Templar and Mage Training 101

[nofury]

WHO: Mage and Templar combat training participants and onlookers
WHAT: The first of weekly training sessions.
WHEN: Backdated to Wintermarch 4
WHERE: Outside Skyhold.
NOTES: Currently closed to volunteers for the first session. Will open up participants pending a successful session. There will be weekly training drills from here on out, with volunteers filling in for Dorian or Maria if and when they leave for missions.

The clearing is not far from Skyhold’s walls, but enough to ensure no passing merchants or courtiers will be endangered or gain too much gossip to bring abroad before the training program had hit its stride. Flat rock with sparse patches of grass struggling through makes for a space more open and less crowded than the courtyards within Skyhold, and whatever ice or snow has built up has been long since scraped and melted away. A number of dueling circles had been marked out by stone or magic to keep pairs from accidentally tumbling into one another’s battles. To one side of these rings sits a box of lyrium potions, to the other a cask of water and some hardtack. Clearly, this is a bring your own drinks events for any Inquisition spectators (despite any jokes that may have been heard, participants will not be drinking while Maria is around).

Maria Hill and Dorian Pavus pair up mages and templars then take turns participating in the pairs themselves or strolling along the outside of the dueling circles to offer constructive commentary. Or, if worse comes to worse, separate pairs that have taken the friendly nature out of this training session.

Only a small audience has formed, of Templar and mage both. They remain out of the way and mostly separate, watching as if equally curious to see success as much as failure.

[[OOC: Assigned training pairings are as follows:
Nerva with Sabriel and Vivienne
Elian with Dorian and Alfsigr
Maria with Benevenuta and Simon

Feel free to tag into the open posts of non-assigned characters, as well as tag around in general. Spectators are welcome to tag in, just remember anyone causing disruptions will be swiftly asked to leave!]]

Comments

dorian pavus. ota.

[liberalum]

"If you've never felt it before, it would do you well to become accustomed when no one's trying to kill you."

He isn't holding one of the practice staves he uses for usual training sessions within Skyhold's walls, but his own, black wood and serpentstone that seems to brim with magical energy without effort. It crosses with the other mage's staff in paused combat as he speaks. "Hit me with an offensive, and I'll cast an absorbing barrier -- and then," he tips his head to the waiting Templar, "we'll try it in that moment. It's one thing to experience a Templar's nullification while you're just standing there, and another when it's mid-fight."

That sudden deafness and blindness to the Fade. He isn't well-acquainted to it himself, but has gone through these moves with Maria, felt it when Alistair was being Hilarious that one time, and knows what it's like -- like tripping suddenly over one's feet, hitting the limits of your own mana well before you expect to. Disorienting at best, and deadly at worst.

A tap, staff to staff, begins the fight anew. Electricity crackles up and down his staff, more flash than fire, more defensive than offensive, his steps ceding territory to give the illusion of the other mage's victory.

[ ooc ; feel free to use the above prompt as the mage or the templar. he will also be roaming around, correcting technique, if you want to grab him otherwise. ]