory of the free-state armies took after the fall of Helgedad). So it took Lone Wolf twenty years to avenge the Kai, eight of which were on the Daziarn... ...so he's 27 at the end of tMoD. That gives him a further life expectancy of 48 (biological) years if he makes 75, which will take him another 240 chronological years.
So Lone Wolf ought to see his 267th birthday! Not bad at all - the few years' headstart the New Order Grand Master has don't matter so much when you've got a few centuries behind you, I guess... and as someone said, he might age even less as Supreme Master.
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Post by Storm Dancer on Jun 9, 2004 5:40:40 GMT
Yeah, I'm definitely inclined to think it would be longer - I'm assuming Supreme Master level Deliverance is far better than anything modern medicine has to offer, and being an SM must improve things to some degree - and the jumps seem to get bigger from level to level; compare the gap between Kai:Magnakai to the one between Magnakai:GM.
Depending on how optimistic you want to be, if we call GM 5x >Magnakai (based on ageing rate, Deliverance = 20 days rather than curing's 100), and Magnakai maybe 1 2/3 (1/3 of 5) x better than Kai then you'd expect SM to be 5x - 15x > GM.
Assuming the average Kai starts training at about 10 years old and takes 5 years to reach each plateau (a conservative estimate, based on what's been said here)if they have a teacher for them, then we can assume the 3rd order Kai would hit GM at the biological age of 21... which, assuming a natural lifespan of 80 years (75 might be average in the developed world today, but that doesn't make it natural - lots of people die from various diseases on the way that we can probably assume wouldn't bother the Kai), then we can expect the most talented of the 3rd Order to live to about 4450 ;D
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Post by Ghost Bear on Jun 9, 2004 10:37:02 GMT
Well, I made some calculations. At the beginning of book 21, it is the year MS 5083. The Grand Master was born in MS 5063, so he is 20 years old at that time. Keep in mind that he's already mastered four GM Disciplines by this point. This could take several years, adding considerably to your calculation. -GB
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 9, 2004 11:53:34 GMT
Ahh, but thanks to the New Order scheme, this is only Grand Master Senior level. Four Disciplines here is the same as one for Lone Wolf. And given that the rank of Grand Master (all Magnakai, no GM Disciplines) existed prior to GM Lone Wolf and his development of slower aging and so on, and also given the description in the front matter of the GM books...
...it seems to only come once Lone Wolf develops his first GM Disciplines. It can be argued that the New Order GMs need those first four just to get the same level of physical advancement LW experienced with one, hence the rank levels.
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Post by Wild Horse on Jun 9, 2004 14:20:24 GMT
At this rate, we are going to see an entire army of Kai Grand Masters....
Imagine Grandmasters as something like colonels or majors...
Magnakai as something like captains and lieutenants
Kai Lord below the rank of Kai Master, as something like that of sergeants and privates...
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Post by Black Cat on Jun 9, 2004 19:38:28 GMT
At this rate, we are going to see an entire army of Kai Grand Masters.... Imagine Grandmasters as something like colonels or majors... Magnakai as something like captains and lieutenants Kai Lord below the rank of Kai Master, as something like that of sergeants and privates... Yes, we can easily imagine Lone Wolf as a 5-stars general since he is the only Supreme Grand Master. The GM of book 21 to 28 could be a lower kind of general (2-3 stars), and the other GMs could be colonels or 1-star generals. I think Joe just changed the names of the army ranks from the real world and adapted them for the Kai Order in order to make them more original. There's 35 ranks in the Kai Order: 10 ranks to reach the Magnakai Master level, 10 ranks to reach the Grand Master level and 15 ranks to reach the Supreme Grand Master level (in the Second Kai Order). Since the recruits in the Kai Order seem to be very young, we can consider the levels prior to the rank of Magnakai Master as the cadets ranks. The Magnakai ranks could be consider as the enlisted ranks and the Grand Master ranks as the officer ranks. The Supreme Grand Master is the General of the Kai Army, a general with 5 stars, wich is very, very rare.
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Post by Peregrine on Jun 10, 2004 6:09:44 GMT
The Kai were always the elite of the Sommerlund army, even when Grand Master was the highest rank. Higher levels of Kai Lords (certainly Warmarn and above) are probably more like NCOs if not junior commissioned officers, and Kai Masters (Magnakai ranks) are senior commanders.
I'm sure I've read something somewhere in the assorted extra material (the newsletters possibly) that describes how the Kai worked with the main Sommlending army. I think it said they led units of ordinary troops, or formed crack units of their own, or both... ringing any bells, anyone?
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Post by outspaced on Jun 10, 2004 8:43:02 GMT
I think it said they led units of ordinary troops, or formed crack units of their own, or both... ringing any bells, anyone? In MS5050 a crack commando unit was sentenced to be cast into the Shadow Gate below the Brotherhood Guildhall by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Toran underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Kai-Team.
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Post by Storm Dancer on Jun 10, 2004 10:24:47 GMT
Cute At any rate, if all the Kai warriors are living for multiple millenia, we might have to start worrying about a population problem!
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Post by The Tagazin Poodle on Jun 10, 2004 13:00:19 GMT
Warmarns were usually given command of a military group (I want to say company, but I'm not sure that's right).
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Post by Black Cat on Jun 10, 2004 19:28:04 GMT
Warmarns were usually given command of a military group (I want to say company, but I'm not sure that's right). Well, in the US Army, a Captain commands a company. Anyway, I just checked in Rune War that there's (Spoiler alert!) 500 Kai Lords and only 5 Grand Masters, including the one from book 21 to 28, and only one Supreme Grand Master (Lone Wolf, of course...). So, each Grand Master, excluding LW, has 100 Kai Lords under is command, wich makes him (according to the US Army hierarchy) a Captain. Of course, military divisions of the Kai Order might be different because there's less Kai Lords than there is soldiers in the US Army. Check this diagram that I found, it explains clearly the hierarchal structure of an army: www.army.mil/organization/unitdiagram.html
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