Most fighting on Geba is done with weapons, and most fighters learn only what keeps them alive in a corridor. A smaller number of traditions treat the body itself as the subject, refined over generations and passed from teacher to student. They differ less in what they teach than in what they demand. The Yuvaari arts are nearly impossible without deep, lifelong fitness. Geban Fist rewards strength and power over overall condition. Thazvaari Maiden rewards speed of hand and deception. The best art for war is Severan Focus, and the best unarmed art, and the one that requires the most skill, is Boagrian fighting.
Almost all of them trace back to a handful of roots: the hunting arts of Yuvaar, the force of the Ngorrhali passes, and the doctrines the Empire built when it took what it learned from both.
Yuvaar and the Harmony Code
Yuvaar holds the most widely practiced unarmed traditions on the planet. They grew out of survival rituals and the Saodeh, which treats mastery of the body as worship and the hunt as a conversation with the world, and refuses war outright. The traditional Yuvaari schools are governed by a harmony code that restricts weapons, excessive force, and individual dominance, and the arena fighters of the Yuvaar Hunting Games are almost all Saodeh practitioners. Both Yuvaari arts are modeled on animals, and both are built on conditioning that most people never reach.
Yuvaari Kelek
The Yuvaari Kelek is the most practiced art in Yuvaar. It takes its name from the Yuvaar Kelek, a small lowland feline that strikes from concealment, takes its grip in a single pounce, and dies before it lets go. The art is built on that hunt: a fighter can face something larger than himself if he is the one who does not let go. The stance is low and balanced with both hands forward, and its holds are the foundation of Holder work in the Hunting Games.
It demands grip strength, endurance, and the willingness to stay attached to something trying to throw you off long after your body wants to stop. Those who learn it outside Yuvaar often carry it into contract work armed, a long blade in one hand and a knife in the other, and fall back on it when a fight closes past the range of a weapon.
Yuvaari Goldenwing
The Yuvaari Goldenwing is modeled on the Goldenwing, which seizes prey in midair or drives larger animals to the ground. It is an art of height and impact: closing from above or from a leap, taking hold in the air, and landing with the full weight of the body on whatever was caught. It is the art of the Ambusher in the Hunting Games, and the relay broadcast of a fighter leaping from a cliff to seize a Goldenwing bare-handed is part of its legend.
It is the most athletic art on the planet. It demands explosive power, timing measured in fractions of a second, and a body conditioned to survive the falls that come with it. Few people outside Yuvaar ever become capable of it.
Ngorrhali
The Ngorrhali art comes from the mountain passes and reached its height in the Frost Sentinels. It emphasizes powerful and accurate forward strikes, crushing downward blows, and limited but extremely forceful straight kicks. Its holds are full-body and simple in structure, and nearly impossible to break once set. It is neither fast nor technical the way the Yuvaari arts are. It produces blows and holds that are far stronger, built for fighters whose physiology rewards force over speed.
Training includes breathing techniques for sustained exertion in thin air, so that a fighter can carry heavy armor and keep fighting at altitudes where others cannot function. The art is tested in the Bonding Trials and in the old rite of passage, which still asks a Ngorrhali to kill a Greater Smilohound with bare hands. It rewards mass and endurance that most bodies cannot build.
Geban Fist
Geban Fist grew out of the Ngorrhali art in the imperial capital, where the Frost Sentinels kept their own district and Northern Pass children were raised as the Emperor's bodyguards. It kept the forward strikes and the unbreakable holds and dropped the legs entirely. A Geban Fist fighter does not kick, sweep, or attack the legs. Everything happens above the waist: hard straight punches, throws taken by grip and hip, and upper-body clinches, lifts, and body locks.
It rewards strength and power far more than overall condition, which made it the most accessible of the strong arts and widely taught across the Geba continent. Its weakness is the same as its foundation. Every strike and throw depends on a rooted stance, and a Geban Fist fighter who loses his legs, whether to a sweep, an injury, or a fall, has almost nothing left.
Garnath Dueling
Before the Empire, the nation of Garnath on the northeast coast of the Geba continent settled questions of authority through direct physical duels. It is the oldest fighting tradition on record there. When Vaer'karesh came to unite the five nations, he defeated three Garnath generals in duels, and Garnath's leaders escorted him to Thaloryn afterward. Its forms were never written down, and how much of it survives inside later arts is unknown.
Emperor's Wrath
The Emperor's Wrath was the Empire's annihilation unit, drawn from the strongest and fastest natural-born warriors in the pre-Engineered era, and its fighting art was built for the same purpose. It combines what came before it, with Frost Sentinel instructors shaping it from the beginning, and wins through shock and speed: high-speed strikes, an overwhelming first contact, and pressing the fight before the enemy can organize.
Like the unit, it is never practiced alone. Members fight as one body, each protecting the person beside them, and the art assumes someone is covering every opening. It survives in the New Emperor's Wrath and in the Wrath bloodlines. It demands speed and aggression above all, and when the first shock fails, it has less to fall back on than the arts built for long fights.
Dominion Boarding
Dominion Boarding is the close-quarters art of the old Thazvaari Dominion's navy, drilled for fighting across gaps, on moving decks, and on platforms that could give way at any moment. It favors grapples, shoves, and throws that send an opponent over an edge, and fighting while climbing. It is the root of Thazvaari Ascension, the vertical tower sport of Coastal Thazvaar, and it demands balance, grip, and nerve at height more than raw strength.
Thazvaari Maiden
Thazvaari Maiden began among Thazvaari women and is still taught mostly by them. It is built on deception: feints layered on feints, strikes hidden behind other strikes, and a flurry meant to overwhelm an opponent faster than they can read it. It became known across the south through the Maiden's War, a conflict fought mostly by women that has never formally ended.
It suits smaller fighters and does not depend on strength. It demands hand speed, the stamina to sustain a flurry, and a mind that is always one move ahead of what it shows.
Bare Hand
Bare Hand began as an elite unit of the Geban Empire, founded in the Era of Late Conquest by Imperator Kenez'Feraaz of Thazvaar for deep infiltration and sabotage. Its operatives studied in Yuvaar, took part in local games, learned advanced rope techniques, hunted unarmed, studied the Goldenwing's dive and pin, and were beaten repeatedly by seasoned Yuvaari fighters. They kept the Yuvaari movement and removed the restraints. Where the traditional schools limit outside weapons, Bare Hand trained its people to kill with any object or with none.
The unit dissolved after the Fracture, and its remnants became the first generation of Shadow Operatives. No formal Bare Hand branch exists today. The method survives as improvised close-quarters fighting for when a weapon is lost: short, desperate exchanges with whatever is nearby to buy time for a reload or a single lethal opening.
Severan Focus
Severan Focus is the fighting art of the Severan, the warrior faith held by nearly every fighter and contractor circle on the planet, and it is the best art for war. Like the Emperor's Wrath it takes from all of the others, but it does not rely on shock and speed. It is designed to work only long enough to reach a weapon: break contact, control the limb or the weapon in front of you, and get your hands on your own or the nearest one.
It is trained in armor, under load, and after exhaustion, the way fighting actually happens in a corridor, and it includes the rope work the Severan are known for. Children raised in Severan households begin it as soon as they can walk. It is the reason Severan fighters are considered the best combat practitioners on the planet, and its logic is on display at the end of every match of The Severan, where the duel comes only after the course has broken the athletes down.
Boagrian Fighting
Boagria sits in the mountain passes of Peak Boagria in the Berinu highlands, an edge grey zone with no relay of its own, hidden from anyone who does not know where to look. It was first explored and settled by Ngorrhali explorers who wanted a place of their own outside Karesh, and it grew into something its founders never anticipated. Members went out into the world seeking greater challenges and brought back pupils from every continent, to learn from them as much as to teach them. Veterans of the Emperor's Wrath, Saodeh practitioners from Yuvaar, Frost Sentinel lineages, and Engineered individuals have all found their way there. Anyone seeking true mastery of the body eventually hears of Boagria, and most spend years searching before they find it.
Boagrian fighting is the best unarmed art on Geba and the one that requires the most skill. It treats the body as the only instrument that matters and has no single form. Every practitioner uses the body differently, and every one of them understands leverage, distance, and positioning as a language: how a shoulder can redirect a charge, how a heel planted at the right moment can cancel the momentum of something ten times its weight. It is a science built on generations of accumulated knowledge, and its practitioners also train with the melee weapons Boagria teaches.
Rank at Boagria is earned by teaching. Defeating the person above you counts for nothing. A practitioner rises by becoming capable enough to teach the person below them, and is then sent out into the world to find them.