Martial Arts in the Land

The martial artists of Gozeiki no Bano Kami Kantaro are among the best that Creation has to offer. Martial Arts have a cultural importance and significance that is ingrained in most aspects of society.

The prowess of martial artist hailing from the Land are very real and saying that their mastery of the arts is supernatural would not be much of an exaggeration; Mortals of the Land have access to the advanced techniques and charms normally only available to essence users.

The Martial Artist Merit
The Martial Artist merit works in the same way for mortals of Gozeiki no Bano Kami Kantaro as it does for everyone else in Creation but in the Land, it provides an additional benefit at no cost: it allows martial artists to perform Exfusion actions.

Exfusion Actions
Martial artists of the Land can manipulate the energies of the world around them, shaping it into patterns and matrices that achieve their ends, much like a sorcerer does. When a mortal martial artist uses a charm, the motes that power it are not drawn from her own Essence pools. Instead, she must take Exfusion actions to manipulate the flow of Essence around her and channel exfusion motes into the channeling of a charm.

To take an Exfusion action, the martial artist must roll (Perception + Martial Arts). Each success contributes one exfusion mote to an Exfusion Pool. A character can never gain more than 5 exfusion motes each turn.

Exalted and other characters with their own Essence pools that naturally respire Essence have no Exfusion Pool and substract exfusion motes from the number of motes they naturally respire. In effect, Exfusion actions are normally only useful for mortal martial artists or an essence user trying to pass off as a mortal.

The Exfusion action itself is a combat action which cannot be included in a flurry. A martial artist can pause in the act of gathering exfusion motes to perform other actions, such as attacking or disengaging from an enemy, but loses one exfusion mote at the end of every round where no exfusion motes were gathered or spent.

Exfusion Pool
A martial artist can gather exfusion motes equal to (10 + current Willpower) in her Exfusion Pool. Any mote over that limit is lost.

Exalted and other characters with their own Essence pools that naturally respire Essence have no Exfusion Pool and substract exfusion motes from the number of motes they naturally respire.

Martial Art Charms
Mortals (and only mortals) can learn each charm as a merit with a cost equal to the sum of its prerequisites. For example, a Martial Arts ooo / Essence o charm is a Merit oooo. Only Essence 1 charms can be learned by mortals, and they always use the Terrestrial keyword when present.