((The game itself kind of glosses over any training that our characters do with their weapons. In the crucible we just pick up swords and guns and immediately know how to use them effectively, and later on we can just swap to a new weapon with no sort of training time. I thought it might be fun to have a place where cabal members learned to use their weapons and practiced techniques, perhaps helping each other out by giving pointers and things like that.

Feel free to add more setting to the area as needed. We'll start with the in-game crucible.))

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Tom stared at the demon strung up on the rack, frowning slightly. He wasn't too sure how much he liked the idea of beating on a living... thing... regardless of how evil it supposedly was. Instructor Lethe had walked out several minutes ago, grumbling something about all the damn new blood. Somehow Tom didn't think the man was complaining about the stuff the demons were leaving on the polished marble floor. He could only imagine what the man would have to say if he saw Tom staring at the demon for more than five seconds before adding more blood to the flow.

Ah well, time to get to work then. Tom crossed the floor to the crates stacked nearby. Melee weapons, Tom felt most comfortable getting up close and personal with his weapons. Guns always left him nervous that he would screw up and hurt someone, and he wasn't yet too sure about magic. Templars were about tradition right? What could be more traditional than grabbing a club and bashing something's head in?

He picked up a pair of gloves with blades jutting out of the knuckles, and went back to rejoin his new buddy. He drew back his fist, and swung a hard right hook. The meaty thunk shook all the way through his chest, and he turned his head away. It was just like a punching bag, only with a lot more blood... and otherworldly screaming.

"Morning, Tom" - reinforced door leading to the Crucible almost gets smashed in, as Venator appears, guiding a group of fresh recruits, carryng a big, actually really gigantic crate into the room. Recruits are sweating, as they try to manoeuvre their load through otherwise wide doorways, stairs and passages. Grumpy Instructor appears, but after noticing, that these are new "toys" being brought in, reveals that he can actually smile and returns to his cabinet in the depths of the catacombs.

Venator, finally letting dead tired soldiers to leave, takes a seat on top of his crate and turns to watch Tom's practice.

Jenn wandered in to the training room, not noticing that the door was hanging ever-so-slightly askew on its hinges. She wasn't really noticing anything. Her rifle bag was slung over one shoulder, and she held a book open with the other hand. “Archaeologists really don't do this... where do they get these idea...AHH!”

Stopping just short of plowing into a crate, she blinked up at Venator, perched atop it, and shoved the romance novel behind her back, face flushing with guilt. “Sorry... didn't see your... well, huge, mucking box.”

Skirting around the crate, she noticed Tom as well down the way. She began to sketch a salute to the two other Swords, but realized that would involve hitting herself in the head with either a romance novel or an AK. “Concussion or death by embarrassment,” she thought. “Why is there never a good option?”

She settled for waving the rifle bag and making her way to a range table. The paperback got shoved unceremoniously into the bag as she pulled out the specially-modified rifle and quickly rebuilt it. A noise-canceling headset followed. When settled snugly over her ears, this handy bit of gear muffled the bark of the assault rifle... and more importantly the screams of the targets.

There was no wasting anima-imbued rounds on practice. She began unloading magazine after magazine into the demons strung up at the end of the range.

Lethe strode by and stopped to watch her progress for a moment. Jenn spoke without looking back, voice just audible above the echoing gunfire, when she shouted.

“Father says I'm an 'enthusiastic' shot.”

“He didn't mean that in a complementary way, did he?”

“Not a bit.”

Tom started working up a sweat. He had managed to tune out the rest of his brain to the droning of the punches, the methodical thudding of meat against meat. He didn't have the luxury of noise reducing headphones, but he quickly found that the roars of the thing in front of him no longer bothered him, they were just minor intrusions into his own rythm.

He put a face to the thing in front of him, a face that wasn't its own. A much better looking face to be fair, but one that made his blood boil. His swings got harder, and each impact made a louder and louder crack. The hair on his arms stood up, and his next blow was accompanied by spikes of blood suddenly bursting out of the demon and splintering part of the wooden frame that held it up. Well, that was new.

Tom stepped back and stared at the hanging thing for a moment. He felt the blood cooling in his veins, it felt... good. He nodded to Venator, just now noticing him and his huge crate. "What's in the box?" He shouted over the racket of automatic weapons fire.

Warily looking at growing pile of empty cases around Jenn, Venator pats the crate he is sitting on. "Managed to overcome red tape and get some custom-made HEATs. You know, high explosive anti-tank heads. Designed to be shot out of standart grenade launchers! Not good enough to get through a tank, but will toast some nasty slimy thing on sight."

Venator picks up a multitool from his pocket and starts unscrewing the lid, tearing off the silver cross-shaped seals on his way.

Wes walked in and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. He was heartened to see that there were others here to take some of the attention off of himself. Though he prided himself on his skill with a blade, he was not terribly comfortable with the direct scrutiny offered by the rather intimidating training officer that held court here. Slipping over to a nearby table, he removed his blade from its sheath and checked the edge for any significant wear and tear.

He remembered his old fencing master telling him "take care of your blade and it will take care of you". He was pretty sure that his master had not come up with that line on his own, but it was still good advice. His epee and foil were in excellent condition despite not having any real time for the sport in years. In fact, he had always prided himself on keeping a clean, sharp blade on even those swords that were just for show. How much more important it was now that he was using these instruments for real work. Even though he had been told that the edge was not important for channeling his anima, it was still important to HIM to keep them in excellent repair.

Eying a demon lashed to the boards in front of him, he took a moment to stretch and prepare himself mentally and physically. Lethe took that opportunity to sneak up on him with catlike grace and bellow in his ear, "WHAT ARE YE TRYING TO DO?! BORE IT TO DEATH!? GET TO WORK YE TIT!".

Something wasn't right.

Scuffing the pile of casings to the side with one boot, Jenn swung the rifle stock down to her hip, barrel pointed at the ceiling, and studied the practice demons from a distance. It just didn't feel the way it did when she was in the field. The tortured targets hung there, staring balefully down the range at her. They had absorbed a respectable number of rounds. (For all her joking about being a lousy shot, Jenn hit more than she missed. Her father did design rifles for a living, and she'd been firing them since she was old enough to do so without tipping over... slightly before that, to be honest.)

It wasn't that the demons were just absorbing the regular rounds like a comforting skin lotion; she expected that from the damned by now. It was just that, since that fracas with the bee in her 911, things had been markedly different in the field. She'd learned to channel her anima through the rifle... but it wasn't going where she expected it to. Wisps of it would break off and concentrate on her teammates, instead of tearing into the enemy.

Now, she was losing track of the targets, glancing over her shoulder, checking on a squad that wasn't even there. The demons were just hanging there, she was alone at the range line, and she wasn't able to keep her target. Something was definitely wro... woah, who was Lethe yelling at now? The sound had made it through her headset.

Dragging the headset down around her neck, she tugged at the stiff collar of her Templar leathers, shouldered her rifle on the strap and padded across the Crucible to see what the fuss was about. She was thinking as she went... there had to be some way to test this... practice it just the same way she'd practice shooting.

Turned out it was just Lethe yelling at Wes. She thought that might be on the top ten list of Lethe's favorite things to do, probably because Wes let it get to him; you could see it in how his posture tensed when the combat instructor was lurking.

As she got closer to the area where the melee fighters practiced, up close and personal with their targets, Jenn felt the anima surge, like a flow of plasma just beneath her skin. Wisps of the stuff floated away from her, coiling around the practicing men, seeking out cuts, bruises, bloodied knuckles, torn ligaments... whatever injury they could find. When she wasn't busy trying to shoot a giant tentacle, it was a lot easier to see what the anima really wanted to do.

Fascinated, Jenn stared at the tendrils of anima swirling around. She wondered if anyone else could see her anima projections. She'd never asked. She'd have to remember to ask... but first, she just wanted to watch for a little longer, try to get the feel of it.

Jenn planted herself at the edge of the melee circles, hands on her hips, rifle on her back, staring intently at Tom and Wes … really, really intently. “Don't mind me.”

Now that there were other people doing their thing in the Crucible as well, it was a bit harder for Tom to get his rhythm back. He was just starting to manage when Lethe started yelling. Tom jumped, inadvertently slashing the belly of the demon open and spilling blood all over himself. Tom backed up, waving his arms a bit to flick the blood off of them. He would have to go change now, bah.

Then Lethe started laughing at him.

Maybe he wouldn't change. He put on a look of determination and set to beating on the monster again. As he struck the blood covering his torso started to move back up his body to his shoulders, then to his arms and fists. He focused his mind in on that one image again, and he began to feel his own blood rise. His strikes started to cause bigger bursts of blood than they should have, pummeling the target with reckless abandon and rage.

He stopped when something big and hard hit his head and bounced off before landing on the floor with a resounding thud. Tom stared down at the book that Lethe had thrown at him, rubbing the side of his head gently.

"You'll need that." The cranky old man grumbled. "And get yer temper under control boy. It'll kill you."

Tom bent to pick up the book, and noticed Jenn watching the two of them, "What's that?" He asked, having realized that she said something, but not having caught what it was. He wiped across his forehead with an arm. Surprisingly most of the blood that had splashed on him seemed to be gone, replaced with a sheen of sweat.

With all the shooting, smashig and yelling going on, Venator had totally forgotten he was actually doing something - damned crate had still half of its screw in the lid. Frustrated, he hit it with his steel-toe boot. And the thing just opened up!

Mumbling something about missing instructions and unclear labelling, Venator crouched down to look at new shineys. Rows of cases, neatly placed in special hollows. It was just perfect beginning of the day.

Watching the slick of demon blood covering Tom...move... Jenn got distracted from tracking her own anima wisps. It made her think of the way the energy seemed to pulse under her skin. She was beginning to get an idea... never a good thing.

Tom finally noticed her, standing there gawping at them like a tourist at Buckingham. She responded to his, “What's that?” with an eager, “Just stand still a minute! I want to try something.” Her voice had the sort of blithely naïve confidence that should inspire flight, with possible screaming accompaniment, in anyone with any sort of survival instinct.

Letting the feeling of plasma moving under her skin build up again, Jenn concentrated on forming the feeling into a bubble of anima energy around Tom. There was a flickering, then a glowing ooze of light, then * pop *, a thin film of anima... red as the fluid that fueled it... burst into existence around Tom.

“Yes! It work...” Jenn's excitement waned quickly. She looked quite pale, in fact, as she realized what she'd forgotten. The blood Tom had used had come from something other than Tom. She'd just hauled off and used her own to form the shield.

The bubble around Tom vanished with a soft * squelch * as Jenn staggered a few steps, smacking into the side of Venator's crate, shaking all the pretty cases in their comfy nests. She looked down, trying to focus her swimming vision.

“Are those... warheads?” She leaned on the crate, which seemed like a better plan than falling into it.