Teräs Käsi

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Teräs Käsi is a fictional hard martial art in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. It has been used extensively in the video games, most notably Star Wars Galaxies, which is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG), Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi, and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

According to Steve Perry in an interview, Teräs Käsi was based on/inspired by Silat.

1 Overview
2 Linguistics
3 Trivia
4 References
5 External link

[edit] Overview

Teräs Käsi utilizes extremely quick, devastating strikes to end the fight quickly. It also focuses on using hand weapons, such as vibroknuckles. Many of the moves are so fast that the artist almost appears to blur, but at the same time, they are so precise that they almost never miss. The art of Teräs Käsi itself presumably died out at the time of the fall of the Jedi Knights. Along with Echani, the martial art of the Emperors Royal Guards, and Jedi combat training, it is one of the most powerful martial arts in the Star Wars universe.

Darth Maul is an expert in Teräs Käsi fighting, which include the physical manuvers "Rancor Rising" and "Riding Bantha", which are named after Star Wars creatures.

(Now redundant information due to the NGE, but left in for posterity) In Star Wars Galaxies, A character can choose to become a Teräs Käsi Artist. The Teräs Käsi artist has four different skill sets that defind him or her: Balance Conditioning, Meditative Techniques, Power Techniques, and Precision Techniques.

In Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi, one of the characters, Arden Lyn, is a Teräs Käsi artist. Some of her moves are Flip Kick, Double Ankle Kick, and Scissor Kick Takedown.

Finally, in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith video game, one of the styles of Clone Trooper are the Clone Assassins, trained in Teräs Käsi. The game explains that their conditioning has allowed them the ability to dodge attacks and even evade powers of the Force.

[edit] Linguistics

The name comes from Finnish words "teräs" ("steel") and "käsi" ("a hand"). "Teräskäsi" would be a more grammatically correct Finnish term meaning "a steel hand" or "a hand of steel". Writer Steve Perry, creator of the fictional martial art, sometimes uses non-English languages in his work, and says "Norse languages have the kind of rhythm" he likes [1].

Linguistically Finnish is actually a Finno-Ugric language like Hungarian and Estonian, not a Norse language. However, Finland is a Nordic country which are sometimes, but rarely, referred as "Norse countries".

In Finnish street language referring to someone as "käsi" is to call that person clumsy or incompetent.

[edit] Trivia

In Steve Perry's novel The Musashi Flex, a prequal to his Matador book series, Teräs Käsi is breifly mentioned as one of the fighting styles practiced by the novel's main charactor.

[edit] References

Teräs Käsi first appeared in Steve Perry's Star Wars novel, Shadows of the Empire (Bantam, 1996.). Darth Maul is shown practicing Teräs Käsi in the opening chapter of Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter (Reaves, Michael. 2001, Del Rey.). In the novel Medstar I: Battle Surgeons (Perry, Steve and Michael Reaves. 2004, Del Rey.), the primary antagonist, Phow Ji, is a Teräs Käsi champion.