2 Chirreb 4385: Even More Practice
Aug. 23rd, 2010 07:03 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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delight_in_wtWe all groaned. I'm pretty sure Mirhandrax is the only one who wasn't already stiff and sore. Trust whimpered. But we grabbed the Little Bird from Purrzhon (who woke up to say "Good, learn much" before going back to sleep) and limped up topside anyway. It'd be easier if Mirhandrax wasn't always right.
This time, Trust started practice with Limber the Lazy Body, which he actually has as a pattern spell (it's only a cantrip) but forgot to use yesterday. I'm sure Mirhandrax would have reminded him except Mirhandrax was the one who didn't need it and it didn't occur to him we did. Probably. Either that or he just figures pain is good for you since he is a Gormorror after all.
We started with more general practice and I tried some of the suggestions people had left for me in my scroll.
* Waterform: In the air, I am not any faster in waterform than I am in bipedal (Mirhandrax timed me). I am, however, a bit more maneuverable: it was quicker to switch directions and change speeds in waterform, although not by a huge amount. Enough to matter if I was flying an obstacle course in a race, I think, but probably not enough to matter in an ordinary fight. And that was only in small-size waterform: in full-size waterform it didn't make a difference. And in small-size I can't effectively use any weapon except maybe the sling which arguably I can't use effectively no matter what my shape. HOWEVER, in small-size I was a whole lot harder to hit. A whole lot! Even Mirhandrax had a hard time hitting me if I was trying my best to dodge. And I can cast spells in waterform so this could be useful.
* Alternate orientations: During yesterday's practice we had made sure to approach one another from different directions -- especially up and down -- but all of us -- even me! -- tended to orient ourselves as if we were standing on the ground. You know: feet down, head up, body perpendicular to the ground. I didn't do it when I was just flying around but as soon as we got weapons out I started. There's no compelling reason to fight that way when flying: it was just what felt most natural. Most similar to the way we were all used to fighting. But once![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tuftears brought it up I really wasn't sure it was the best way to fight. So today I made a conscious decision not to keep myself "balanced" and "level" in the senses I normally think of those words. All those foot positions and bracing stuff I normally worry about doesn't matter in the air, right? Because you can't knock me off my feet when I'm not on my feet in the first place.
At first the others couldn't figure out what I was up to, and I kept disorienting myself by ending up upside down and just being an easy target for their attacks. Then I started to get a feel for it and was doing things like jackknifing in the air to meet a rising attack on the diagonal with a downward-angled head-first (well spear-point-first (no not actually spear-point but staff-head but in a real fight it would have been spear-point so we pretended)) dive. Which worked really well because Nightbloom had most of her body facing me and presented a big target to me but all that I presented to her was my head and shoulders basically. I slithered around both her sword and staff to score against her side in passing and then pivoted about around my center torso to do the same thing again on the way back up.
Even Mirhandrax was impressed!
So then we all started working on that sort of thing. The theory that leg stance didn't matter turned out to be not quite right. As it happens, the things we do on the ground to move or brace our bodies are the same cues that the spell takes in deciding whether to move or brace you. The spell didn't absolutely need the full motion or the full pose to know that was what you wanted. But for example Mirhandrax was practically immovable when he was "braced" in the air just like he'd brace on the ground, but if he floated parallel to the ground he was much easier to shift. Controlling the flight without using normal-movement cues seems to be a skill, though. You can do it and we got better at it by practice. It was just much trickier.
But we couldn't spend the whole day doing that because Mirhandrax wanted to do more teamwork drills. Which turned out to be mostly "Keep the healer alive" drills because (a) we weren't very good at keeping Trust from getting attacked and (b) Trust wasn't very good at defending himself either. We started out giving him a shield to hide behind but that didn't work out that well so we gave him a long staff to parry with which worked somewhat better. When it was Nightbloom and I against Mirhandrax and Trust, Trust's side did fine. Anybody else paired with him and Trust would get hammered. This may just be because Mirhandrax is a lot better in general than Nightbloom or I. Possibly better than Nightbloom and I at once. Not better than Nightbloom, Trust and I all together, though. We tried that too. Mirhandrax decided that our best bet was to keep the enemy from figuring out Trust was our healer for as long as possible. I have a few Remedy spells so one thing we might do is have me heal the first person to get hit. Then hopefully the enemies will try to kill me and not Trust. Since I'm hard to hit in waterform that might even not get me killed. Even if it does getting me killed is still better than getting Trust killed. Not that any of us actually want to die!
During practice we mostly did mock-hits, where we wrap our weapons in cloth and pull our hits. After a while we added in mock-magic which helped me a lot because my main tactic is to put all but one enemy in Nowhere Prison and then focus-fire on the one still free.
We did do some live-magic exercises using just a few cley (or feather-casting even) because we didn't want to use up too much and get caught in the wilds with not enough to defend ourselves.
Purrzhon came up and joined us around midmorning. Purrzhon wasn't as good in the drills as Mirhandrax but he was better than Nightbloom and I by a lot still.
At around mid-afternoon we were thinking of calling it quits for the day. We'd been spending a lot more time talking or doing drills that didn't require a lot of moving this time but we were still getting tired and Purrzhon wanted his expensive fast ship to spend some more time going fast.
Then the ulgrane showed up which pretty much decided things for us.
This time, Trust started practice with Limber the Lazy Body, which he actually has as a pattern spell (it's only a cantrip) but forgot to use yesterday. I'm sure Mirhandrax would have reminded him except Mirhandrax was the one who didn't need it and it didn't occur to him we did. Probably. Either that or he just figures pain is good for you since he is a Gormorror after all.
We started with more general practice and I tried some of the suggestions people had left for me in my scroll.
* Waterform: In the air, I am not any faster in waterform than I am in bipedal (Mirhandrax timed me). I am, however, a bit more maneuverable: it was quicker to switch directions and change speeds in waterform, although not by a huge amount. Enough to matter if I was flying an obstacle course in a race, I think, but probably not enough to matter in an ordinary fight. And that was only in small-size waterform: in full-size waterform it didn't make a difference. And in small-size I can't effectively use any weapon except maybe the sling which arguably I can't use effectively no matter what my shape. HOWEVER, in small-size I was a whole lot harder to hit. A whole lot! Even Mirhandrax had a hard time hitting me if I was trying my best to dodge. And I can cast spells in waterform so this could be useful.
* Alternate orientations: During yesterday's practice we had made sure to approach one another from different directions -- especially up and down -- but all of us -- even me! -- tended to orient ourselves as if we were standing on the ground. You know: feet down, head up, body perpendicular to the ground. I didn't do it when I was just flying around but as soon as we got weapons out I started. There's no compelling reason to fight that way when flying: it was just what felt most natural. Most similar to the way we were all used to fighting. But once
tuftears brought it up I really wasn't sure it was the best way to fight. So today I made a conscious decision not to keep myself "balanced" and "level" in the senses I normally think of those words. All those foot positions and bracing stuff I normally worry about doesn't matter in the air, right? Because you can't knock me off my feet when I'm not on my feet in the first place.At first the others couldn't figure out what I was up to, and I kept disorienting myself by ending up upside down and just being an easy target for their attacks. Then I started to get a feel for it and was doing things like jackknifing in the air to meet a rising attack on the diagonal with a downward-angled head-first (well spear-point-first (no not actually spear-point but staff-head but in a real fight it would have been spear-point so we pretended)) dive. Which worked really well because Nightbloom had most of her body facing me and presented a big target to me but all that I presented to her was my head and shoulders basically. I slithered around both her sword and staff to score against her side in passing and then pivoted about around my center torso to do the same thing again on the way back up.
Even Mirhandrax was impressed!
So then we all started working on that sort of thing. The theory that leg stance didn't matter turned out to be not quite right. As it happens, the things we do on the ground to move or brace our bodies are the same cues that the spell takes in deciding whether to move or brace you. The spell didn't absolutely need the full motion or the full pose to know that was what you wanted. But for example Mirhandrax was practically immovable when he was "braced" in the air just like he'd brace on the ground, but if he floated parallel to the ground he was much easier to shift. Controlling the flight without using normal-movement cues seems to be a skill, though. You can do it and we got better at it by practice. It was just much trickier.
But we couldn't spend the whole day doing that because Mirhandrax wanted to do more teamwork drills. Which turned out to be mostly "Keep the healer alive" drills because (a) we weren't very good at keeping Trust from getting attacked and (b) Trust wasn't very good at defending himself either. We started out giving him a shield to hide behind but that didn't work out that well so we gave him a long staff to parry with which worked somewhat better. When it was Nightbloom and I against Mirhandrax and Trust, Trust's side did fine. Anybody else paired with him and Trust would get hammered. This may just be because Mirhandrax is a lot better in general than Nightbloom or I. Possibly better than Nightbloom and I at once. Not better than Nightbloom, Trust and I all together, though. We tried that too. Mirhandrax decided that our best bet was to keep the enemy from figuring out Trust was our healer for as long as possible. I have a few Remedy spells so one thing we might do is have me heal the first person to get hit. Then hopefully the enemies will try to kill me and not Trust. Since I'm hard to hit in waterform that might even not get me killed. Even if it does getting me killed is still better than getting Trust killed. Not that any of us actually want to die!
During practice we mostly did mock-hits, where we wrap our weapons in cloth and pull our hits. After a while we added in mock-magic which helped me a lot because my main tactic is to put all but one enemy in Nowhere Prison and then focus-fire on the one still free.
We did do some live-magic exercises using just a few cley (or feather-casting even) because we didn't want to use up too much and get caught in the wilds with not enough to defend ourselves.
Purrzhon came up and joined us around midmorning. Purrzhon wasn't as good in the drills as Mirhandrax but he was better than Nightbloom and I by a lot still.
At around mid-afternoon we were thinking of calling it quits for the day. We'd been spending a lot more time talking or doing drills that didn't require a lot of moving this time but we were still getting tired and Purrzhon wanted his expensive fast ship to spend some more time going fast.
Then the ulgrane showed up which pretty much decided things for us.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 02:45 pm (UTC)Oh, yuck. Ulgrane.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 08:49 pm (UTC)And it's okay they're from the Vheshrame flock so we didn't have any actual trouble!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 02:53 pm (UTC)And seeing as how you managed to write this, the ulgrane seems to not have been *that* bad...
Also, it seems that lots of other Prime journals are updating (at least for me), have you found a bunch of recent updates for you too?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 06:19 pm (UTC)I'm guessing your expensive fast ship wasn't fast enough to just outrun them?
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 09:44 pm (UTC)Was Purrzhon able to hire any of them? n.n
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 08:42 pm (UTC)... although I probably won't recognize the opportunity for it if it comes up. Or not coordinate well enough to do it in time.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-23 10:54 pm (UTC)pounce!
Measure twice, pounce once!