>Provided that they've got thirty years to dedicate to refining
>themselves.

Kaitlyn certainly hasn't spent thirty years on it... she's only sixteen.

>Please correct me if I'm wrong, but, Kasurigatryuu seems to be rather
>closely held. It would follow that only the most promising and
>honorable of students would be taught something like the "Shadow"
>skills.

It's true that Katsujinkenryuu is a fairly insular art, but that's more a function of circumstance than deliberate action. Gryphon is the only living master between the early 2330s and whenever one of his students achieves mastery, which hasn't happened to date (March, 2405). He's been awfully busy. That I know of so far, he's had six and a half students, of which three and a half are currently active. The first died a novice; the next achieved the rank of journeywoman before circumstances separated them, and he never saw her again. That was in the mid-Exile; he didn't take another student (as far as I know at the moment) until after the end of the War of Corporate Occupation. In Future Imperfect, the third similarly reached journeywoman, then felt that her path lay along a different course and they parted. (The readers haven't had a chance to meet her yet; it happened several years before the Symphony began, in a period of history not covered by released material.)

Of the three current ones, the most senior (Kaitlyn) is an advanced journeywoman, and the other two are novices, one fairly senior, the other all but green. (I cound Utena as the half-student; she counts because, although she isn't studying directly, she does have regular exposure, which will inevitably impress some aspects of the form on her own style, and she looks up to Gryphon enough to call him sensei even though she isn't his student.) With everything else he has to do, he can barely manage to teach three. If Kaitlyn were not a journeywoman, and therefore in the mostly-out-from-under-sensei's-wing stage, he wouldn't have been able to take his most recent novice on.

If and when there's more than one master, one expects the spread of the art to increase somewhat in pace; but it is true that those who practice K-ryuu are a choosy lot when it comes to picking who will learn from them. Being involved with K-ryuu presupposes a certain level of moral fiber - perhaps that's one of the lingering echoes of Talar Kem's involvement in the foundation of the form. So even when there's more than one master of the form, you won't see us setting up dojos in strip malls and awarding colored belts. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/