fandomhigh | Weapons 101; Tuesday, First Period [07/02].

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weaponry

Weapons 101; Tuesday, First Period [07/02].

One thing the last session had certain done effectively was break Amaya out of her stubborness against using the Danger Shop for these sorts of classes, but, really, when you didn't know what the island would be serving you from one week to the next, it just seemed a bit more consistent and convenient for everyone, so that was where the class would be meeting. Case in point, Amaya still wasn't sure where Diaz might be; she supposed the other teacher could be running late, and she kept checking her phone, since she figured she'd let her know if something came up or she couldn't make it in due to official FPD business, or something, but nothing. Then again, it was a bit hard to tell with Diaz. Maybe she was just running late.

The room had been set up as a large training area with a medieval bent to it, and addition to a wide space for movement and a collection of practice dummies, there were several racks of various swords gleaming and waiting for use, and the students all seemed ready and waiting, too, so Amaya was going to just get started and hope Diaz got there in time for her part of the class.

"Welcome to Weapons 101," she started, giving the students a nod, "a basic introduction to a variety of different classic weapons, most of them melee, most of them what some of you might consider archaic. Each week, we'll be looking a different type of weapon, learning about their origin and use, and then giving them a go. I'm Amaya Blackstone, I'm the local blacksmith here, so I've got a lot of experince with these weapons from the craftsman's side. It's important to know a weapon well if you're going to be running around making them. And on the using them side, we'll...usually have Detective Diaz here to instruct you there; she's an expert in a multitude of weapons, from glaives to gattling guns, so she knows what she's talking about. And she's also...apparently...not here...at the moment, but hopefully, that just means she's running late, and we can get started without her, anyway.

"We're going to start," Amaya said, and then she gestured dramatically to one of the racks behind her, "with swords, naturally! Probably one of the most common and ubiquitous of classic weapons, especially where I'm from, a sword is a bladed weapon intended for slashing or thrusting, distinquished by being longer than a knife or a dagger. As a matter of fact, they rather evolved from the dagger, way back when, when someone likely looked at their dagger and thought to themselves, 'Yes, I like this...but what if it were bigger?'

"Since then, swords have developed in a variety of different ways in a variety of different places, making them quite possibly the most varied and diversified group of weapons out there. Which is what makes them an excellent choice for a first class. You've got short swords and long swords. Swords with box hilts and even hilts, swords with pointed tips or tapered tips, straight blades, curved blades, thick blades, thin blades, double edges, single edges...it's almost impossible to squeeze in a comprehensive look at how each of these styles may have developed, how each of them are made, or even what distinguishes them in a single class period. Swords on their own could have a whole dedicated class just for themselves!

"So, this week, we're going to let you guys choose which ones you want to talk about. As you can see, I have a variety of different swords here behind me. You're going to take a few moments, look them over, and try and pick out a sword that you think suits you best. Is it one you're most familiar with? Is it one that you just like the aesthetics of? Do you feel like that sword, in particular, represents who you are? Because we're then going to talk about those swords and why you chose them, sort of as a way of introduction, and then we'll do a bit of testing them out.

"For example," she grinned a little, turning around for a second before hefting up one of the largest swords available and turning around to present it, "I'd probably go with the bastard sword, or long sword. It's big, it's bold, it takes a lot of strength to weild it effectively, and there's not a whole lot of fuss or extra fancy work with it. It is what it is, you see what you get, and I think that defines me pretty well.

"So, then, it's your turn. If you have any questions or you're really not sure what direction to take, just let me know and we'll work through it together, especially if you're unfamiliar with these weapons as a whole. No time like the present to learn about them and we'll find you a good sword match. But if you've already got that figured out, then I'm definitely curious to see why that is."

She nodded to the class again, lifted one fist to pound decisively into the palm of her other hand. "So let's get to it."

[[ ocd ~~on the way~~ is up! have at it! ]]

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Feeling sword-y.

Prompto Argentum

Nina

Mae Borowski

Vette

Juillenne Milone (and Camden)

Lana Beniko

This one is just about as light as these lectures are likely to get. Amaya could have gone into more detail with this particular topic, but she didn't think the class would be too keen on sticking around all day for that...which would be exactly what would happen.

Because one you got her really going about swords...there was no turning back.

The swords are many and moddable, though if there's something a bit more unique that you're looking for that you don't see, it's the danger shop, so talk to Amaya and she can get it set up pretty easily for you. Find one that you feel suits you well, and then explain why you picked that particular sword. And if you're unsure what to pick, go ahead and ask Amaya for help, or even work with your fellow classmates to find one.

Amaya encourages taking your time as well; sometimes, finding the right sword is just a matter of getting through a couple of the wrong ones first!

Okay, this was great and all, but where were the swords that might actually be guns?

Kidding, kidding! There was no question in Prompto's mind why he was in this class, that was for sure. He could definitely stand to be a little more familiar with weapons that didn't go pew-pew-pew (even if he was willing to argue that pew-pew weapons were way better than swish-and-slash weapons, buuuuut....). It did leave him a little bit at a loss, though, when he was looking through the swords. Sure, he'd experienced a lot of these in video games; he'd seen Noct and Gladio working with them during training, but beyond that? He decided to give a few a try (almost all of them the more fancy or elaborate ones), finding them a little awkward and unfamiliar, but then, there it was, and it was perfect, and he had his sword, giving it a few swings and stabs in the air before nodding, confident in his choice.

"I chose this one!" he announced when it was time to explain. "Because it's lithe and quick and...swishy...uhhhh...." Yeah, he did not think this description through all the way, did he? He chuckled, turning a little pink. "Kinda like...me, I guess? Anyway, I like it, it looks like it's good to use if you like to be fast and precise, and...and!!" This was clearly the best part: "Look at the hilt! It's like a pistol! It's perfect!"

And to prove it, he went ahead and gave it a twirl in his hand like it was a pistol, keeping in mind that there was a thin, sharp blade attached to it and a pretty big hiltguard attached to it, and, for being unfamiliar with the rest of it, he pulled it off...really well, actually, ending in a bit of a cheesy pose, pointing the sword as if it were a gun, then, realizing what he was doing, laughed, lowering.

"Feels really good," he concluded. "Natural."

Edited 2019-07-02 12:51 (UTC)

Like, really, Nina had her preferred weapon and she was entirely disinclined to change it, but she'd signed up for this class on purpose so even though it gave her entirely too many conflicting feelings, she went looking for a sword that she thought… ugh, suited her.

It… it was going to take a while.

Being, of course, a delicate and fragile lady (at least, she amended, in appearance) Nina inspected the lighter swords first but they were all far too… insubstantial for her preferences. (Admittedly, she was aware that swords were not meant to bludgeon people to death, the way her bookbelt was, but nonetheless, the lighter, whippery swords were… not appealing to her.)

Honestly, by the time she'd tried all the swords, she was a little cross—mostly at herself, for being so picky—but she had a sword.

"I don't really like this one," Nina said, since this was what happened when you took someone who was surgically attached to her biblioflail and made her pick up a different weapon, "but I think it's the best of the lot??????????? For me, anyway, and part of that is that it's so large that people, like, won't think I can handle it????????????"

But she could, the weight not seeming to bother her one whit as she worked her way through a pattern she'd watched Matilda Knights do thousands of times. Nina couldn't do the movements with the same flawless perfection that they could, honed through practice, but she knew the sequence of movements and her mistakes weren't due to the sword's weight and size.

"It's heavy, and it's a bit ridiculous," she admitted, studying her zweihander flamberge. "So it works well enough for me?????????????"

Better than, like, Prompto's knitting needle would, at least! Honestly, Prompto!

"You don't have to like it," Amaya said, nodding slightly but grinning a bit more; she'd remembered working a bit on Nina's little book-belt...and the atrocious types of books she'd filled it with, too! "But I appreciate you at least trying to. Swords aren't going to be for everyone, really, especially not when someone's used to a more...unique weapon.

"But the flamberge is a bold choice," she noted, and Amaya did like bold, "especially a zweihander. I don't think I'm underestimating anyone carrying a blade like that into battle. But I am curious...any reason why you decided to choose a flame-blade in particular, over a more traditional straight blade? Was it just the style of it that caught your eye...or something else?"

Nina took beating enemies with the power of love and friendship very literally, Amaya!

"I mostly picked it because I liked the look of it," Nina admitted, since why yes, yes she was going to be like that. She surveyed the rippled sword thoughtfully. "Over the other zweihanders, I mean????????? I can't, like, imagine it'd be a lot of fun to try and go against it either?????????? Like, it's cool, but cool doesn't last long on weapons unless there's actually some sort of function to it too…?????????????????"

Yes, yes that was a question about her ridiculous sword.

And Amaya grinned a little more, because, come on, Nina, you didn't think she'd just give you the answer there, did you?

"That is true," she allowed. "Cool points will only get you so far; there's many a knight or adventurer who had to learn that the hard way. Function above form, although it's nice to have a bit of function and form, and, I assure you, this one's definitely got both. What sort of advantages, other than the weight and size, do you think a blade like that might have?"

Mae looked through the swords carefully, picking up several and swinging them around. (It was a really good thing they were in a place with safety protections.) It didn't take her long to narrow it down, but she was having way too much fun swinging blades around to stop before she'd tried each and every one of them.

"This one," Mae said, proudly, holding it aloft. "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"

"Arrrrrr, indeed," said Amaya, grinning, unable to help being a bit amused at Mae's exploration of the different swords, especially since they were in a place with safety protections, and, yes, she was starting to see the benefit of utilizing this place more often. "That's a well-chosen pick, and suitable to your size. Anything in particular bring you back to the saber, though?"

Mae shrugged. "It's . . . little and funky. Like me. And, you know, pirates. Who doesn't love them?"

"Probably the people being pirated," Amaya noted with a smirk. "But, let me then ask you this: if people love pirates, and pirates love sabers, what do you think it is about a saber that pirates love?"

Oh, Vette didn't need to take her time. She'd spotted one during the lecture that she couldn't take her eyes off of, and she was making a beeline for the mambele the moment she was given leave to.

"It's got spikes!" Vette was full of glee. Absolute glee. "Look at all these spikes!"

Vette apparently wanted something that looked extra vicious.

Okay, so, Amaya knew it was wrong to pick favorites, buuut...

"Okay," she said, "you're my favorite."

Way to go and win instant points with the Needs More Spikes Queen over here, Vette.

Chuckling, positively thrilled that at least someone would understand a good, healthy appreciation for spikes, she still couldn't let even her own BUT SPIKES! enthusiasm get in the way of, you know, actually teaching.

"Anything else about it catch your eye other than the spikes, though I'm sure we can both agree that you don't really need much more than that? And you suppose those spikes are functional, too, or just merely there to look pretty?"

"I mean, they're really pretty," Vette mused, "but spikes that prominent have to serve some kind of purpose, right? It looks almost more like it's made for chopping than most swords do."

Most swords, she thought, looked like maybe they were better at stabby stuff.

Jules picked her way through the swords, every so once and a while hefting one up to give it an experimental slash.

"What do you think?" she asked Camden, testing out yet another sword.

The mountain cat's ears twitched in an apparent approval, and Jules grinned, having found her weapon of choice.

"Mostly I like this one because it looks a bit like a very big version of one of Cam's claws," she explained to her classmates.

... Also it would be useful in a fight on horseback, not that she knew that.

Amaya considered Jules' consultation and the eentual connection with Camden with amusement; she thought it was a fine choice of sword right from the get-go, obviously, but the reasoning behind it she thought was particularly interesting.

"A bit of a bipedal improvement on the natural defenses offered up by nature?" she mused. "Not a bad strategy at all. Get yourself duel-weilding some of those and you could probably really do some damage. And, like a claw, it can be used in a variety of different slashing, piercing, and even gripping ways."

Lana looked for a sword as close to the length and width of her lightsaber as she could - long and thin, with a blade on each side. She frowned a little, trying to work out the balance, but she could work with this.

Not long after Amaya had sort of given up on expecting Rosa to show and set the students to just sort of get a feel for the weapons on their own with as careful of an eye as she could provide, guess who came blustering in, and she didn't look exactly happy about it, either.

"This god.damn.island!"

"And this," Amaya offered, gesturing toward Rosa and doing a poor job of trying to not look amused, "is Detective Diaz."

"The streets are changing!" Rosa forged forward with her rant. "There's walls and...stupid hedges popping up everywhere, it took me forever just to get here, and I know those streets, I have to patrol those streets all the goddamn time, but I guess, no, that's what the thing is this week, everything changing like some goddamn maze, and--"

She stopped, blinked, seeming to realize that, oh, right, she was coming to the danger shop for a class, and there were a bunch of students with swords all ready to go.

"Oh, cool. Good. Looks like I managed to at least avoid the boring part of class. Right. I'm sure Blackstone explained it to you already. She's going to teach you about the weapon, and then I get to show you the good stuff, which is actually using them. And we're doing swords, and there's about a million different swords and twice as many techniques for using them properly, and you've all probably picked something different, so what we're doing today is just letting you go at a practice dummy so I can see who knows what they're doing and who doesn't, and if it's the former, I might ask you about your previous training to get a feel for where you're at, and if it's the latter, than listen up, because I'll show you what to do so you don't look like an idiot and/or get yourself hurt. Got it? Okay, cool. Get to work. Try not to cut off your hand or your neighbor's head in the meantime if I don't get to you right away."

So this should be interesting. Ping in with however you might approach using the sword you've chosen and we'll go from there!

Edited 2019-07-02 10:47 (UTC)

Nina had no particular training with her sword, just a really, really good memory of watching how knights in her world worked (and, let's be real, half of the time spent watching them had not been spent watching their… weapons…) and a body that was nearly as good as her mind was at picking things up quick.

(That she was already in disgustingly good shape and used to combat was also a bonus.)

So, when it was her turn at the training dummies, she went to it with a will. The sword was definitely a ridiculous size for her, but that didn't impede her at all as she started a different set of moves and then kept going.

The moves themselves were not perfect, and she could feel that, and know she'd feel the imperfections later—Nina was not trained as a knight, after all—but she could brute force her way through the pattern just fine. She knew how it was supposed to go.

Mae had no training. Like, at all. She had a lifetime of fencing with sticks and playing "knife fight", a game where the goal was essentially to just be more willing to get your hand cut up than the other person was. She was perfectly happy to swing away at her practice dummy with her cutlass, yowling the whole way.

Rosa was going to have her work cut out for her with this one.

Lana knew lightsaber fighting, and she'd picked a sword as close to what she was used to as she could, but it was going to take a few strikes for her to get the hang of the balance, and she still had a hard time remembering there were only two edges, so she smacked the dummy with the flat more than once.

She was adaptable, though; she could do this.

Since they're both actually here now, yay!

...since they're bith actually here now, unfortunately.

Although Rosa might be wondering if she could manage to get "lost" through all the boring stuff for the rest of the session now. Save for the frustration of actually getting there, it worked out pretty well for her.

And Amaya was there if anyone needed her, of course! Secretly hoping someone asked her for more detail about swords, please ask her for more detail about swords, let her tell you all about every possible aspect of them until your head explodes!

...she really just liked swords, okay??

Me, preparing for this session: "Oh, perfect, I've got things situated with my schedule so the heavier class falls on my day off or at least my evening shift days, and it'll all be perfect and I'll be around!"

The Powers That Be: "So wouldn't it be just great if we decided to SWITCH EVERYTHING AROUND ON YOUR SCHEDULE AGAIN? MWA HA HA!!!"

...so, yeah, a bit of an SP warning, because god forbid I actually have a consistent schedule for a change. -_-

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Weapons 101; Tuesday, First Period [07/02].

Sign In - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Sign In - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Sign In - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Sign In - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Sign In - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Sign In - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Sign In - Weapons, 07/02.

Listen to the Lecture - Weapons, 07/02.

Pick out a Sword - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Pick out a Sword - Weapons, 07/02.

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Training - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Training - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Training - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Training - Weapons, 07/02.

Talk to the Teachers - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Talk to the Teachers - Weapons, 07/02.

Re: Talk to the Teachers - Weapons, 07/02.

OOC - Weapons, 07/02.