Monk Limits

Limits are special "bracelets" that monks wear in order to suppress their monkly abilities, be it strength, intelligence, stamina and combinations thereof. Mostly people are aware of monk abilities and suppression of them in terms of MiDavid strength and speed, and they are the monks that most often need to wear limits in their outside activities.

History
They were made three thousand years ago by some Assyrian evil genius. The druids that make them have made the design a little gentler and less enslaving, but they're pretty much just copying it when they make new sets. (See Ruach’Alukah)

How They Work
Traditionally, it's not really understood how the limits actually work. They have been studied, of course, but no one has been able to figure out exactly what the Assyrian druid did to create them.

By the time the limits were discovered by a druid in India (now Pakistan), all they had was the dead, damaged corpse of one of the Ruach'Alukah - Spirit Leeches. The druid was able to create the progenitor of modern limits, but from her time to present there has been little improvement in design or function.

Their Effects
The way it works doesn't change from monk to monk, even irregardless of strength. The best analogy is an inverse one. If you put a pair of five pound weight bracelets on someone relatively weak, they feel it much more than someone that can bench press three hundred. The way they work is the same on both, and it's the same weight, but one can resist it better. With monks, they're the same limits, but one person has more of which they are now bereft than the other does. So the stronger feel it much more.

If you're strong and fast, you feel like you're wearing weights. Or moving through water. Or something like that. And they make us wear them to fight so we can make sure our reflexes and instincts are sharp. Monks think fast, so when you're in a fight, you can think more about what you're doing. Sometimes that's good, sometimes bad. But it slows down how we think, so we have to react more on instinct in a fight. They do it to make sure we've learned things deep in the muscle memory. So it's just reflex, you know.

The Courin Limits
"I've been changing the way in which the magic is pulled from the body, the speed, process, and the dispersal.  I've also begun to experiment with not pulling all of the magic from the body, but trapping it into a loop that does not allow the magic to be used, yet doesn't drain the wearer."

Each limit looks like a sort of wide bracelet made of individual smaller bracelets each about the size of a piece of yarn, and the metal is flexible to slide on, and each smaller bracelet bit has a click-in-place clasp. They were designed to be put on in a certain pattern. You put them all on, but don’t secure any of them, and then starting with a wrist go in a clockwise pattern, closing one clasp with each cycle.

Ruach'Alukah
See page on original, evil limits, the Ruach'Alukah.