The practice dummies did not fight back, which was the only thing working in my favor for the first twenty minutes.
There were three of them in the clearing, wooden humanoid shapes mounted on rotating bases that I had designed to simulate basic enemy movement. They responded to strikes by spinning away and resetting, giving players a feel for timing and follow-through without the complication of something trying to hit them back. I had thought of it as training wheels. Standing in front of the first one with my practice sword, I was extremely grateful for training wheels.
The first form was a basic downward strike. I had motion-captured it from an actual fencing instructor, a woman named Petra who had spent forty minutes explaining weight transfer and wrist alignment while I nodded and t
