K'Artanyik

K'Artanyik was a thri-kreen monk and fighter who espoused a philosophical tradition of balance and middle way, ultimately founding the Mo-kan monastic tradition and developing the martial techniques of Ki.

Background
A thri-kreen fighter, K'Artanyik (born 210 DA) was naturally inclined to work and fight as a part of a larger unit rather than by himself. In thri-kreen society, his name meant "Storm of the Searing Sands", and he spent the majority of his life within the Desert of Bleached Bone. Prior to his coming of age, K'Artanyik's clutch was enslaved in an ambush by minotaurs loyal to Baphomet. K'Artanyik led a slave revolt, not out of desire for freedom, but because he determined that his slave master was a weak leader, and weak leaders must be challenged, for the clutch must be strong. In his youth, he carried the gythka, a two-headed spear traditionally used by Thri-Kreen for hunting. During the revolt, K'Artanyik was separated from his clutch, and he set off on his own to forge a path in the human world.

Like all thri-kreen, K'Artanyik saw combat as a form of hunting. He fought not for glory or riches, but as a means to sustain his body and his clutch. However, as time went on, he realized that all of existence was his clutch, and that the hive was the unity of all planes.

Appearance
K'Artanyik stood 6'6" tall, and weighs 200 lbs. His body was covered in chitinous plates the color of wet sand, and his back bore scars from the short time he spent as a slave. The multi-faceted eyes on his wedge-shaped head were colored golden-yellow. While his powerful mandibles allowed him to speak an accented form of common, he found Thri-kreen much easier to pronounce, and as such, Mo-Kan jargon is rife with thri-kreen terms.

Philosophy
Instructing others in the middle way, K'Artanyik believed that one should be able to defend the balance of the universe completely unaided, and so he developed a martial tradition reliant entirely upon one's six limbs. When other races began to espouse his teaching, he modified elements of the fighting style out of deference to those who did not possess a middle pair of arms. The vows of his order are balance, integrity, mastery of self, and indomitable spirit. Only by extensive meditation and physical rigor can one hope to attain unity with existence.

His philosphy also revered knowledge as the chief means of maintaining balance:


 * "By knowing, we lose our thrall to ignorance.  By freeing ourselves from ignorance, we become wise.  By becoming wise, we may finally attain strength.  It is only by this that we may attain inner peace, and thus reconcile ourselves to mortality.  Finally, by acknowledging our impermanence, we may strive to bring balance to existence with our lives.  Istria is our clutch, and our hive is the entirety of the planes.  Indeed, only by knowing may we become one with knowledge.  This is the middle way--a way of no way, for to choose a way is to lose balance.  Seek you rather to keep all perspectives--which is, by nature, to keep none."