Flashback Very basic swordplay

[Danough Trema]

Danough Trema 31st of Winter, 498 AV Syliras. The Sword is held. Young Danough found the first bells of the day the most boring. The afternoons were spent glorifying Yahal out on the Antinous Training Fields, and some of the evenings were spent in ways that would make Tyveth proud, but the mornings were the domain of Eyris. Each morning was the same routine: get up, get washed, eat, take care of some basic maintenance chores for Ser Negriso and his staff-- be it polishing armor or mopping floors, it was up to the squires to make sure it got done-- and then there was just no way around it: before the mid-day meal there would be two or three bells spent on learning. Learning from books or learning from older squires and knights, but there was always something to be learned: strategy, tactics, chivalry, weapon maintenance, courtly behavior, the virtues expected of Syliran Knights: there was some nice variety in the subjects, but the order of each day was rather strictly locked down. Even when the subject matter should be inherently fascinating, most of Danough's instructors appeared to believe in a brute-force rote-memorization style of instruction, and so what might have started as a very exciting topic, such as the organization of the Syliran Knights as they rode on patrol or into battle... it soon became a tedious exercise in learning that a wing was smaller than a company, and a company was smaller than a regiment. A squire outranked a page but a stewart knight outranked a sergeant knight. And it didn't end there: after being called on to name the Captain Knight and Warden Knight of his own patron, and totally failing at being able to do so, Squire Danough was given the task of memorizing as many of the names and ranks of as many important knights as he could, so days when other students would be free to do as they wished, he would be sitting there writing "Stewart Knight, Green Company: Tuscar Bree; Stewart Knight, Red Company: Shelby Havarth; Stewart Knight, Blue Company: Mayer Nigriso" on a piece of parchment, then saying the names to himself over and over again. (He found it impossible to memorize all the names at once and so he tackled the list a few names at a time.) After the middle meal, however, Squire Danough really came into his own and enjoyed himself. He liked doing all the warm-up and stretching exercises, and he actually enjoyed seeing how many push-ups and sit-ups he could do each day. He was not as good with his leg muscles, with the jumping-jacks and squat-thrusts, but he did them diligently, cycling through all the exercises as often as he could. It was not easy training the young body of a squire to move and fight in full plate, and so these attempts at building up his muscles and his physique were absolutely necessary. Once that was all done-- and it sometimes took a full bell, depending on if he was alone or if other squires were with him-- he would be assigned a training dummy and be told to hack and slash at it under the watchful eye of a young Knight or a Squire much older than he was. Later on he would be taught all sorts of fancy manuevers, many different stances and various supplementary skills such as strategy, tactics and logistics, but for now he had been taught one single slash and was instructed to keep doing it over and over again. It was sad to admit, but even against a stationery and defenseless target dummy, at this point in his career, Squire Danough sometimes lost. He might drop his shield or fumble his blade, and on more than one occasion an over-eager strike had rebounded so hard that he'd knocked himself flat on his rear end. And of course many times his strikes simply went wild and slashed at air. And he was one of the more diligent students, always volunteering to stay and help practice with another squire who needed a partner. But even so.. his little wooden buckler and his little wooden longsword kept dropping to the ground of their own volition, more times a day than he cared to admit.

[Orion Michaels]

Lt. Dan
None

Lore :

Rank Structure of the Syliran Knights
Force Structure of the Syliran Knights

Notes
So you're probably wondering while there is no XP here. Here's the thing. I noticed it on your other thread I graded, but rather than actually write about the event itself, you inform me that it happened. There's no information about what actually happened. Instead of telling your readers that he did some pushups, tell them about how he dropped to the ground, got in position, lowered himself, and pushed himself back up. Then deal with how it gets progressively harder, about fatigue rearing its ugly head. Switch to lunges, or squats, or whatever is next in his routine. Show the struggle, show the growth. 

Then in your battle with the training dummy, write about your grip, about the actual slashing itself, learning to hold the blade properly, following through with swings and such. Tell us about how his feet are set, how his body twists as he flails wildly with the wooden sword. Don't write that he did these actions, write him doing them. The same goes for working with other squires.

You have some great premises to work with here, and the writing flows well. I think it's just getting used to the writing style here. If you can apply some of these things you'll be just fine. Please, don't hesitate to ask me any questions. PM me, catch me in chat, I'm here to help. Thanks for the thread, Dan. Please remember to remove or edit your thread to reflect it's been graded.