Rapier

Had a great two practices this week.  I’m sore and a bit bruised, but none the worse for wear.

The first practice was Lionsdale’s Wednesday practice.  It went really well.  It was our first day indoors, the hard packed dirt is amazing on the knees.  It lets you practice a bit harder without the knee pain that I get occasionally from lunging too much on concrete.  We started out with a bear-pit to warm up, as we’re all getting ready for the fall tournament season and shaking off the dust from war fighting.  I haven’t fought in a tourney since Sir Eddies, and I”m planning on fighting this weekend, so I needed the practice.

With the bear-pit I started working on the semi-refuse guard that we were taught a few weeks ago.  It seems to work well for defence and fits in perfectly with my current style.  It’s very aggressive while allowing me to defend quickly.  I was still having some issues with controlling my opponents blade, but not too much.

After warming up with just the three of us (Sebastian, Alejandro, and myself) a fourth person got there, Cion.  He’s working on getting authorized, so we decided to test him out on the basics.  We had him teach us how to stand, how to lunge, cut, and Parry.  He taught us how to use a dagger, a shield, and a baton.  We didn’t work on cloak, as we didn’t have one with us that day.  He’s doing pretty good.  Then we quizzed him about the rules for different things like engagement, holds, melee, and weapon requirements.  He’s got most of those down too.  That just left combat.  So we started a four man bear-pit to test him out.  He seems safe, though we haven’t tried unsafe activities against him yet, which is a major portion of the auth test, dealing with others mistakes.

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