Magic Under Construction: TOMU 2-8
Started:4/21/2011
Status: In progress.
Last Updated: 4/22/2011
Word Count: ~2500
Hours Writing: 2
[2 hours.]
Magisterius University had a Skirmish team and one of the best gladiatorial programs in the interior provinces, or so I was told... and it was also a surprisingly popular school for delvers... but it had originally been a university for wizards.
Modern ideas mean that wizards tend to be more well-rounded these days... the notions that studying such base and mundane matters as arms and fighting or carrying weapons and wearing armor would actually inhibit the ability to use magic have all been pretty soundly dispelled. A robust education is seen as a good thing. This is why MU and most other modern universities all have a liberal arts approach to education, teaching mundane subjects and combat skills alongside such thing enchantment and elementalism.
But even if learning how to swing a sword or strapping on a shield wouldn't damage your ability to use magic, my feeling was that it's still true that time spent studying fighting isn't time spent studying magic. You can't study both at the same time, unless you were studying how to fight with magic.
That sort of thing might have sounded like the perfect way for wizards to defend themselves, but combat casting can take a lot of specialized training. To be able to throw off volleys of spells on demand like a siege engine or a one-person regiment of archers would require a lot of dedicated practice of evocation. Combat buffing is technically enchantment, but it's a far cry from the sort of enchantment I was formally studying. I could use my limited knowledge of enhancement to give myself a bit of a boost before or during a fight, but the techniques for doing that well were different than the ones I'd use to better enhance an item.
In other words, learning combat magic effectively would pretty much require taking a double major, so almost everyone gets stuck taking weapon classes.
For my first semester at MU, I'd enrolled in a class called Basic Knife. Basic Knife and Basic Staff were the softest of the soft options for fulfilling the school's minimal weapon proficiency requirements. That they existed at all was a bit of a bone thrown to the old days when the world divided neatly into categories like users of magic and men who fought.
They weren't the only options available for people who carried daggers or staves, but they were the best options for someone who wasn't really interested in fighting but hadn't been able to find a way around the requirement for one weapon proficiency class.
I hadn't realized how much of a joke Basic Knife was when I took it... it was nicknamed "Bladies For Ladies" and the major focus of the class seemed to be how to carry a dagger about one's person without hurting oneself.
I still would have taken it, though. I had no interest in fighting, and I'd resented the fact that I was required to spend three hours a week one semester learning how to do it.
Circumstances and my friends had impressed on me that fighting was something that could happen whether I wanted it to or not... and like swimming, it's better to have the skills before they become essential than to try to pick them up on the fly. Or on the sink, as the case may be. So, I'd transferred to a more advanced class at Amaranth's insistence.
That class was recommended by Steff, and it was taught by her favorite teacher outside the necromancy program: Coach Jillian Callahan.
The rumors I'd heard about Callahan were the same as the rumors you heard about any tough teacher, only more... well, more. They said she'd liked to kill a few students for demonstration purposes, before the school rules were altered to prevent that. Well, actually, she had said that. Strangely, a lot of the people who spread rumors about her rejected that as being unbelievable.
She had made no pretense of hiding the fact that she would have just as soon killed me as taught me anything, but as long as the former wasn't an option she had done her best to see that I learned something in her class.
Unfortunately, as she'd pointed out, the Mixed Melee class that I'd joined was actually a bit above my level. It didn't have any prerequisites, but it assumed a basic competence that I'd lacked. I wouldn't have necessarily failed it, but it would have killed my GPA for the semester even if I gave it my best shot. So, we'd forged a deal: I would give it my best shot and then she'd give me a pass/fail grade, as long as I agreed to take another class of hers.
It had seemed like a good deal at the time. Well, more than that, it had seemed like a necessary deal at the time. But it really just deferred the basic problem, which was me being graded on my fighting ability. Three credit hours of a weapon proficiency class were part of the general education requirements for graduation, and a pass/fail class didn't count.
So I'd sought out Callahan... Coach Callahan... during the second semester and asked her opinion of which of her classes I could score the highest grade in. I had counted on her being able and willing to give me an honest appraisal, because her whole motivation seemed to be to get me into the class I was best suited for. She had flat out told me that there was only one class she could see me getting an A in... and then she'd told me it was a five credit hour class.
"It's not about pretty techniques," she had said. "And it's not about fancy footwork. It's about ending fights quickly and decisively. It's about surviving. It's a five-day-a-week class because it's my baby. I'd make all my classes daily if I could, but I fought for this one because I believe in it. It's also the class you need."
It was probably the longest thing she'd ever said to me without yelling, swearing, or calling me a name. In fact, she'd sounded surprisingly at peace as she said it. So with a little misgivings... she'd said that I could earn an A, but that didn't mean that I would... I'd signed up for five credit hours of hitting people with a stick.
My new fighting class met in a location that was familiar to me, the memorably named Kessherakh Salle in the fitness center. It was a long room, equipped with floor mats. The cabinets along the backwall were enchanted as mockboxes. Any weapon... any object, really... placed within them would be duplicated in phantasmal form. The mock weapons were illusions, complete with the illusions of tactile presence and heft. They could inflict illusionary pain and even wounds, depending on how the box was set.
In my Mixed Melee class, I'd been used to mocking my staff as soon as I arrived so I would be ready when class started. For this new one I thought it was better to wait until I received instructions. I arrived in the salle to find a bunch of other students... mostly human, or at least outwardly appearing to be.
There were three guys who looked like they were mostly elven... more elven than Steff, but with some traces of human ancestry. On slightly closer look, at least one of them was a slightly butch girl. Or maybe very butch, for an elf. There was a guy who looked like he either had some orc blood or a smaller proportion of ogre blood.
There was also a kobold who I almost overlooked completely, she was so small... kobolds weren't tall to begin with but this one was tiny, maybe two feet tall. My brain wanted to code her as female and it took me a few seconds to work out why. Kobolds were goblinoids, and goblinoids aren't mammalian. There were no identifiable secondary sex characteristics I could pick out.
Oru the goblin tended to wear things that were identifiably skirts and dresses, and did things with her hair that somewhat paralleled human standards of femininity, but kobolds valued conformity. Head-shaving was expected. Shiel the kobold had been smooth-headed when she showed up, but had stubbornly and proudly grown a head of short, bristly fuzz over the course of our freshman year... she'd explained to anyone who would listen and more people who wouldn't that kobold women were expected to keep smoothly-shaved heads while men could get away with a head of stubble to show that they were busy.
The fact that the kobold in the class had a shiny-smooth pate didn't prove that they were a girl, as the reason for the shaving preference was that most kobolds were naturally hairless, but I'd heard Shiel give her spiel often enough that my mind associated the look with women.
Something else about the tiny kobold was tugging at the corner of my memory, but I couldn't place her. I was almost positive that Shiel had been the only one of her kind attending Magisterius University the previous year.
The kobold girl looked so scared and out of place that I almost went over and introduced myself to her, but in the end my good intentions were no match for my own social awkwardness... while I was sure that a friendly face would make her feel better, I couldn't convince myself that my face was friendly enough for her to welcome its intrusion before Coach Callahan arrived.
She said nothing and made little noticeable noise as she walked through the propped open door, her steps bouncy and light... but almost everyone in the room turned and looked at her, anyway. I had seen her manage to blend into a crowd of students before, but she definitely had presence when she wanted to.
Coach Jillian Callahan looked human, more or less. She looked more human than anything else, anyway, but if you really looked at her and thought human there would be a few things that would just barely register as being off. Something about the way the muscles were attached to her bones, the way they flexed when she moved... something about the shape of her bones underneath it all.
She looked enough like a human that even if you caught onto the wrongness you'd probably think that it was her dominant bloodline, but she didn't have a drop of human blood in her body. According to Steff, she was a mixture of elf, dwarf, orc, and ogre that somehow averaged out into a mostly-human-like shape. Her typical dress was pure urban barbarian, all studded leather and with her arms and legs bare for easy movement. She carried a sword or a battle axe depending on the day... today both were on her back. Both were big, well-made, and enchanted to almost artifact-level.
I had no idea how old Coach Callahan was, but she had to be older than she looked because she easily have pass for a student... a cheerfully psychotic student.
"Welcome to Fighting To Disable," she said with a big, sharp grin on her face. Some people have a disarming smile. Coach Callahan's smile would take your arm off at the shoulder. "Formerly called Disabling Strikes. Renamed when I took it over because naming an entire class after the last step in a process is fucking stupid. I am Coach Callahan. You will call me Coach Callahan. I will call you whatever name I think you deserve. I will give you whatever grade I think you deserve.
"I am the fairest fucking teacher you will ever have, because you will never get more or less from me than exactly what I think you deserve, except in those circumstances that school rules prevent me from doing so. Before you get too comfortable about that last caveat, let me remind you that you signed a waiver for this class exempting myself and the school from penalty for any healable injury you may suffer in the course of your education. If it ain't permanent, I can get away with doing it to you. Believe me when I say that I've tested the limit of this thing. I don't mind testing it again."
She wasn't bluffing even a little bit. I already knew of her willingness to break bones and inflict pain and damage on students who annoyed her.
"I prefer to think of this class as fighting to win. I mean, that's how you win a fight: be the last one standing who's still able to fight. Be advised this is not a non-lethal fighting class. Our focus is on ending fights quickly and efficiently, which means removing your opponent's ability to continue fighting, which often means murdering the living fuck out of them.
"If you didn't actually read the fucking class description and just assumed from the title that we would not be using lethal force in this class, you will want to talk the registrar while we're still in the grace period. The classes you're looking for would either be Subdual Damage or Unarmed Grappling, both taught by Buttercup the Pretty Prancing Pony. But don't call him that to his face... it's Professor Prancing Pony. Respect is not just for your betters, kids.
"Also, be aware that even though unarmed fighting classes make up less than five percent of the fighting classes held on this campus, more students have been killed in them than all other combat classes put together. You can't mock a fist. At least not while it's attached to a living being."
[]
"The first mistake a lot of people make is cracking someone on the skull when they want to take them alive," she said. "Serious rookie mistake. A head shot is one of the best ways to end a fight, but it works best if it doesn't matter if your opponent lives or dies.
[1 hour in]
Magisterius University had a Skirmish team and one of the best gladiatorial programs in the interior provinces, or so I was told... and it was also a surprisingly popular school for delvers... but it had originally been a university for wizards.
Modern ideas meant that wizards tended to be more well-rounded these days... the notions that studying such base and mundane matters as arms and fighting or carrying weapons and wearing armor would actually inhibit the ability to use magic had been pretty soundly dispelled. A robust education was seen as a good thing. That was why MU and most other modern universities had adopted a liberal arts education, teaching mundane subjects and combat skills alongside such thing enchantment and elementalism.
But even if learning how to swing a sword or strapping on a shield wouldn't damage your ability to use magic, it was still true that time spent studying fighting wasn't time spent studying magic. You couldn't study both at the same time, unless you were studying how to fight with magic.
That sort of thing might have sounded like the perfect way for wizards to defend themselves, but combat casting can take a lot of specialized training. To be able to throw off volleys of spells on demand like a siege engine or a one-person regiment of archers would require a lot of dedicated practice of evocation. Combat buffing is technically enchantment, but it's a far cry from the sort of enchantment I was formally studying. I could use my limited knowledge of enhancement to give myself a bit of a boost before or during a fight, but the techniques for doing that well were different than the ones I'd use to better enhance an item.
In other words, learning combat magic effectively would pretty much require taking a double major, so almost everyone gets stuck taking weapon classes.
For my first semester at MU, I'd enrolled in a class called Basic Knife. Basic Knife and Basic Staff were the softest of the soft options for fulfilling the school's minimal weapon proficiency requirements. That they existed at all was a bit of a bone thrown to the old days when the world divided neatly into categories like users of magic and men who fought.
They weren't the only options available for people who carried daggers or staves, but they were the best options for someone who wasn't really interested in fighting but hadn't been able to find a way around the requirement for one weapon proficiency class.
I hadn't realized how much of a joke Basic Knife was when I took it... it was nicknamed "Bladies For Ladies" and the major focus of the class had seemed to be how to carry a dagger about one's person without hurting oneself.
I still would have taken it, though. I had no interest in fighting, and I'd resented the fact that I was required to spend three hours a week one semester learning how to do it.
Circumstances had impressed on me that fighting was something that could happen whether I wanted it to or not... and like swimming, it was better that I had the skills before I needed them than I tried to pick them up on the fly. Or on the sink, as the case may be. So, I'd transferred to a more advanced class at Amaranth's insistence.
That class was recommended by Steff, and it was taught by her favorite teacher outside the necromancy program: Coach Jillian Callahan.
The rumors I'd heard about Callahan were the same as the rumors you heard about any tough teacher, only more... well, more. They said she'd liked to kill a few students for demonstration purposes, before the school rules were altered to prevent that. Well, actually, she had said that. My experience was that the rumor mill tended to reject that as being unbelievable.
[]
Jillian Callahan looked human, more or less. She looked more human than anything else, anyway, but if you looked at her and thought human there would be a few things that would just barely register as being off. Something about the way the muscles were attached to her bones, the way they flexed when she moved... something about the shape of her bones underneath it all.
She looked enough like a human that even if you caught onto the wrongness you'd probably think that it was one of her dominant bloodlines, but she didn't have a drop of human blood in her body. According to Steff, she was a mixture of elf, dwarf, orc, and ogre. She dressed like an urban barbarian, all studded leather and usually with her arms and legs bare for easy movement. She carried a sword or a battle axe depending on the day. Both were big, well-made, and enchanted to almost artifact-level.
I had no idea how old she was, but she had to be older than she looked because she could easily have passed for a student... a cheerfully psychotic student.
"Welcome to Fighting To Disable," she said. "Formerly called Disabling Strikes. Renamed when I took it over because naming an entire class after the last step in a process is fucking stupid. I am Coach Callahan. You will call me Coach Callahan. I will call you whatever name I think you deserve. I will give you whatever grade I think you deserve. You will never get more or less from me than i think you deserve, except in those circumstances that school rules prevent me from doing so. Before you get too comfy, let me remind you that you signed a waiver for this class exempting myself and the school from penalty for any healable injury you may suffer in the course of your education."
I already knew of her willingness to break bones and inflict pain and damage on students who annoyed her. []
"I prefer to think of this class as fighting to win. I mean, that's how you win a fight: be the last one standing who's still able to fight. Be advised this is not a non-lethal fighting class. Our focus is on ending fights quickly and efficiently, which means removing your opponent's ability to continue fighting, which often means murdering the living fuck out of them.
"If you didn't actually read the fucking class description and just assumed from the title that we would not be using lethal force in this class, you will want to talk the registrar while we're still in the grace period. The classes you're looking for would either be Subdual Damage or Unarmed Grappling, both taught by Buttercup the Pretty Prancing Pony. But don't call him that to his face... it's Professor Prancing Pony.
"Also, be aware that even though unarmed fighting classes make up less than five percent of the fighting classes held on this campus, more students have been killed in them than all other combat classes put together.
[]
"The first mistake a lot of people make is cracking someone on the skull when they want to take them alive," she said. "Serious rookie mistake. A head shot is one of the best ways to end a fight, but it works best if it doesn't matter if your opponent lives or dies.
[0.5 hours in.]
Jillian Callahan looked human, more or less. She looked more human than anything else, anyway, but if you looked at her and thought human there would be a few things that would just barely register as being off. Something about the way the muscles were attached to her bones, the way they flexed when she moved... something about the shape of her bones underneath it all.
She looked enough like a human that even if you caught onto the wrongness you'd probably think that it was one of her dominant bloodlines, but she didn't have a drop of human blood in her body. According to Steff, she was a mixture of elf, dwarf, orc, and ogre. She dressed like an urban barbarian, all studded leather and usually with her arms and legs bare for easy movement. She carried a sword or a battle axe depending on the day. Both were big, well-made, and enchanted to almost artifact-level.
I had no idea how old she was, but she had to be older than she looked because she could easily have passed for a student... a cheerfully psychotic student.
"Welcome to Fighting To Disable," she said. "Formerly called Disabling Strikes. Renamed when I took it over because naming an entire class after the last step in a process is fucking stupid. I am Coach Callahan. You will call me Coach Callahan. I will call you whatever name I think you deserve. I will give you whatever grade I think you deserve. You will never get more or less from me than i think you deserve, except in those circumstances that school rules prevent me from doing so. Before you get too comfy, let me remind you that you signed a waiver for this class exempting myself and the school from penalty for any healable injury you may suffer in the course of your education."
I already knew of her willingness to break bones and inflict pain and damage on students who annoyed her. []
"I prefer to think of this class as fighting to win. I mean, that's how you win a fight: be the last one standing who's still able to fight. Be advised this is not a non-lethal fighting class. Our focus is on ending fights quickly and efficiently, which means removing your opponent's ability to continue fighting, which often means murdering the living fuck out of them.
"If you didn't actually read the fucking class description and just assumed from the title that we would not be using lethal force in this class, you will want to talk the registrar while we're still in the grace period. The classes you're looking for would either be Subdual Damage or Unarmed Grappling, both taught by Buttercup the Pretty Prancing Pony. But don't call him that to his face... it's Professor Prancing Pony.
"Also, be aware that even though unarmed fighting classes make up less than five percent of the fighting classes held on this campus, more students have been killed in them than all other combat classes put together.
[]
"The first mistake a lot of people make is cracking someone on the skull when they want to take them alive," she said. "Serious rookie mistake. A head shot is one of the best ways to end a fight, but it works best if it doesn't matter if your opponent lives or dies.
This entry automatically cross-posted from http://alexandraerin.dreamwidth.org/246834.html. Comment hither or thither. Void where yon.
Status: In progress.
Last Updated: 4/22/2011
Word Count: ~2500
Hours Writing: 2
[2 hours.]
Magisterius University had a Skirmish team and one of the best gladiatorial programs in the interior provinces, or so I was told... and it was also a surprisingly popular school for delvers... but it had originally been a university for wizards.
Modern ideas mean that wizards tend to be more well-rounded these days... the notions that studying such base and mundane matters as arms and fighting or carrying weapons and wearing armor would actually inhibit the ability to use magic have all been pretty soundly dispelled. A robust education is seen as a good thing. This is why MU and most other modern universities all have a liberal arts approach to education, teaching mundane subjects and combat skills alongside such thing enchantment and elementalism.
But even if learning how to swing a sword or strapping on a shield wouldn't damage your ability to use magic, my feeling was that it's still true that time spent studying fighting isn't time spent studying magic. You can't study both at the same time, unless you were studying how to fight with magic.
That sort of thing might have sounded like the perfect way for wizards to defend themselves, but combat casting can take a lot of specialized training. To be able to throw off volleys of spells on demand like a siege engine or a one-person regiment of archers would require a lot of dedicated practice of evocation. Combat buffing is technically enchantment, but it's a far cry from the sort of enchantment I was formally studying. I could use my limited knowledge of enhancement to give myself a bit of a boost before or during a fight, but the techniques for doing that well were different than the ones I'd use to better enhance an item.
In other words, learning combat magic effectively would pretty much require taking a double major, so almost everyone gets stuck taking weapon classes.
For my first semester at MU, I'd enrolled in a class called Basic Knife. Basic Knife and Basic Staff were the softest of the soft options for fulfilling the school's minimal weapon proficiency requirements. That they existed at all was a bit of a bone thrown to the old days when the world divided neatly into categories like users of magic and men who fought.
They weren't the only options available for people who carried daggers or staves, but they were the best options for someone who wasn't really interested in fighting but hadn't been able to find a way around the requirement for one weapon proficiency class.
I hadn't realized how much of a joke Basic Knife was when I took it... it was nicknamed "Bladies For Ladies" and the major focus of the class seemed to be how to carry a dagger about one's person without hurting oneself.
I still would have taken it, though. I had no interest in fighting, and I'd resented the fact that I was required to spend three hours a week one semester learning how to do it.
Circumstances and my friends had impressed on me that fighting was something that could happen whether I wanted it to or not... and like swimming, it's better to have the skills before they become essential than to try to pick them up on the fly. Or on the sink, as the case may be. So, I'd transferred to a more advanced class at Amaranth's insistence.
That class was recommended by Steff, and it was taught by her favorite teacher outside the necromancy program: Coach Jillian Callahan.
The rumors I'd heard about Callahan were the same as the rumors you heard about any tough teacher, only more... well, more. They said she'd liked to kill a few students for demonstration purposes, before the school rules were altered to prevent that. Well, actually, she had said that. Strangely, a lot of the people who spread rumors about her rejected that as being unbelievable.
She had made no pretense of hiding the fact that she would have just as soon killed me as taught me anything, but as long as the former wasn't an option she had done her best to see that I learned something in her class.
Unfortunately, as she'd pointed out, the Mixed Melee class that I'd joined was actually a bit above my level. It didn't have any prerequisites, but it assumed a basic competence that I'd lacked. I wouldn't have necessarily failed it, but it would have killed my GPA for the semester even if I gave it my best shot. So, we'd forged a deal: I would give it my best shot and then she'd give me a pass/fail grade, as long as I agreed to take another class of hers.
It had seemed like a good deal at the time. Well, more than that, it had seemed like a necessary deal at the time. But it really just deferred the basic problem, which was me being graded on my fighting ability. Three credit hours of a weapon proficiency class were part of the general education requirements for graduation, and a pass/fail class didn't count.
So I'd sought out Callahan... Coach Callahan... during the second semester and asked her opinion of which of her classes I could score the highest grade in. I had counted on her being able and willing to give me an honest appraisal, because her whole motivation seemed to be to get me into the class I was best suited for. She had flat out told me that there was only one class she could see me getting an A in... and then she'd told me it was a five credit hour class.
"It's not about pretty techniques," she had said. "And it's not about fancy footwork. It's about ending fights quickly and decisively. It's about surviving. It's a five-day-a-week class because it's my baby. I'd make all my classes daily if I could, but I fought for this one because I believe in it. It's also the class you need."
It was probably the longest thing she'd ever said to me without yelling, swearing, or calling me a name. In fact, she'd sounded surprisingly at peace as she said it. So with a little misgivings... she'd said that I could earn an A, but that didn't mean that I would... I'd signed up for five credit hours of hitting people with a stick.
My new fighting class met in a location that was familiar to me, the memorably named Kessherakh Salle in the fitness center. It was a long room, equipped with floor mats. The cabinets along the backwall were enchanted as mockboxes. Any weapon... any object, really... placed within them would be duplicated in phantasmal form. The mock weapons were illusions, complete with the illusions of tactile presence and heft. They could inflict illusionary pain and even wounds, depending on how the box was set.
In my Mixed Melee class, I'd been used to mocking my staff as soon as I arrived so I would be ready when class started. For this new one I thought it was better to wait until I received instructions. I arrived in the salle to find a bunch of other students... mostly human, or at least outwardly appearing to be.
There were three guys who looked like they were mostly elven... more elven than Steff, but with some traces of human ancestry. On slightly closer look, at least one of them was a slightly butch girl. Or maybe very butch, for an elf. There was a guy who looked like he either had some orc blood or a smaller proportion of ogre blood.
There was also a kobold who I almost overlooked completely, she was so small... kobolds weren't tall to begin with but this one was tiny, maybe two feet tall. My brain wanted to code her as female and it took me a few seconds to work out why. Kobolds were goblinoids, and goblinoids aren't mammalian. There were no identifiable secondary sex characteristics I could pick out.
Oru the goblin tended to wear things that were identifiably skirts and dresses, and did things with her hair that somewhat paralleled human standards of femininity, but kobolds valued conformity. Head-shaving was expected. Shiel the kobold had been smooth-headed when she showed up, but had stubbornly and proudly grown a head of short, bristly fuzz over the course of our freshman year... she'd explained to anyone who would listen and more people who wouldn't that kobold women were expected to keep smoothly-shaved heads while men could get away with a head of stubble to show that they were busy.
The fact that the kobold in the class had a shiny-smooth pate didn't prove that they were a girl, as the reason for the shaving preference was that most kobolds were naturally hairless, but I'd heard Shiel give her spiel often enough that my mind associated the look with women.
Something else about the tiny kobold was tugging at the corner of my memory, but I couldn't place her. I was almost positive that Shiel had been the only one of her kind attending Magisterius University the previous year.
The kobold girl looked so scared and out of place that I almost went over and introduced myself to her, but in the end my good intentions were no match for my own social awkwardness... while I was sure that a friendly face would make her feel better, I couldn't convince myself that my face was friendly enough for her to welcome its intrusion before Coach Callahan arrived.
She said nothing and made little noticeable noise as she walked through the propped open door, her steps bouncy and light... but almost everyone in the room turned and looked at her, anyway. I had seen her manage to blend into a crowd of students before, but she definitely had presence when she wanted to.
Coach Jillian Callahan looked human, more or less. She looked more human than anything else, anyway, but if you really looked at her and thought human there would be a few things that would just barely register as being off. Something about the way the muscles were attached to her bones, the way they flexed when she moved... something about the shape of her bones underneath it all.
She looked enough like a human that even if you caught onto the wrongness you'd probably think that it was her dominant bloodline, but she didn't have a drop of human blood in her body. According to Steff, she was a mixture of elf, dwarf, orc, and ogre that somehow averaged out into a mostly-human-like shape. Her typical dress was pure urban barbarian, all studded leather and with her arms and legs bare for easy movement. She carried a sword or a battle axe depending on the day... today both were on her back. Both were big, well-made, and enchanted to almost artifact-level.
I had no idea how old Coach Callahan was, but she had to be older than she looked because she easily have pass for a student... a cheerfully psychotic student.
"Welcome to Fighting To Disable," she said with a big, sharp grin on her face. Some people have a disarming smile. Coach Callahan's smile would take your arm off at the shoulder. "Formerly called Disabling Strikes. Renamed when I took it over because naming an entire class after the last step in a process is fucking stupid. I am Coach Callahan. You will call me Coach Callahan. I will call you whatever name I think you deserve. I will give you whatever grade I think you deserve.
"I am the fairest fucking teacher you will ever have, because you will never get more or less from me than exactly what I think you deserve, except in those circumstances that school rules prevent me from doing so. Before you get too comfortable about that last caveat, let me remind you that you signed a waiver for this class exempting myself and the school from penalty for any healable injury you may suffer in the course of your education. If it ain't permanent, I can get away with doing it to you. Believe me when I say that I've tested the limit of this thing. I don't mind testing it again."
She wasn't bluffing even a little bit. I already knew of her willingness to break bones and inflict pain and damage on students who annoyed her.
"I prefer to think of this class as fighting to win. I mean, that's how you win a fight: be the last one standing who's still able to fight. Be advised this is not a non-lethal fighting class. Our focus is on ending fights quickly and efficiently, which means removing your opponent's ability to continue fighting, which often means murdering the living fuck out of them.
"If you didn't actually read the fucking class description and just assumed from the title that we would not be using lethal force in this class, you will want to talk the registrar while we're still in the grace period. The classes you're looking for would either be Subdual Damage or Unarmed Grappling, both taught by Buttercup the Pretty Prancing Pony. But don't call him that to his face... it's Professor Prancing Pony. Respect is not just for your betters, kids.
"Also, be aware that even though unarmed fighting classes make up less than five percent of the fighting classes held on this campus, more students have been killed in them than all other combat classes put together. You can't mock a fist. At least not while it's attached to a living being."
[]
"The first mistake a lot of people make is cracking someone on the skull when they want to take them alive," she said. "Serious rookie mistake. A head shot is one of the best ways to end a fight, but it works best if it doesn't matter if your opponent lives or dies.
[1 hour in]
Magisterius University had a Skirmish team and one of the best gladiatorial programs in the interior provinces, or so I was told... and it was also a surprisingly popular school for delvers... but it had originally been a university for wizards.
Modern ideas meant that wizards tended to be more well-rounded these days... the notions that studying such base and mundane matters as arms and fighting or carrying weapons and wearing armor would actually inhibit the ability to use magic had been pretty soundly dispelled. A robust education was seen as a good thing. That was why MU and most other modern universities had adopted a liberal arts education, teaching mundane subjects and combat skills alongside such thing enchantment and elementalism.
But even if learning how to swing a sword or strapping on a shield wouldn't damage your ability to use magic, it was still true that time spent studying fighting wasn't time spent studying magic. You couldn't study both at the same time, unless you were studying how to fight with magic.
That sort of thing might have sounded like the perfect way for wizards to defend themselves, but combat casting can take a lot of specialized training. To be able to throw off volleys of spells on demand like a siege engine or a one-person regiment of archers would require a lot of dedicated practice of evocation. Combat buffing is technically enchantment, but it's a far cry from the sort of enchantment I was formally studying. I could use my limited knowledge of enhancement to give myself a bit of a boost before or during a fight, but the techniques for doing that well were different than the ones I'd use to better enhance an item.
In other words, learning combat magic effectively would pretty much require taking a double major, so almost everyone gets stuck taking weapon classes.
For my first semester at MU, I'd enrolled in a class called Basic Knife. Basic Knife and Basic Staff were the softest of the soft options for fulfilling the school's minimal weapon proficiency requirements. That they existed at all was a bit of a bone thrown to the old days when the world divided neatly into categories like users of magic and men who fought.
They weren't the only options available for people who carried daggers or staves, but they were the best options for someone who wasn't really interested in fighting but hadn't been able to find a way around the requirement for one weapon proficiency class.
I hadn't realized how much of a joke Basic Knife was when I took it... it was nicknamed "Bladies For Ladies" and the major focus of the class had seemed to be how to carry a dagger about one's person without hurting oneself.
I still would have taken it, though. I had no interest in fighting, and I'd resented the fact that I was required to spend three hours a week one semester learning how to do it.
Circumstances had impressed on me that fighting was something that could happen whether I wanted it to or not... and like swimming, it was better that I had the skills before I needed them than I tried to pick them up on the fly. Or on the sink, as the case may be. So, I'd transferred to a more advanced class at Amaranth's insistence.
That class was recommended by Steff, and it was taught by her favorite teacher outside the necromancy program: Coach Jillian Callahan.
The rumors I'd heard about Callahan were the same as the rumors you heard about any tough teacher, only more... well, more. They said she'd liked to kill a few students for demonstration purposes, before the school rules were altered to prevent that. Well, actually, she had said that. My experience was that the rumor mill tended to reject that as being unbelievable.
[]
Jillian Callahan looked human, more or less. She looked more human than anything else, anyway, but if you looked at her and thought human there would be a few things that would just barely register as being off. Something about the way the muscles were attached to her bones, the way they flexed when she moved... something about the shape of her bones underneath it all.
She looked enough like a human that even if you caught onto the wrongness you'd probably think that it was one of her dominant bloodlines, but she didn't have a drop of human blood in her body. According to Steff, she was a mixture of elf, dwarf, orc, and ogre. She dressed like an urban barbarian, all studded leather and usually with her arms and legs bare for easy movement. She carried a sword or a battle axe depending on the day. Both were big, well-made, and enchanted to almost artifact-level.
I had no idea how old she was, but she had to be older than she looked because she could easily have passed for a student... a cheerfully psychotic student.
"Welcome to Fighting To Disable," she said. "Formerly called Disabling Strikes. Renamed when I took it over because naming an entire class after the last step in a process is fucking stupid. I am Coach Callahan. You will call me Coach Callahan. I will call you whatever name I think you deserve. I will give you whatever grade I think you deserve. You will never get more or less from me than i think you deserve, except in those circumstances that school rules prevent me from doing so. Before you get too comfy, let me remind you that you signed a waiver for this class exempting myself and the school from penalty for any healable injury you may suffer in the course of your education."
I already knew of her willingness to break bones and inflict pain and damage on students who annoyed her. []
"I prefer to think of this class as fighting to win. I mean, that's how you win a fight: be the last one standing who's still able to fight. Be advised this is not a non-lethal fighting class. Our focus is on ending fights quickly and efficiently, which means removing your opponent's ability to continue fighting, which often means murdering the living fuck out of them.
"If you didn't actually read the fucking class description and just assumed from the title that we would not be using lethal force in this class, you will want to talk the registrar while we're still in the grace period. The classes you're looking for would either be Subdual Damage or Unarmed Grappling, both taught by Buttercup the Pretty Prancing Pony. But don't call him that to his face... it's Professor Prancing Pony.
"Also, be aware that even though unarmed fighting classes make up less than five percent of the fighting classes held on this campus, more students have been killed in them than all other combat classes put together.
[]
"The first mistake a lot of people make is cracking someone on the skull when they want to take them alive," she said. "Serious rookie mistake. A head shot is one of the best ways to end a fight, but it works best if it doesn't matter if your opponent lives or dies.
[0.5 hours in.]
Jillian Callahan looked human, more or less. She looked more human than anything else, anyway, but if you looked at her and thought human there would be a few things that would just barely register as being off. Something about the way the muscles were attached to her bones, the way they flexed when she moved... something about the shape of her bones underneath it all.
She looked enough like a human that even if you caught onto the wrongness you'd probably think that it was one of her dominant bloodlines, but she didn't have a drop of human blood in her body. According to Steff, she was a mixture of elf, dwarf, orc, and ogre. She dressed like an urban barbarian, all studded leather and usually with her arms and legs bare for easy movement. She carried a sword or a battle axe depending on the day. Both were big, well-made, and enchanted to almost artifact-level.
I had no idea how old she was, but she had to be older than she looked because she could easily have passed for a student... a cheerfully psychotic student.
"Welcome to Fighting To Disable," she said. "Formerly called Disabling Strikes. Renamed when I took it over because naming an entire class after the last step in a process is fucking stupid. I am Coach Callahan. You will call me Coach Callahan. I will call you whatever name I think you deserve. I will give you whatever grade I think you deserve. You will never get more or less from me than i think you deserve, except in those circumstances that school rules prevent me from doing so. Before you get too comfy, let me remind you that you signed a waiver for this class exempting myself and the school from penalty for any healable injury you may suffer in the course of your education."
I already knew of her willingness to break bones and inflict pain and damage on students who annoyed her. []
"I prefer to think of this class as fighting to win. I mean, that's how you win a fight: be the last one standing who's still able to fight. Be advised this is not a non-lethal fighting class. Our focus is on ending fights quickly and efficiently, which means removing your opponent's ability to continue fighting, which often means murdering the living fuck out of them.
"If you didn't actually read the fucking class description and just assumed from the title that we would not be using lethal force in this class, you will want to talk the registrar while we're still in the grace period. The classes you're looking for would either be Subdual Damage or Unarmed Grappling, both taught by Buttercup the Pretty Prancing Pony. But don't call him that to his face... it's Professor Prancing Pony.
"Also, be aware that even though unarmed fighting classes make up less than five percent of the fighting classes held on this campus, more students have been killed in them than all other combat classes put together.
[]
"The first mistake a lot of people make is cracking someone on the skull when they want to take them alive," she said. "Serious rookie mistake. A head shot is one of the best ways to end a fight, but it works best if it doesn't matter if your opponent lives or dies.
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