The Path of the Eclipse

The Path of the Great Eclipse

Inspired by the movie Kung Fu Cult Master, based on Jin Yong’s Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber

The Path of the Eclipse is one of the great legends of kung fu. It is the unification of the Great Solar Stance and Great Lunar Stance, each of which are legends in their own right, peers of the mighty Magic Stance and Constellation Stance. Its masters are filled with mysterious and powerful energies. Martial artists all over Sheflek would flock to the opportunity to learn these stances, and many would kill to possess such secrets. Entire schools would divert their resources to possessing such a treasure if its location were known, or even hinted at. It’s a fast way of acquiring students, rivals, and students who want to take your technique and kill you.

The Great Solar Stance exemplifies yang: it is a linear, hard martial arts style with lots of punches and kicks. It unifies with a man’s chi, but would have deleterious effects on a woman: any woman learning even the first stance would, within a year, become hairy, flat-chested, bearded, deep-voiced, and infertile. The stance’s attacks are flashy and extremely blatant. Recognizing a given schtick as Great Solar Stance requires a Perception + Martial Arts check of 24 – the schtick’s grade— so the really blatant effects will start to make people remember the legends.

The Great Lunar Stance exemplifies yin: it is a circling, soft martial arts style with lots of throws and holds. It unifies with a woman’s chi; any man learning even the first stance would, within a year, develop breasts, a beardless chin, a high, soft voice, and infertility. The stance’s attacks are intricate and elegant, but unmistakably powerful; like Great Solar Stance, it requires a Perception + Martial Arts of 24 – the schtick’s grade to recognize the schtick as suggestive of the Great Lunar Stance.

The Great Solar Stance and Great Lunar Stance each consist of nine grades (each represented by a fu schtick). The tenth degree of each is identical: the awesome Great Eclipse Stance, which can only be practised by masters of the Great Solar Stance and Great Lunar Stance working together.

No ordinary martial artist is even capable of mastering the great energies involved in the Path of the Eclipse. A martial artist must master one of the bigger fu paths (having at least eight schticks in a single path) or two of the smaller ones (full mastery of each path, at least eight schticks in both paths combined), cultivate a Fu of 11, then gain the Stat schtick of Chi Mastery.

Chi Mastery: your control over your own internal energy is tremendous, as is your perception of the patterns of chi. (Come up with something for the spraying chi trick.) As long as you have experience points to burn, you can learn fu schticks in the middle of combat. (If someone else is teaching them to you, you merely need expend a continuous action to pay attention to them until a number of shots of teaching have elapsed equal to the number of XP you're paying for the schtick. If you're studying someone else's technique, you must roll Perception + Martial Arts against their Intelligence + Martial Arts to glean their technique...) You can also project your chi through others you touch, thereby causing their Martial Arts AV to be no less than your own. (And Str? Chi?) If they are used to cooperating with you have have a native AV of 12+, then give a +1 AV bonus for combined maneuvers. This is mostly an exclusive action, though you can maintain trivial things like walking on a tree branch or flying through the air.

Chi Mastery requires more than mere self-cultivation. (I.e. you can’t just spend the XP.) To prove your mastery, you must harmonize your chi with an external mystic source beyond ordinary control— a raging waterfall, a whirlwind, a burning volcano... (Come up with something appropriately questlike.)

The Great Eclipse Scroll does not specify what these powers do; it merely gives instructions on the stances and chi circulation.

Great Solar Stance

Dawn Radiance. You are filled with mysterious power and can easily travel through the air at minimal fu cost (2 Chi, 0 shots, fly for the sequence), but cannot hover. (Pay a little extra for carrying someone with you.) For a male practitioner, they may use their Fu stat as a substitute for Constitution in matters of health (disease resistance and healing, but not endurance). Learning Great Lunar Stance negates this last benefit. (“Great Sun Appears” was the original in the movie, with other evocative phrases like “Solar Pool”, “the blood flows backwards”, and “Blood Sea”) With a similar fu expenditure, your weaponless strikes can cause knockback based on the difference between the permanent Fu stats of you and your opponent.
Learning: while doing the katas and meditations, your body forcibly expels impurities— old vestiges of sickness, crud you didn’t know you had in your lungs, heavy sweating. Make a Constitution check— the lower, the more impressive the symptoms of acquiring the path. Once the impurities are purged, you gain the health effects of the path, and using it gives the enhanced flight or imparting unexpected flight to others.
Morning Sunbeam. Single-target telekinetic attack; spend a long-term Fu point for structural damage or doing knockback against a human-sized foe.
Learning: pretty straightforward, though learning to “push it” and spend a long-term fu point may be a bit foreign at first.
Sundog. (aka parhelia— often a sign that rain or snow is on the way) A luminous ring surrounds you, with two bright nodes shining with the colors of the rainbow at the level of your hands.
Those who have mastered the third grade of the Great Solar Stance become sensitive to matters of chi, and can observe its flow like a sorcerer.
Rebirth of the Great Sun. Spend a long-term Fu point to negate a failed death check and stay standing. You can also reduce your need for food and drink to almost nothing by meditating quietly.
Learning: When you “get it”, there’s a general feeling of warmth and well-being within you, and hunger and thirst vanish. A bit of Healing or Life magic will determine that you are not consuming any resources as long as you’re just sitting there in a nonhostile environment. A good roll on Healing or Life will observe that the energy expenditure is very similar to the kind of healing that needs to be applied when someone is shuffling off the mortal coil.
Great Sun’s Wrath. Hurl a bolt of brilliant energy from your hand; it causes an explosion where it strikes, damaging all within two meters. (Need to roll to see if you get flung away, knocked down, or stay standing.) Even more impressive if you put a long-term Fu point into it.
Racing the Sun’s Rays. Move your Fu stat in meters in effectively 0 shots, leaving a trail of light. You may add your Fu stat to the damage of your next attack.
Great Solar Tide. You wrest the local chi flows from their courses and heaven and earth tremble. (Earthquake-like linear blast, but works against flying characters; spend a long-term Fu point for area effect. Good for bringing down buildings.)
Great Sun in High Heaven. The face of the master glows with the light of a ruddy sunset, and a golden nimbus gleams around his form. (come up with something impressive, perhaps involving a green flash)
Great Solar Zenith. The entire body of the master shines with sunlight. (“Great Solar in the Sky” was the original in the movie.) You manifest overwhelming force, capable of flinging objects weighing many tons high into the air. (Mega damage on single target opponents, do terrifying things to hordes of mooks.)

Stunts from the movie: telekinetic attack performed with limbs bound, shattering weapons, blue-white energy bolts creating 4m diameter explosions, breaking down stone doors, area effect disruptions (earthquake-like) in both linear and spherical configurations, leaping faster than anyone else can react while trailing blue-white light. Survive a blow that should have killed someone else.

Great Lunar Stance

Crescent Moon Rising. You are filled with mysterious power and can easily travel through the air at minimal fu cost (2 chi, 0 shots, fly for the sequence), but cannot hover.. (Pay a little extra for carrying someone with you.) For a female practitioner, they may use their Fu stat as a substitute for Constitution in matters of health (disease resistance and healing, but not endurance). Learning Great Solar Stance negates this last benefit. With a similar fu expenditure, your throws can fling opponents great distances, based on the difference between the permanent Fu stats of you and your opponent.
Learning: similar to Dawn Radiance.
Turning of the Lunar Phases. As a defensive action, redirect an incoming blast (from a spellcaster, martial artist, creature power, or item) aimed at you. In an area effect blast, you can carve out your own personal space, spend some extra fu and take an AV penalty to increase the protected area, or intercept the center of the blast, spend a long-term fu point, and redirect the whole area effect to a different target.
Bright Moon Halo. (The “ring around the moon” phenomenon, also called a halo. They often presage approaching rain or snow.) Concentric pale rings of light appear around you, possibly showing bands of color when it’s dark.
Those who have mastered the third grade of the Great Lunar Stance become sensitive to matters of chi, and can observe its flow like a sorcerer.
Dark Moon Passage. After failing a death check, spend a long-term Fu point and appear to die. Much like Inevitable Comeback, you will appear to be dead for five sequences, but will have reduced your Wound Point total to 5. You are aware of your surroundings the entire time. In addition to this ability, you can also marshal your chi to simulate the state of death while remaining aware of your surroundings. (This will stop blood flow from severed limbs.)
Learning: While practising the stance, your compatriots get worried because you appear to dead! A bit of analysis with Healing magic shows an unusual marshalling of resources, which Tavarm can identify as resembling Inevitable Comeback.
Great Lunar Eclipse. Hurl a bright-bordered orb of dark energy that disrupts active magic and fu powers.
Waxing Moon Dance. Spend 1 chi for every shot you perform the Waxing Moon Dance. When someone attacks you in hand-to-hand combat, you may perform a throw maneuver for free; damage received as a result of the throw is increased by the number of shots you’ve been performing the Dance, up to a maximum of your Fu stat. While you are Dancing, your Move is equal to your Fu, and you can perform leaps of up to your Move as part of the dance moves. You leave pale trails of light as you move, growing brighter until the power of the Dance saturates at your Fu stat. You may active dodge while performing the Dance, but other interruptions (such as use of a Fu schtick other than Turning of the Lunar Phases as a defensive action, attacking someone who is avoiding you, being knocked down and failing a Martial Arts check to roll and get back up immediately, or taking enough damage that you fail a Willpower check against the amount of damage taken) stop the Dance and you must begin again. (You are allowed to get in someone’s way if you’re in the thick of combat and they’re attacking someone near you; if they abort their attack and Active Dodge, you will be unable to throw them.) If your shot comes up and you’re out of Fu, the dance ends.
Great Lunar Tide. You strengthen the natural chi flows of the area, wresting power away from sorcerers and priests who are not in harmony with the local chi. (Creates a negative juncture modifier...)
Great Moon in High Heaven. The face of the mistress shines with the light of the full moon and a pale nimbus surrounds her form. (come up with something impressive)
Great Full Moon Zenith. The entire body of the mistress shines with the light of the full moon. She can redirect tremendous forces— dancing in the midst of an avalanche to spare her own allies and drop boulders on enemies, throwing runaway carriages, etc.

Stunts from the movie: redirecting an incoming blast back at the attacker.

Suggested stunts: twirl about, causing attackers to run into each other, walls, etc. Catch an incoming spell and fling it like a discus.

Great Eclipse Stance

The Great Eclipse Stance is one of the most terrifying powers in the world of martial arts. Fortunately for the rest of the world, people with even the potential to practise it are extremely rare.

The mistress of Great Lunar Stance stands before the master of Great Solar Stance, and they both call upon their internal energies; while both are radiating light, the solar exceeds the brilliance of the lunar to give the impression of a solar corona surrounding a feminine shadow. The linear force of the Solar Stance is directed into subtle and mysterious patterns by the rotational power of the Lunar Stance. Rivers of brilliant blue-white chi radiate from the pair, flinging durable objects about or simply exploding the lesser ones.

While the general destruction is going on, the mistress and the master can focus their attention on particular targets. If they jointly focus on a single target, they gain a +3 AV bonus.

Other Notes

There’s apparently a 40-VCD set of the series The New Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre (sometimes they translate part of that as “Heavenly Sword”) available for $198 if you know where to look, but it’s in Cantonese with no subtitles. There was also a 1978 movie.

Other cool motifs from the film: going into seclusion to practise a particular difficult stance, sometimes with other martial arts masters to help provide enough of a challenge that you can get control of the stance.

The magic mushroom means of gaining Chi Mastery draws up energy through your seven chakras.