[ycleption]

More on Ki

I was sitting, listening to Ozymandias tell stories the other day, when the discussion turned to the nature of Ki. I was quite surprised to hear that Jennara say that she was not a monk, and had never heard of Ki... The former was not particularly surprising, (the title of monk is something that I have always felt was fairly meaningless; it's just a word, it does not change who we are or what we do, it makes life simpler only if in communicating what we do to others. We must always define the word, not let the word attain a narrow meaning, which allows it to define and control us). The latter, however, was quite disappointing: many people have told me that Jennara was the greatest monk the land has known in a long time, and I had always hoped to be able to learn more of Ki from her.
Ozymandias replied that she did, in fact, use Ki, but learned unconsciously, much in the manner of sorcerers as opposed to wizards (I'm not really sure what the distinction is there, but I'll take his word on it). She claimed she learned her martial skills from watching animals, and I would be interested in hearing about this. Does this mean that animals can channel Ki as well, or simply that nature movements awakened the ability to channel Ki? I think the latter is far more likely, after all many forms, paths and movements are named after animals or animal movements. Surely, at some point, there must have been a progenitor of the path, and perhaps that person also learned to channel Ki by imitating nature, its strength and its power. In the monastery where I trained, every young monk learned to meditate before even the simplest blocking and punching, and often meditation focused on images from nature. However, without careful instruction, I don't know that I would have ever learned awareness of the energy inside of me, let alone how to channel it. Perhaps after that point, I could have taught myself without the assistance of my master, but it would have been very difficult. Without his instruction about how to identify my weaknesses, how to train, how to learn, how to strengthen my mind, my progress would have been very slow indeed. Perhaps, rather than being disappointed with Jennara's ignorance of what I consider the key points of the path, I should be impressed with her ability to master herself without being taught; perhaps I should simply try to watch her and see what I can learn from her, perhaps not necessarily about Ki, but certainly about the mechanics of fighting, and maybe about other things as well.

Much though I respect his knowledge, Ozymandias claimed that Ki was simply the weave turned inward, which makes little sense; I have little doubt of his knowledge of magic things, but I doubt he knows quite as much about Ki as he claims, although he said he intended to conduct a study of those of us who use at some point. I have had the weave used upon me many times, and never felt Ki in it, so I am certain he must be wrong on this point. Storold once mentioned to me that there are places in the world where the weave is torn, and does not function. Sometime I should venture to such a place, to see whether Ozymandias' claim has any merit. I suppose it might be possible that Ki interacts with the weave in some way that would explain his confusion about the matter, and it would be interesting to test.