Solo [Bronze Woods] Not just a Doctor

Devi ventures just outside of the city walls to begin practising a new skill quite outside of her comfort zone - archery.

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Stretching northward along the coastline of the Suvan Sea, the Cobalt Mountains are the home of the Bronze Wood, numerous ruins, and creatures both strange and fantastical.

[Bronze Woods] Not just a Doctor

Postby Devi on April 4th, 2015, 6:01 pm


3rd Spring, 515AV - Bronze Woods (near the gates of Syliras)

Devi stood mutely at the edges of the Bronze Woods, the gates of Syliras still visible behind her. She had been torn between a desire to remain within sight and safety of the stronghold and a desire for solitude whilst she indulged her most recent of strange impulses. In the end she had opted for the former, deciding that she valued her wellbeing over a feeling of embarrassment. She flexed her hand absently, stretching the leather of the archer’s glove now fitted across two of her fingers and much of her right hand. A leather arm-guard was secured across her left arm, ready to protect it against the whipping of an errant bowstring.

She breathed in deeply and found her eyes dropping to admire the weapon in her hands once more. It was a composite longbow, made of a mid-brown coloured wood with a dark leather grip wrapped tightly around the handhold. A light inlay of bone could be seen just beyond the grip in a small, simple design. Across her chest Devi could feel the leather strap of her new quiver, holding 20 longbow arrows. All in all it had cost her 143 Gold Mizas – more than she spent on her day to day expenses in an entire season.

Still, she was determined. In her mind she wasn’t entirely certain where the desire had originated from. It would seem bizarre to any of her medical or healing counterparts in the city. Healers should oppose violence. Leaning a method by which she might harm another being or creature should have been abhorrent to her. Still, Devi had always had a more pragmatic view of the world. Wishing for peace alone would not deter danger. She wanted the option to travel beyond the walls of the city without fearing complete helplessness.

So here she was, outside the city gates facing off against a large oak tree. Before venturing out here she had snuck to the outskirts of the Training Grounds, to watch the knights and squires there practicing their own archery skills. It was no substitute to an actual tutor but it at least gave her a place to start. She had also chipped some of the hard outer-bark of her target tree away, exposing the softer innards (thinking that she may at least be able to work her arrows free should she actually hit the tree).

She started by spacing her feet, aligning them so that her body was side-on to her target. She breathed deeply and stood straight, holding her bow in her left hand so she could draw with her right. Devi pulled an arrow from her quiver and fitted it in what she hoped was the correct place. She held her left arm straight out before her, wobbling slightly as the arrow threatened to fall from its perch. With her right hand she used two fingers to pull back the string, all the while keeping the image of the archers she had seen in her head. She realised her elbow was too low and struggled to correct it. Looking down the shaft of the arrow she felt her arms already begin to protest as the bow pulled against her. She was breathing hard in anticipation of the moment, realising already that she was shaking too much from nerves, excitement and exertion to hit her target. Then all at once she released the string and the arrow was loosed.

It landed far short of the target but Devi didn’t care. She felt a bubble of carefree laughter escape her as she basked in the moment. As of that day, she was no longer just a doctor.

(OOC: Receipt Link) ->ReceiptReceipt:
Leather Quiver – 20GM
Composite Longbow, wood/bone – 100GM
Bow Case – 20Gm
Longbow arrows x 20 – 1GM
Leather glove & arm guard – 1GM each
143GM total.
Devi
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[Bronze Woods] Not just a Doctor

Postby Devi on April 5th, 2015, 11:33 am


Her fingers slipped another arrow from the quiver, replacing the first. Devi didn’t draw straight away. She rested her arms, realising that she’d tried to hold the position a little too long the first time. She’d also tried to perfect it too much. It was frustrating to someone who was used to being in control to venture so far outside her usual comfort zone. This wasn’t something she would be able to pick up in an instant, she told herself. It would be something she needed to systematically attack.

Whilst her arms rested it gave her time to think of her next step, now that her initial nerves had eased a bit. She wished she could take another look at the archers she had seen in the Knight’s training grounds. Wishing grants nothing but wasted time. She thought to herself. She would just have to rely on her own memory. Devi closed her eyes and visualised the stances she had seen. She remembered the side-on pose and the line running from the edge of the archer’s outstretched elbow, down the shaft of the arrow – almost like the arrow was an extension of the archer.

She opened her eyes again and looked at her own positioning. She adjusted and shuffled until she felt comfortable once more, then looked towards her target. Really she needed to strengthen her arms and back to reach her full potential. For now she could at least practice getting from here to aiming at the target quicker.

Devi looked up at the tree she’d marked and concentrated on it. She pulled up her left arm and simultaneously drew back the string. She held it for a second and relaxed again. Her arms rested for a few seconds and then she repeated the process. Repetition. It had always been a useful tool for her when studying anything. If you could focus on just one thing at a time, do it over and over until your mind knew how to do it without even thinking, then you could focus on more important things. The body, she felt, was made to benefit from such processes. One didn’t need to actively be thinking about breathing to be drawing in air every second of the day.

When she next drew back, she finally loosed the arrow she’d been holding in her bow. It flew much further this time, beyond the tree in fact. She smiled, despite the miss. It still felt like progress.
Devi
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[Bronze Woods] Not just a Doctor

Postby Devi on April 5th, 2015, 11:43 am


Thinking that she should probably try and find the errant arrow now, whilst the memory of its path was fresh, Devi jogged towards the trees. On the way she stopped to pick up her first, stuck loosely in the dirt at a heavy angle. She carefully cleaned the dirt off of it and replaced it in the quiver before heading forwards once more. She paused just past her marked tree, eyes scanning the foliage carefully.

The trees were fairly thin here, getting thicker the further into the forest you travelled. Still, it was sparse enough this close to the wall that it would be difficult to obscure any approaching trouble. It was part of the reason she’d chosen it. Unfortunately that didn’t make it any easier to spot her missing arrow. Devi shivered a little as she looked, jumping around from foot to foot to warm herself up. She was glad for the season change. Despite the chill still hanging in the air, beams of sunlight still eked through the clouds above.

Finally as she was raking her eyes around on the floor she spotted her prize sticking out of the ground a little ways away. She jogged forward, scooped it up, wiped the dirt off and then made her way back to her starting position. She resumed her stance exercises, again repeating the process of drawing and aiming, holding the position for barely a second before relaxing it again. The more she did this the easier it became, though she kept having to remind herself to pick up her elbow. She noticed that when she dropped it, drawing the bowstring was more difficult. It felt like she was pulling from the wrong places.

She practiced a few more times and then decided to loose another arrow. It flew in a moreorless straight line, though certainly a little wobbly and no wonder – when she loosed the string it caught the leather of her arm guard and jerked her wrist a little. Devi was suddenly extremely thankful that she had listened when the bowyer who sold the gear to her had insisted on that particular item.
Devi
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[Bronze Woods] Not just a Doctor

Postby Devi on April 6th, 2015, 12:06 pm

Devi retrieved another arrow from her quiver, not stopping this time to pick up the one she had already loosed. She set it in place on her bow and stretched up to an aiming position again. She paid special attention to her left wrist this time, noting how holding the bow in different ways put her arm in danger, or not. She loosed another arrow, watching its path as it whistled off towards the trees. Feeling her arm begin to tire again she loosed the position and lowered her arms to rest.

She wandered forwards slowly, shaking her loose arm to encourage the blood to flow more easily through it. As she scanned the area for her two missing arrows her eyes caught on a dash of blue amidst the greenery coating the floor of the forest edge. Tilting her head slightly she made towards it, a spark of excitement unfurling in her abdomen. She leant close to the flowers, admiring the unusual shape of the petals and searching her memory to see if she knew what type of flower it was. Something about it was familiar. Devi used the tip of an arrow to inspect the shiny, dark green leaves, remembering her mother’s note about not touching unfamiliar plants.

As she raised one of the leaves she noticed that they were white on the underside. A memory stirred in her mind, a vague recollection of one of her mother’s sketches taking shape. She stood, stretched and then gathered up her two loosed arrows whilst she thought on it some more. As she started to head back the details she had been trying to remember came to her. It was Acson, one of the more unusual plants one could find around the forest. The stem and leaves were mildly poisonous though they were useful to combat certain poisons. Animal based perhaps? She wondered in her head. She knew that her mother had written of the method she herself had used to prepare the leaves and stem for edible use – when chewed raw they apparently tasted vile.

She shook her head of the musings when she reached her starting position again, focusing instead on her archery again. She drew another arrow from her quiver and aimed at the target once more. All the same, she couldn’t keep a smile off of her face. Expanding her knowledge of herbs and poisons was, after all, her reason for wanting to venture into the forest in the first place. She just hadn’t expected to find anything on her very first day.
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[Bronze Woods] Not just a Doctor

Postby Devi on April 6th, 2015, 12:40 pm

Another arrow flew from her bow and Devi stopped abruptly, staring at it. It quivered slightly, sticking out of the soft tree bark that she had cleared for use as her target. She had hit it. She had hit her target with an arrow. Granted it had hit the edge of her target but still, it was better than hitting the floor or glancing off the edge of the tree. She let out a cry of celebration before remembering she was still in sight of the city gates. Chuckling quieter to herself she drew another arrow and, with the memory of her last arrow fresh in her mind, tried to imitate what she had just done.

Devi felt her arms pull taught against the bowstring, both of them one long line pointing towards her target. She loosed this one and let out another celebratory yell, this one completely unabashed. She had managed to hit the target again, on the other edge of the target but slightly closer to the centre. She continued in this way for another two hours, stopping for the simple lunch she had packed that morning to revive her energy and rest her arms again. By the end of her session she could feel the strain in her arms but also her back and abdomen.

As she packed her belongings away she pondered this from a medical perspective. In her mind she watched herself draw an arrow and aim at the target, feeling her own muscles twitch in response. She realised that working her back muscles would be a necessity given the way in which she moved and held her arms. She used her hands to feel and put pressure on her abdomen, feeling exactly where she ached. Thinking of herself as a patient she came to the conclusion that using the core muscles in her abdomen would steady her posture. She wasn’t used to using those muscles in that way already though, which is why they were aching from the morning’s exertion.

She laughed at herself, the light sound intermingling with the birdsong she could hear floating out of the trees. Here she was making a point that she was not just a simple doctor and her first session ended in a medical diagnosis. She wandered forward to collect her arrows, carefully extracting them from the target which was now pierced in several places. As she did so her eyes caught on the flash of blue flowers once more. She replaced the arrows in her quiver and returned to her pack, pulling out the thin piece of leather that she used to wrap her lunch in and her woollen gloves. She pulled on the gloves and laid out the leather before the plant.

Eyeing it carefully she selected one of the larger stems and detached a few of its leaves. It would be enough, she thought, to make a couple of doses of the syrup her mother had mentioned. Encased in the sugar of the syrup she thought the doses would last quite a while. She wrapped up the leaves as cautiously as she could, ensuring she wouldn’t accidentally touch them with her bare hands. The sun spilled through the light clouds above her as she started back towards the gate, a smile on her face once more.
Devi
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[Bronze Woods] Not just a Doctor

Postby Katelyn Marks on April 16th, 2015, 2:31 pm

Due Rewards


“After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

 
Devi
Skills
➢ Observation +4
➢ Philosophy +1
➢ Carving +1
➢ Longbow +4
➢ Body Building +1
➢ Endurance +3
➢ Tactics +2
➢ Tracking +1
➢ Herbalism +2
➢ Poison +1

Lores
➢ Location: The Bronze Woods
➢ Archery: Proper Stance
➢ Archery: Stringing a Bow
➢ Archery: Importance of Repetition
➢ Longbow: Heavy Draw
➢ Longbow: Proper Arm Angles
➢ Acson: Identification and Uses

Comments: A pleasant thread! I felt like this was a pretty good introduction to archery, and I liked how you gave Devi a learning curve. Keep up the good work!

If you have any concerns or questions about your rewards please feel free to send me a message. Also, please edit your original grade request and mark it as graded. Thank you and enjoy!
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Gingersnap
 
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