Two towering, tinted, transparisteel doors slide open to grant you access to the central chamber of the Combat Training Halls. The main room is wide and open and as large as as a holoball field. Tall walls stretch towards a domed ceiling that is made up of rows of ambient lights that spread out and fill the room with soft even lighting that eliminates any shades or shadows. Those same walls are lined around the perimeter with racks and stacks of varied weaponry: everything from swords and polearms to rifles and flamethrowers.

There are two signs that hover over each weapon rack to create an alternating motif in the Combat Training Hall: “No Explosions” and “Accorded Neutral Territory”. While the first is fairly obvious, the second speaks to the single law of the Training Halls: all members of the Brotherhood are welcome, and no member is to be killed or maimed without incurring the wrath of the Grand Master and the Inquisitorius.

A trio of training dummies are statically set up and spread out in a line, each made out of a blend of alloys and padding that can withstand blows from any standard weaponry with the exception of lightsaber blades. To the side of the dummies, a large sparring mat has been stretched out to create a larger footprint than the typical shockboxing ring. The padding is good for helping teach new combat students how to take a fall without injury and offers firm footing, but the hard rubber mat is hardly forgiving.

Behind the sparring area is a door that leads to a small archives that combat students can use to view holorecordings of fights and duels from the past as well as relevant information on combat tactics, techniques, and forms. On the opposite side of the archives at the far end of central room is the locker room that members can safely store their equipment.

The final and probably most important element of the Combat Training Hall is the onsite Med Ward. The maglock door is sealed off and can only be opened by an attending Medic. The Medical facilities feature state of the art bacta tanks for recovery and aftercare. A combination of observation and waiting room rests adjacent to the recovery center and features two large monitors that display a live feed of the central room.

The Combat Halls are staffed around the clock, allowing combat students and mentors alike to come and go as they please at odd or regular hours. It also available for members looking to prove their worth to compete in the Antei Combat Center.

[Venue Note: Weapons incorporated into your match are allowed to be used, even if not listed on your Loadout for the match itself. Skill usage and all other ACC rules and guidelines still applies.]

Erinyes pulled her unruly mane into a ponytail as she stepped out of the Arx Training Hall’s locker room. Shuttling back and forth between the Brotherhood’s headquarters and Taldryan’s stronghold was getting tiresome, but thankfully, this little scrap would kill two birds with one stone. Her opponent was already waiting for her, and the sour expression he wore hinted that he was none too happy with the delay.

“Proconsul.” Quejo’s words were as rigid as his Imperial bearing. “You asked to see me?” The complaint Erinyes expected, about how they had a perfectly good training facility at the Taldryan Citadel, didn’t materialise.

“Yes, about the preparations for a Collective attack.” Erinyes shrugged her shoulders to loosen them as she stepped on to the mat. “You’ve done an excellent job of overseeing the military’s readiness exercises, but we can’t leave the fighting to them. I need to make sure you can handle yourself when you’re not on the bridge of a starship.”

Quejo frowned. “My record should speak for itself–” Any further objection was cut off by a warning ringing through the Force, and the Warlord reached for his lightsaber. The weapon’s scarlet blade crackled to life in a high diagonal guard, its point in line with the Adept’s face. Quejo hesitated for an instant—Erinyes was his superior, technically, and he was still Imperial enough that attacking his own commander felt wrong somehow—but after reasoning that she’d ordered him to demonstrate his abilities, he shook off his hesitation and let loose with a stab angled right between her eyes.

Erinyes sensed her opponent’s intent in nearly the same instant he formed it. She slipped to one side of the Warlord’s thrust, then stepped around behind him and snapped her arm outward for a horizontal cut. The difference in speed between them was large enough that even with the Force’s warning of an impending attack, Quejo barely had time to turn his head to follow the Adept’s movement. Luckily, even that split-second of warning gave the Warlord enough time to mould the Force energies around him.

The air between the two combatants rippled, and Erinyes’ lightsaber blade bounced off Quejo’s conjured shield. Quejo chopped into the opening that Erinyes’ deflected blade had left behind, mirroring the cut Erinyes had thrown a moment before. Erinyes answered by drawing on the Force to vault over Quejo’s sweep with an acrobatic twist. When her rotation brought her around to face Quejo again, the Adept jabbed the tip of her lightsaber into her opponent’s sternum in the same moment that his cut would’ve sliced her in half.

Quejo hopped back a step out of belated reflex, then blinked in surprise when he realised he hadn’t just been run through. In fact, Erinyes’ lightsaber had barely scorched the surface of his armour. The Warlord raised his eyebrows as Erinyes disengaged by half a step. “A training saber?”

“It keeps me from pulling my blows.” The world seemed to slow to half speed as the Adept immersed herself in the Force. She lunged forward with a flurry of strikes, alternating between high and low, left and right, forward and reverse grips, all calculated to find a hole in Quejo’s defences that she could exploit. The old Warlord’s scarlet blade danced around him as he met each of Erinyes’ attacks with a mere flick of his wrist, but the sheer speed and volume of strikes prevented him from throwing the ripostes that normally came so easily.

As intense as the onslaught was, though, each attack gave Quejo a little more insight into Erinyes’ fighting style. Every parry added data to his calculations; every aborted return strike helped him formulate the best strategy to use against her. None of the cuts and thrusts the Warlord had hastily deflected had come close to breaking his defences with their strength. So, she’s one of those types, he thought. All speed, no power. That was simple enough to counter. The next time Erinyes attacked, Quejo gave up the minimalist parries for a much more powerful offensive slash, attacking the Adept’s weapon hand instead of merely brushing her strike aside. Then, drawing on the Force to minimise the difference in speed between them, Quejo reversed his blade and swung for the gap he’d opened in Erinyes’ defences, aiming to cleave her in two.

Even with the world moving in slow motion, Erinyes sensed Quejo’s attack coming before her eyes picked it up. She didn’t bother trying to reverse her incoming strike, instead opting to angle her wrist to ensure that the Warlord’s counterattack would knock her lightsaber aside instead of amputating her hand. Quejo’s follow-through strike came much quicker than Erinyes expected, and with her lightsaber off-course and traveling in the wrong direction to parry it, the Elder Marauder resorted to leaping out of Quejo’s reach.

Quejo charged forward like an angry bantha with a lightsaber for horns, refusing to give Erinyes a chance to rest. The clank of his armour plates jostling together nearly drowned out his thunderous steps across the hard rubber mat beneath the Siths’ feet. Erinyes brought her lightsaber up to parry Quejo’s attack, but quickly abandoned that idea when the force of his two-handed blow nearly knocked her weapon into her own face. Instead, the Adept danced just outside her opponent’s reach, leading Quejo to chase her practically in circles around the sparring area.

When the Warlord’s burst of Force-enhanced speed wore off, Erinyes seized the opportunity and darted forward, passing beneath Quejo’s incoming strike as easily as if he’d held a door open for her. Quejo barely had time to turn his head and see Erinyes’ lightning-fast horizontal strike scything toward his exposed back—but luckily, that was all the time he needed. An eyeblink before the attack landed, an invisible shield conjured from Force energies shimmered into existence and absorbed the blow.

Erinyes let her momentum carry her forward, and two long steps past Quejo, she pirouetted to face him. “Not bad. I guess age isn’t catching up with you as quickly as it looks.”

Quejo frowned with all the Imperial sternness he could muster. “I’m disappointed that you thought I would find handling a single attacker difficult. I protected the Grand Master for decades.”

“You say that like any Grand Master has ever needed protection. The Guard are glorified meat shields at best,” Erinyes scoffed. Not that she really believed the accusation—Quejo had more than earned his reputation as a skilled warrior—but as any practitioner of Dun Möch would confirm, taunts didn’t have to be true to undermine an opponent’s morale.

The Warlord narrowed his eyes, and the tip of his lightsaber blade wavered ever so slightly as he tightened his grip on the weapon. “If you think you can break my guard, you’re welcome to try.”

Erinyes opened her mouth to answer, but hesitated before she spoke. She’d come here to test Quejo, not beat him. Even “friendly” duels between Sith tended to escalate quickly, and from a Proconsul’s point of view, one or both of them being injured in a sparring match would make Taldryan that much more vulnerable. And yet, challenging fights were so rare for Erinyes that she hated to pass up an opportunity to continue this one. Kriff, why not? Just a little longer, she promised herself.

Flicker-fast, Erinyes lunged toward Quejo—but before she could take a second step, something slammed into her gut with enough force to double her over. Pain exploded through Erinyes’ torso, and the resulting coughing fit dropped the Adept to one knee as she willed her lunch to stay down. When she looked up a moment later, she saw that Quejo had removed one of his hands from his lightsaber hilt and balled it into a fist. So he doesn’t just do barriers, Erinyes thought, with a feral grin that banished any thoughts of restraint.

Pushing past the pain by sheer willpower, Erinyes extended her hand and focused her attention past Quejo. The Warlord tensed, bracing himself against the Force-powered shove he expected, but he was quickly forced to turn and deflect an attack from the now-active Z6 baton that Erinyes had summoned from a nearby weapon rack. Quejo met each attack with the same whip-quick parries he’d used to deflect Erinyes’ earlier assault, but as before, the rapid-fire strikes prevented the Warlord from simply slicing the offending weapon in half.

With a smirk, Erinyes deactivated her lightsaber and gestured with the hand that held it. Another baton leapt from its storage and crackled to life, and while Quejo was busy dealing with the first weapon, the second struck him across the backs of his legs. The impact drove the Warlord to one knee, and Erinyes gestured again to guide her remote-controlled weapons in for another series of blows.