Sigil of the Hare

Sigil of the Hare is a martial art that combines knowledge of strength, agility, and magic. Practitioners of this style must go through a lot of training before being comprable to practitioners of other styles. This is because of the unique use of magic, which requires that students be open minded about how magic is typically used.

It is genearlly practiced by very flexible people, abel to coordinate the complicated movements of the arms and legs.

Leg Casting
Leg Casting is the most distinct component of Sigil of the Hare, and the technique which seperates from most other kinds of martial arts. Leg Casting was designed by a group of Faunus Mages, trying to find a more offensive method of casting magic.

The problem that the mages saw was that most magic puts too much focus on the mages torso, arms, and head, with spells being concieved in the head, energy being gathered in the torso, and cast and controlled via the somatics of the arms. This school of thought ignores the feet, a trait passed down from even older practices where a mage might have to sit, meditating, to gether energy before releasing it in a spell.

The mages identified that the arms were a limiting factor in this school of thought. The somatic components of magic had huge effects on the success of a spell, so the arms were valuable. The mage's idea was to transfer the somatic component of casting spells to the legs, freeing up the arms to complete other tasks.

After much research on the subject the mages succeeded, but discovered that this new style of magic was not very easy to use. Somatic components of the legs were diffirent then those of the arms and so spells could not be transfered over on a one to one basis.

Today, Leg Casting is still in development with a fairly small number of practioners, attempting to grow the meager knowledge they have. Most spells are offensive, as originally intended by the mages. This is because day to day spells, outside of combat, might as well be cast with the arms. Spells usually revolve around short term physical augmentation and teporary enchatment, with a very limited number of spells for typical ranged spell casting.

Process
The process of casting a spell goes as follows. The torso is partitioned into 3 sections, the chest, the gut, and the pelvis. Energy is built up in the gut. It is sent to the arms, legs, or both for manipulation, finally the prepared energy is transfered to the chest, pelvis, or both, to be focused and finally released through the arms, legs, or both, respecitvely.

Styles
Sigil of the Hare has been split into multiple smaller styles, being studied in concurance. For the most part these styles broke off from Core, choosing to partition the body diffirently, or choosing to focus certain parts diffirently then others.

Core
Core was the style developed by the original group of mages. Similar to other, older, schools of magic, Core does not move the body very much. Core splits up somatic components between the arms and legs, so that all 4 limbs prepare a single spell. This seems to lower the casting time of spells; however the real advantage is that it prefers to release spells though the legs, and keeps the arms free to prepare more spells. Spells are usually ranged, and delivered with large kicks, as the mages figured this was the safest thing to do. Core differs from more developed styles in that the torso can be split into only two larger partitions.

Common practice of this style is to stand back as an ordinary mage, being the somatic components with the hands while jumping to preform somatic components with the legs. Alternatively, practitioners will lie on their back and preform somatic components with their hands and feet at the same time. Traditional ranged spells like streams of energy or telekenitic derivatives are then preformed with some of the 4 limbs while the others begin preparing another spell or work to maintain the existing spell. Details on the exact progression of a fight with this style is unkown because it is so under developed.

Core has largely died out as practitioners realized the difficulty of splitting somatic components among 4 limbs. In addition the ranged spells invisioned by the first mages proved to be much harder then personal augmentations.

Sigil of the Bull Rabbit
Sigil of the Bull Rabbit was the first off shoot from Core, and is the most commonly practiced style of Sigil of the Hare. This style chooses to focus on enchanted physical attacks. The caster will preform enchantments on their own legs, with their arms, while the legs deliver devistating kicks. Most schools will prefer to focus on a single spell which is then maintained and modifyed over the course of the fight; however, a practitioner could also choose to cast many short term spells, lasting only for a few kicks, if they want to use multiple enchancements to fight multiple enemies or to keep the opponent guessing on what kind of kick will come next.

Common practice is to take a strong, well grounded stance, while beginning an enhancment. Defense is relegated to aura or defensive kicks for more advanced users. Common enhancements are force vectors to put more power behind a kick, or temperature enchantment to burn and feeze the opponent. Fights will continue with this enchantment, as a diffirent enchantment would require breaking combat for a few moments. Fights will end with the opponent either being kicked into submission or the practitioner wearing down the opponent before using a full body strength enchantment to preform grappling, a take down, and a pin.

This is the most commonly practiced style because somatic components are still done with the hand, meaning the only thechnique that really needed from Core is the ability to channel spells thorugh the legs.

Jumping Hare
Breaking off of Core around the same time that Sigil of the Bull Rabbit, Jumping Hare maintained the art of using legs for the sommatic components of spells. The style engages in an very acrobatic form of melee combat, where in physical augmentations are cast by both the arms and legs on both the arms and legs, resulting in a flurry of blows. The accrobatics are necesary to keep the feet off the ground to cast their own spells. While this form could focus on either long lasting enhancments, like Sigil of the Bull Rabbit, or short lasting enhancements, because Jumping Hare pratitioners prefer to stay flexible, most opt for short lasting enhancements.

Common practice is to stay mobile, quickly begin an enchantment with the arms, moving in for a punch while setting up to enchat the legs and follow with a kick. The kick should then allow the user to enchant the arm for a follow up attack. Manuvers to keep the feet off the ground include jumps, cartwheels and even rolls in some special cases. Jumping Hare finishes almost all fights with a full body enchantment of some kind to preform a take down and pin. This is conveninet because the body is already being enchanted consistantly, so a full body enchantment is a natural step from the limited enchantments preformed thus far.

Jumping Hare can is more difficult to learn due to it's greater focus on acrobatics, while maintaining the focus on actual spell casting.

Some practitioners of Jumping Hare focuses on dedicating either the arms or legs to further casting enchantments on the other pair of limbs while also using healing spells to keep the user fighting for longer.

Jack
Whether this is its own style can debated because it is the least developed. Jack emerged later then the previous two styles and didn't split from Core, in the same way. Jack was developed by clandestine assassins who had practice in some combination of aformentioned styles. Jack focuses on laying traps while moveing.

A common practice is to cast trap spells with the arms or legs, and focus them in the pelvis, before being placed by the feet while running. Trap spells cast in this way are very hard to notice. This style doesn't really have applications in melee combat unless the user wants to place a trap in the middle of combat. Common spells in this style are timed and triggered explosions. Force vectors to push or hold enemeis are also common.

This style would be very complicated to learn because casting a trap with proper triggers can already be hard while working with the hands.