GURPS Martial Art: Python Strike Thesis Defense Kung Fu [GURPS 4E]

Blame this.

Python Strike Thesis Defense Kung Fu [8/11 pt]

In that room, in that place, it is either you, or it is the snake.  The snake knows its purpose. Do you? – Pat Whittaker, PhD. (Botany)

It was perhaps inevitable that the venerable Western practice of requiring PhD. candidates to wrestle a snake as part of their doctoral thesis defense would eventually spawn its own martial art. Python Strike Thesis Defense Kung Fu is a fairly brutal discipline, in its way: much like graduate school, it is uncompromising about – and uncaring of – weakness.  Adepts in the art obviously prefer to train on snakes, but the hard truth of the matter is that snakes are expensive.  Anonymous brawling in campus bars and illegal tournaments in the steam tunnels are typically cheaper… or, at least the costs don’t come out of department budgets, which is really the important thing.

There is a rumored cinematic version that is supposedly used to endure the legendary Actinic Marriage of Pain ritual (and thus obtain tenure), but few hard details exist.

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