#sidesword

[wearemercs]

1,2 by mossacannibalis

[mockingnerd]

Another one for the HEMA folks, or SCA or LARP or other collections of capital letters! It is available here if you are inclined to wear clothes or stick things on other things

If my clubmates would stop saying banger things like this I would be able to stop drawing piles of weapons and twisty banners. But for now it's a pretty fun challenge for my art so I'll allow it

[impossiblepackage]

NEW SWORD DAY

can't wait to try it out later. it really likes making the swoosh noise, which is very fun

[vidilpoge]

FFS I've being denied access to the iron tournament AND being explicitally said that I cant use my fencing jacket because I've put a colorful patch on it. I have to take it off. I don't really care for the tournament because I had an inkling they would not let me take part in it, but my plan for the patch was feingning ignorance about them not being permitted

Please tell me, fencers wolrdwide, are you allowed to personalize your equipment in your club or you have to stick to certain colors, models and brands?

I am talking of esthetical stuff, like painting the mesh of the mask, putting patches on the pants, embroider the back of your jacket, choosing some bright color or fancy pattern for your socks, so on and so fort.

Reblog for bigger sample size etc.

We have to wear all black, stick to a small hadfull of approved models and get scolded for anything out of place. The only free for all are the shoes.

[historicalfightingguide]

"In this video we cover the basic techniques of parrying described in Meyer's 1570 Sidesword/Rapier treatise. This is not intended to be a complete disassembly of each technique, rather it is a generalised overview with some consideration of important points in the movement. This is the first of at least 2 videos covering the techniques and principles of parrying in the context of Meyer's system."

You may find the other posts about Daniel Pope's work on this blog useful as well

Also here’s a masterpost of sorts of Meyer content on this blog

You may also enjoy this general one-handed sword according to Meyer video as well

(and keep in mind the dussack is used by Meyer within his 1571 book as a basis for all one-handed weapons).

As well as these videos on how to apply the Meyer square to a dussack, and some other dussack-handling drills.

The provoker-taker-hitter tactical concept and its uses are quite relevant to dussack as a weapon.

Lastly you might find the dussack tag of the blog relevant too.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

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Some advice on how to start studying the sources generally can be found in these older posts

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Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.Check out their curriculum too.

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Fear is the Mind Killer: How to Build a Training Culture that Fosters Strength and Resilience by   Kajetan Sadowski   may be relevant as well.

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“How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills”  by Rob Gray  as well as this post that goes over the basics of his constraints lead, ecological approach.

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Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

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Trauma informed coaching and why it matters

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Look at the previous posts in relation to running and cardio to learn how that relates to historical fencing.

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Why having a systematic approach to training can be beneficial

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Why we may not want one attack 10 000 times, nor 10 000 attacks done once, but a third option.

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How consent and opting in function and why it matters.

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More on tactics in fencing

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Types of fencers

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Open vs closed skills

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The three primary factors to safety within historical fencing

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Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

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And if you train any weapon based form of historical fencing check out the ‘HEMA game archive’ where you can find a plethora of different drills, focused sparring and game options to use for effective, useful and fun training.

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Check out the cool hemabookshelf facsimile project.

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For more on how to use youtube content for learning historical fencing I suggest checking out these older posts on the concept of video study of sparring and tournament footage.

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The provoker-taker-hitter tactical concept and its uses

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Approaches to goals and methodology in historical fencing

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A short article on why learning about other sports and activities can benefit folks in combat sports

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Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.

[wearefighter]

[runeswordproductions]

The Night of Bones

“You do not know the first thing about the Dark Lord, do you?” Brodcrum asks just as another wretchkin lunges out of the darkness. Brodcrum sidesteps the swipe of its claws and beheads it with a deft cut. “Osseon always spares the children.”

            “The Hell King of the Dragonspine Promontory has mercy now?” Kneewound demands.

            “No, but he prefers to kill the kids ten to twenty years after the fact, after they have grown up and devoted their lives to revenge. It is what I would do if I was a deathless sorcerer. Gotta do something to keep eternity interesting.” Brodcrum frees up his hands by shifting Kneewound from his shoulder to his back, so she has to hang onto his neck. “Now hold on tight. I am going to do what you might call a ‘professional adventurer move.’”

            “Please don’t,” Kneewound says as Brodcrum scans the starry sky. They’ve reached the edge of an open square with a cheerful wooden sign reading, Designated Dueling Ground. Brodcrum has tangled with the hordes of Osseon before, and he knows their tactics. He knows the gates of the compound will be swarming with wretchkin, and he knows those wretchkin are just the shepherd’s goad. Typical horde attack: send in hundreds of easily-rebuilt wretchkin to flush your prey into open spaces where they’re easy pickings for the horde’s air force. Knowing it’s exactly what his enemy expects, Brodcrum runs out onto the open dueling ground. 

            He doesn’t see the deathwing, but he feels it swooping toward him, eight hundred pounds of leather-winged, necromantically-constructed killing machine detectable only as a garbage-smelling wind and a prickling on the back of the neck. Carefully compensating for Kneewound’s weight, Brodcrum leaps aside at the last second, not letting the deathwing’s talons snag him but getting his huge hand around its ankle. The panicking deathwing pulls out of its dive, lifting Brodcrum and a screaming Kneewound into the air, first ten feet, then twenty as it tries to shake them off. Then they’re above the wall, and Brodcrum’s sword flashes upward, the tip of his blade tearing through the fused-together human hides of one delicate wing. The monster shrieks, losing altitude as its one undamaged wing struggles to keep it in the air. Its desperate flapping is just effective enough that Brodcrum doesn’t break his legs when he lands, releasing his grip on the deathwing’s ankle just as it’s about to crash to the ground. The soft sandy ground helps, though Kneewound is getting perilously close to throttling him as the deathwing hits the ground a few yards away in a meaty cacophony of snapping bones.

            “Quit your hysterics!” Brodcrum shrugs Kneewound off and places her on the ground. “You act as if I had never done that before!”

“I didn’t know that!” Kneewound squawks. “And even if I had--”

A high, coldly amused voice slithers out of the darkness. “Oh, but we knew he’d done that before. You’re growing predictable in your old age, Brodcrum.” 💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀⚔💀

BEHOLD! Chapter 3: The Night of Bones is up on https://www.runeswordproductions.com/ Direct link to the beginning for those new to the adventure: https://www.runeswordproductions.com/beholdcover

The whole book's going up for free, chapter by chapter every other week, but by signing up for the Patreon you can get access to chapters released a month early, as well as bonus stories including BONED, the events of this chapter from the perspective of some skeletons who put the devastating in devastatingly sexy. https://www.patreon.com/RuneswordProductions

Wishing you all a very, "embrace the civilization-destroying barbarism inside of you," - Rune

[medievalsnippets]

Finding out HEMA is cancelled after reading through pietro montes writing and being excited to use his advice

[morwynlefay]

made this sword hanger for a freind of mine to carry his sidesword in. it’s made out 3mm thick veg tanned leather with a stamped fleur de lis pattern. it has 6 cast brass buckles for holding the sword and 1 slightly larger buckle for sdjusting the angle that it hangs in

[crow-toes]

Day 4 of OC-tober 2023: Redesign

Rhyann Kavanagh, half-elf fighter

This is a day where the sketch just didn't turn out - for a character I've always had a much harder time drawing than writing. I'm not happy with the anatomy and drawing itself, and I'm not settled on the redesign yet either. I have a different eye than I did during their original design process 7 years ago (the time flies!), and a much deeper understanding of the material that inspires their concept - but that doesn't always mean the art or decisions come easily.

I've been wanting to move my inspiration period for Rhyann (they/them) earlier in real-world history. As I've studied cultural, martial, and clothing history more, I've focused more around 1350-1500. I originally set Rhyann's inspiration in the early 1600s, but my interest just hasn't held as strongly there.

Here I've sketched them slightly more in an early renaissance/late medieval fashion, bringing in a fancy voluminous houppeland, winged spear/partisan, and a significantly earlier complex-hilted sword. There are so many in-period options, though, so I've done a few other studies and included more of my reference material.

OC-tober 2023 by bweirdart (prompt list)

Fave OC

New OC

Old OC

References:

Model: Andreja Pejic (image source unknown, way back in my files)

Houppelands (sources unknown, way back in my files)

Swords and daggers: Seven Embers Forge

[mentally-moderato]

The guards transition? 😳 damn.. 🏳️‍⚧️

[wearemercs]

Feres of the Darad People by Pavel Hristov

Many of the young Darad took jobs as either mercenaries or hired killers, otherwise starved for honest work. Not allowed to produce or buy their own equipment, some would use whatever farming tools were at their disposal.

Others would scavenge the battlefields for whatever they could find, to which the Temple mostly turned a blind eye. However, ornate armor, pommels and scabbards would be stripped and sold, keeping only the practical, as undue attention from a Darad could cost one's life.

[mockingnerd]

A silly little design I made for my historical fencing club! We’d been discussing mental health in HEMA and my clubmate said this banger of a quote and I had to immortalize it. You can get it on stuff here!

Turns out I do love drawing swords

[longsword-enjoyer]

I CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

[vidilpoge]

About yesterday's meet

I took part in the two handed sword and in the sword and buckler tournaments, and did bad in both of them.

They are structured so there are round-robins and then the two partecipant with most wins (breaking ties with points earned) go on to the direct elimination bracket. I stopped at the round-robins both times.

I can't quite put my finger on how I feel about it. I liked how I fenced in the two handed sword even if I took more losses than wins. I think I've done well enough. Against my first opponent, a guy on the smaller side that played it more on the technique and mindgames side, I almost pulled off a parry in hengen with thrust to the throat in indes. It slid by the neck. Play was so good people from the sidelines gasped, play was so good the referee adwarding the points said "congratulation on the action, but it didn't go thru, I'm sorry".

Then I had two opponents in the ring, the fencer and the frigging sun blasting in my face if I tried to position myself in the centre. The blinding effect of sunrays hitting the mask mesh, IYKYK. In retrospect, it messed me up a lot more than I gave it merit for.

So like, I was happy on how I fenced but I did not really win. It bums me out.

On the sword and buckler side, this was what I was working with:

I have not trained it for a long time

The weapon provided was a sidesword, with finger rings and a knuckleguard

Everyone else was used to sideswords and reinassance sword and buckler

The I.33 system I studied sorta of expect the opponent to fight you using the same style

I haven't even seen a buckler since last May

This meant:

My coordination with two weapons in hand was miserable

The longer blade and the complex hilt made I.33 fencing even more cumbersome

I was not familiar with the guards they went in and the stikes they threw out

I had nothing on them, while they were confidently doing their own thing

You can bet I forgot after years of only longsword sparring that the legs are targets and you have to defend them

But! Newbies where happy with our matches! They told me I had them run for their money. A more advanced fencer told me I was good, not playing into his ruse. I had no idea what he was talking about. I still had the damn sun in my eyes. The outside of my upper left leg is black and blue from at least three hit to the same place. As I said, I don't know how to feel about the whole ordeal, because I don't feel like I was competent but I got positive feedback from the people I fought against.