“To rely on one’s fist above all else”
The driving philosophy of the Shunde was borne of a mistrust of magic. The first Shunde monks were villagers, the six survivors of the Warping of Acriman. Seeing the havoc unchecked magic wrought, along with the callousness of the arcane scholars that picked apart their home’s carcass, the six individuals travelled south established an abbey in Tsamsara’s south west.
From that point in F+99, they began to grow. Back then, Anomalies were not well understood and claimed many lives. In addition, there was no governing body to regulate magic practitioners. Often those with magical power would run wild and turn to banditry. Thus, the Shunde stood in their way. Through countless crusades against rogue mages, the Monks developed techniques meant to match and counter the raw arcane power of the mages.
As the world became more civilized and the Magician’s Union was formed to regulate and protect mages, the Shunde settled into an uneasy truce, with an enemy that now had a formal face: the Union. Tensions eventually calmed to the point the Shunde made their monastery in Benthia, the home of the Magician’s Union.
Whereas magical practioners power their spells from the magical force that suffuses the material world, the Shunde draw from within. According to philosophers, each living being has a “spark” that encompasses their personality, soul, and mind. The Shunde dubs this “Qi”. By tapping into Qi, Monks are capable of great agility, allowing them to close the distance with mages and dismantle them in a flurry of blows. However, to use Qi is to use one’s life force, potentially cutting their years.
The Shunde’s outlook is a mixture of religion and martial philosophy, and each monk believes that Qi is passed on from parent to child. Thus, each child has the soul and knowledge of their entire ancestral line. Thus, the six lines of the six orignal survivors are the most revered. This line is why the Shunde were devastated when the Visailin line was abruptly ended by a rogue mage, resulting in the Visailin Pact being drafted and the Shunde ending all relations with mages.
