Feats, Tricks and Rider Kicks

The warriors of the Gordian cycle perform "feats" that will be familiar to any fans of the kind of anime that feature named special moves. These are most directly drawn, though, from my medieval Irish inspirations; heroes in those stories will perform all sorts of zany special techniques, clessa, with names like the wheel-cles or the apple-cles. The traditional translation is indeed "feat", though I've seen it suggested that "trick" might be more accurate.

This dovetails nicely with the special moves used by the 70s Kamen Riders, which have a similarly consistent naming scheme; Rider Jump, Rider Kick, Rider Chop, etc. The "Hound's leap" breaks from the naming scheme to be more like "Rider Jump", but this also parallels the "salmon-leap", and it's another neat coincidence that both Hongo Takeshi and Cú Chulainn use this one a lot.

Most of my actual innovation comes in having to decide what some of these actually mean. The "edge-feat" and "thunder-feat" are both lifted directly from medieval texts, but they're a bit vague on what they actually are, and while I've left a little ambiguity I am more specific when I include them. The numbered 'levels' of thunder-feat are also medieval, appearing in at least three stories, while I added more of a sense of effort and struggle to climbing said levels, because it's hard not to think of stuff like the Kaioken from DBZ in that situation. Meanwhile some are original; the "kicking-feat", for instance, because you've gotta have a Rider Kick in there.

Finally, the big list of feats in a row, without explaining what any of them are (as seen in the Wooing of Eve), is absolutely a medieval thing; but it's also the song Rider Action from the 1971 show, which is also mostly composed of random technique names that don't appear anywhere else, and has a very similar feeling. (What the hell is the wheel-feat? What the hell is the Rider Plane?)