[Rhargn Etn]

This clear evening, Rhargn was on the ball. He'd hurried to his field and gone through his set of warm ups as he'd performed in the two brightenings before, and then quickly gone into his practice routine. Stances, foot positons, single handed attacks, double handed attacks, everything that had been practiced before was excitedly crammed into the several candlemarks of this evening.

'Right, there's got to some sort of defensive moves I can do to give me a little protection', Rhargn thought to himself as he came onto doing his five o'clock to eleven o'clock attacks. As he ended his round, the ruffian found his weapon already in one positon he could use. Both hands were fit snug round the shaft, right being in the middle, and left nearer the base. The base of the weapon was higher then the head at this point, as the head faced diagonally down towards the ground. 'This'd work', Rhargn thought to himself as he aimed the head of the mace diagonally up, bringing the base parallel to where the head was before. Both these defensive manuvers were tried various times, shifted from a simple standing positon, with mace hanging down. These were to protect head and chest from slashing attacks and were easily switched over from left to right

"Not too shabby." Rhargn said aloud as he slipped his new defensive stance over his head horizontally. It was quite obvious from the moves before that this would halt horizontal slashes to the head, any numskull would work that out. Another candlemark dwindled away as Rhargn worked out which attacks could be altered into defensive moves.

Finally, Rhargn began ticking over ways he could defend his lower body from attacks as well. It took a few clumsby, tangled positions for the mountain man to work that which ever stance he was in, if he turned his paws upside down and held them to his side, that he could quite effectively block a slashing attack to the lower right handside of the body, and with a quick overlapping of the hands, he could block the left as well. Both hands were definately need for all blocking.

The next few brightenings followed this same pattern. After work, Rhargn would jog down to the field, which by now was looking slightly better then the overgrown mess it had started out as. After this, he would begin warming up with star jumps and various other moves and grooves, before switching stances about while in single order, attacking each face of the clock. Next the defensive moves would be ran over, before finishing the sessions he would shadow spar.

Imaginary opponets were placed in front of the bear like man, as he would slowly but surely, swing out at a target, before pulling his mace back to defend one of his own body parts. It was something that could be varied each time, and so provided a great way to link attack and defense up.

Now, after jogging back to his hovel each brightening, Rhargn made sure he'd wiped his weapon down vigoursly, before wrapping it up in cloth. He didn't realize that it stopped it rusting and such, all he did it for was to keep the Dwarven Steel clean and dry. Sometimes, he'd even get a sharp stone or utensil and slide it down the end of each flange in hope it would sharpen slightly, as he'd seen Chef's do with their knives. Each brightening went this way for a cycle, with Rhargn feeling more confident all the time.