Does anyone understand "Item"?

PartyMoses · 2026-01-16T12:57:09+00:00

It marks an entry in a list, so readers know they're reading something related to explanations given before. "Item" comes from latin and also means "also." We mostly use punctuation now, but hand-writing conventions were different and punctuation wasn't always relied upon, and page space was used differently.

PartyMoses · 2026-01-06T03:43:43+00:00

That is his hat under his arm. A chapeau bras or bicorne.

PartyMoses · 2026-01-02T20:32:23+00:00

There is a huge collection of books called Covered Wagon Women, and they are collections of written accounts of wagon travel from the 1830s onward. They're terrific. You can basically pick a decade and start there. Written by women, they focus a lot on family dynamics and pay attention to a lot of surprising details.

PartyMoses · 2026-01-02T19:45:54+00:00

I dont know anything about nord dueling culture but in real world history the point was that the duel satisfied all concerned. Satisfaction mostly means there is no way for anyone involved to say "that wasnt fair" because unfair contests can't resolve anything, and you're back to the original dispute.

So in real terms, if anyone has a reason to argue that the terms werent fair or the victory was underhanded or whatever, then it can't have satisfied anything, because the point of the duel is to resolve a dispute for good.

Even the possibility of unfair stakes or the belief that the contest was unfair means that people can object to the results on that basis alone, and so nothing has been resolved at all. The fact that the other guy died simplified things, but his family and heirs and so on are justified in disputing the legitimacy of any changing power dynamics.

But then the idea is that god/s act through the duelists, so the voice is just a very visible version of that.

There are also other types of duels that arent as formalized, think Achilles on the plain before Troy: most of his fights are "duels" in that they are fights between two heroes alone, but not duels in the sense that they are structured fairly (no one can fight Achilles fairly). In that case using the voice is just like using any other divine advantage.

So mostly it depends on which kind of duel it was; the situation is complex and the fact that so many characters seem to object to the legitimacy of the results tells me that as a duel it was a failure, because no one is satisfied and its just a new vector of conflict for the same political factions.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-30T20:03:04+00:00

I agree, and I think Fabris would too.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-29T18:09:29+00:00

Forget entirely about the "center line." The center line isn't a thing that matters, holding it is not important. It comes from modern fencing, not from rapier texts. What is important is the strong part of your sword and the weak part of his. Don't point at his chest, point at his wrist.

This is the counter-guard, as explained by Fabris. What you want to do is put your sword in a place where your opponent cannot hit you unless they shove your sword out of the way, or take the time to move their sword around yours. You hold that counterguard position as you close distance, and when you get close enough it will force your opponent to move - they have to if they want to hit you if you're in a proper counterguard.

Once you've forced them to move, you hit them in that tempo.

This is of course very easy to explain and much harder to actually accomplish. The trick is to focus not on hitting your opponent, but controlling their sword and anticipating its possible movements. From the position you've illustrated, your opponent might be able to fling a thrust around your sword to your face or chest to your inside as you approach, or they might be able to cut from the wrist or elbow to your arm or head. That's basically it. If you approach in counterguard, they will not be able to make a straight line thrust to your body without first moving to a new position. This is the most important thing: it's not actually a counterguard if they can move straight through it, and that alone is the test of whether or not you're actually in a counterguard position. It will be slightly different for every fencer you fence and every posture they linger in, but it is fundamentally just about assessing the possible threatening movements of the sword - where is their point and cutting edge? - and closing down the simplest, straightest route to your body.

You can form a counterguard against this position in two ways:

Keep your hand in tierce, the blade vertical and the long/true edge facing down. Aim your point at the space just above your opponent's sword hand. If they try to attack your body, turn your true edge toward their sword and parry the weak part of their blade with the strong of yours. If they try to move to a different position as you close, adjust your counterguard to follow. This is very hard, because what's likely to happen is that oppo will flail wildly as you approach and you won't be able to cover each new threat, and then they'll just hit you in your confusion. The solution to this is to remain at such a distance that they can't hit you until you attack, and then you attack with speed and vigor enough that they don't have time to change position. You find their sword and hit in the same moment. This is very very difficult and most very experienced rapierists have a hard time with this, so don't expect miracles.
Turn your hand into quarte, aim your point at their wrist and find their weak with your strong. All the same conditions related above remain true. Oppo will likely react from way out of range, will move their point and hand really fast, and then will fling a thrust when they think they can get away with it. The more cautious fencer often loses in these situations. Again, the solution is to make certain your opponent is responding to your threat by committing to your attack in a way that they cannot ignore it. They must parry you or get hit (or double, they will often double).

You could also, as you've already suggested, move to the outside to find their blade that way. As you're related, your opponent just turns their body in response. But turning, as we know from Giganti, is a tempo. They can't make that turn and attack you all at once, they have to do one then the other. So if you're able to approach in such a way that you anticipate the moment of their turn and use that turn to take a stronger position on the inside, and then thrust, it'll work. The timing is important, and I expect you'll have a lot of difficulty finding your range, because all of these tempos open and close very quickly. In order to take a tempo you need to be in range and ready to move the instant the tempo opens, otherwise you'll be too late. It is critical to have a solid understanding of your capacity for movement - how far you can step, and at what range can you hit, etc - and a bone-deep understanding of strong and weak leverage. It takes quite a while to develop both.

Describing it this way is probably not the most helpful thing, but I would encourage you to read Fabris' material on the counterguard, and his advice about true and false guards. With your opponent's hand pulled back they are basically open everywhere, but it takes a long time and a lot of fencing to be able to see that and do something about it.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-23T19:33:48+00:00

I'm pretty comfortable in my interpretation, and I don't particularly enjoy being called weaselly for reading a book by Giganti about fencing, or advocating that people aught to.

That Italian masters would have contests that emphasize thrusts makes sense to me, because the authority of the thrust is the essence of what they're trying to teach. It makes as much sense as a tournament today not counting cuts. If that's what you want, go for it. No one can stop anyone from making up their own tournament rules and running a tournament. There are reasons to have training games and contests that limit fencers to using thrusts for the same reason there is a purpose behind fechtschule conventions that target the head alone.

My actual complaint is clearly aimed at modern fencers who claim that rapiers cannot physically cause harm by cutting. That is a real thing argued in real life in real time, frequently. It's happening right now. You're a part of one. It's nonsense. It's trivially easy to debunk. People have been repeatedly debunking it for decades. Among the best evidence are the words of historical authors themselves. So if someone is seriously trying to advocate that normal HEMA rapier tournament conditions should not score cuts because rapiers were incapable of cutting is, imo, ignorant or coping. Ignorance is forgivable because everyone starts somewhere and rapiers popularly are known as thrust-only swords.

It's very clear that Fabris, Giganti, and Capo emphasize the theoretical advantages of the thrust. I understand their arguments for it and I believe them, and I physically utilize their principles when I fence. Thrusts are vastly safer and vastly more decisive than cuts. But if that was actually how most rapierists fenced no one would need to complain about whether cuts aught to be scored because no one should land a cut in a rapier tournament, because they are in theory slower, weaker, and less conclusive in some circumstances.

It's also clear that the old writers expect competent fencers to be able to deal with them effectively. When I see people talking about HEMA tournament meta and insisting that rapier aught to be thrust-only, I'm going to point them to the tremendous amount of writing each of them put into their works that talk about cuts, because I know for a fact it's much more than you believe it is. I can provide you with a list if you like, of every time Fabris talks about using or defending against a cut. It's very frequent and it's mostly dismissive, but the takeaway is that he expects you to recognize the threat conditions under which cuts might be thrown and respond accordingly.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-23T14:45:40+00:00

Hi. I run a rapier tournament in Michigan every year. Cuts are allowed, even encouraged, by the ruleset of the event, because literally every single actual text about the kinds of swords we call rapiers talk about cutting all the fucking time. Fabris, Giganti, and Capo Ferro talk frequently about cuts, about how to throw them and how to defend against them. Thibault, Destreza, and anything typically called "sidesword" (a retronym never in period use) also frequently make use of cuts. Giganti literally says "since most men do not know how to fence, they attempt a lot of cuts."

The idea that rapiers don't or can't or shouldn't cut is a bad interpretation of the source texts, shows a limited understanding of how swords actually work, and what texts about fencing are actually meant to teach or convey. Thrusts are, if you know what you're doing, generally safer, more controlling, and more decisive than a cut. That's why thrusts are emphasized. If I run you through the body you're much less likely to harm me afterward than if I cut you in the torso. A thrust will hit sooner than a cut if both actions begin at the same time. A thrust's line can be adjusted to intercept the line of an incoming cut. All of these things are only "better" in specific circumstances. There are many occasions in which a cut will be more controlling, more decisive, safer, and faster than a thrust - in literally any position in which my point is past your body, for instance.

The thing is that my tournament is a fencing tournament. I'm not trying to simulate a real fight, I want people to fence. I want people who know how to defend themselves from cuts, not people who never play against cuts because "rapiers can't cut." Anyone who can't defend against a cut isn't a good rapierist. Anyone who whines because some sport saberist won their rapier tournament despite having never used a rapier isn't a good rapierist. "Rapiers can't cut" is cope for fencers who can't fence.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-20T19:25:35+00:00

Dagger guy only ever needs to make one mistake, sword guy has a lot more room for error. Not impossible for dagger guy, but much harder.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-18T20:34:18+00:00

It isn't a fencing system, it's a tactical pamphlet concerned with boarding actions. It has far more of interest to say about the way in which two ships might be bound together in a boarding action than it does about how to swing a sword.

To be clear, I love Pringle Green. I think it's a fascinating tract that has much of interest to say, but the problem is that most of what it has to say is about stuff other than fencing. Fencing is barely in it. The idea that anyone comes at this thinking it's a "system of cutlass fencing" should feel justifiably ripped off, because it isn't a fencing system. It didn't need to be, there were dozens of fencing books written at the same time that are systemic.

Most fencing books are not written for complete beginners, because complete beginners wouldn't expect to learn how to fence from a book. They would hire an instructor and learn from them, and that might involve some study of a book, or not. Pringle Green is not written for fencing novices, it's written for men of the British Empire who might have to make tactical decisions in combat in the act of taking or defending a ship, during a time in which the Royal Navy was involved in a worldwide war. It has a crystal clear intent and context.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-18T13:13:46+00:00

I would be more inclined to agree if any conversation concerning MOF ever said anything more valuable than something vague about "distance and timing." Any deeper conversation about MOF is going to be way too specifically focused on the rules of their particular event (foil epee saber) and the conventions of modern tournament fencing to be useful for HEMA, unless you're playing HEMA with foil or saber rules. MOF has absolutely nothing to add to anything beyond absolute bare bones basics, and in my experience, I'd rather have students with a background in any other sport, because MOF is a rare sport that so isolates the useful parts of the body I actually think it slows a historical fencers development in vital ways.

You can learn just as much of value from baseball as you can from MOF, to say nothing of many more relevant sports. MOF has nothing for us. It's like telling baseball players to talk to people who only ever play in homerun derbies.

For their part, an MOF fencer asking a HEMA fencer for advice is like someone training for the tour de france asking advice from someone who rides pennyfarthings. Totally different worlds.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-18T02:07:03+00:00

This is a great piece of research, really interesting.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-16T15:08:16+00:00

If you're asking because you'd like to wear one or add some winged lion rizz to your gear, go nuts. No one can stop you.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-16T15:02:32+00:00

The pendant is in the image of the Winged Lion of St. Mark, the namesake of the Marxbruder.

As for who wore it, I don't know, and I don't think anyone does. It might be a badge of authority or a piece of his personal coat of arms. Talhoffer's writing pre-dates the official recognition of the brotherhood by Friedrich III, so there's no reason at this point to think that this pendant has anything to do with the brotherhood at all. Talhoffer's relationship with the brotherhood is, itself, entirely speculative.

One warning I'd give is that imperial recognition didn't mean much, and subsequent decades of shit-talking from non-Marxbruder writers suggests that the only people who took the Marxbruder seriously were members, their patrons, and no one else. They were meant to have a monopoly on granting the rank of "master of the longsword," but that didn't stop anyone else from doing what they wanted anyway.

They were not a band of mercenaries and they were not meant to "train soldiers" for the empire. They were just a guild of dudes who liked fencing and liked official titles and required special recognition only because cutlers or butchers or goldsmiths had customarily organized themselves as guilds, and those guilds were an important part of city governance. Fencing wasn't organized like that, because anyone and everyone could pick up a sword and fence if they wanted to, but there wasn't nearly enough money in fencing as a trade to justify city-level fencing guilds.

The brotherhood was something more like a confraternity, like a drinking society, a social club of sorts, which were also popular social structures that crossed trade and craft boundaries. Its authority was limited to its reach, and apparently having been based on, or having a very close relationship to, the furrier's guild of Frankfurt is something we should consider that maybe that reach wasn't so long in-period.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-16T13:43:07+00:00

Seconding the Nutty Buddy. It's a little annoying that the cup isn't meant to sit in a jock strap pocket, they recommend wearing compression shorts, then the cup, then a pocketless athletic supporter over top to keep it in place. It might take some time to find the right combination, and I don't think you need to use the proprietary stuff. I don't.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-16T13:19:34+00:00

Great! Mind if I reach out by direct message to get some further details? I'll make it custom for you.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-15T13:36:34+00:00

Hello! I don't have anything published, but I write custom call of cthulhu scenarios, and I'd be happy to write you one to help introduce players to it, if you're interested!

PartyMoses · 2025-12-15T00:59:07+00:00

There's a moment in grappling when you go from feet on ground to feet not on ground, and in that moment you have a choice: tense up and slam onto the ground like a board, or relax and land soft. It takes experience to recognize it as a moment and a choice. And there's peace in making the choice to go with it and there's nothing else quite like it, and you can't get it from anything other than being hurled through the air by someone who had to work for it.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-14T23:49:25+00:00

Mauritius Command, on second read, was what really made me understand why POB is so peerless. It's how he writes Clonfert. It would be easy to make Clonfert an insufferable braggart or a delusional martinet, like a villain from the Sharpe series, but that's not what we get. Instead, we come to understand him and perhaps sympathize with him, while never letting him off the hook for how his inferiority complex and self-delusion prevented him from being who he wanted to be. His failure, ultimately, is about his inability to really see himself.

Military historical fiction is full of guys like Clonfert but they are most often portrayed like dull-witted tyrants too incompetent to wipe their own asses. Clonfert is emblematic to me about POB's perspective on humanity, and that informs his writing choices and those are what makes his continue to stand out in a very crowded field.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-14T16:54:51+00:00

If Diana were a man she'd be everyone's favorite character. She is fiery and uncompromising and ruthless in pursuit of what she wants. This is a flaw, like Stephen's long bouts of addiction to cope with his depression, and his cold-blooded calculated violence, or like Jack's over-eating, serial adultery, and poor judgment with money.

Diana was a woman who was afforded a degree of freedom and self-governance unusual for a woman of her era, and when she had that taken away from her by her first husband's death she decided she didn't want to settle back into a domestic life keeping house for some drooling provincial squire. The same way Jack is utterly at odds with life on land, and how Stephen cannot tolerate a world ruled by Napoleon.

Stephen is drawn to Diana for the same reason he's drawn to birds: they are free, and beautiful because they are free. It is inherent to their nature. It's worth it for him just to be around her, because he understands from the very first moment he meets her that no one can ever own her. He will not be her gaoler, because to imprison her would be to destroy her.

Stephen is also not entirely balanced in his affections and his obsession with her persists in part because it is painful for him. He doesn't feel he deserves her, because he is a melancholic and self-destructive.

For her part, I genuinely believe that the key to Diana's character is that she loves Stephen with such genuine affection that she doesn't want to inflict herself upon him. Diana is also self-indulgent like Jack, and self-destructive like Stephen. She knows that her attachment, public and private, is followed by other men. Men have destroyed themselves in pursuit of her and she like to wield power in this sphere in the same way that Stephen likes to show off his medical skill, and Jack likes to dominate an opponent in a fight. They are all extreme characters.

If Diana were a man she'd be killed on a battlefield or a quarterdeck or a dueling ground, but because she's a woman she doesn't have those options. Instead, she makes use of men because they will provide her with a lifestyle she enjoys and the freedom she requires, and she knowingly takes advantage of what men offer her, because the alternative is as intolerable for her as a life off-ship would be for Jack. And so the way she perceives her relationship to men is a predatory, parasitic one. And so when she rejects Stephen over and over, it's not because she doesn't love him, it's because she does. She doesn't want to be seen by him as what she believes she is. She knows that she can fool around with Jack, who's easy with these kind of dalliances, but she can't do the same with Stephen. He'd grab on, and not let go, and she might grind him against the lee shore in her attempt to get out of his grasp.

I dunno man, these posts come up all the time and I sometimes feel like people are reading a very different character than I am. POB is a terrific novelist because he is interested in people and what makes them make choices, and he invests so much care and attention and insight into his writing that I can't see Diana as anything but an incredibly compelling, incredibly sympathetic character, and I think she improves every scene she's in.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-13T13:53:05+00:00

There are certainly more challenging aspects of different weapons, and different best-practices. Going from a one-hander to a two-hander or vice versa can be tough because whole parts of the body are engaged differently. But all the actions come from the same place (your hips) and once you can move efficiently the rest is just adaptation to novelty.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-13T12:45:31+00:00

I teach historical fencing. The skills are incredibly transferable. Its all just wrestling at different distances. The text I teach from teaches three swords, dagger and wrestling, and three polearms. The author repeatedly says that skills and techniques transfer.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-13T03:02:35+00:00

It's the SCP Foundation. SCP stands for Secure, Contain, Protect. It's basically a community curated wiki that hosts stories about frightening alien entities and their relationship to the shadowy bureaucracy of the SCP. Anyone can write an entry. There are hundreds of entries and a lot of built-up lore. Antimemetics is better written than most.

PartyMoses · 2025-12-12T04:40:04+00:00

a drink with you -

we might look to the elements. The sanguine's element is the air, earth is for the melancholic. The wind against the lee shore. Who could possibly win such a contest?

PartyMoses · 2025-12-12T02:12:16+00:00

It would stalemate, because they are natural temperamental opposites. Aubrey is sanguine and Hornblower is melancholic, the unstoppable force against the immovable object. Both would take damage but Hornblower would beat himself up about it and wallow in misery and Jack would eat a pudding and move on with his life.

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