Fantasy: fighting styles and weapons
Mar. 7th, 2014 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethHave been listening to Prodigy while thinking about martial arts movies.
One of the Highlander characters with the same name as me tells her student "Choose your ground, choose your weapon, and face what is to come."
I think a lot of people skip over step one. But the ground is key.
Consider parkour. All space is 3D, and movement through it can go in any direction. Seriously, any. Humans and physics don't always seem to get along. This isn't just rogues going up walls or down grates, though they totally will (see Ladyhawke, the fighter and the rogue treat the space in totally different ways). It's ladders and landings and bamboo forests and alleyways and town squares. There's also Sharpe's rule: keep your feet. It's no use being good at fencing on a nice flat floor if, when you get outside where the mud and leaves are, your footwork leaves you flat on your back. (The other Sharpe rule of course is the Voltaire quote, that god is on the side of the best shots. And the fastest - enough rounds per minute makes your enemy's other qualities irrelevant.) So to figure out a fight scene you need to know where your characters stand, and how they stand, and if they're going to try and hold their ground, charge in, or run away.
Then of course there are weapons. These interact with the ground - if they're mostly in alleyways they're going to stick with short reach. But a lot of 'weapons' were actually day to day tools that just get repurposed. Specialist stuff like a sword is much less useful to most people than their work tools. And hunting weapons like bows or spears are going to see use a lot more often than things primarily intended for prying someone out of plate armour. But fantasy has its speciality applications, and since my magic is all alchemy, there's going to be ways and ways to get the alchemical preparations onto the enemy. One of my characters has a Bec de Corbin and a flask full of undead-only contact poison, because with zombies you want to bash heads in and with this poison a nice broad area to spread it on can get a good dose onto them. Of course if a particularly clever alchemist learns how to apply them via super soaker or paintball, the problem becomes getting a whole dose through to skin. Well, that and how much each shot would cost, if it's even a fraction of an alchemical potion. Eternal Rest takes four weeks to make and costs about four thousand dollars, where dollar roughly means a loaf of bread. You would want a supply of that for an expedition to zombie country, but the amount of shots you could realistically afford to prepare would be very limited.
One character, basically a bard, is going to climb and hide and maybe yell 'look out' sometimes. But they're also good with a rope, so they can lasso or wrap like Indiana Jones' whip, or put a weight on the end and have a meteor hammer. Plus their main work is as a messenger and guide, so they're used to escorting people who have no clue. They'll protect themselves, and will happily run away at the first sign of trouble, but they will actually be back after the fight to see if they can patch anyone up and show them the way forward. This gets them little respect, but they've survived long enough to learn the ground.
The smith has brought his hammers. He'll stand his ground and try and strike weak points. He also understands the difference between zombies and revenants; a shiny black gem with their soul in it worn in contact with their skin means revenants lose none of their intelligence or skills, where zombies are much more limited (which is why revenants can climb when zombies just won't think of it). Some revenants also learn how to direct zombies, order them around. So he'll be looking out for the shiny thing, because if he can smash that the enemy gets much more manageable. But in this particular fight he finds one revenant wearing many shiny black gems, and now he's pissed off, because he knows there's a person in each and every one, so it's really one guy with a lot of prisoners. Also he doesn't know if any of those gems is his dad. He's out here looking for his dad. So, he needs to stop the revenant, which will turn the zombies from directed henchmen into a random milling mob again, but every gem he crushes has equal chances of being the enemy or a prisoner.
... a more dexterous rogue type character would just try lifting the gems, which has its own problem - once in contact, any occupant gets a chance to try and possess any body. Breaking whatever metal bits are holding the gems on would probably be preferable, but not simple.
So the smith fights through the mob to try and reach the leader, while the bard is up a rooftop or something, dropping a noose down to yoink zombies out of reach every now and then.
Then the tank turns up, someone in full plate armour. I don't know what weapon they use, probably a mace, but I do know they charge in and let momentum clear a hole on their first try. That leaves them vulnerable, since enough weight of zombie can stop them even if no particular enemy has skill. But it gets the zombies off the smith's back for a while.
The smith gets in crushing range. They swing for joints and miss, but backhand a gem, smashing it. The revenant grins as it calls more zombies in. The smith lines up for another strike, still not knowing which gem is friend or enemy, and...
*splat*
paintball of Eternal Rest to the face, and the zombie nearest him goes down.
The smith reverses his strike and turns to the undead crowd, because if he can figure out where the sniper alchemist is and clear her shot, they won't lose any more soul gems.
... ooooh, fights look so much less interesting written down. In my head it's all woosh and bam and urk and smash and yaays and oh noes. It takes so many words to manage any of that though.
Added to this action, the alchemist only actually cares about one person in that fight, her son the smith, so the tank and the bard are out of luck. Four weeks of work per shot, she's not spending that on randoms.
Her son would very strongly disagree with this attitude. But he hasn't learnt the recipes yet.
Zombies and other undead are limited to aspected mana zones that pretty much correlate with altitude. Like, the lower, the stronger the death aspected stuff. So most everyone is up mountains now, and the lower one goes the stronger one's enemies get. ... yeah, that's a very hand wavey way to get a classic game mechanism wedged in the story, but it also redraws the map of human civilisation. Other aspects can be tied to a particular water source or field or can be larger but weaker. And it's all secretly nanotech or biotech, so while there can be command words built in that make the handwaving sort of magic kinda work, mostly it's alchemy, that is the magic inherent in specific materials, or just herbalism. Healing plants and so forth, perhaps prepared to bring out their strongest qualities, some of them containing tiny tech that cancels out other designs. They were engineered before the fall of society and their properties are still going strong.
So you get to use google maps and have roads and cities lying around full of zombies. But still have the vaguely fantasy story magic world.
Revenants are pretty much Owen Harper, running around undead, no fatigue, maximum effort available at all times, no pain, but also, like zombies, no healing without further necromantic magics. They were a mostly successful experiment that escaped a teensy before it was ready for prime time. Zombies ought to be revenants but they were too rotten when they were raised, or their brains just didn't quite make it, and the soul gem meant to provide the back up copy is not there. Often because once the zombie maker got out it raised much, much older corpses than the designers had dreamed, so they were never recorded.
Nobody would trust a revenant, because zombies are destructive little bastards who want to make more zombies (which, from their point of view, is 'heal all the things', but the code was buggy). Revenants are not necessarily any different than they were when conventionally alive, and there's more of them around than commonly imagined.
The main characters come from a town with a Healing aspected water source, but the necromantic aspect is right at the end of the valley that spring cut, and the inhabitants have forgotten that it's the water that keeps the zombies back. So come a very dry season, guess what can roll up right to the gates...
My main characters keep being all guys though. Like, not all the time, sometimes I can decide they're women and stick with it, but then they turn back into guys in my head and it's annoying. I know it's cause of who they were inspired by and it's not like there's an overabundance of black men in fantasy as it is and if one of the guys is gay and brings both a boyfriend and a platonic friend and his ex is in the story then already you have several men but again they're men you don't get so often in mainstream fiction, but, it's still weird when characters won't stay women in my head.
Except for that one character where it's weird I sometimes think of him as a woman, cause he's a trans man that feels like he's in drag when he's dressed as a woman for one off reasons and just gets stuck with that persona, except that's... I don't know as that's a good way to write a trans man at all at all. Like, even if the gender stuff makes sense to him, it's going to look like they're a woman because the point of view character sees them dressed that way quite often. Or maybe he could know better and just ignore the skirts? Cause he learns fairly swiftly. That would be better. Even if everyone else thinks he's weird for saying he about that guy they all think is a she. He'd actually be being respectful. I keep not writing the whole story at all though, partly because I expect to splat about this one character's gender identity. Even though such things would be constructed differently in a post apocalyptic alchemy powered fantasy society. There's no elixir to swap sexes though, that would be a specific use of Alter Body and you'd have to invent an elixir for that. Plus Alter Body is usually temporary, though it can be made permanent, so you'd have to do more inventing to make a permanent version. Would the elixir be simpler because one specific set of changes? Alter Body can make you look like anyone, as long as you stay humanoid, which is a bit more change than aimed for. ... it's magic, it could do whatever I decide, I know.
Lots of things about inventing story are annoying. I keep thinking of things like, I could kill that one guy off to inspire his sister! ... I could kill the black man to give a woman an excuse to go adventuring now the men are gone... why is brain full of fail?
... because brains get stocked by all that fail stuff I seen and read and everything, so I have to unpick it carefully and consciously. Which is fiddlier than just not being fail in the first place. boo.
well that ramble wasn't much about what I started out thinking on. I'll go do something else instead.
One of the Highlander characters with the same name as me tells her student "Choose your ground, choose your weapon, and face what is to come."
I think a lot of people skip over step one. But the ground is key.
Consider parkour. All space is 3D, and movement through it can go in any direction. Seriously, any. Humans and physics don't always seem to get along. This isn't just rogues going up walls or down grates, though they totally will (see Ladyhawke, the fighter and the rogue treat the space in totally different ways). It's ladders and landings and bamboo forests and alleyways and town squares. There's also Sharpe's rule: keep your feet. It's no use being good at fencing on a nice flat floor if, when you get outside where the mud and leaves are, your footwork leaves you flat on your back. (The other Sharpe rule of course is the Voltaire quote, that god is on the side of the best shots. And the fastest - enough rounds per minute makes your enemy's other qualities irrelevant.) So to figure out a fight scene you need to know where your characters stand, and how they stand, and if they're going to try and hold their ground, charge in, or run away.
Then of course there are weapons. These interact with the ground - if they're mostly in alleyways they're going to stick with short reach. But a lot of 'weapons' were actually day to day tools that just get repurposed. Specialist stuff like a sword is much less useful to most people than their work tools. And hunting weapons like bows or spears are going to see use a lot more often than things primarily intended for prying someone out of plate armour. But fantasy has its speciality applications, and since my magic is all alchemy, there's going to be ways and ways to get the alchemical preparations onto the enemy. One of my characters has a Bec de Corbin and a flask full of undead-only contact poison, because with zombies you want to bash heads in and with this poison a nice broad area to spread it on can get a good dose onto them. Of course if a particularly clever alchemist learns how to apply them via super soaker or paintball, the problem becomes getting a whole dose through to skin. Well, that and how much each shot would cost, if it's even a fraction of an alchemical potion. Eternal Rest takes four weeks to make and costs about four thousand dollars, where dollar roughly means a loaf of bread. You would want a supply of that for an expedition to zombie country, but the amount of shots you could realistically afford to prepare would be very limited.
One character, basically a bard, is going to climb and hide and maybe yell 'look out' sometimes. But they're also good with a rope, so they can lasso or wrap like Indiana Jones' whip, or put a weight on the end and have a meteor hammer. Plus their main work is as a messenger and guide, so they're used to escorting people who have no clue. They'll protect themselves, and will happily run away at the first sign of trouble, but they will actually be back after the fight to see if they can patch anyone up and show them the way forward. This gets them little respect, but they've survived long enough to learn the ground.
The smith has brought his hammers. He'll stand his ground and try and strike weak points. He also understands the difference between zombies and revenants; a shiny black gem with their soul in it worn in contact with their skin means revenants lose none of their intelligence or skills, where zombies are much more limited (which is why revenants can climb when zombies just won't think of it). Some revenants also learn how to direct zombies, order them around. So he'll be looking out for the shiny thing, because if he can smash that the enemy gets much more manageable. But in this particular fight he finds one revenant wearing many shiny black gems, and now he's pissed off, because he knows there's a person in each and every one, so it's really one guy with a lot of prisoners. Also he doesn't know if any of those gems is his dad. He's out here looking for his dad. So, he needs to stop the revenant, which will turn the zombies from directed henchmen into a random milling mob again, but every gem he crushes has equal chances of being the enemy or a prisoner.
... a more dexterous rogue type character would just try lifting the gems, which has its own problem - once in contact, any occupant gets a chance to try and possess any body. Breaking whatever metal bits are holding the gems on would probably be preferable, but not simple.
So the smith fights through the mob to try and reach the leader, while the bard is up a rooftop or something, dropping a noose down to yoink zombies out of reach every now and then.
Then the tank turns up, someone in full plate armour. I don't know what weapon they use, probably a mace, but I do know they charge in and let momentum clear a hole on their first try. That leaves them vulnerable, since enough weight of zombie can stop them even if no particular enemy has skill. But it gets the zombies off the smith's back for a while.
The smith gets in crushing range. They swing for joints and miss, but backhand a gem, smashing it. The revenant grins as it calls more zombies in. The smith lines up for another strike, still not knowing which gem is friend or enemy, and...
*splat*
paintball of Eternal Rest to the face, and the zombie nearest him goes down.
The smith reverses his strike and turns to the undead crowd, because if he can figure out where the sniper alchemist is and clear her shot, they won't lose any more soul gems.
... ooooh, fights look so much less interesting written down. In my head it's all woosh and bam and urk and smash and yaays and oh noes. It takes so many words to manage any of that though.
Added to this action, the alchemist only actually cares about one person in that fight, her son the smith, so the tank and the bard are out of luck. Four weeks of work per shot, she's not spending that on randoms.
Her son would very strongly disagree with this attitude. But he hasn't learnt the recipes yet.
Zombies and other undead are limited to aspected mana zones that pretty much correlate with altitude. Like, the lower, the stronger the death aspected stuff. So most everyone is up mountains now, and the lower one goes the stronger one's enemies get. ... yeah, that's a very hand wavey way to get a classic game mechanism wedged in the story, but it also redraws the map of human civilisation. Other aspects can be tied to a particular water source or field or can be larger but weaker. And it's all secretly nanotech or biotech, so while there can be command words built in that make the handwaving sort of magic kinda work, mostly it's alchemy, that is the magic inherent in specific materials, or just herbalism. Healing plants and so forth, perhaps prepared to bring out their strongest qualities, some of them containing tiny tech that cancels out other designs. They were engineered before the fall of society and their properties are still going strong.
So you get to use google maps and have roads and cities lying around full of zombies. But still have the vaguely fantasy story magic world.
Revenants are pretty much Owen Harper, running around undead, no fatigue, maximum effort available at all times, no pain, but also, like zombies, no healing without further necromantic magics. They were a mostly successful experiment that escaped a teensy before it was ready for prime time. Zombies ought to be revenants but they were too rotten when they were raised, or their brains just didn't quite make it, and the soul gem meant to provide the back up copy is not there. Often because once the zombie maker got out it raised much, much older corpses than the designers had dreamed, so they were never recorded.
Nobody would trust a revenant, because zombies are destructive little bastards who want to make more zombies (which, from their point of view, is 'heal all the things', but the code was buggy). Revenants are not necessarily any different than they were when conventionally alive, and there's more of them around than commonly imagined.
The main characters come from a town with a Healing aspected water source, but the necromantic aspect is right at the end of the valley that spring cut, and the inhabitants have forgotten that it's the water that keeps the zombies back. So come a very dry season, guess what can roll up right to the gates...
My main characters keep being all guys though. Like, not all the time, sometimes I can decide they're women and stick with it, but then they turn back into guys in my head and it's annoying. I know it's cause of who they were inspired by and it's not like there's an overabundance of black men in fantasy as it is and if one of the guys is gay and brings both a boyfriend and a platonic friend and his ex is in the story then already you have several men but again they're men you don't get so often in mainstream fiction, but, it's still weird when characters won't stay women in my head.
Except for that one character where it's weird I sometimes think of him as a woman, cause he's a trans man that feels like he's in drag when he's dressed as a woman for one off reasons and just gets stuck with that persona, except that's... I don't know as that's a good way to write a trans man at all at all. Like, even if the gender stuff makes sense to him, it's going to look like they're a woman because the point of view character sees them dressed that way quite often. Or maybe he could know better and just ignore the skirts? Cause he learns fairly swiftly. That would be better. Even if everyone else thinks he's weird for saying he about that guy they all think is a she. He'd actually be being respectful. I keep not writing the whole story at all though, partly because I expect to splat about this one character's gender identity. Even though such things would be constructed differently in a post apocalyptic alchemy powered fantasy society. There's no elixir to swap sexes though, that would be a specific use of Alter Body and you'd have to invent an elixir for that. Plus Alter Body is usually temporary, though it can be made permanent, so you'd have to do more inventing to make a permanent version. Would the elixir be simpler because one specific set of changes? Alter Body can make you look like anyone, as long as you stay humanoid, which is a bit more change than aimed for. ... it's magic, it could do whatever I decide, I know.
Lots of things about inventing story are annoying. I keep thinking of things like, I could kill that one guy off to inspire his sister! ... I could kill the black man to give a woman an excuse to go adventuring now the men are gone... why is brain full of fail?
... because brains get stocked by all that fail stuff I seen and read and everything, so I have to unpick it carefully and consciously. Which is fiddlier than just not being fail in the first place. boo.
well that ramble wasn't much about what I started out thinking on. I'll go do something else instead.