WolffyLuna

Black footed ferret by Hansa, bought on Vinted in September 2025 along with a hyena. Normally I'd say a mustelid plushie is better off floppy and beanie, but the wire skeleton in this one is pretty fun too. Weaponisable ferret! It's good to have some different styles.

Some players tend to ask witnesses the right questions ("Who did you see? When was it? What did they do? Did you notice anyone new? Anything suspicious?"), others not so much ("Did you see X? No? Well, okay then, goodbye"). I feel like some players have very little clue about how investigations work. Maybe it depends on how many detective tv shows one has watched, I dunno.

Anyway, I'll try making a short "manual" about detective work for the next game. It will brief players on which questions to ask, how to gather evidence, how to conduct an arrest and when they have the right to use lethal force.

Named for america's most famous guy

Now add some aid both kool and lemon

Pour in moxie nice and even

Share it with your closest friends

Theres so much it never ends

White washington its much too bland

13 more parts this cocktail lacks!

Add coffee milk and coffee, black

Mix in two more parts of whiskey

A brandy old fashioned and a DC Rickey

Tomato juice and apple cider

Two parts CJ, plus OJ and water

'Awa's made from kava root

Stir it in with the rest of the booze and fruit

White Washington makes you repent!

Coming now from hot Nevada!

Picon punch: it hails from Basque,

Top with brandy from the cask.

From Delaware and Maryland,

Two parts milk have met their end.

In: orange crush, vodka and juice

with triple sec that gets you loose.

White Washington is getting boozy!

Rocky hums. “Close. Skip first note.”

“Why? You always include that.”

“This means… of Rocky, possessive. Of the speaker.”

“My.”

“Correct. But only for names.”

“So you’re calling me…?”

Rocky repeats the word: “My Grace. Yes.” 

He was hanging out in the one house where he was guaranteed not to be safe from Owen. After Owen killed multiple people, including him, one permanently.

It’s either one of those tropes that has no real world basis, but looks/sounds cool in storytelling and is useful for moving the plot along (see: torture, knocking someone unconscious, a lot of medieval fantasy government stuff)

-Drills. So many drills. Just doing the same motion, or set of motions, over and over and over until it's muscle memory. And then do it some more. These can be done with another person, so you can get a feel for hitting someone (else's sword), or they might be done to a dummy, or just to the air as part of a series of steps

-there is a surprising amount of reading! A lot of what we do is based on styles that originated in the 11th-15th centuries, and were literally written in manuals for future people to use. Sometimes the explanations and diagrams are very clear. Sometimes they are not.

- There is sparring, with variations on goals. Sometimes the goal is just 'hit each other'. Sometimes you will have specific caveats, like if you both deliver a 'killing blow' at the same time you have to run to opposite ends of the room and back

- Footwork drills

- lots of wrist and arm stretches, both with and without swords

- Moving through different blocks/base positions, and practicing different cuts from each position

- More drills, wearing armor or other appropriate gear

- Weights and cardio training! Both are extremely important for making sure you can 1. Swing your sword and 2. Keep swinging your sword when you're wearing 15 lbs of armor and have been hacking at people for a full 20 minutes

- Learning how to maintain your gear

- Practicing control of the blade- this is usually done by having a dummy target (or sometimes a real person), and swinging with full power but stopping before you actually make contact. Master swordsman can bring their blade within half an inch of their target.

- Even more drills

Footwork drills are really important! Learning how and when to move, and shift your weight on your feet, is crucial

When practicing solo I often do so in front of a full-length mirror so that I can actually see what I'm doing

There is also just a lot of sparring. Unfortunately you can't really get good at sword fighting without getting your butt kicked. A lot.

However! A good teacher will give you tips either during or after the fight, or both! A lot of the time it's things like 'you need to improve your footwork more, here are 10 different drills. Go do them.' However, there is also a fair bit of going back over certain 'plays' in slower motion, where they'll tell you exactly what you did wrong and how to fix it in the context of the fight.

Also, just as a side note, unless your character is the progeny of a wealthy lord, they are probably going to use borrowed equipment. It will not fit right. And it will reek with the stench of 1000 sweaty people. And if you train in it enough, when you do get your own gear that actually fits properly and only smells like your sweat, I swear you get 5x better overnight

At some point, everyone develops their own style. I've fought people who love to just make huge stabby lunges, people who make wild flourishes, big guys who just brute force it, guys who look like they'd blow away in a light breeze but are the fastest people you've ever met. It comes over time, and from learning as many different techniques as you can

Not sure how much they did this in Ye Olden Days but almost everyone I've met in HEMA now fights in at least two different styles (usually longsword and Sabre or rapier). As I said above, the more styles you learn, the better you get at all of them; many techniques that you learn from one style are applicable in some way to the other

Faux Cashmere, Silk, and Pearl fibre (50/25/25), worsted, chain plyed.

It is a lovely fibre combination. It was advertised as not suitable for beginners, and I would agree with that. It's somewhat uneven in the drafting, and the fine fibres would occasionally adhere to the other singles and make plying troublesome.