>>6118524. . . While they're competent enough, their actual edge comes from the fact that they're unerring good at picking the moment. Luck as a studied skill. You go in high, they turn out to have been low. You attack in a cross wolf cut, the Blue Rat Trooper was holding his shield, entirely by accident, in such a way your blade glances off of the edge and the small opening leaves you vulnerable to a kick in the gut.
They aren't -aware- they're doing it.
In the old tales, the Young Windseeker once tried to hunt down the Wolfmonkey of the Mountains because he had been stealing the grain from villages all around. But no matter what trap or cunning or trick the Young Windseeker tried, the Spirits so loved the Wolfmonkey that it never came to harm. There are tales of the Twenty-Two Assassinations of Smiling Blinks Before the Flash, and how each practiced murderer was stymied by sudden wind, locked doors and patches of ice. Sword Saint Sato once had to cross a river and when river pirates beset his vessel, all their arrows hit the water because the waves kept moving the boat just so.
The Blue Rat who just managed to make you drop your sword by accidentally stepping on your foot does not know these tales, of course, and would not understand it if you told him. But the gods smile on drunks, fools and Vanadians all. And what the Young Windseeker learned from trying to fight the Wolfmonkey of the Mountains is that sometimes, if you move with the world, and simply appreciate the flow, you will find that not struggling was the key to achieving.
An enormously annoying lesson because its so very hard to learn and has the quarrelsome implication of some kind of sagacious paradox.
You pick your sword back up and go for a feint and the Blue Rat Trooper stumbles over his own undone bootlaces and tumbles away a moment before you score a point in your mock duel. You'd call it the Third Water Stance, if the man wasn't so obviously as equally surprised as you.
>Blades Trick!Wolfmonkey Strike: Test against 10, ignoring most skill modifiers. Instead, the further the result is from 10 the stranger the cut. Costs 1 Focus.
>>6117780Everyone appreciates the quiet word and the subtle gesture of respect.
>+1 RepBut what Crushfist finds he needs - later - after the work is done - and the sun sets - is a lonely path. Sometimes you have to listen to your own feet, find a path somewhere. They say the Pytherii Legion employs recon-scouts that'll map a way to anywhere and make a sport of crossing through places no other dares go. In Rikovia, in the old woods, you have to stick to the paths. Or the trees will get you. Perhaps these Pathfinders would make sport of navigating the woods also?
Crushfist climbs a cliff, shimmies through a broken wall, ascends a crumbling pile of old white stone. Draws some strength from the stern fort, crumbling but standing. . .
