I have not been that active over the last couple of weeks, and that is because I have just been laid off and have been putting all of my energies into job hunting, and until I actually secure employment I will be taking care of my two girls at home.

So needless to say I have have to officially put my participation in some things on hold for now, but I can still be reached via PM or e-mail.

I have not been that active over the last couple of weeks, and that is because I have just been laid off and have been putting all of my energies into job hunting, and until I actually secure employment I will be taking care of my two girls at home.

So needless to say I have have to officially put my participation in some things on hold for now, but I can still be reached via PM or e-mail.

Vykor was visibly shaken when he helped Tai'Dashan to his feet but he tried to school his features as best he could. His chagrin at not weaving an air shield was evident; he should have down it but had relied upon the cover at the stone wall to avoid harm but that alone did not assure safety.

When the Asha'man left, Vykor vented his embarrassment upon the stone wall and the earthen practice field. With an air shield almost completely wrapped around himself, he unleashed one destructive weave after another to shatter stone and crack earth until all evidence of the wall and dummies had been reduced to little more than slag. He felt calmer, but no less guilty for having forgotten one of the basics of combat channeling.

With several more flows of Earth woven into the ground itself, he churned the practice yard more thoroughly then a plow ever could and then tramped it down into a hardpack with weaved of air that he laid about with like a hammer. He was breathing hard when he finally finished, but still felt relatively strong.

The walk to the Inn was a time he was able to fully calm himself by feeding the flow of emotions and random thought into the Flame of the Void, so that when he entered and caught sight of Tai'Dashan sitting at a table, he was composed again.

He approached the other man and gave him a salute, fist to heart, as he said, "The practice field is cleared and in order once more, Asha'man. Are you feeling any better?"

Dazed as he was, Vykor found his feet steady under him and the sparks of light and dark quickly cleared from his sight. A gobbet of only red-tinged saliva hit the hard packed training yard as he spit.

"I think I will be fine. I've been smacked harder by my mother when she thought I was being too glib, but if you have had enough..."

Vykor could not believe the words that leaked forth from his lips, but could no more recall them as put spilt ink back in the jar. It was that smile of hers that must be doing it because he could never imagine as scenario in which he would have said anything like that to Asha'man Isha when he had been first teaching him the way of the sword.

He did not know how she would take his comment, but found that he could not bring himself to sally some kind of apologetic recovery. He had been soundly thrashed by the Mistress of Trainees and it had sparked a resolute fire within him that he would not allow to dim regardless of what was done to him upon the practice yard.

He had vowed to himself to work twice had hard as any other men or woman on the field and prove himself and he would not let his time here go by lightly. From the sound of Edana's voice, she might have been ready to let him go off and seek healing, but that would have most likely signaled the end to this and he knew he did not want to put up the practice weapon yet.

Vykor, still slightly gasping for air and with his hands barely able to hold the hilt to his practice weapon, staggered back from Thera and the Void popped like a pricked soap bubble.

He had not felt so helpless in years, not since he had learned to channel the male half of the One Power, and burned with the desire to...what? He pulled himself together and tried to even out his breath and get his thoughts back under rein. For a brief moment when he had been almost sure Thera had been trying to kill him with the Light cursed "practice" weapon, he had the urge to channel saidin and blast his with a weave of Fire that would have left nothing but ash behind. No swordsman...or swordswoman for that matter...could contend one on one with someone wielding the Power, but to do that and for a trifling matter of a few bruises and welts would not only have made him a murderer, but he would have lit a signal fire that would have called every Aes Sadia on the island to come and kill him.

A few even breaths freed him of such stupidity and he was once more able to assume the calmness that was the Flame and the Void. She was testing him, he knew, and he could no more beat her with a sword than a babe could overwhelm a Trolloc. So he resolutely clasp the hilt of the bundles lathes and focused on defending himself from her viper-quick strikes.

When commanded, Vykor drew in a good amount of saidin...though years of mistrust and having to worry if the person you were talking to was a darkfriend made him hold back from drawing upon his full strength. It was not that he distrusted the Asha'man, but he did not know him well and did not know who the fellow would talk to. Caution seemed the best path for now.

The weaves Tai'Dashan showed him for creating a stone wall and the dummies were relatively simple things but watching the making of them up close let him fully examine the how's of them and to fix them solidly in his mind. It would not do to bungle a weave as simple as these after attaining the silver sword pin.

"Now I want to go over a point that most men seem to miss. Just because you are under cover," Tai'Dashan motioned to the wall he had raised. "Does not mean that you cannot begin your weave before you can see your target."

The weave he began when Vykor took his place at the man's side crouched behind the low wall was similar to that of...well it looked like a combination of two weaves - the fireball most soldiers learned for combat and a ward that would make fire trap, though the combination of the two required a fair bit more skill and several more flows of Air. It was a tangled bit of weaving and he watched how it was done with an unblinking stare. After the Asha'man's demonstration of the effects, though the weave was apparently the secondary lesson to be learned here, he did his best to execute the weave as he had watched it being made.

He stood boldly and released the weave toward another of the stone dummies. An ear deafening boom rattled his teeth and the concussion of it staggered him, but that was the extent of the effect that he could see as the stone dummy stood untouched in the open training area.

Embarrassment and anger at himself heated his face as the Asha'man just looked at him and without another word Vykor hunkered down to being weaving the combination of flows once more. Earth, Fire, and Air followed by Spirit and more strands of Fire. He tried not to look over at the other man as he worked, but he found his eyes shifting over to Tai'Dashan as he neared completion of the weaving, trying to see if the other man's face would hold any indication as to whether he had placed the flows correctly or not. The Asha'man's face was unreadable, so he had no choice but to stand and release his weave.

It worked, though his aim was off and strange bolt of fire bore into the ground at the base of the dummy he had selected upon standing. The small explosion carved out a small divot in the ground and chewed a section from the dummies base, but that was it. Success in a minor part, but careful aiming would have to be worked upon.

Over and over again, he made the destructive weave behind the cover of the stone wall and loosed it upon the silently standing stone constructs when he stood. With each new attempt, his confidence grew and therefore he was able to form the weave more swiftly, but it would take more practice still before he felt confident in using it in a real combat situation. His aim might have been better had he done as Tai'Dashan and made the gesture with his hands, but he tried to steer clear of gesturing when weaving the One Power. He had seen several different people making the same weaves before, some with the gesture and others without depending upon how he had learned it, but Vykor had seen no other difference in the flows or effect, but the fellows that made a gesture while weaving could not seem to complete those weaves unless they also made the same gesture.

When the supply of dummies was exhausted he made new ones and continued to systematically destroy them.

Vykor nodded his ascent and gathered the flows for a healing. Earth, Water, and Spirit wove together in a simple weave. Not a complex bit of work, but something he took his time in putting together under the Asha'mans’ critical eye. It seemed strange to Vykor that the chaotic torrent that was saidin could be used for such a...gentle...thing like healing.

Vykor did not dawdle in his weaving, but took care in it and when he finished he sent the flows out in a loose net that settled upon the other man, but he did not reach out and touch him.

"As for training, I am willing and eager to learn what ever you have time to teach." He saluted again and kept his face impassive, though he felt a swell of excitement surged outside the calmness of the Void, skittering along like a water bug. It had been so long since he had a true lesson in wielding saidin and he longed to gobble up whatever learning he could.

OOC: Here are my OP scores as well.

Earth 7, Fire 10, Air 5, Water 5, Spirit 8; Strength 35, Skill 26; Potency 61

I wish there was a way to up skill a little, but I can eek out weaves that would need a Skill of up to 30 I think before they become way to difficult for me, though doing so is harder and I try and RP it as such and they give him savage headaches.

"Well, I could use some more training with healing," he replied and realized that it sounded more like a jest coming as it did after he had asked Tai'Dashan if he had wanted to be Healed.

He tried to smother the grin that came to his lips and was sure that he was only partially successful, but continued on none-the-less. "Truly, it is one of the areas that I have fallen behind in. I have a strong affinity for Earth, and even stronger for Fire, so killing things has..." he shrugged and spread his hands a bit, "but the march to the Last Battle will require that there are people still standing, so we need to be more than just a weapon if we expect to be there."

Casually, he tucked his thumbs behind the two straps crossing his chest. They would need to be more than weapons, though the Shadow-spawn and manure swilling Darkfriends and he would be more than willing to channel until he burnt himself out to kill them all.

"Of course," he continued, "some of the weaves you were using to form those dummies could be more than useful as well. If we had enough people with a solid affinity for Earth we could craft bulwarks to shelter troops from enemy fire and create fields of sharpened stone spikes to channel enemy forces into killing zones or to break a charge - and thereby keeping our forces stronger. So if we spent some time on things like that, I believe it would be more than worth the time to learn."

Vykor, having decided to head over to the Inn for something other than his own lackluster cooking and a mug of cool ale, was in time once again to see a large croud of black coated men gathering, though it was more of a milling mass then the crisp lines of a formation.

Curious, and because the Inn was also that way, he fell in among the rest of his fellows. No one greeted his arrival, he was still too newly returned and between his efforts to rebuild his house, Traveling back and forth in secret to Tar Valon for his lessons with the Warders, and also filling the remaining time with classes here at the Black Tower, it had not left him with any true social time.

He caught sight of Covai and felt his heart sink. He had been meaning to approach the man, but between the fellows convalescence and the other issues plaguing the Black Tower, Vykor felt a great deal of reluctance and a bit of fear. But all that was pushed aside for now as he blended himself in with the crowd. Perhaps after this he would be able to slip in and meet with Covai in private and explain what he had been doing...maybe.

"I believe I attended a few of the classes you oversaw while you were a Dedicated, but I would not expect you to remember the face of ever fellow you taught two years ago. I have been...away...on a task given to me by M’Hael Dalinarius Traachanshield and Asha'man Isha and then serving the Lord Dragon directly."

He stopped himself from saying more; uncertainty warred with caution and the desire to re-immerse himself into life in the Black Tower. The past two years had been a hard taskmaster in the realm of trust, so he opted for playing his cards closer to his chest for now to see where the currents lay before hazarding out into them.

"If you don't mind my pointing it out, but you seem overwrought, sir, and you are also bleeding," he pointed to his own cheek before continuing. "I could heal that if you don't mind the rougher sort of it. I have the strength for the other kind, but the weaves are difficult for me so I do not practice them very often."

Truth was that the weaves gave him headaches greater than even the ones for Traveling did and left him unable to channel much more then the most basic of weaves for an hour and he was not about to subject himself to that to fix a few shallow cuts, but he felt that the offer for Healing was not out of the question. And the other man did look to be on the verge of a bleakness so deep that Vykor saw a reflection of himself in the man, a reflection of the boy he had been after accidently killing his best friend. That he had just come to terms with that tragedy and reconciled with his family made Vykor ache to try and led a hand to another.

After the ringing explosions and the fire of his work of demolishing his old house, Vykor was surprised to hear even greater explosions and to feel a great amount of saidin being wielded nearby...every nearby in fact, so he decided to go and see what it was all about.

Still holding the power, he wove a set of flows that snuffed out his own fires as he turned to walk away. It would not do to burn down everything.

So it was that he approached the training grounds once more, though now it was mostly empty. The sole occupant was a black coated man that was raking the grounds and stone-shaped dummies with fire, explosion, and lightning in a rather impressive display. He watched for a time, memorizing the weaves. An interesting use of Earth and Fire it was to form hardened stone dummies, and he knew he was more than strong enough with both elements to do the same.

All at once, the explosions stopped and he did not know how long it had been since they had because of he ringing in his ears, but the fellow was looking toward him standing in the trees as he was.

"Can I help you Dedicated?" the Asha'man asked, apparently not recognizing him, but Vykor recognized the voice though the fellows bleeding face was slightly different then he remembered - harder, and with hollow-looking eyes.

"Tai'Dashan?" he asked, but continued on. "It's been a while and you may not remember me, but the names Vykor Temmer...uh, sir," he added with a hastey salute to his chest. "I was one of Asha'man Isha's pupils."

With a bit more flare then he expected he had had in him, Vykor feigned curling around the hilt as it punched into him, though the grunt was real enough and he was sure he would have a bruise, but the Void buffered him from the pain and he thought to play it up to his advantage.

Edana spun away and he saw her practice weapon coming up overhead as he straightened in what he thought was Courtier Taps His Fan. Thanks to a rather entertaining and accommodating acrobatic lass he had met at a traveling circus and become close to while behind Seanchan lines, Vykor threw his whole body backwards. It was a graceless maneuver and he only just braced himself up on one arm to just keep from smacking face first onto the hard packed earth. As it was he did crack his sharply upon the unforgiving ground and it sent a jolt of pain skittering just outside of the Void

The downward cut from Courtier Taps His Fan and the shift to Boar Rushes Down the Mountain required a shift of stances that just gave him a second of breathing room as he struggled to get to his knees...which he did just in time to see Tower of Morning sweep up into a long vertical slash before him.

As he was kneeling upon the ground he had just enough time to try and execute Unfolding the Fan, but he was not fast enough to do more then deflect it a hair. The tip of the practice lathe smacked the bottom of his chin and clacked his teeth together with a noise he was sure could be heard a good ten paces away.

Dark spots and bright sparks of light bloomed across his vision and he staggered to his feet, but the grinning Edana was already dancing away from him. She must have just made it look like she was fouling up her footwork to draw him into doing something foolish and it appeared that he had complied from the large smile on her lips.

Thanks Tai - I have of course taken you up on the suggestion.

Kura - I would like to RP with you as well though, so let me know when you might be available and we will plan something out and stuff.

Practice lathe in hand, Vykor did not swing it about, but let the heft of it settle into his hand and feel the weight and balance of the thing.

“Shall we see what you can do?” Thera asked and he knew that his training would start much like his first days in the Black Tower - with a sound beating to drive thoughts of skill or arrogance from the pupil. So his rely was a simple, "Of course," and he formed the Void and the Flame in his mind, calming thoughts and becoming one with the practice weapon, the ground, and the woman standing across from him.

There was a decided lack of flare or flowing, sinuous movement as he stepped through the forms, but he attacked with every bit of skill that he had. Low Wind Rising began by cutting at her low to high in a diagonal slash that began on her left , which then allowed him step into The Heron Spreads Its Wings and take a swipe at Thera's neck. He put a bit more into the horizontal strike then he intended but brought it back around with out swearing aloud. The practice weapon came back into line with a small loop that Vykor managed to make look like a semblance of Tower of Morning - a long vertical slash that would open a man from stem to stern before placing his right hand upon the hilt and powering the lathes back down in two-handed version of The Courtier Taps His Fan. It exposed him and he knew it, with both arms raised over his head like that but it was what came to him in the split seconds he had to try and think of his moves and the one that would need to follow.

A wealth of welts were sure to be his reward for the day, coat or no coat.

“You win,” Edana grinned. “I’m impressed. Now let’s see if you know what to do with that sword, once you’re ready for an attack.”

"Well, as for that, I have always been told that the pointy end should be placed in the other fellow, but if the Warders are teaching otherwise...?" The quip flashed thought his mind and past his lips before he realized. The Void freed him of any nervousness and it was not uncommon for him to say something while within it that he might not have at another time.

The low guard he used, properly named Mosiev'Val, allowed him shift to the defensive form of Leaf Floating on the Breeze to foil The Creeper Embraces the Oak and then answered Lightning of the Three Prongs with Lightning of the Three Prongs. Vykor knew that his movements could not have been said to flow, but he moved well and solidly. Farm life and then the hard physical training in the Black Tower had given him a strong, lean body that balanced strength, speed, and endurance.

That Edana was better than him with a sword he had not doubted and as she pressed he knew that she was not putting her all behind her moves. It was a much different training style then in the Black Tower, where you fought as hard as you could, for as long as you could or you paid the price for it with your body. Healing was usually always at hand to keep training fatalities to a minimum, but those who stayed and lived soon learned to fight as if their lives depending upon it.

The bundled lathes brushed his cheek from a thrust that he barely avoided taking in the throat. Well, maybe she was not taking it as easy on him as he had thought. If they had truely held blades he was sure he would have been bleeding from no less then half a dozen serious cuts by the time she gave up her press and settled back into Lion on the Hill, her grin still quirking her lips.

He was still centered in the Void, ignoring the flickering sirens call of saidin. He mirrored her stance, standing off just a little, breath quickened from the practice but not allowing himself to sweat.

“Not half bad! Now, you try advancing,” came her invitation and so he did.

His mentor Isha had told him of Mo’Kai’La, the discipline of Strike and Hold in the Old Tongue. It was beautiful in its simplicity thought difficult to master. Simply put, you must attack - always attacking and unrelenting in it until your opponent fell or you did. So without a word of banter this time that is what Vykor did.

With a flurry of measured steps, he closed upon Edana, practice lathes lancing out. The Kingfisher Takes A Silverback was a simple downward thrust at her abdomen, followed a thrust to her throat called Kissing The Adder. River Undercuts The Bank was a long horizontal slash to her abdomen that he delivered as he dropped to a knee but he allowed the momentum of his cut to carry him back up, twisting as he did to thrust at the underside of the woman's chin in an attack called Whirlwind On The Mountain.

He moved from stance to stance, each new move taking him into a position to attack again and again. He used his one slight advantage of greater physical strength, though he knew that raw power did not usually win a sword fight, and kept the tiredness closed off from him while he existed inside the Void. His forms were rough in some cases, lacking the fluid, sinuous movement of a unconscious thought, but had a practiced look to them.

Is there currently any Asha'man around that would be willing to do some teaching? I could use some additional instruction for my character since he has been gone from the BT for so long.

Thanks!

Hey ya! I left that subject line hanging out there to entice you to look inside.

Anyway, I am looking to see if there are any in the CoS that might want to take part in an inter-division RP with my character Vykor, a male channeler, that is being trained by the Warders in the White Tower.

The premises behind this idea is that two years ago, my character was part of a team hunting DFs that had infiltrated the Black Tower, and while the official hunt may have been ceased, Vykor has still kept up a bit of hunting in his free time. So while he is at the White Tower training, he will incure the wrath of a master (who is a TTPC) and Vykor will be dosed with forkroot and given over to "a shadowy figure", and I thought that who better to play such a persona than a Darkfriend.

The additional upside to this is that it could perhaps lead to some other large RPs later on as well.

This is all of course subject to the approval of the respective divisions DLs, but I am hoping to find some interested people and then set about coming up with a RP proposal to then be submitted to the DLs.

Anyway, if you would like to take part, PM me or post on this thread!

Peace out!

Vykor wandered into the area where his cabin had been only to find that the trees and brush had had their way with the structure. A large tree limb had demolished the thatched roof and collapsed one wall almost completely. Weeds choked the path that had once led to his door so that one could hardly tell there had ever been one.

“Oh well,” he murmured. It was not as if he thought that it would still be habitable after all this time, but he had hoped.

As he come closer, he felt a small flicker of recognition and caught sight of a weave of the power, hair thin and laying close to the ground. By the Light, he had completely forgotten about this and was amazed to see that his alarm ward, woven, tied off, and inverted two years ago – still held. He was also sad that it had. It meant that none had ever bothered to return here on the off chance he had returned.

With a now practiced ease, Vykor attained the Void and reached out to take a hold of the quivering lightning and bone-cracking cold that was the male half of the One Power. Life filled the entirety of his being and ever sense and sensation was heightened as if new. It was then just a simple matter of unknotting the alarm ward and allowing those flows to harmlessly dissipate.

He briefly thought of going into the ruined hovel, but decided that there was nothing that could have survived in that house unsullied for this time that he could think of needed. He would make a fresh start here on this same ground, if such a thing was possible.

Thin flows of earth and fire quickly wove under his direction, multiple tendrils of the same weave, and with a thought he sent them snaking toward the half fallen tree and it’s health neighbors that hemmed in the derelict dwelling. As each weave sank into the base of each tree he smiled and wove a shield of air in front of himself before allowing the flows to fall into their final configuration.

All around the broken house, trees erupted as the One Power shattered the base of each tree trunk. It was a torrent of destruction that even Isha, his old mentor, would have been proud of. Fragments of the sundered trees, some small and others not so small, pelted his shield, but he paid the jagged shards of wood no more mind then he would had they been raindrops.

It felt good to be in a place where he could wield the Power again without worry that some Red Sister would find out and decide to try and gentle him, or to see the looks of horror that some had when gazing upon a man that could channel or what they did with saidin when they did.

Hey everyone!

I will be starting a new thread to rebuild my old smal house and was hoping that others would like to take this time to stop by and visit, check in on the noise, or lend a hand. I plan o making this a thread where I use saidin quite a bit to fulfill a requirement to be raised and see no reason that others could not also hop on this one with me and use it for the same reason.

Anyway - just thought I would leave an open invitation for people to come and RP with me!

Later.

No problem and I completely understand.

I hope she likes my ideas and as I posted over on anther thread, I am hoping to bring some more interdivision RP to all of us, so I will of course be contacting you some more to talk about this.

My dear U4ae, I have news!

As you might have seen, I requested the creation of a TTPC and Matalina has taken it upon herself to help me with this and stuff. I have given her some details and a rough kind of outline of my future RPs with envolving this TTPC, and one of them is that I will be taking a beating from a Master (Bruising Time). I suggested that the first element of why this person dislikes Vykor take place during your character's evaluation of Vykor, so at some point it might come that Matalina enters that eval RP with us or something.

If she is down with my ideas and such and we can get this all rolling, I think it will be totally cool.

Oh, but a gneral FYI to others, but I am going to ask the Congress of Shadows and of course the DL of the Warers here, if I can have a member of the Darkfriends come in to the White Tower sometime to make problems for Vykor, but it might be possible that the problem goes further and could encompass more if we can get people involved.

So what do you all think? Will there be any takers?

I can't get to it today either anyway lol.  not usually on on the weekends.

 

Mat

You've totally been e-mailed!

SPAM!!!!

:)

I know it's only been a day and no one has jumped on this so I guess I'll write a TTPC up for you and get it approved.  I need you to send me an email though if you could kindly do so (matalina@gmail.com) with the details of the type of interaction you want to have with him.  If you want to have this guy be some type of arch type or anything of that nature.  Girl or guy or any other critiera you think would help you further your plot.

 

Mat

Will do. It will most likely be later tonight though - it is family fun day and we are doing a bunch of stuff with the kids :)

Thanks!

Oh Light! he cursed himself for ten kinds of fool.

"I would never try and influence your decision in regards to my evaluation." As the pair of them approached the laths, Vykor was more than a little bit flustered and thinking fast to try and come up with something to say that did not paint him a fool. With practiced ease, he took control of saidin and began to form the weaves of air that would pull a bundled lathe practice weapon into his outstretched hand. It was only at the very last instant before the weave touched them that he realized what he was doing - channeling in front of a woman, a Tower guard none-the-less, in the heart of the White Tower. He cut off the flows of air as swiftly as he could and before they moved the practice weapon. So used to doing most every task imaginable with the One Power had be become that he had almost given himself away.

The he also realized that he was still holding out his hand in a rather imperious manner, as if he expected her to hand him one of the practice weapons, that he almost stumbled in his haste to cross the last few paces to where they lay before he picked one up at the same time that he released the Power. He remained in the Void though, feeding his embarrassment into the Flame and clearing all the distractions from his mind as he stepped away, falling into the casual-looking walking stance known as Emptiness. It looked as if he were just walking, but a trained eye would see that he was already moving into position in perfect balance.

"I have had some training in the way of the sword."

In the calmness of the Void, he realized he had not removed his other weapon or coat and then shrugged the thought away as unimportant. While at the Black Tower, he had made himself train at odd hours, in various types of weather, and even sometimes in different degrees of dress. An attack could come at anytime and you had to be willing and able to fight when it came.

With his practice weapon held in a low guard, he was ready for her.

"Good morning, my lady," Vykor replied with a polite bow. As he looked up at the woman standing before him, he could see that she had the face of one used to smiling and a twinkle of mischief-yet-complete in her eyes and could not help but give her a grin.

"Lights truth, but I do no know if you can or not because I do not know who exactly I am waiting for myself. I was ordered to appear here at first light and be ready for an evaluation of my swordsmanship before I am set into training classes." He realized that he was still grinning and straightened his face before continuing. "My name is Vykor al'Tem and I am just newly arrived."

He hooked his thumbs behind the straps crossing his chest and mentally cursed himself. Stupid wool-brain! Of course you are newly arrived if you have not been assigned to specific classes!

"If you know who it is that might be performing my evaluation, I would be grateful enough to buy you a glass or two of wine if you were to point them out to me."