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[Saede Riordan]

-Truncated-

You missed a faction

I missed a few, I left the serps out cause I couldn't picture them having a martial art. Like, an arguement could be made that the Angels, Sansha, and Guristas are their own empires, the Serpentis....them having a martial art struck me akin to a corporation having a martial art. I don't know if they would or not though, they are a pirate group, so it would be in their best interest...I honestly don't know, you're the serp expert, lets here your thoughts

[hellgremlin]

Look at the spread of martial arts in the real world, when east met west. I think that any martial art that exists in New Eden would be practiced by every empire in some numbers. Like, in the real world you have Americans learning Karate and Japanese learning to box - so I think cultural currents would carry any unique fighting style from its point of origin right across the galaxy.

You could have Gallente yuppies learning brutal Amarr slave-suppression techniques and pain compliance methods, because it's trendy all of a sudden.

[lallara zhuul]

Hmmm, martial arts.

I doubt in a lot of the societies that there would be none outside the military.

Most of the current ones we have is from the military or from a time and a space in a society where technological advancement had plateaued and certain classes of people were not allowed to arm themselves.

Main reason for people learning them through the ages has been to protect oneself from bandits, robbers and other malcontents. If a society would reach a balance where the security forces and societal indoctrination would eradicate infighting within the population, the need for any martial arts would be eradicated.

In a thousand years of peace within a population you would have nothing left except dueling and physical culture exercises among the lines of yoga or chi-gong outside the military.

Let's see the Empires of New Eden and their characteristics.

One tribal.

Some Native American tribes did not even know how to hit people when they encountered the barbaric westerners. Their 'warfare' was based on 'counting coup' by touching the opponent with a long stick or with a painted hand.

Tribal warriors usually consider personal development and achievements to be the primary way of showing you how to be good at what you do. Therefore a tribal society would reject any formal way of training as something that would take away from that aspect of personal development. Modifying hunting skills for raiding neighboring tribes, using speed and wits to outsmart/maneuver the opposition to steal something of value. Avoiding loss of life being quite essential in the whole conflict, because if a hunter dies in a hunter-gatherer society then their family dies.

No wonder they were steamrolled by the Amarrians.

One communal.

After the collapse the terraforming was not finished. The whole society was confined to limited resources. Survival of the many was more important than the survival of the individual. After the terraforming was finished the population spread out forming small collectives, going through a tribal phase and later united into a one big collective.

In all likelyhood the whole society went through lengthy periods of peace and security. Causing less and less need for any kind of violence outside of the old military traditions.

No wonder they were steamrolled by the Gallenteans.

One fractional.

The kingdoms of Gallente prime in all likelyhood took pretty much very similar path that Europe did while they climbed from the post-collapse division of the population to the Federation. Constant civil war through millennia turned the population into individuals that sought be skillful enough to protect what was theirs. Even after the Federation was formed, the smaller states within the Gallentean population were in constant state of upmanship against the others when it comes to martial skills and technology.
Probably the most likely to have wide range of different martial arts traditions outside of the military, probably the most aggressive of the all Empires.

One religious.

After the collapse there were three factions on Athra. Two of them religious, Khanid and the Amarrians. Third the more technologically oriented Udorians. All three populations grew, Amarrians met the Khanid, Khanid had similar religion, joined the Amarrians. They kicked Udorian butt. Nature of the Scriptures basically states 'Never forget.' The military traditions that rose in the civil war became something to be revered and upheld. The nature of their religion proved to be right, when they came across other races and steamrolled them. Constantly adding more and more information about warfare into their Scriptures, learning from them, studying them, becoming more and more adept with them. Because of the nature of the society, martial arts outside the military completely unheard of. Ways of controlling the livestock, on the other hand. Quite common.

So, I would hazard a theory that there are roughly three types of martial arts in the cluster.

Military based, where you utilize all means necessary to kill the opponent. Weapons, no weapons.

Traditional, esoteric rules on conducting the conflict, even more esoteric rules about determining the victor.

Utilitarian, greatest amount of pain possible with minimum amount of permanent damage. Fast takedowns without permanent damage. Using the superior strength of the opponent against them.

As I stated before, I believe that very few would actually have any martial arts training.
Only third of the schools for the capsuleers in any Empire is military.
Usually any kind of military specialist training does not entail any hand to hand training, unless it is for a specialty where such training is needed. Wasting resources on teaching pilots to know how to have fisticuffs is wasted resources. Militaries work on efficiency.

I guess that pretty much sums up my current thoughts on the matter for the time being.

[Seriphyn]

Tribal, communal, fractional and religious is a good way to describe the big four.

I think everyone here has got differing pictures of martial arts, I certainly though of "lolBruceLee" initially, but on further thought, stuff like sword-fighting and fencing would be practiced by the Gallenteans as a hobby/sport. Then there's "martial traditions" of the Brutor and so on...

Perhaps there should be a distinction between "martial arts" and "physical combat". To me, martial arts is all the tradition and ceremony stuff, while physical combat is literally just that. Like the Serpentis would just have a physical combat style purely for getting the job done; since the pirate factions are not civilizations, they wouldn't have developed the whole traditional/ceremonial side of things.

[Benjamin Shepherd]

I really don't think about this stuff. Surely you cannot assume that practices that exist today will exist twenty thousand year into the future.

[Amann Karris]

Main reason for people learning them through the ages has been to protect oneself from bandits, robbers and other malcontents. If a society would reach a balance where the security forces and societal indoctrination would eradicate infighting within the population, the need for any martial arts would be eradicated.

Thankfully, no society in New Eden has reached a point where conflict was eradicated.

Bandits, robbers, other malcontents?  Well, wouldn't that be like, for instance, the Blood Raiders, Serpentis, Guristas...?

There's plenty of impetus for private martial training.  The Minmatar are a prime example; conquered by the Amarr, do you think they would have been allowed weapons?  Would there have been differences in training from planet to planet, region to region, etc.?

Before Aduner could do anything, Sadrede made a beeline for a nearby dancer. The Minmatar had a tradition of physical expression ranging all the way from the delicate, symbolic flights of trained dancers to the coarse, even violent, dances of tribal warriors. This one, plying his trade on a frictionless mat, was doing the exhibition form of Ruhste, an old and extremely physical dance art that more often than not had the exhibitor spinning in the air. It had been banned during the Amarr occupation due to fears that it might be used as a tool to train fighters, but was now permitted as a cultural sport, although the government had adamantly refused to give it any grants or official backing.

If it was banned, how did it survive as an art form?  

Looking at Martial Arts as an actual art form is an idea in and of itself.  Wushu for instance.  If you want to really develop a fictional martial art, think about it in a "wiki" sense.

An example.

Another example.

To recap: There's plenty of examples in EVE PF to support martial arts training.  I also agree that, on the whole, few would really "master" such styles.  However, there are probably many more who actively train in them.  There's probably a far greater number of people who know how to beat the **** out of anyone they want; not from any specific style, but from a lifetime of fighting, and simply trying to survive in less-than-ideal circumstances.

EVE is not a utopia.  I could go on and on listing why specific Empires would not have a "unified" fighting style, both out of necessity and cultural influences.  I've said what I need to say, and I'll leave you by repeating this; Martial Arts in EVE are ripe for literary exploitation.  

[Bong-cha Jones]

Tribal warriors usually consider personal development and achievements to be the primary way of showing you how to be good at what you do. Therefore a tribal society would reject any formal way of training as something that would take away from that aspect of personal development. Modifying hunting skills for raiding neighboring tribes, using speed and wits to outsmart/maneuver the opposition to steal something of value. Avoiding loss of life being quite essential in the whole conflict, because if a hunter dies in a hunter-gatherer society then their family dies.

There's a lot that's problematic about this.  There's plenty of evidence that tribal warriors practiced formal training, both in Africa and among the Germanic tribes in Europe, to pick out a few examples.  It's also ...odd... to conflate hunter-gatherer with tribal, when neither one needs to be the other.  The pre-contact Minmatar had spaceships; I doubt their entire martial tradition was rooted in assuring that food-producers weren't killed in single combat.

To address the original topic, I think that every group probably practices, in some shape or way, pretty much every variant and style of fighting.  Certain martial arts may better typify the attitude of one group or another (which is kind of the point of selecting them, Benjamin, not actual continuity with present traditions), but I have a hard time imagining that interstellar empires spanning scores of planets would be less internally generative than single continents.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

Not so much for speculation as just history, Wren (who, sadly, appears to have been sold to someone else) did a bunch of writing on Sebiestor martial arts way back in the day. Here are a couple pieces:

The Seven Forms
A Seven Forms Morning

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

I've also got to wonder about zero gravity martial arts. Certainly most action involves planetary surfaces or structures with artificial gravity, but I can see where martial arts intended for use in zero gravity would be useful. Some habitats (especially older ones) may not have gravity. Likewise, pirates might train in zero gravity - upon boarding a ship, they might try to disable the artificial gravity in order to throw off defenders.

Bruce Sterling came up with some interesting principles of zero gravity martial arts in Schismatrix. The main one is a sort of altered haragei, of keeping awareness of your center of gravity:

"This is what haragei is for." The President slapped his own belly. "This is your center of gravity, your center of torque. You meet some enemy in free fall, and you grapple with him, well, your head is just a stalk, see? What happens depends on your center of mass. Your haragei, your actions, the places where you can punch out with hands and feet, form a sphere. And that sphere is centered on your belly. You think of that bubble around you all the time."

Another big part of zero gravity martial arts would be grounding. If you're floating free, any action you perform will result in a reaction to your own body. You punch someone and you are pushing yourself back. If you are grounded to a surface, so that the reaction to the force you exert goes through you to the wall/floor/ceiling/whatever you're touching, then you can apply that much more force. Strike someone in free fall while you're not grounded and you might break their nose. Strike someone in free fall while you're firmly planted on a surface and you might break their neck.

[Ulphus]

There's only so many to break people, and I expect that every culture in the Eve cluster will have some martial art or other that uses each of them.

Consider Japan, a single small, relatively homogenous culture, that produced hundreds of different martial arts with different emphasis, from strikes to throws to joint locks, direct attacks and defence.

Aikido, Kenjutsu, Judo, Sumo, ninjitsu etc.

To suggest that any of the cultures of Eve with billions of people in will have less variation seems to me to be mistaken.

[Ulphus]

Tribal warriors usually consider personal development and achievements to be the primary way of showing you how to be good at what you do. Therefore a tribal society would reject any formal way of training as something that would take away from that aspect of personal development. Modifying hunting skills for raiding neighboring tribes, using speed and wits to outsmart/maneuver the opposition to steal something of value. Avoiding loss of life being quite essential in the whole conflict, because if a hunter dies in a hunter-gatherer society then their family dies.

There's a lot that's problematic about this.  There's plenty of evidence that tribal warriors practiced formal training, both in Africa and among the Germanic tribes in Europe, to pick out a few examples.  It's also ...odd... to conflate hunter-gatherer with tribal, when neither one needs to be the other.  The pre-contact Minmatar had spaceships; I doubt their entire martial tradition was rooted in assuring that food-producers weren't killed in single combat.

^^ This.

Iraq was a relatively modern Tribal society with fighter pilots, tank drivers, nuclear scientists, bridgebuilders etc. tribal does not (always) equal primitive. Afgrandstand is another tribal society, though a bit more fucked up, and they seem to be nothing like a walk-over to technologicaly superior attackers.

[Laerise [PIE]]

There's only so many to break people, and I expect that every culture in the Eve cluster will have some martial art or other that uses each of them.

Consider Japan, a single small, relatively homogenous culture, that produced hundreds of different martial arts with different emphasis, from strikes to throws to joint locks, direct attacks and defence.

Aikido, Kenjutsu, Judo, Sumo, ninjitsu etc.

To suggest that any of the cultures of Eve with billions of people in will have less variation seems to me to be mistaken.

I don't want to rain on your parade, but this spread of martials arts is/was found everywhere around the globe when those weapons were in use, the japanese just still make a big fuss about calling everything "an ancient an honourable martial art taught by the old and wise masters of (insert random japanese word here)". 

[Ghost Hunter]

Sansha's Nation:
They've probably got something but I have no idea.

Two different extremes seem within their ideology:

A form that maximizes disabling the enemy. It fits the True Slave mentality to disable an enemy, but not destroy them, in order to harvest them for resources / enslavement.

Conversely, a form that focuses on completely devastating a person's body may also be applicable. Breaking bones, fractures, etc. The Sansha can replace extensive portions of the body (and even forgo whole sections as unneeded) so if damaging the person is less resource intensive than repairing the harvester, it would make sense.

Of course if the Sansha really do have a martial form, this is where I foreshadow the possibility of cybernetic ninja zombies.

[Ulphus]

There's only so many to break people, and I expect that every culture in the Eve cluster will have some martial art or other that uses each of them.

Consider Japan, ... snip ...
To suggest that any of the cultures of Eve with billions of people in will have less variation seems to me to be mistaken.

I don't want to rain on your parade, but this spread of martials arts is/was found everywhere around the globe when those weapons were in use, the japanese just still make a big fuss about calling everything "an ancient an honourable martial art taught by the old and wise masters of (insert random japanese word here)". 

I don't disagree, and indeed I've done some study in some of the medieval european stuff, but for the purposes of illumination I was trying to point out the variation within a single culture.

[Major JSilva]

Systema and Krav Maga are two completely different fighting systems with different styles of fighting, training and preformance. not to say it isn't possible. I think khanid/Caldari would be similar in many ways of martial arts as they train together quite abit.