Violet Bier of Sorrows Style

[Captain Hesperus]

/gets out deceased equine and riding crop....


Okay, so my Twilight caste Demon-hunter has finally tracked himself down a friendly neighbourhood Sidereal Sifu who taught him Snake Style. Then I asked my ST, "Any chance of getting started on Violet Bier of Sorrows Style?".


He replies, "Love to, sadly he can't because it's a Severity 4 offense to teach non-Sidereal, non-Bureau of Destiny gods."


Whut? Why?


Captain Hesperus

 

[Malekith]

Its an offense [look in the sidereals book] but, well, he could, but there is risk for the sidereal; just as teaching any sidereal MA to a Solar would have similar implications.


Just because its offense, doesnt mean it cant happen. I think there is a DB who knows that style though...

/gets out deceased equine and riding crop....
Okay, so my Twilight caste Demon-hunter has finally tracked himself down a friendly neighbourhood Sidereal Sifu who taught him Snake Style. Then I asked my ST, "Any chance of getting started on Violet Bier of Sorrows Style?".


He replies, "Love to, sadly he can't because it's a Severity 4 offense to teach non-Sidereal, non-Bureau of Destiny gods."


Whut? Why?


Captain Hesperus

 

[Ledaal Kajiri]

Of course, no one thinks to take the simplest approach there. Get a job with the Bureau of Destiny somehow.

 

[Captain Hesperus]

Well, I thought another way around it in the game session last night. I performed an epic Bureaucracy stunt (Speed the Wheels FTW) followed by a hefty amount of social-fu on the Celestial Bureaucracy along the lines that teaching a demon-hunter a style that is deadly to demons and the like is beneficial to Creation as it preserves the integrity of Creation and frees up Sidereals to deal with more immediate and dangerous problems. Cue one Celestial Licence of Entitlement: Violet Bier of Sorrows Style along with an oath sanctified by my circle's Eclipse along the lines that I shan't use the style against any member of the Celestial Bureaucracy without serious provocation and that I shan't teach it without prior authority from the same. Seems fair. It's fortunate that my ST house ruled that Spirit Charms are still based upon Virtues, rather than simply Essence, otherwise the Form would be almost pointless.


Captain Hesperus

 

[Teln]

Isn't Violet Bier of Sorrows Style a Celestial MA?

 

[cyl]

It definitely is, but it's so broken and awesome that they had to put restrictions on it so that not every celestial could beat the crap out of anything with their klaves.


Nice going with the celestial gods cap, hopefully no one in the Bronze Faction will be made aware of this and launch a serie of forged documents and celestial audits to retroactively punish your Sifu, no, they're not like this at all, not their style ! :twisted:

 

[Lord Kamina]

VBoS is not broken anymore, stop beating a dead horse. It's a Severity 4 offense because it's a SECRET style.

 

[Coyotekin]

The funny thing is that Snake style doesn't require a Sifu for a Solar.

 

[Lord Kamina]

Yeah, that's just really weird.

 

[Brickwall]

The funny thing is that Snake style doesn't require a Sifu for a Solar.

That's because it's the Solar Martial Arts tree. "Solar Hero" the Solar Brawl tree. Learn your history, kiddies.

 

[skafte]

The funny thing is that Snake style doesn't require a Sifu for a Solar.

That's because it's the Solar Martial Arts tree. "Solar Hero" the Solar Brawl tree. Learn your history, kiddies.

What? Coyotekin said Snake style, not Solar here style.

 

[Teln]

Back in First Edition, Martial Arts and Brawl were two separate Abilities, with their own separate Charms. When the editions changed, MA and Brawl were merged to make room for the War ability. What is now Solar Hero Style used to be the Brawl Charm tree.

 

[Persell]

Yeah. We know that. It has nothing to do with Solars being able to learn Snake Style without a teacher. I think it's actually a hold over from 1Ed when Solars could learn all the animal styles without a teacher. (or is that still true in 2Ed?)

 

[Coyotekin]

It has been mentioned in 2nd edition that Snake style is one of the styles that does not require a Sifu.

 

[Mr. S]

It has been mentioned in 2nd edition that Snake style is one of the styles that does not require a Sifu.

I'll chime in to provide a citation for that. It's in the sidebar from the corebook, page 244. I don't see anything about the other animal styles in there or why it's only natural for the Solars. Actually, it says specifically that only Solars can learn it without a teacher (pg 240). Frankly, I'd houserule it as some sort of odd misprint.

 

[chalicier]

My in-game explanation for Snake Style not needing a teacher is that all First Age Solars were taught Snake Style during the early years of their Exaltation as a means of helping them to understand and control their Essence. Lytek doesn't prune these much, for reasons of his own. Which means that every Solar Exaltation has between 1 and about 5 sets of Snake Style memories glommed onto it, in varying levels of completion.


So essentially, as soon as they decide to learn any formal supernatural MA (as opposed to just Hitting Stuff Very HardTM), every Solar finds Snake Style training montages floating around in their dreams.

 

[Quchu]

Snake Style being a Dummy's Guide to Martial Arts comes off as a good enough explanation for me. Maybe the UCS had the brilliant idea of telling his Exalts "Hey, here's this thing called supernatural martial arts that kicks ass without tapping my Essence -- might be handy one day" and used Snake Style as a primer of sorts.


Why a snake, nobody would know. Perhaps it was a reference to the Ebon Dragon being the Ophidian?