youcouldwinahabit:

well one of the main things is that centauri don’t have any major arteries in their wrists so a lot of strikes to the inside of the arm which are common in unarmoured fencing become fairly useless. the shape of the blade in the actual episode was pretty strange too, it was clearly a one-handed weapon but had a very pronounced ricasso (the unsharpened part just above the crossguard), and those are normally used to wrap the index finger around the crossguard on larger blades for better control. i’ve never done a huge amount of shortsword fencing but it looks to me like it would interfere with binds on the strong (where you knock the lower half of the opponent’s blade with the upper half of yours, the half closer to the hand is a lot stronger), since sharp edges stick together while blunt ones slide. also using that grip on a shortsword seems like a bad idea to begin with since you dont end up with a lot of room between the other guy’s blade and your fingers. there might be some obtuse use of italian grip on short blades out there, if not i guess ill have to make something up.

i am using entirely medieval/renaissance sources here, so they were designed for actually being used in fights to the death, and the messer was not a weapon for the upper classes (in strict legal terms it was considered a knife so everyone was allowed to carry it), but there’s a line in paurnfeyndt’s manual describing a counter against a certain wrestle which cracks me up every time: “Stab him through the legs to his testes. ” you could totally stab someone in the crotch. there’s also a line in some tournament book somewhere about unscrewing the pommel and throwing it. oh and leckuchner has a wonderful technique he calles The Unnamed:

Strike to his left side with the Shock Strike / Immediately wrench his hilt with yours / let your messer drop / and grasp with your right turning over / his right hand / twist yourself around / with your left side on his right / step with the left foot before his right / and pull the arm onto your chest / strike your left over his right / plant yourself with strength / spring to the right side / thus you break his arm. If you would then throw and hold so that he can’t stand up / then fall just as you twist yourself / onto your arse / thus he must fall with you.

all bets were off, pretty much. since centauri still actually do judicial duels, it makes sense for the vast majority of their techniques to be firmly rooted in fucking the other guy up as quickly as possible. i’m still looking through sources, probably going to look into falchion and rondel techniques next.

GUYS LOOK AT THIS

I’m gonna need to get a fencing glossary, but look at this!  I love this bit about the lack of major veins and thus lots of bleeding potential in the wrists of Centauri rendering a lot of moves useless, that’s fantastic!  (I wonder about how that works out for them as often as I try to figure out the rest of their anatomy, though.  Maybe the vein is just on top of the arm or something.  I WANT TO SORT ALL OF THIS OUT, AUGH.)

I love all this?  I have this vision of fencing as super elegant, but this is like some professional wrestling right here.  People on the sidelines yelling ‘give him the chair!’ as you’re stabbing people in their junk, breaking their arms, and making them ass-fall with you. 

I don’t remember what episode this fencing stuff was even in, so I can’t go look at it.  Did they just choreograph it to look strange or is it a pretty straight up 'human’ approach to things?   I ask this like I would even know the fucking difference.