Martial Disciplines of the Switchboard

How the various people and creeds of the Switchboard standardized the methods of hurting each other.

Weave and Warfare is relevant reading for this section. Particularly the section weapons.

Rough #1 - Skeletal Class Divisions

Unarmed/Personal Defense Weapons

• Unarmed
  • True Unarmed
  • Glove Weapons
• PD Weapons
  • Daggers
  • Paired Arms
  • Clubs/Batons

Weapons General

• All Weapons

Caster Armaments

• Martial
  • Glaives
  • Halberds
  • Spears/Lances
  • Thin, Long and Curved Swords
  • Daggers
  • Quarterstaffs
  • Glove Weapons
  • Felkrams/Felkraves
• Firearms
  • Combat Bows
  • Hand cannons
  • Marksman Rifles

Esoterics

• Combinations of Martial and Fire Arms and various powers

Rough #2 - Named Classes & Disciplines

Template

Name Origin Style Weapons A Weapons B

Drafts

Drafts and ideas for new styles come here.

All clear.

Unarmed/Personal Defense

These are fighting styles in the Switchboard all about the empty hand; fighting using only ones body and wits, to defend oneself or win fights. While weapons such as glove weapons and even daggers may come into play, the styles here prioritize all manners of unarmed tussling, from graceful, artistic displays, to bare-knuckle brawling.

1. Wyldsman Cyrculian - Wyrlian

Origin

• The Starwylds…
• …and its many inns, taverns and alcohol-houses Style
• Punches, grabs, chokes and throws
• Fleetfooted movement and weapon countering
• Weaponizing inebriation Weapons A
• Unarmed
• Glove Weapons Weapons B
• Daggers
• Clubs/Batons

Wyldsman Cyrculian is an enigma of martial art, evolving everywhere, simultaneously, wherever the origin of its name - Cyrculian Bluscor - was being consumed. Known for its rich blue hue, svelte texture, warming scorch as it sat in the belly and cripplingly fast-acting effects, Cyrculian has been blamed for as many ground-shaking inventions as it has broken noses.

Wyldsman Cyrculian is more responsible for the latter, being a combative style developed around being inebriated, fighting an inebriated opponent or number of them, and none of you being able to find a proper weapon beyond cracked bottles or a broken table leg. Specializing in punches, grabs, chokes and throws, it is designed to defend oneself while under assault from the drunken belligerents that plague the Starwylds.

Performed sober however, it becomes a shockingly competent combative style, well suited for fighting even armed human-shaped opponents. Those who perform the wyrlian more formally, however, espouse the need for differentiating between it performed while sober and while drunk, with some insisting on the wyrlian rising exponentially in lethality the more inebriated one is while performing it.

2. HighCastle Wyrlian - Castle Wyrlian

Origin

• Wydlsman Cyrculian (Wyrlian)
• Skidis
• HighCastle Artisanry House
• Spyndl Academy Style
• Punches, kicks, headbutts, brawling
• Elegant, weightless movement
• Keeping the clothes clean Weapons A
• Unarmed Weapons B
• Daggers

A fork of the original Wyrlian created by martial arts scholars in the employ of Founder of the HighCastle Artisanry House. As one both blessed and cursed with an eye for the art in all things, they found the current form of Wyrlian to be crass, unrefined, lacking in poise, elegance and in conduct both before and after actual instances of combat.

Rebuilt and modified with a rulebook in mind, Castle Wyrlian became the de facto unarmed martial art for Operators and Striders in the employ of Spyndl, a new style that narrowed down its proficiencies to fists and knives, and expanded upon the unarmed component with kicks and headbutts, attacks less wise to perform while drunk. Spyndl adopted it as training for their Operators alongside their other more weapon-focused disciplines.

Where Castle Wyrlian differs considerably from base Wyrlian is that alongside combat doctrines, are codes of conduct to be adhered to between fighters. This includes picking up a fallen opponent, refusing to attack an injured one, giving time for adjusting ones clothes before and after fights, an entire guidebook on verbal back-and-forth between opponents featuring commendations, entreaties, bargaining, jabs and jibes, and rather curiously, an insistence on the value of not letting ill-will or general negative disposition to an opponent prohibit or sour the act of consuming HighCastle fine goods afterwards.

It would have been dismissed as utterly frivolous if not for the fact it looked inanely remarkable in practice, and that the practitioners were often Spyndl Operators, who had the luxury of gentlemanly conduct even in conflict as they were more than capable of playing dirtier. HighCastle’s founder’s vision is that no fist be thrown in the Switchboard without it being wreathed in considerable decorum - a dream he may never achieve - but one whose brief moments of realization in practice make it worth pursuing.

General Weapons

The styles under this domain make extensive use of the Switchboard’s various weapons. From up-close daggers and paired arms, to medium ranged swords and axes, to longer ranged glaives, halberds and spears; from stabbing thinswords to sweeping, slashing scythes, to crushing warhammers, there is a proper way to wield nearly everything, reaping the maximal benefits from each weapon’s make, and securing victory in all situations.

1. The Path of Oninan Monks and Giants - Oninan Path

Origin

• Vahnkin Onina Dwellers Style
• Overwhelming, crushing force
• Weight control and harnessing acceleration
• Close range coverage Weapons A
• Warhammers
• Greatswords
• Curvature Manipulation Weapons B
• Scythes
• Halberds
• Quarterstaffs

At the onina within Isalveh, one can experience some of the greatest warping of local curvature, resulting in any consistency to gravity being a humorous notion. It is in these mountain-like coves where Vahnkin monks have made themselves scarce, dwelling just under the Horizon and watching the collapse of the Sky above. In their time there, they have met many a shallow who have fallen from the sky above, and summarily deduced how to escape the clutches of the Challenger Dark. Some have taken to stopping them.

The Vahnkin of the Onina have learned of making use of the fluctuations of gravity within the Void to their advantage, and have thus taken to using the largest and heaviest weapons in the martial arsenal to better capitalize on the doubling or even tripling of their weight that occur mid-swing. With colossal windups followed by devastatingly fast swings, it isn’t uncommon to fell stronger foes in singular strikes, a well-honed greatsword more than capable of cleaving even a large bestial target in half.

It carries on further in use by Vahnkin Depthstriders who don’t need to wait for the shifts in curvature local to the environment, and instead use their own powers of curvature manipulation to supplement every strike with accelerating, crushing force. With this, hulking hammers and colossal greatswords can be swung as though they were weightless, only to shatter solid ground and send hairline fractures through armor in singular blows.

Lighter weapons such as scythes, halberds and quarterstaffs are further enhanced in this manner, all three weapons benefitting less so from induced weight, but rather induced acceleration, allowing wielders to perform movements pivotal to the weapon’s lethality at greatly heightened speed. Scythes and halberds that can slice through metal, quarterstaffs able to perform hundreds of blows in seconds; this is the power of the Oninan Monks.

2. Sanscryvan Knife and Sword Disciplinary Standard (SKSDS, Sanscryvan Blade Disciplinary) - Skidis

Origin

• The Fel-Arcad Style
• Self defense
• Speed and lethality
• Proficiency with all manners of bladed weapons Weapons A
• Longswords
• Curveswords
• Thinswords
• Daggers Weapons B
• Paired Arms

A martial art developed almost entirely from scratch, concocted by the Fel-Arcad of the Second Arcology as a standardized discipline of self-defense via commonly-available bladed weapon use. Designed to be immensely teachable and thus fairly easy to master, it has been criticized as a ‘classroom style’ by many, but those many fail to realize immediately that the Disciplinary is designed less so to be used on its own, and more so to be iterated upon.

Much of the teaching of Skidis is less about techniques pertaining to one grand book of execution, but rather about teaching the usage of blades in general, and how to iterate upon what one has learnt and develop a personalized doctrine to which one can adhere. Skidis teaches what one can do, but more so what one must account for. How to block this, or sidestep that; what you must be ready to face from other fighters, and how to develop the methods to counter them.

As such, while there is indeed a singular or small collection of ‘True Skidis’ that stem from the original cut developed by Fel-Arcad martial scholars, all who learn Skidis inevitably develop their own form of it, with varying success and to varying effectiveness. It can and has been expanded beyond the original weapon scope, incorporating guns or chalkweaving or certain kinds of grafts. It has been redesigned to account for different contexts, such as high and low gravity environments, fighting while in a vehicle, fighting with a missing limb, fighting multiple targets, fighting chromelings or Shattered or other EPIT, occasionally all at once.

The various forks of Skidis eventually find their way back into the larger Sanscryvan Blade Disciplinary archive, enriching the core rulebook and providing formalized avenues for learning styles and techniques for specific contexts. The true success of Skidis isn’t legendary, awe-inspiring performance on battle, but rather making the bedrock of those awe-inspiring practices enrollable classes at an arcology’s Sekatorial Camps.

3. Soleian Festival Code on Felkram and Felkrave Displays - Felkr Arms Festival Code/Felkr Ceremonial

Origin

• The Fel-Arcad Soleri Style
• Acrobatic, flowing, like dance-like
• Floating, spinning and stinging the air
• Inexplicably beautiful Weapons A
• Felkrams/Felkraves Weapons B
• N/A

Less so a combative style, and more so a theatrical one, developed around the usage of the Fel-Arcad’s felkram and felkrave weapons. In various Fel-Arcad ceremonies and festivals, the artistry in both blade crafting and usage is put on display using the felkrams and felkraves, featuring elaborate large-scale battles mimed across urban landscapes, displays of dance, and duels in theater.

In particular, it is not designed to wound, and exists purely as an artform performed to the delight of many Fel-Arcad. Schools of artistry spend processions training troupes of those most able to wield the weapons in grand performances.

4. Felkr Nomadic - Felkr

Origin

• The Feljourn
• Felkr Arms Festival Code Style
• Acrobatic, flowing, dance-like
• Floating, spinning weightlessness
• Terrible, unpredictable lethality Weapons A
• Felkrams/Felkraves
• Chalkweaving Weapons B
• Glaives
• Scythes

Called one of the greatest crimes of the Feljourn, the perversion of the ceremonial display code used by the Soleri and their festival troupes creates one of the hardest to learn and most lethal fighting styles using one of the hardest to master and lethal weapons in the Switchboard. No one truly ‘masters’ Felker Nomadic, as it is nearly impossible to reach the physical fidelity of weapon-dancing while there are targets in your way. Practitioners can only come close to the lofty heights of wielding the felkr weapons as though they cut through air, and try as many may, and though master after master emerges as processions past, none have been said to achieve prowess put on display by Felkr Dancers.

Being a style practiced by a nomadic people, it thus has forked into various other substyles, some designed to incorporate other weapons that can benefit from the doctrines of felkr weapon use, such as glaives and scythes. Many inevitably incorporate chalkweaving, as Feljourn are natural-born adepts at wielding Weave.

In actual practice, Felkr features usage of the felkr weapons to their utmost, exploiting area-sweeping spinning strikes, deft footwork, and a nigh unblockable weapon doctrine to dispatch and defeat foes with awe-inspiring ease. As the base techniques were spread across the Dancirah, the rulebook evolved and picked up new tricks; spinning uppercuts, scything lunges through the air into waiting midsections, devastating sprinting attacks, slashing through crowds of targets, unbridled spins like a hurricane, turning crowds of foes into showers of limbs and viscera.

It is regarded as one of the greatest weapons disciplines in the entire Switchboard, and it has irritated a section of purists to a considerable end that a perversion of a once beautiful style into a tool of destruction has become so widespread and so lauded. But Feljourn practitioners jeer at them with rebuttals of their own; that there is beauty to be found in all things; in both the watering can that feeds the garden, and the shears that trim it.

5. Sekator’s Restraint and Disabling Standard - SRDS

Origin

• The Fel-Arcad Sekators
• Skidis Style
• Blunt force trauma
• Within reason, and only to the places that matter
• Disabling targets as opposed to causing harm Weapons A
• Clubs/Batons Weapons B
• Quarterstaffs

A fork of Skidis, developed by the Fel-Arcad themselves. More specifically the Sekators, the only Fel-Arcad empowered to use violence. The SRDS was developed as a non-lethal, harm-minimized way of dealing with subjects who became belligerent and generally resisting the authority of the Sekators.

By the usage of blunt weaponry to specific parts of the body, an arcology’s Sekators are able to perform the necessary act of policing, while maintaining - somewhat - the Fel-Arcad’s philosophical stance of zero and - only when absolutely necessary - minimal violence. Precision strikes intended to disable but also heal quickly allow them to do this, and constant study is being done to develop both the physical techniques as well as the tools used to maximize its effectiveness while still occupying the Fel-Arcad’s square footage of the moral landscape.

6. Vahnkin Infantry Weapons and Warfare Doctrine - Vahnkin War-making

Origin

• The Vahnkin Style
• Massively varied and dependent on weapon type
• Lauded for its competency and utility with different weapon types
• Designed, fairly simply, for killing on battlefields Weapons A
• Maces/Flails
• Warhammers
• Greatswords
• Axes Weapons B
• Curvature Manipulation
• Longswords
• Halberds
• Combat Bows

In the middling eras of the Vahnkin and the Challenger Dark, the Daughters of Sultan Vahn and their loyalists fought protracted battles across land and sea for territory to establish their fiefdoms. These battles were waged across a number of landscapes and generally across dozens of contexts, and only those who adapted rapidly to the hostile realm of Isalveh were able to even make it to the many battlegrounds, much less fight, much less win.

As such, a weapons doctrine gradually began to form as the weapons of war were established in Vahnkin consciousness. This doctrine surrounded, expectedly, the making of war and the tools for doing it, and the Vahnkin’s natural preference for heavier, crushing weapons further influence this, with maces, flails and warhammers dominating much of the combat-scape. Training in these particular weapons was thus summarily underway, designed to be swift to learn by anyone, from the lowliest farmer to the softest sheltered princeling. In fractions of a procession, a formidable fighting force could be trained to battle-readiness, a very desirable state of fairs considering the nature of war as being a matter of throwing bodies at the problem until it is resolved.

Because it is so weapon and context specific the Vahnkin’s Infantry Doctrine makes up a surprisingly voluminous rulebook, and the fact almost every party is playing by the same rulebook, counters had to be developed for every strategy, expanding the rulebook even further. With each new strategy came a counterplan, and with each new counterplan came new strategy. The rulebooks grew and forked as a result, leading to the diversification and specialization of various infantry sub-doctrines. Compositions of weapon and their wielders. Strategies of attack, defense and retreat. Terrain combat. Ship combat. Fighting in castles and fields. How to do everything well, in the hope that no one has developed a means to do everything better.

The Infantry Doctrine emphasizes a very elementary approach of upfront lethality. Behold the opponent - a simple fighter - though so are you. To dispatch him, you must account for his weapon and yours, and make up for any differentials with infantile brute strength, or the occasional brilliant idea dropped in the mind of those who catch the eye of the Amaranth Sultan. Then you either win, or die regardless.

An additional component is that of religious practice. For those who feel so inclined, a prayer, an entreaty to the Amaranth Sultan, may be uttered as their body falls, perhaps as a form of understanding of something greater, yet inexplicably out of reach. But that is for the Enclave to ponder; another foe approaches.

7. Starwyld’s Bladeworks - Thoroughfare/Threwfair-Fam

Origin

• The Sil’khan
• The Feljourn
• Skidis
• Dwellers in the Starwylds Style
• Immensely versatile and easily expanded upon
• Fairly easy to grasp, the mastery ceiling being impossibly high
• Emphasizes balance between attack and defense Weapons A
• Curveswords
• Daggers
• Longswords
• Axes
• Thinswords
• Glove Weapons Weapons B
• Maces/Flails
• Paired Arms
• Spears/Lances

A fork of Skidis that formed somehow before and after its invention. More correctly, Threwfair Fam existed before Skidis, and in tune with the nature of Threwfair, it assimilated Skidis into itself once the rulebooks for it emerged. Once called ‘thoroughfare’ to describe the usefulness of it as a path between two places, often one meal and the next, it was grammatically corrupted into simply ‘threwfair’, some adding ‘fam’ at the end for ‘family’, referring to the various different sub-doctrines comprising it, and providing context that they are indeed talking about the informal school of weapon techniques.

Threwfair simply exists in, and defines the Starwylds. All who take to sojourns across the stars, be it on their own striding wings, in personal jumpships, in smuggling convoys, on large fleets - anything really, that moves people about, they will both encounter threwfair and come to learn it, shaping their own dimension of it in the process, by learning from others and putting one’s onw spins to account for one’s own strengths and weaknesses.

It has thus come to be described as the most formless, most informal combative doctrine of the Switchboard. Is that a practitioner of some of the deadliest threwfair, or merely a drunk wildly whipping a blade around? There is no real way to tell beyond actually fighting, and even then, it doesn’t eliminate any particular incomprehensible display of weapon usage as a form of threwfair. It is often joked that all are born into the Dancirah as skilled practitioners of threwfair, and some simply choose to stick with it, while others learn something else. To the ire of those who sweat these intricacies, some joke that all styles of combat in the Switchboard are threwfair, from the elegant Felkr Ceremonial to the painstakingly-developed HALOS to the utterly divine Zahflir - and are necessarily so because threwfair may very well be combat itself in its rawest form.

Inevitably, and in accordance to the principles of threwfair, many have sought to and even succeeded in bringing elements of standardization and discretion to the entire affair, made possible through informal ‘schools’ of threwfair-fam, run by ‘masters’ who convinced themselves that their specific brand of threwfair was noteworthy enough to earn a distinct name and be practiced on a larger scale. This has resulted in certain ‘named threwfair’ (these being the many fams) emerging, though their undisciplined roots are impossible to disguise to the trained eye.

It is the weaponplay of nomads, innkeepers, mercenaries, robbers, exiles, drunks and barkeepers alike, businesspeople, scorned ladies, beggars and paupers, the occasional curious princeling, and the assassin coming to kill him. It is everyman’s weapon doctrine; the posterchild of deliberate violence in the Switchboard itself.

8. Of the Ashfelds and the Wylds - Ashb’aiz

Origin

• The Ashfelds of Zahir
• The Starwylds
• Threwfair-Fam
• Skidis
• Wyrlian Style
• Fighting hard opponents and fighting to win
• High brutality and clever agility
• Disarming and suppressing foes Weapons A
• Longswords
• Curveswords
• Axes
• Daggers
• Glove Weapons Weapons B
• Spears
• Thinswords
• Paired Arms

A style forged by the unintentional collaboration between the various misfits that make up the dwellers and travelers of the Starwylds, and the nomad-zealot Sabai, created in the Ashfeld pits where blades clash and sing in worship of Skydancer Zahir, the Sword.

Lauded as one of the most brutal and effective styles of the Switchboard, it features techniques that make maximal usage of the practitioner’s strength and on-the-spot agility to utterly crush opponents. It is one of the few styles in the Switchboard - and chief among them too - that specialize in disarming opponents and even breaking weapons. With various blocking, parrying and countering techniques, it allows for effectively combating crowds of even skilled opponents, and existing in a state of constant combat flow.

It is a style widely used by mercenaries, Sabai battle-nomads, Spyndl Operators, other academy’s paramilitary actors, and pure, honest-to-the-word warriors, who simply relish the act of combat and conflict itself. It is a style conferred divine status as being the style developed under the watchful eyes of Skydancer Zahir, who ensured that every step made in it carried with it the full essence of war.

Caster Armaments

The domain of styles that make extensive use of weaponry and weave. Whether to enhance the weapon or the wielder, change the battlefield, subjugate and weaken the enemy, and more, caster armament styles gain the additional edge that comes with the integration of chalkweave into one’s combat doctrine.

1. The Flight of Zahir - Divine Zahflir

Origin

• The Skydancers
• Danseer Sabai
• Sil’khan Sabai Style
• Fast, devastatingly so
• Long, deep protracted cleaves; moments of whirling, shredding violence
• Almost deific in its execution Weapons A
• Glaives
• Chalkweaving
• Spears/Lances Weapons B
• Scythes
• Greatswords
• Halberds
• Combat Bows

In the time of the rise of those who would come to be known as the Skydancers and the greatest Danseers, there were by little by way of formal weapons doctrines. While there were certainly various evolving ways of using weapons, some exhibiting more success over others, it would be a while before formal disciplines and schools for training practitioners of them would emerge.

This did not stop the Skydancers and the Danseer Sabai that followed them from perfecting the usage of the Strider Protocol to perform the preternaturally graceful Skydance, granting them total dominion over the skies through speed and coverage, something that proved valuable in the interplanetary space battles between the First Thinker Minds and their chromeling forces. In time, the Skydance came to be coupled with their practitioner’s weapons of choice; glaives and spears.

The Zahflir is part martial art, part act of worship of Skydancer Zahir, the Sword and Warmaker, and thus it sees use primarily in battlegrounds. Not small corridors or large rooms, literal, actual, wide battlegrounds, where all spatial dimensions must be used and conflict is waged between armies. The reason for this is the the Zahflir is performed while actively skydancing, or ‘flying’ to use a more graspable term, and the majority of the techniques performed in it make extensive usage of this fact.

In a sense, Zahflir practitioners function like supermaneuverable fighter aircraft, this being made possible by usage of the Graceflight. A typical example of a maneuver would be a ‘run’, this being a singular cutting sweep across a length of a battlefield using one’s long, bladed weapon and rapidly-woven, masterful chalkweaving to devastate an entire line of opponents, moving faster than they can anticipate, faster they can see, and far faster than they can counter. Groups of skydancing Sabai would perform joint runs, graceflying in formations and sweeping through space, ripping, tearing, and generally shredding through all that stood before them. The power of the Zahflir comes down to one’s own proficiency in flight and how honed their reactions are, and seen in practice, it is not surprising that it has come to be called a divine form of martial art.

While the above is more so the flight component of it, its martial components specializes in dexterous, devastating wielding of polearms, particular glaives, a favored weapon class of the Danseers as beings of conquest. With glaives they can perform sweeping slashes, deep thrusts, crushing blows with their butts and block attacks with their sturdy handles. Being able to be kept in one hand during use, they free up another for powerful chalkweaving, further supplementing the power of the wielder.

The practice of Zahflir is built off of great understanding of the Strider Protocol, and it is widely lauded as a ‘Strider’s technique’; a symbol of their unchallenged dominance over the Dancirah. In the modern era, learning the technique is decidedly difficult, as much of it wasn’t penned down in any real capacity in the era of the Skydancers, and thus was only passed down through active practitioners of it, where it skewed somewhat from its hallowed original, coming to only be really used by the Sil’khan Sabai; nomad-zealots who wander the stars. Intercepting one such procession and proving one’s devotion to the Skydancers and proficiency with the Strider Protocol is a prerequisite to coming under their tutelage.

2. Rosenthalist Clandestine Blade Arts - The Roslette Style

Origin

• Fel-Arcad Rosenthalists Style
• Sneak attacks and executions
• Dispatching targets quickly and fighting dirty
• Defeating armor and general sabotage Weapons A
• Unarmed
• Daggers
• Thinswords
• Curveswords
• Chalkweaving Weapons B
• Paired Arms
• Glove Weapons

Nothing but mystery surrounds this body of martial practice, as the only means of learning its closely-guarded secrets are from the Rosenthalists and their Courts, and even then only few can and will teach you the body of practice that is the Roslette Blade Arts. The Rosenthalists seeing themselves as truer kin, descended directly from the Arcad through a true bloodline, makes them quite disinclined to sharing the intricacies of their blade techniques, leading some to deny they even exist, only to find a rapidly widening red line form on their throat.

The Roslette Style is part of a much larger manual on Rosenthalist infiltration, subterfuge, deceit; generally clandestine mischief-making. Dexterous usage of bladed weapons coupled with clever acrobatics and chalkweaving allows Roslette practitioners to kill targets with alarming speed and proficiency, enabling stealthy combat and its primary usage; assassinations. The Roslette Style has allowed the Rosenthalists to survive, propagate and infiltrate nearly every institution of the Switchboard, dismissing political and institutional opponents as necessary to further their various goals.

In active combat, wielding daggers and thinblades allows for harrying thrusts, piercing through and bypassing armor, targeting weak points, precisely undoing calcic defenses and casts, and generally sabotaging an enemy and their attempts to defend themselves and fight back. The usage of various poisons comes into play as well, letting them gain the upper hand in every engagement. Despite its proficiency in fair battle, Roslette practitioners prefer to kill foes that never see them, and disappear before the body drops.

3. The Methods of Travelling Savants - Trevelyan’s Principles on Confrontation

Origin

• Shattered Danseer, Grand Sabai Trevelyan Style
• Self defense and being terribly smug while doing it
• Defeating much better armed and armored opponents
• Immensely destructive chalkweaving but only when they really deserve it Weapons A
• Quarterstaffs Weapons B
• N/A

The 99 Tales of the Danseer Trevelyan detail the travels of a terribly eccentric fellow who was opportune to survive the Refrain, but not opportune enough to do so with all his screws properly tightened upstairs. Instead of going about causing catastrophe like many of his Shattered Danseer cousins, he instead to sought to understand and perhaps even help out in the post-Refrain Switchboard, by traveling its length, breadth and height, speaking to its peoples and seeing its places, helping out wherever possible and making a name for himself while doing it. As he did, he penned his many adventures and occurrences along the way, adding his own commentary, spanning from grandfatherly advice to a very personal brand of humor, all these being contained in what would become the 99 Tales.

In his time, he inevitably encountered many less than scrupulous figures who sought to end his sojourns prematurely for their own personal enrichment, and the Danseer Trevelyan set about writing out various means of dealing with such situations, varying from his brand of de-escalatory banter, to martial disciplines surrounding the usage of the humble quarterstaff, the only weapon he carried during the entirety of his travels and penning of the 99 Tales.

Assembled from the core notes and post-commentary of many of the tales, the Trevelers - students and lovers of Trevelyan - put together a small tome they came to call The Methods of Travelling Savants, or more simply, Trevelyan’s Principles. It details all manners of methods surrounding de-escalation, bargaining and conduct while in unfavorable scenarios, and finally, methods of fighting when one absolutely must.

Due to the nature of the quarterstaff, the martial discipline component is decidedly non-lethal, specializing in tripping up opponents, using their own strength against them, disabling them with precise, heavy strikes, and generally causing no more damage than a tumbler of ale and a goodnight’s rest wouldn’t fix. It includes additional lessons on fighting groups, fighting to defend others, fighting on various terrain and in tight spaces, and how to read one’s attackers to determine what personal traits might taint their methods of combat. Much time is spent on this last point, with Danseer Trevelyan telling of how the average roadway robber is cripplingly overconfident, and all that’s left to do is actually cripple him, something that he will greatly help you in doing, though quite unknowingly.

There is, however, a final note in Trevelyan’s Principles, that details the occasional necessary evil that is very violently, very visibly, very thoroughly… annihilating an unscrupulous fellow with potent chalkweave. This isn’t because there is no other means of handling them - absolutely not, chapter after chapter has been spent before now proving exactly that. Instead, it must be done to place a fear in those who escape that spreads quickly among their ranks. By making an example of one accosting gang, the ten others further down the road learn that perhaps, they should leave this one fellow alone. To Danseer Trevelyan, after all, the greatest victory is not needing to fight to begin with.

Esoterics

A dumping bin - almost - of all things outlandish, questionable and strange. But nonetheless effective. Whether it’s integrating guns or chrome and lattice grafts, all things too unique for the other categories come here; the red-headed stepchildren of Switchboard combat discipline.

1. Spyndl Academy’s HALOS Doctrine - HALOS

Origin

• Old Danseers
• Perfected by the Spyndl Academy Style
• Sword-gun-weave
• Close-to-Medium Range coverage
• Anti-personnel Weapons A
• Longswords
• Hand cannons
• Chalkweaving Weapons B
• Thinswords
• Curveswords
• Sidearms

A foundational aspect of the much larger Spyndl Combat Doctrine, stemming from the practices of the Old Danseers. Spyndl Operators train in marksmanship with sidearms and hand cannons as weapons that are usable with either one hand or two, with benefits attached to both, coupled with swordsmanship training, all obtained at institutions under Combined Strider Operations.

Much of the doctrine revolves around a mix of sword and gun and sword and weave fighting, granting practitioners considerable versatility and necessary lethality in the close, close-medium and medium ranges. Knowing when to move between pairings of sword, gun and weave is necessary for success with this doctrine.

It is also worth noting that this doctrine is particularly designed for killing other kin, especially other Chalkweavers. This ironically works against the Operators of the Academy, who must learn different strategies for dealing with non-human-shaped targets.

2. The Wheelhouse’s Five Summits - The House Pentrapex

Origin

• The Spyndl Academy’s Wheelhouse
• Divine Zahflir
• Skidis
• Felkr
• Castle Wyrlian Style
• Absolute mastery over unarmed combat, blades, firearms and chalkweaving
• An answer to every single question
• Pure, unending lethality Weapons A
• Praxlances Weapons B
• All martial weapons except those in the Bludgeoning class
• All firearms in the Close Quarters and Medium Range classes, under Driven Ballistics, excluding shotguns and machine guns

There are those who stand above even those who stand above all else, and those are the Strider Sojourners of the Wheelhouse; those who have distinguished themselves among the distinguished, and proven themselves among the proven. Only the best even among those are made privy to the House Pentrapex, perhaps the most powerful singular combat discipline practiced in the Switchboard.

The Wheelhouse compresses all combat in the Switchboard down to five elements; martial weapons, firearms, chalkweaving, acrobatics and dexterity, and skydancing flight. The fact that most other styles in the Switchboard are lacking the final component is what places the House Pentrapex above all other disciplines.

It differs from the many other martial arts in the Switchboard in that it was created almost entirely through computational design. Repurposed artificial First Thinker Minds, Slate compute and calcic ritualism were used to parse all of the many fighting techniques and styles in the Switchboard down to pure weave, and thus calculated and iterated upon to create an almost mathematically perfect combat rulebook. The final human touch given by Wheelhouse scholars serve to shape it into its final form.

Another manner in which it differs is that it was designed primarily only to be used by those wearing and thus capable of wielding Whelian Regalia; the functional-ceremonial combat attire and symbol of achievement conferred only upon those who have gone above and beyond in the practice of striding and service of the Wheelhouse. The Whelian or Wheelhouse Regalia is intricately designed calcic wear that functions as armor, and when equipped, interfaces directly with the wearer’s Five Straits, lending aid in the form of pure calcic compute. With it, bodily actions take on dual lilts of the divine and the mathematical, enabling perfect conduction of the will, allowing it to be realized and given form. It is rumored that the first threads that would form the regalia were knitted into being by Skydancer Nefele themselves.

The Regalia allows for the perfect performance of the actions outlined in the spool-rulebook of the Pentrapex. As one’s inevitable human inaccuracies skew the true output of the Regalia-conducted Pentrapex, it forks the original schematic and further refines it with the new data given, while additionally tuning the personal Regalia of each practitioner to enable performance of the Pentrapex better inline with their own physical intricacies.

Because of this, the Pentrapex functions almost like a praxis power, in that it draws on the collective that wields it, and grows as individual members and the group as a whole grows.

A noteworthy component of the House Pentrapex is the arts of using the Praxlance, lauded as the greatest among Chalkstrider weapons, an incredibly destructive implement that unites the Danseer’s glaives and their relevant techniques with inbuilt firearm components and the raw potency of inscribed ritualism. Pentrapex allows for maximal usage of the praxlance, bringing forth the full cataclysmic potential of its design.

3. On Fighting With Tooth, Tail and Claw - Feral Form/Feralkar

Origins

• Lancaster Tamers
• The Fel-Arcad’s Sembleworkers
• Felkr Ceremonial Style
• Quadrupedal
• Fangs, claws, tails, horns and stingers
• Wild, beastly lethality Weapons A
• Chromegrafts
• Latticegrafts Weapons B
• N/A

A novel fighting doctrine that emerged Fel-Arcad study of Lancaster beast wranglers, and how they used the powerful beasts of the Switchboard towards task and combat. Some Fel-Arcad scholar made the logical connection between the manners of combat exercised by beasts, and the various identical chrome and latticegrafts taken by various Fel-Arcad, which - in the spirit of the Semblance Doctrine - had rather unanticipated utility almost identical to where they draw inspiration.

As such, the incorporation of principles exercised in the felkr bladedancing created a doctrine that revolved around using the various chromegrafts practitioners might have received to dangerous effect. Horns on the head and elsewhere facilitate devastating charge attacks, claws and talons slash and rip through opponents, sharp teeth and strengthened jaws can pierce armor, tails can function as an additional limb with enough dexterity, or merely a powerful blunt weapon that can move with terrible speed and grace.

And it only expands from there, as chromegrafts and latticegrafts expand and diversify in what they are capable of, drawing inspiration from the non-kin beings in the Switchboard, and expanding upon what is gleaned to create all new kinds of bodily-weaponry, as well as an ever-expanding rulebook on how to use it.

It earns considerable repute on the battlefields of the Switchboard as many other combat disciplines are designed around fighting human-shaped targets. Those who take the Feral Form gain the benefits ascribed to the beasts of the Switchboard, occasionally this being as simple as a quadrupedal approaching target being surprisingly difficult to hit to those unused to fighting foes attacking from so low. It does however suffer from a lack of truly combat-oriented practitioners, as many Fel-Arcad simply do not take these beast-mimicking grafts for anything past aesthetic pleasure, and some sembleworkers actively refuse to service those who desire grafts should it become apparent that their intent with them is violence.