Welcome to Cove

*Sergeant Keres chokes on his ale and sputters as he reads the name on the list, picturing a bald, bronze-clad brudda smashin'foo's. Dazed, he begins to pen the Trials.*

Loyalty

~ Venture into the Blood Dungeon in Ilshenar and locate and destroy the following creatures;
                - Blood Elemental
                - Balron
                - Succubus
~ All three must be slain as part of the same expedition.
~ 20,000 gold must be raised during this expedition.
~ You must be accompanied by at least 4 other Guardsmen.
~ Provide sketches of the corpses of each creature in your report, and bring back the Essence of the Blood Elemental, the Wing of the Succubus, and the Jaw of the Balron.

Discipline

~ Lead a Parade Drill, Drilling the men until those present can execute each order wtih precision and speed.
~ Put their new skills into action, leading a Recruitment Parade in New Haven, Luna, OR Britain.
~ At least 3 other Guardsmen must attend.

Ability to Fight & Brotherhood

~ Lead a training based on Hand-To-Hand Combat and Teamed Combat.
~ At least 3 other Guardsmen must attend.
~ The Hand-To-Hand portion should be at least partially roleplayed. This may require explaining to those present concepts such as power-emoting and knowing one's characters' limits.

Sergeant's Notes: Dont be tricked by the succubus, bled dry by the elemental, or eaten by the Balron. Avoid those things and you should be fine. Oh, and try not to get -too- many of the men killed in the process.

*Signed with Grenadier Swagger, including a small sketch of a jigging Grief Dryfh Gry below the signature.*
Sergeant Torrak Keres
1st Baron's Own Grenadiers
Grand Imperial Covian Army

Attended -- (In random order)

Dave Williams
Thomas Aylmer
Rita Whalebiter
Delferium
Torrak Keres
Bersi

Led by --

Grief Dryfh Gry

Summary of the event -- [OOC]

A battle training that ain't for the weak hearted ! We went through walls of heavy smashing and wrestling till we dropped. No rest for the wicked. This training was all about working the muscles and bruising up. During this event I tried to provoke heavy power emoting, and the use of such in battle. Calling on your emotions to drive your wicked mouse and keyboard skills, to smash the enemy. To scream at your enemies, and to call on the hellish war cry. A report of this follows..

Report of the event --

It's a beautiful day, light shines down on the freshened up guardsmen that have assembled in front of the barracks. Just returned from a wrecking run through the dungeon of doom, they've worn themselves out but're re-supplied and ready to be sharpened up. As grief eyes the group of the assembled woo-heads, all characterized by their own psychological down-falls, he can only wonder how they'll make it through this next part of the day. These rugged fools are run through many trials of smashing and death defying acts of lunacy, by the hands of craze headed oafs like the capn' himself, Hoagie Grayner. Trial after trial they re-merge, only slightly more eye-bended, hammer-headed and brain-sledged. If the avatar himself were to re-imagine the image of the bar-brawlin' bandits of hell, he'd pick these men to stand as his example.

Eyeing down the line, grief studies each of these men. Dave Williams, a dazzling man, meatshield ready and sorted like a proper watchman. Thomas Aylmer, once bald, now no more. He wonders if he could save him from the growing terror ontop of his head, as he once did, freeing him from his hair blindness. Rita Whalebiter, notoriously smelly, but a woman by all means. Muscles like a man, brains of a woman. And all the ticklin' toe-tippin' she may cause to the weak-hearted metal-clad oaf during a proper trainin'. Buttons, a notoriously hairy man. Only matched by the evenly hairy Torrak Keres. Both men of great stride and compassion for the trade of smashin'. His eyes rest now on the last member of the assembly of coots, Bersi, a meatshield-mage of proper proportion.

This could only go wrong.

In covian fashion, the training started through a series of confused looks and incompetent stares. This colonial weird-o appeared to be babbling into an invisible crowd of onlookers, speaking like a crazed man at the corner of town, oblivious of his tremendous volume. Grief, the hellslinger himself, smashed through many victories. Uttering many wise things, many wise men never understood. Born in the burnin' sands of Nujelm, this enlarged man speaks in tongues known only to his fellow smashin' bruda's.


His art, the jig'o FU. A most lethal combination of traditional nujelmian wrestling arts, and years of training with the tokuno tribe o' the bujin'ka. Worked through years of precision martial art training, slicing butterflies in mid-air, cutting perfect pizza slices, precision log-chopping. A technical marvel of the avatarian age. An art, so lethal, it has been banned from the vesperian and yew mainland. So dangerous, it has victimized countless of ignorant recruits. It could be only a tap-o-the shoulder, and another bit the dust in grief's vicious counterattack. This day, today, would be the day that grief made the walls of the barrack tremble in his wake of earth shaking stance-swithing and arrow-blocking stares of doom.

The men, and woman, observed as grief instructed them in this dark-dark-dark art. It started innocently. A run'o the jig', as grief called it. Making these assembled guardsmen run for their life in a series of jigs around the arena. Working the bun'n'thigh area properly, the jig is performed in a swift motion of tremendous emotional expression. Like animals, these gathered jigged furiously to a call of the wild. Like warriors, ready for battle. Shaping up their enemy. Wildly, intimidating their threatened foes.

This would be followed by a smack'in down the line. Bloodshot eyes and bruised faces, warpaint of the ruthless soul. Calling on their inner fury, smackin' eachother's aggression up, so to say. By now, many would fall face down in the dirt, calling it quits already. These were the men and women serving the proud covian army, grief thought. How would these stand up to the bar-wretched whore smelling vesperians in battle?! He started smacking them himself, screaming in their ears, cursing belligerently.

"YO'DAM FOO'S, OW'YO'S GUN'TA SMASH DEE'FOO'VESPERANS !? CHO'MUTHA MOUTH'FED CHO'TIL LAS'WEEK ! YO SISTAH' DRESSES'CHO IN DA'MORNIN'!!"

There would be bloodshed, bruised eyes, whinging and bashin'. A spiritual endeavour of an escaping fury of the covian brawlers. These faithless covian hobo's, clearly out of shape by nights in the swaggers seedier corners tending to the vesperian wenches, had to be straightened out. A diet of twenty banana's a day, of nujelmian ground seeds and green grass tokuno hoppers, raw and straight down the gut. A trim regiment of the nujelmian sort, tended by a bald man of a ferociously aggressive nature.

Facing eachother, screaming for their life, grief watched as these puffy men ripped their socks off and threw sand in eachother's faces. A tribal affair, to train the weakened foo's heart to witstand the gutwrenching skirmishes of the cowardly enemy. Decent men, men like Keres and Buttons, were at eachother's throats, a survival of the fittest hairy monster. Beard's being a disadvantage in this game of brutish behaviour.


When the torturing of their poor souls of the grief-esque paintaking had seaced, the men ran sweat and blood splattered to their saviour tavern, to share an ale. Around grief were faces that had just met, in battle, brotherhood. Bred warriors, ready to share their blades and blood. Their hands had met, their faces and heads had collided and their blood had been spilled on the sands of the barrack roof. Such bonding is known only in the heart of battle, a thing covian's need to succeed on the battlegrounds.

Grief sat writing these words in a train of thought of the day's events leaning over the goblin's bar. His blood still soaked through his purple cotton shirt, the hairs pulled out of buttons' beard twirling down occassionaly on this fragile paper. He remembered the terrified eyes, those dark wretched eyes of Torrak as he was torn by the hair by two eager arcanists. Buttons, screaming at the top of his lungs lunging at Thomas' throat.

They were bruda's now, bruda's in da'jig.


Signed clumsily,

Grief Dryfh Gry