ph_logs | September Open + 2 Closed

Who: River la Croix and YOU
What: Blacksmith open for business, sword practice, crippling coffee addiction, tailoring a cloak, & laying the dead to rest
When: [waves hand like a magician] September
Where: River's forge, Annabelle's tailoring shop, the festival green, the woods, Oak & Iron
Warnings: Likely discussions of death & necromancy, River's general bluntness about death, injury, and maiming, and I dunno about the woods thread, that's Dara's party

Glory to the Secondborn [Open | River's Forge]

River spends most of the time after her arrival in August getting her forge ready to go - all smiths need to ensure their workspace is just how they like it - but now she's completely open for business. The sign hanging out front proclaims INFERNAL ARMS AND ARMOR, with a second, smaller sign hanging beneath it: Custom Work Accepted.

Find River here five days a week, laboring over her anvil and forge. A smith's work is never done, and right now a great deal of her own is in the little things a town blacksmith does - helping the overall owner of the forge make nails and rivets, hammering out wire, repairing pots, pans, and tools, melting down broken equipment to either reclaim the metal or make into new tools, and the like. But she's eager to work on other things. River didn't train much as a traditional smith. She's an armorer, and the night, it is so very dark, isn't it?

River works with a faceplate on, a blank bit of steel with a slit so she can see, so if you come up on her in the middle of a project odds are good that her hair is tied back and her face is not immediately visible.

The sigils on her bare arms burn with a light that matches her forge, which is curiously free of coals despite the heat coming from it.

Best Practices [Open | Festival Green]

One can find River in the evenings at the festival green, while the sun is setting, training with her spatha. Her style has a curious quirk; she fights dirty and mean, yes, but mixed into the more usual moves of her two-handed stance are light, quick touches, as if all she intends to do is make brief contact with an opponent. She could use a sparring partner.

Black As Night, Sweet As Sin [Open | Oak & Iron]

From the studio that brought you the last 'come bother me' prompt, a second one: find River in the mornings at Oak & Iron, carefully measuring out her budget for a daily cup of coffee. You can almost see her transformation from 'I'll fight God if he so much as looks at me' to 'eager and curious about all these new people' as the cup drains. She is not a morning person by inclination, merely by habit.

Anyone who feeds this girl something she doesn't have to cook herself may have an instant friend.

Custom Order [Closed to Annabelle | Annabelle's Shop]

With weather being a thing on the island, River is making her cloak a priority...quite aside from it being an excuse to talk to Miss Whitlock again. She comes in with a heavy cloak in deep green folded over her arm, her ears twitching curiously as she looks around and takes in the ambiance. River wouldn't dream of expecting special treatment as a client here; she can wait for the sticheress to be ready to serve her, especially when the measurements might need...

...Privacy.

The Family Business [Closed to Degas | The Woods]

"Thank you for agreeing to this," River murmurs. "...I know there's misgivings, but I want to stress again that my primary goal here is to get the deceased laid to a proper rest and provide closure to their families. If there are none who might be willing to see their earthly remains used to protect the community, that's fine. Not ideal, but fine, I can't expect or demand anything."

River's here, she's ready, she's at the edge of the woods. She's come armed with her sword, but to be frank if a monster attacks her job is to make sure that Degas can get away. Cold as it is, the dead will wait for a return trip, but the Temple needs its minister.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Get it done, then get gone?" he offers up. It's a serious question despite any lightness that might be perceived in the phrasing.

"What I want... out of knowing how to fight..." He visibly thinks about that for a moment. It feels like something that deserves thought, and to be put into the correct words. He looks up into River's eyes after a few moments. "I want to be able to protect others. And myself. I'd rather take a monster's attention so someone else can get away, if I have to. And then I'd like to get away from them myself, once others were safe."

"Got it in one. You can't help anyone while you're dead, and most versions of wounded suck more than I do after my fourth beer, so." River listens to Eddie describe his goals, and taps her chin. "...I'm gonna make the assumption that you came to me because you want to learn how to use a weapon you hold in your hands. I'm familiar with a lot of them, even if I favor the sword. The way I see it, you've got two options: the sword, and the spear. You ever use either?"

That self-deprecating remark about her alcohol tolerance gets River a brief smile from Eddie.

"I've never used a sword or a spear. I haven't done much fighting at all, but um... I know about going for soft bits like the throat or eyes if I have to. ...and that's about it."

Yeah that wasn't about her alcohol tolerance Eddie, you pure, pure soul.

"Aim to kill people in the spots where they die is usually good advice, yeah." River picks up her sheathed sword and offers it, flat on her palms, out to Eddie. "Feel the weight if you like, it's always both lighter and heavier than people understand. Double-edged swords like this one, and more broadly swords in general, they're...sidearms, they're not usually primary weapons. But they do something no other weapon ever forged does. A sword is the only, and I mean the only, weapon you can put in your hand that can meaningfully protect another person. As long as you're able to fight, you define a circle around yourself through which ill intent may not pass without contesting your will."

(Shh... he's kind of repressed.)

Eddie puts his hands out so that they are beside each of River's, then lifts the sheathed sword so that it lies flat on his hands instead. He sees what she means about it being both heavy and lighter than he was expecting, and that's a good way to put it into words. He tips his hands so he can get a grip on the handle of the sword itself, angling it up to feel the weight without letting it slip from the sheath (she didn't say he could take it out, after all).

After a bit more time feeling out the weight of it as she speaks, he hands it back to her.

She has a fancy way of talking about weaponry, and he has to think it over. "I think I understand. It's... they have to come into your natural reach to hurt you, and the sword covers that for you?"

"Yes, but it also covers it for people near you. The sword is an extension of your arm, and moves as you do." Slowly, River draws her blade, and turns it so Eddie can look at it edge-on. "It is also, not to be too technical, an extremely thin lever, and that means you can dictate how your opponent moves once you know how - without hitting your friends and comrades. But it's not without its flaws either. Swords break after enough time, they'll take more blows on the anvil than they ever see on the battlefield. They struggle with most forms of armor, and they're expensive and hard to make. Which brings us to the god of the battlefield, whose name is Spear and whose cup runneth over with blood."

River sheaths the blade again, and sets it aside before she turns to Eddie. "People will tell you to counter spears by rushing in past the tip. These people are, and let me be as kind to them as I can, fucking morons. The reach of the spear is your dominion, and you are lord over it. Anyone who wants to get to you must defeat the tip, the haft, and the butt, in addition to your body. It has superior leverage in comparison to almost all other weapons, slashes and stabs with ease, and gives you the concentrated force to punch through armor. But to take advantage of it, you need full range of motion, and that means you can't stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your allies. The spearman fights from the front, and is the last to retreat."

"If I learn one, would that make it hard to learn the other?" Eddie asks. "The way you describe the spear does make it sound... right, for me. But I also don't have any experience in close range combat, which seems to happen more often."

River smiles; it's a good question, but it's also the wrong question. "Eddie, my friend...you're a full-time farmer. Full-time soldiers don't grow food, they learn weapons all day and eat the food, which, again, you specifically are growing. It's not that you're gonna have bad habits from one you need to shake off learning the other. It's a question of time and also how dead you want to be when I pour you onto your front porch and mop you over the threshold. You gotta be up fuckin' early and let me tell you, the only things that take it out of you as much as weapons training is professional swimming and sex work."

Fun fact! All three are full-body cardio exercises.

"How does bicycle racing compare?" Eddie quips back, but then considers, "Do you even have bicycles where you come from..."

He shakes his head and waves a hand to dismiss that line of conversation. "Can we cover fighting with... knives? or daggers, I guess. Get the basics down so I don't slice myself up? And then if I'm not hopeless at that maybe we can talk training hard enough to exhaust and liquify me."

"What's a bicycle?"

(At the edge of the parade grounds, down the street, a citizen on one of those huge-ass pennyfarthings goes pedaling past.)

River shakes her own question off. "We can definitely start there. A knife's still a good weapon, especially if you're up against someone unarmed, but...well. First rule of knife fighting is don't get into knife fights. Most of the rules after are variations on that theme - the winner of a knife fight goes to the hospital. Tell you what, why don't we start up tomorrow? I'll see if I can bring down a deer, we need something already dead for you to practice your cuts on."

Fun fact! Also a common technique when teaching actual knife fighting.

"I'll explain later. With a terrible drawing or two." She should know by now that he's not the most artistically inclined of people, but sometimes Eddie does have to sketch out at least a representation of the ideas he's trying to communicate.

"It's just that I pretty much always have a knife on me, and this place has a habit of catching me unawares... but I'll, uh, keep that in mind for just in case new people start trouble. No knife fights."

He nods at her suggestion about starting tomorrow -- and the deer-as-practice-dummy makes sense, once he considers it. "Maybe it was rude to seek you out when you were already practicing, but I didn't expect a lesson right away. Thank you, River."

"Pssh, you're fine. I'm out in public, what am I supposed to do, get mad that someone walked up? I just need time to prepare. And you need time to make food for the session. Bring stuff that sticks with you, you'll need the energy."

"Yes, ma'am!" Eddie says brightly, with a smile to match.

Yeah, he's probably going to get his ass kicked just by the demands of the training, and he's gonna suck at it at first, but... one has to start somewhere. And he's grateful for the help.

September Open + 2 Closed

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Wraaaaaaaaaaaaaaap?

Sure thing