Fjaltindr - A Tath Fighting Drill

Cedric

Rogue
Marshal
Fjaltindr

A long time ago, in my homeland, there was a legendary fighter named Sigurd Helltai. He spent his whole life studying battle and dueling wherever he could, testing himself against any fighter who would take him. In the later years of his life he started a battle college that soon became the greatest of the fighting schools. His methods were undeniably effective, and his students were some of the greatest warriors of Valarion.

One, his best student, was a man named Thorson Tath, became his closest friend and most popular teacher. Helltai and Tath, though, disagreed about many points of fighting and, only a few years before Sigurd Helltai died, Tath began his own school.

Tath was a much more intellectual fighter, preferring to use his mind to prepare his instincts. His school used a number of battle-games to teach students the basics of fighting, and to give them practice in their scant off-hours. This game, which translates as "Mountain Top", is one of those.

It is based on the "belt" system of categorizing and ranking students, which Helltai developed, and which Tath and almost all the other Valarian fighter-schools use. There are four belts representing Novice, Fighter, Veteran, and Warlord. Each belt can have one to four knots, representing movement through each tier. Thus, a four-knot Novice is at the peak skill of a beginning fighter, ready to take the next step into his second belt, and become a one-knot Fighter. None are allowed to teach who have not reached their third belt.

In the game of Fjaltindr, the two fighters with the highest knots (1-16) face each other first. They spar, seeking to land acceptable hits on one another. Once one fighter has gotten 5 hits, the other goes to the back of the line of fighters and the next challenger steps up. A win means you "drop" one knot. The first player to get to 0 knots wins. Thus, a great fighter with 14 knots would have to win 14 fights to win the game. A novice, with only 2 knots, would only need to win two fights to win the game.

Once someone has won the game, in subsequent rounds, he or she begins with one additional knot. So if the 2-knot Novice wins the game, in the next round, he would have 3 knots to lose. Generally, there is an unwritten rule that those from outside the school, who have not been given a formal ranking start with 4 knots.

Losing knots and gaining knots are just for the game, they do not actually change the formal belt-ranking of the fighters in question.
 
Goodman Eisenhal,

I find great merit in this battle game and thank you for the historical knowledge as well as the application.
When opportunity permits I would dearly love to hear more of your homeland, as it falls outside of my varied travels.

In service,

Sir Morningtide
 
Goodman Eisenhal,

I, too, delight in stories of your homeland. I look forward to learning more of its culture - starting with this fine martial tradition. I am eager to participate in such games and training, and look forward to the opportunity with great relish.

In service to Acarthia,

Dame Katherine Albright
Knight of Rivervale
 
Dame Katherine, I hope to soon see you, either in the capital of Rivervale, or perhaps if time allows me a journey to Watson's Ferry before I head back to New Acarthia in the month of May. Sir Morningtide, I am very much looking forward to visiting you as well in the Barony of Tiatar. Until we can meet again in person, I'd like to leave you with some further information on the Fighting Schools of Valarion, their history and their focus. Perhaps it might explain a bit more about the culture of the land that I am from and where the martial background comes from.

Helltai – The Warriors, devoted to skill, instinct, and practice. 280 years ago, Sigurd Helltai wandered the North, learning the sword-and-shield based fighting of the Northern warriors. He took that South, moving into the Crown Lands, picking up Florentine and Two-Weapon styles, earning his keep by acting as a paid Second, or doing simple mercenary work. Sigurd had no issue with killing, but it was not his goal. He developed an ethical code based around the principles of equals only fighting equals (or betters), and of out brutalizing the brutes and bullies, and it was this code that became the template for the Order of the Iron Shield after its reformation in vy649. Helltai lived until he was almost 80, opening his now famous fighter-school in his early 40s. Helltai believed strongly in practice drills and rites of passage, which led him to develop the "knot" system used by almost all his daughter schools. Discipline and hierarchy were important in the schools, and giving respect to one's betters or teachers was paramount. His fighting school believed in drilling to perfect accuracy and muscle-memory, and then giving in to "the Void" during actual combat. He advocates an aggressive, close style, and a reliance on instinct, backed up by endless practice. Students often spend a year or two seeking out duels and most are familiar with a number of formal local dueling styles. In his early 70s, he wrote and published a manual called the Five Arcs of Battle, or the Pentarc Manual, which details much of his personal philosophy, including the belief that in order to succeed, you must accept death as inevitable. One of the exercises in the Manual is the observation of a flame, which lead to the symbol of the Torch as the symbol of the Helltai line. His greatest friend, student, and the most honored teacher in his schools was Thorsson Tath.

Tath – The Talkers, intellectual and precise. While Thorsson Tath was the head instructor of the Helltai Fighter School in Halcyon, he began to find his opinions diverging from those of his teacher, mentor, and friend, Sigurd Helltai. Tath favored a more observational, intellectual approach to fighting, and many have opines since that it was Thorsson's slighter stature and lack of pure muscular physicality that lead to this difference. Tath broke away from the Helltai schools in vy521 and took, as his emblem, the White Tiger from his homeland in the Valengaard forests. Tath fighters do a lot of talking and analyzing, and believe strongly in terminology and shared concepts of fighting. Their famed "fight three times, talk once" format lasts to this day. Many Tath fighters surrender the power and aggression of the Helltai method for a "sniping" style built on accuracy, knowledge of an opponent, and instinct informed by prior thought. The Tath schools had a much flatter structure than Helltai, with the knot system being used for personal motivation and sign of accomplishment, rather than as a formal ranking. Teachers were encouraged to listen to the analysis and discussion of students, rather than lead those discussions. The school developed a number of formalized "battle-games" to encourage students to constantly fight and practice, but has little emphasis on formal dueling or one-to-one combat outside the learning environment.

Kaelai – The Artists, sword-dancers. The elf, Baeryn Kaelai, formed the Kaelai school about 65 years after Helltai's death. She had been a student of Tath's in the early days of his own school, and had left to pursue her own studies, frustrated by the clinical, analytical Tath style. She spent five years after that in Helltai, Seth, and even Seravail before beginning her own discipline, and trying to bring an artistry to the techniques taught to her by her early mentor, Thorsson Tath. The Kaelai sword-dancers take combat as an art, training as much in movement and grace as they do in combat. Kaelai do not work well in groups, needing both space to dance and metaphorical space to improvise, but they are great individual fighters and are likely to add character and beauty to any war.

Seth – The Rebels, believe that the only growth comes from destruction. Sigurd Helltai’s first disciple, Brennon Seth, left him after almost a decade of faithful service. After disappearing for another decade, Seth returned to start his own school, teaching individuality and disrespect for authority; a direct contradiction to the teachings of Helltai. Seth’s schools included constant duels for rank and position, some schools even requiring kills for knot progression, and were based on a chaotic might-makes-right system that produced some of the fiercest, most skilled fighters of the 7th century. The Seth school made a real show for itself in the Bloodwars, its students highly prized and compensated. Since the turn of the century, though, their ways have fallen into disfavor, with Helltai and Tath schools coming to prominence once more.

Serabail – The Seekers, believers in the deeper mysteries. In Helltai’s memoirs, he describes Symon Serabail as “the saddest of my disciples.” Serabail believed that combat was not the end, but the beginning. He used it as a form of meditation, believing that the almost mindless, reactive state of the true fighter was a key to the deeper, inner mysteries. He was also a great philosopher, exploring the ethics of killing and being killed. Late in his life, when he was almost 80, Serabail began his own school and taught meditation and a very spiritual form of Helltai’s leadership and combat styles. Symon Serabail lived almost to 120. Serabail students always meditate over each person they kill, finding the meaning in that person’s death. It is common for fighters of the Helltai and Tath schools to move into Serabail once they are past their prime, and unable to fight with the same physicality they once did.
 
You forgot one, brother.

Ashes - The Everybody, all the schools. Now there are two posturing disciples of Tath, and a whole unholy horde of laughing Ulflanders.

Lots of love,
 
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