Solo [The Old Mill] Dagger Antics Part 1

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A lawless town of anarchists, built on the ruins of an ancient mining city. [Lore]

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[The Old Mill] Dagger Antics Part 1

Postby Caela Dorin on June 25th, 2014, 6:03 pm

4th Summer 514AV

Her dagger had brought her to the Mill once again but this time she was alone. The prostitute, Matthew wasn't accompanying her this time and there was no thug attempting a robbery this time either. She had come by herself with the intention of practising. The blonde was considering working up on the beams so that she would be unstable and learn to be adaptive but she wasn't sure if it was safe. If she fell then the ground below her would be hard and far enough down that the landing would no doubt be harmful. She'd be in a predicament if anything happened that made her unable to dance. An injury would be a big problem.

Before entering, Caela walked around the outside of the building searching for any materials that might cushion a fall. It had been a working mill at one time and so there should be sacks for storing flour and things in. The young woman didn't know a lot about mills but she was fairly sure that sacks were a requirement.

With no luck finding anything outside she headed into the interior. Light spilled through holes in the roof, illuminating some areas and leaving others in shadow. The bright areas were quickly searched with no result before Caela moved on to the shadowy area. These areas were damp and she was sure that there were rats in some of them as she could hear movement. As a result, she was careful in her search even after her eyes adjusted to the lower lighting.

In one corner of the old building, she finally succeeded in finding sacking but was disappointed to find that it was full of holes. Either dampness had rotted it away in places or the rats had gotten a taste for cloth. Either way it was useless to her. She had hoped to stuff them with something soft, vegetation maybe, and leave them beneath her but that option was out. That left her with two choices: risk the beams and the possibility of a fall or work on the ground.

Working on the ground would be the safest bet but she wanted to push herself and a but of danger was bound to act as a powerful incentive. Her balance shouldn't be too bad anyway as it was an important aspect in some forms of dance. Her control of her body should be good enough for what she intended. It would allow her to work on her stance and posture and increase her awareness of her movements or so she hoped.

She made her way to the beam that herself and Matthew had used to ascend to the upper floor, trying to go up it without the use of her arms for balance. Her body teetered dangerously at first, more from her expectation of losing her balance rather than her poor balancing skills. So she focused.

Her arms were held loosely at her side as she placed each foot forward carefully. Rather than using her arms, she tried to use her whole body to maintain her equilibrium. If the top half of her body swayed too much to the left then the lower half would move abruptly to the right to try to pull her back to the centre. She could imagine her hips wiggling back and forth the way Matthew's had when they were last here. The thought made her giggle, losing her balance in the process so that she fell forward and had to catch herself with her hands on the beam.

The fall and the memory of Matthew made her sombre. Remembering how that day had ended took the humour away. It wasn't funny when she considered the fact that he was a harlot ad that that wiggling had probably been a form of unconscious seduction, if it had been unconscious. This wasn't the time to think about it, not that she ever wanted to think about it again. It was an unwelcome distraction and so she tried to forget about it and focus on her upward climb.

It was no easy feat standing up again. She had to push herself away from the beam but not fall sideways or backwards in the process. It took a few attempts to get herself standing but once she was up she wasted no time in getting to the top. There were no more distractions allowed, no opportunities to make her lose her balance again. The young woman succeeded in reaching the top in another few chimes, thankfully without falling and breaking something.


Word Count760 words
Last edited by Caela Dorin on June 27th, 2014, 11:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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[The Old Mill] Dagger Antics

Postby Caela Dorin on June 26th, 2014, 5:58 pm

Although she'd been up here before, she couldn't remember which parts of the floor were stable and which ones weren't. So before she tried to do anything her first order of business was to check each section of the floor and memorise the safe sections. It was a task that required caution. Each footstep was light and tentative, pressure gradually increased before she trusted putting more weight onto the flooring.

Some of the boards creaked ominously beneath her feet so she remained wary of them even though they held. Close to where some of the floor beams were exposed, one section gave way beneath her foot, the abrupt drop leaving one leg totally unsupported. Her leg crashed down through the hole, causing the rest of her body to land heavily on the remaining flooring. The wood creaked and cracked and Caela stayed still for a chime, too frightened to move. It was both an uncomfortable and precarious position to be in. Her hands were left gripping the beam, her torso held partly over empty air while one leg stretched out behind her on the intact floor.

Slowly she tried to draw her dangling limb back up to safety but her other leg began to slip in the process. She tried again, acutely aware of the positions of both legs as she tried to return her whole body to firm ground. Once she had both legs again, the dancer had to half crawl and half slide to get her top half back onto solid boards.

Peering down into the gap her foot had made, the young woman considered the drop. The ground wasn't really that far down but imagining herself dropping that distance made her reconsider her latest plan. Maybe using danger as an incentive just really wasn't worth it. No, she didn't like the idea of training up here. It was too risky and she was deluding herself if she thought otherwise. Working on the ground was certainly the better option. It may be less challenging but it was more sensible.

Righting herself carefully, she picked her way back across the way she'd come and balanced back down the beam. This time she allowed the use of her arms for balance, not quite as confident this time as she had been on the way up. The dancer had never been so glad to be on the ground before, safe from further accidents or mishaps.

Withdrawing her dagger from her belt, Caela moved into a large, uncluttered section of floor and considered how to drill herself in the blade's usage. Wrapping her fingers around the belly of the knife's hilt, she allowed her thumb to rest against her index finger. It was comfortable and meant that she had a sturdy hold on the dagger. The blade itself was pointing slightly upwards just like we she'd used this same grip when sparring with Matthew. Perhaps investigating new grips could be a task for today but she'd wait and see how her drills went.

Placing her feet slightly apart, Caela stepped forward with her right foot and thrust the dagger forward. She repeated the exercise a few times, alternating between which foot she put forward and whether her style of attack would be a stab or a slash, low or high. Her movements grew faster as she got used to the repetitive motions and she began to feel warm.

Once she grew used to the first set of movements, she began to switch things up. The dancer would step forward one moment and then put her foot back the next. She stepped to the side, she circled, she even spun around at one stage and almost cut into her side in the process. Her style of training quickly grew boring and the blonde began to feel stupid. What she was doing was unrealistic. If she attacked someone and managed to make contact with them then there would be resistance as the blade met flesh or cloth. Air didn't offer the same sort of resistance at all, which meant that she wasn't really benefiting from her practice. If she had someone to spar with it would be much better but she didn't have anyone that she could trust enough.

If this was going to work out then she'd have to find some way to practise attacking a real person, or at least something that could serve as a real person. Looking around her, she let her eyes roam over the materials she'd come across earlier. She may not have a person but maybe she could make one.


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[The Old Mill] Dagger Antics Part 1

Postby Caela Dorin on June 27th, 2014, 11:48 am

The dancer's brain was ticking away as she considered the materials that she had at her disposal. There were pieces of wood, there was sacking. The sacking could imitate clothing and could be wrapped thickly around the wood. The wood could be used as the body of a practice dummy. How to prop it up though? And how to hold it all together. It would need to be held upright somehow and securely so that it wouldn't fall down when she attacked it. She had her belt. That could be used for tying things together and if there was enough sacking then maybe that could be used for tying as well.

A quick inventory was taken by the young woman. There were a fair few pieces of sacking, several pieces of wood and there was a short stump of wood sticking out of the floor from some broken, unidentified old structure. Not all of the sacking was very strong. She tested each piece, pulling it taut to see if it would stay in one piece or not. Such testing resulted in two piles of the material, one for "clothing" and one for material that could be used as short pieces of rope. Some of them she had to hack into smaller pieces so that she had material that was easier to work with.

The dancer removed her belt, intent on using it to hold the main body of her dummy together. Gathering the loose pieces of wood into a bundle, she wrapped the piece of leather around it and secured it tightly in place. She draped sacking over and around it, layering it carefully so that her belt would be protected from any slashes from the dagger. Once she was happy with the wrapping, she set about attaching the bundle to the wood stump. It took the last of her sacking to attach them together but it wasn't very secure. It was too loose so that when she pushed against it, it shifted slightly. That'd be all right though. The movement would soften her blows so that it wouldn't be like stabbing a wall.

Pleased with her work, the dancer began to circle around her makeshift dummy. She'd actually be able to hit something now and she felt good about that. Her training became a real workout then. The dancer moved around and around the dummy, dagger hand darting out to stab and slash at cloth, her strikes enthusiastic as she imagined that the dummy was a real attacker. She was left sweating once she was done, her overheated body panting with exertion.

The young woman sat on the ground, recovering before she moved onto her next lot of training. Her dummy looked a little worse for wear, the sacking hanging off in places and the dummy leaning precariously. She'd need to fix it before she proceeded. This time she'd switch to using her left hand though. It wouldn't be as easy to use but it might be useful in the future. It would certainly provide her with a challenge. If she ever got into a fight and found herself unable to use her right hand then it would be a very valuable skill. Switching between hands without cutting herself or dropping the dagger would also be something that would be important in defence. Whether she could manage that without help she didn't know.

Picking herself up off the floor, she found that her leg had gone partly numb because she'd been sitting on it and she had to stamp feeling back into it before she could go back to work. Caela tightened the hold of the dummy to the stump before switching her dagger to her left hand. She copied the grip that she normally used when the dagger was in her right hand. It felt strange there, less secure than normal. The young woman didn't notice until she attacked the dummy that she was gripping the dagger far too tightly. As soon as she slashed clumsily and struck the dummy, pain jolted up through her arm from her wrist and made her drop the dagger.

Cursing vehemently, the dancer gripped her left wrist hoping to ease the pain. Once the shock waves had passed, she bent to pick up the dagger, holding it more tentatively this time. This time her slash sent the dagger flying from her grip. Exasperated she went to retrieve it. She thought that she'd managed to solve her dagger gripping problem a long time ago but perhaps she'd been a little overconfident in her assumption or a little premature.

She tried to keep her grip at a moderate strength as she took a careful swing at the dummy. A few more swings and she was still able to grip her blade without losing it and without pain. So the same routine was carried out with her left hand as had been done with her right. The same circling, the same slashing and stabbing. It wasn't as easy or as natural as with her right hand but she was getting there. As she continued her training she became more confident with using her weaker hand.

Her strikes weren't as strong as with her right hand but they were certainly effective. Her makeshift dummy was looking a little worse for wear, the clothing slashed to pieces and dangling down. She wouldn't be able to keep using it for much longer at this rate without risking damaging or blunting the blade on the wood itself. Perhaps her task of learning to switch hands mid attack would be better off done without actually attacking something. It was not a task that she felt very optimistic about. After all, she was still struggling with holding the dagger. It was certainly going to be an interesting learning experience.


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Caela Dorin
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[The Old Mill] Dagger Antics Part 1

Postby Khida on July 27th, 2014, 11:33 am

Thread Award

Caela Dorin

Skill Points
Acrobatics +1
Construction +1
Investigation +1
Planning +2
Weapon: Dagger +3
  • Assembling a makeshift practice dummy
  • The off hand is weaker, but trainable
  • Planning: inventorying available materials
  • The security of solid ground


Notes

This was a great little thread; I really like how she used her environment. Or got tripped up by it. She should take some bruising, and maybe a few splinters, from that fall through the floor. Nothing that wouldn't clear up in a few days. I gave Investigation and one Planning for her initial search of the grounds, and the second Planning point for brainstorming how to improve her practice. The rest should be pretty transparent.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade. Also, please edit your request to show this thread has been graded.
Spring threads: 2/5 .. | .. Season Goals .. | .. GradersMaxed skill: Observation.
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