Welcome to Gaia! ::

Welcome to The Art of Combat. This thread is for me to practice, for the upcoming Broken City RP Event, run by Opaj. Any literate may join in however.

Rules are simple. Follow the rules of good RP combat. The School of Dedicated Role Players and The Anti-munch project can help you if you don't know them. Other than that, it's gaia mainstream, meaning no holds are barred.

The Scene: A new dojo, within Aekea. It is a large, metal warehouse, 200 feet long, 100 feet wide, with walls 60 feet tall, the roof semicircular, the center held up by rafters at 80 feet. The floor is a cement slab. It seems to be fairly old, and quite hard and cold. The walls and roof are made of lightweight steel, strong enough that they could take some accidental blows, but most likely couldnt' stand up to determined assault.

There is only one door, in or out, a large sliding door, 15 feet high, 10 feet wide. There are no windows, the sole source of lighting being a few electric lamps hanging from the ceiling.

Inside, are the four members of this unmarked dojo.

Information on the four members:

Soon to follow...

Four men were inside the massive warehouse. Small they themselves were compared to the building, but their shouts and cries, thundering blows, and stamping feet seemed to fill the empty space. Perhaps they were brothers, or maybe quadruplettes. They all looked somewhat similar. Tal, darkl, well muscled, with short, spiked brown hair. Their eyes were blue, and their faces hard masks of discipline and fury.

The only way to tell them apart, was looking at the simple gi they wore. Pure white cloth was most of the uniform, but the belts were each colored differently. Green, black, red, and white were represented upon their waists.

Finally, one stood tall, the one in the red, tossing his partners with hip throws and knocking some down with some quick footwork and trips. The rest grudgingly picked themselves up off the cold cement. None of them seemed to be seriously hurt, as they came together, trading playful shots and crude jokes about the fight.

All four of them stood slowly, turning towards this new guest in a unison that bordered on the creepy. Slowly they looked to one another, finally three sets of eyes settling upon the man with the green belt. He stepped forward, just a single stride from the line towards the newcomer.

"Aye. This be a place of training," Green said, his voice tinged with just the barest hint of an accent, perhaps scottish, but he had obviously tried hard to obliterate it, and done a fairly sucessful job, "Just one of you? You sure you have the right place?"

"In a way..." the green belted man replied. The other three glanced at him, and then looked back at each other. Thier shoulders shook as they held back a laugh at some private joke between the four men there.

"Friends might have been a good idea. In this school, training is not about reaching the perfection of yourself, but the perfection of others. Do you understand?" The green belted man folded his arms across his chest. Quickly the other three did the same. Each of them stood an arm's length from each other, their feet square and shoulder width apart.

"There would be no point," Green replied simply, "Learning to fight one, and learning to fight a group, are different things. Outside these walls, the chances that your enemies will challenge you one by one are slim."

He glanced over towards Red, nodding his head slightly at the man, the man slowly returning his nod, "Two should be sufficient for you now." Green told him taking two more steps forward. Red did the same, leaving white and black behind.

"Are you ready?" Green and Red asked together.

The two men slid into position, backs towards one another, hands up, one forward and low, the other high and back. Their feet were spread wide, and bent at the knees.

"We'll try not to kill you," Green said.

"And try not to kill one of us," Red finished.

That seemed to be the extent of the rules. White and Black stepped back further, heading towards the back corners of the warehouse made gym. It seemed that the two were waiting for the stranger to make the first move.

Green's weight shifted, throwing forward slightly, bracing for the expected blow of the stranger's charge. His lower hand came up, holding out before him as though he was calling for the man to stop, his palm outwards his fingers up a splayed. The warrior's teeth gritted, and he braced himself to block the incoming attack.

Red ran to Green's right, or forward, relative to his stance, and forward, towards the enemy, moving at a 45 degree angle from the line of the stranger's charge towards Green's defensive stance. He stopped, a mere five steps, about 4 yards from the path of the man's charge. He pivoted on his right foot, turning towards the man and where he should be. His feet braced, and his arms up, in an olympic style boxing stance, as he prepared to counter attack the man.