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Post by Bewildered Badger on May 10, 2008 15:47:51 GMT -5
Is there any evidence, one way or the other, that female Kai exist? Off hand I can only think of four possible examples, and only one of these comes from the game books themselves. In 'Dawn Of The Dragons', there is a small illustration in section 178 showing two warriors (presumably, but not explicitly, Kai) fighting a Lava. One is definitely male, he has a mustache. The other has her face turned so we can not see it, but the waist length plaited hair suggest a woman. As do the boobies. In 'The Skull Of Agarash' two visitors to the Monastery are greeted by a young woman called Dawn Light. Now the name is certainly in keeping with the Kai form, but, like on Earth, Dawn may be a common Sommerlending name. Light could be a surname. In addition she is unarmed and wears no armour, although this may simply be normal for off-duty Kai. In 'Eclipse Of The Kai' everyones favorite Mary Sue (irony mode to maximum), Alyss, disguises herself as a nine foot tall female Kai when visiting the Monastery, if memory serves. Seeing as no one remarks on the oddity of her gender it suggests other women are there as well, though I don't recall any others being pointed out. And of course there's the front cover of the Mongoose RPG.
Now, can anyone think of any others?
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Post by Maerin on May 10, 2008 16:09:58 GMT -5
Well, as you said, there are quite a few examples (aside from the one you noted, there are a few others in Eclipse of the Kai and subsequent Legends novels. The relatively non-gender nature of Kai names makes it virtually impossible to disern gender of those Kai that are referred to (unless a pronoun is used that makes gender more specific). Finally, there is no specific reference in the gamebooks that suggest the Kai are entirely male (which is a not-insignificant cultural detail).
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Post by Agrarvyn on May 10, 2008 17:17:50 GMT -5
You know, Badger, if Alyss was visible as a nine-foot-tall female Kai, even if she was in an exclusively male monastery, they would be commenting on her height, not her gender! There's one line I constantly remember from Eclipse of the Kai, which is something to the effect of: "oh look, she's in silver; she must be an Archmaster." Horrible pun alert: How does Lone Wolf cut his hair? 'Eclipse it.
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Post by Balgin Stondraeg on May 11, 2008 14:51:54 GMT -5
disguises herself as a nine foot tall female Kai when visiting the Monastery, if memory serves. Seeing as no one remarks on the oddity of her gender Surely they'd be more likely to make odd remarks about her obscene size. "Hey, aren't you a bit tall to be a Sommlending you darklands freak?!"
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Post by zipp on May 11, 2008 18:58:23 GMT -5
In 'Eclipse Of The Kai' everyones favorite Mary Sue (irony mode to maximum), Alyss, disguises herself as a nine foot tall female Kai when visiting the Monastery, if memory serves. Seeing as no one remarks on the oddity of her gender it suggests other women are there as well, though I don't recall any others being pointed out. Sigh... am I the only one who likes Alyss? Anyways, she doesn't come as a nine foot kai. She appears as a rather thin kai wearing glasses.
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Post by Okak dez naj on May 11, 2008 19:41:04 GMT -5
There may have been female Kai but not any more, they all defected to the Nak. Much more fun being on this side. ;D
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Post by Samildanach on May 11, 2008 20:54:52 GMT -5
Some confusion here. In Eclipse, there is mention of a female Archmaster who appears to be about 17, and a seven-foot female Kai of unspecified rank dressed in scarlet. Alyss does disguise herself as a silver-clad Kai, but it's not specified that the Kai is female, only that it's slight of build.
It's convenient having my copy of Eclipse right here. ;D
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Post by Maerin on May 11, 2008 23:09:03 GMT -5
Sigh... am I the only one who likes Alyss? No, actually I do happen to like the character of Alyss as well (might be a weird "sage thing"). She certainly skewed the story approach that was taken to the Legends series in a fashion that was, to put it mildly, at times odd...but no more odd than some of the other approaches written by the author into those books. If Alyss was the author's "Mary Sue" in those novels, she was certainly not the only one. Her introduction into the gamebooks was actually fairly rational, at least so far as "talking head" story elements go. And I did rather enjoy roleplaying her for a relatively brief period of time running "A Twist In Time".
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Post by Al on May 12, 2008 8:50:28 GMT -5
Finally, there is no specific reference in the gamebooks that suggest the Kai are entirely male (which is a not-insignificant cultural detail). Given the time frame (approximate) that the books are set in (relative to ours), I would suggest male only would be normal, not requiring specific mention, while a non-segregated institution would be most unusual indeed (which would require special mention). This being said, though, given that their are some seriously strong indicators that female Kai exist (and no explicit rule to the contrary), I would assume that they do (this is especially true given that in post-Tolkien fantasy literature, IMHO, their appears to be a move towards including females as strong leads, even though it would not make sense in the types of eras described).
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Post by Maerin on May 12, 2008 10:03:38 GMT -5
I think we have a tendency to be married a bit too strongly to our own world's (or at least our own culture's) prejudices in subjects like this. Even if one looks at our own world's history taken as a whole, gender separation was never as completely institutionalized as it was for several hundred years relatively late in Europe's history (and as recent as this century or so in the U.S., even moreso than large areas of Europe). Moreover, as more and more historical documents emerge in recent times whose content was essentially ignored due to the fact that the content did not necessarily support that institution, even our view of those several centuries is starting to change and shift a bit. All that suggests that viewing Magnamund through the colored lens of our perceptions of our own world history is probably not the most reasonable approach anymore, assuming it ever was in the first place. Just because everything in the world looks tinged with blue through blue-tinted glasses does not mean that the world we are looking at is actually blue. I think we have to assume that the lack of information is nothing more than a reflection of lack of information, unless or until we find out otherwise. After all, there are quite a few examples of descriptive content regarding various areas of Magnamund that we might regard as redundant because of our own world's history...and yet, there is a fair amount of descriptive text written for those examples nonetheless. And one can again look at our own world's history. How much active distortion of written history can be sole attributed to lack of information and how much active distortion of written history can be attributed to one, or even more, authors' own biases and prejudices about how things are "supposed to be"?
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Post by Beowuuf on May 12, 2008 16:01:00 GMT -5
I think in this case, unless we see evidence to the contrary explicitly saying females were barred or not considered, I think someone with kai potential was someone with kai potential. Perhaps the warrior nature might have meant more boys were pushed towards the kai than women, but I still imagine both genders being put forward
If I ever get around to it, I must admit something in the legends books sparked with ideas for a a female heavy kai story. But I have many things to do before getting back to that one!
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Post by Balgin Stondraeg on May 12, 2008 18:10:06 GMT -5
I think we have a tendency to be married a bit too strongly to our own world's (or at least our own culture's) prejudices in subjects like this. Even if one looks at our own world's history taken as a whole, gender separation was never as completely institutionalized as it was for several hundred years relatively late in Europe's history (and as recent as this century or so in the U.S., even moreso than large areas of Europe). Many pre Catholic societies had a lot more gender equality than people think (too many cliche'd hollywood films, slander from the catholic church and other stuff). Hey, at one point in medieval france the head of the blacksmith's guild was a woman. In most celtic and viking cultures, the way they treated women could be looked upon as sexist by modern standards but, taken in context, the women of these cultures had much more freedom than those of "civilised nations" (classical mediterranean countries which always had a fairly strong male dominence thing going on). Now, here's my take on the break down of the kai order as far as women go. According to the Magnamund companion the sons of noble families are taken for testing to see if they're suitable for entry into the monastery. Children throughout the country who show talent are taken to the monastery (some parents will begrudge this as their child is not there to work the farm and look after them as they get older but will accept the blessing that fate has given their family). Many nobles would probably consider using their daughters as bargaining chips to secure political marriages of alliance a more proffitable prospect than sending them away to join a monastic order. As such I see the kai membership as predominently male but by no means exclusively so. I belieev that young women in the monastery would be a rare thing and have fairly unique personalities. Do I think the monastery would exclude women from it's membership? Absolutely not. How is a young Kai monk to master the act of camouflage (including blending into a crowd, mimmicry and disguise) if he's got no idea how women live? How can he speak Vassagonian fluently like a native if he's stammering and staring at that slave girl's ankles? I think it makes more sense for the monastery to encourage female acolytes, it's the Sommlending population in general who might be reluctant to let their daughters go. She appears as a rather thin kai wearing glasses. Wearing glasses? And nobody commented on the vow of poverty? Those things would likely be prohibitively expensive for the majority of Sommerlund's population and I know that many kai are supposed to be of noble birth but that shouldn't make the vow of fire relative.
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Post by Agrarvyn on May 12, 2008 18:46:59 GMT -5
I can't imagine that any Kai warrior would need glasses. After all, Huntmastery gives each Kai tremendous senses, so it stands to reason that every Kai Lord is at the very least "normal".
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Post by Maerin on May 14, 2008 0:47:09 GMT -5
Now, here's my take on the break down of the kai order as far as women go. According to the Magnamund companion the sons of noble families are taken for testing to see if they're suitable for entry into the monastery.... Actually, unless you are quoting some other section of Magnamund Companion than I recently did in another thread, it says "children" not "sons". Just want to keep the actual quotes separate from speculation, or these "canon" topic discussions get rather confusing.
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Post by Al on May 14, 2008 1:27:51 GMT -5
If the term is "children" then I would take that as pretty strong evidence of females being allowed into the Order - why would one use a gender neutral term if the process was not gender neutral?
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