Swashbuckling combines fast movement with a quick wit, witty repartee, and a flashing rapier. Prove that elegance and subtlety of approach will always dominate over brute force.
Swashbuckling combines a rapier and a keen mind to produce a truly effective fighting machine. The skill includes methods to deal death from above or parry multiple places at once, your blade moving with breathtaking speed. Moving between various specialised stances and dance about with acrobatic ease, avoiding any damage from your clumsy opponent's blade.
Swashbuckling can only be truly effective when undertaken with a song-blessed rapier, as everyone knows. To gain the blessing, simply take your rapier to the Grotto of Song, which is off the beach in Tasur'ke. Once you have completed "BATHE RAPIER IN SONG" you will have the perfect tool for the ultimate swashbuckler.
The Swashbuckling skill is available to members of the Bard class, along with Voicecraft and Harmonics.
Abilities in Swashbuckling
| Swing | Swing gracefully up into the trees overhead. | |
| Syntax: | SWING UP SWING DOWN | |
| Cooldown: | 2.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | When in a forest location, you will be able to swing up into the trees, or down from them again. | |
| Flourish | Intimidate an opponent with a flourish of your blade. | |
| Syntax: | FLOURISH <target> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 2.50 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Strike fear into your opponent's heart with a complex flourish, showing exactly what you will be doing to him in the coming combat. | |
| Backflip | Flip over obstructions that stand in your way. | |
| Syntax: | BACKFLIP <direction> | |
| Cooldown: | 1.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Like a monkey on kola you can flip over obstructions such as adventurers blocking you or icewalls. | |
| Auralbless | Use your song-blessed blade to remove deafness. | |
| Syntax: | AURALBLESS <target> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 3.00 seconds of equilibrium | |
| Details: | With a deft and carefully-aimed blow, knock the hearing back into your target, removing deafness and forcing them to sit up and take notice of your songs. | |
| Tunesmithing | Harness the power of your songblessed rapier. | |
| Syntax: | TUNESMITH <your songblessed rapier> <song> | |
| Required: | 50 mana | |
| Details: | Call upon the power of song within your songblessed rapier to imbue your next jab with a certain power. As your skill level in Swashbuckling increases, you will gain more songs with which you can tunesmith your rapier. There are four such possible songs, and the first is ACCENTATO. See AB SWASHBUCKLING ACCENTATO. | |
| Accentato | Let your songblessed rapier sing out to harm your opponent. | |
| Syntax: | TUNESMITH <your songblessed rapier> ACCENTATO | |
| Required: | 50 mana | |
| Works against: | Adventurers and denizens | |
| Details: | Deliver a devastating burst of magical damage with your next jab. This damage will increase with the number of mental afflictions the target suffers from. | |
| Handspring | Leap at your foes in neighboring rooms. | |
| Syntax: | HS/HANDSPRING <adventurer> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 2.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | With this acrobatic attack, you can handspring into an adjacent room, attacking an adventurer there. | |
| Riposte | Unleash a strike of vengeance. | |
| Syntax: | None (Passive while parrying) | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Details: | Riposte is a passive ability. After a successful parry or trueparry, riposte will sometimes permit a free and automatic counterattack. Yes, this means that you must have either the parry or trueparry ability in order to accomplish this. | |
| Acrobatics | Leap and bounce to make yourself a difficult target to hit. | |
| Syntax: | ACROBATICS [ON|OFF] RELAX ACROBATICS | |
| Required: | Endurance drain | |
| Cooldown: | 3.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | With this ability, you will become even more acrobatic, leaping and bouncing about such that you are more difficult to hit. Be warned that it is a serious endurance drain. | |
| Gripping | Grip your wielded items in a deathlock. | |
| Syntax: | GRIP RELAX GRIP | |
| Details: | While using this ability, you will prevent items from being knocked out of your grip. | |
| Scan | Scanning the forest floor from the treetops. | |
| Syntax: | SCAN | |
| Works against: | Room | |
| Details: | While in the treetops, you can scan the ground for passersby. | |
| Knuckleslap | Numb an opponent's hand temporarily. | |
| Syntax: | KNUCKLESLAP|KS <target> LEFT|RIGHT | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 3.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Numb your opponent's hand, either left or right, for a few seconds, making it unusable. There is currently no cure or way to avoid a knuckleslap. Attempts to use a numbed hand will have unpleasant results. | |
| Shove | Sending a hapless victim crashing to the forest floor. | |
| Syntax: | SHOVE <target> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 4.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | While in the trees, you may shove an adventurer to the ground, possibly breaking his legs. | |
| Thrustkick | Kick your opponent out of the way. | |
| Syntax: | THK <target> <direction> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 4.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Using your great leg power, you will attempt to kick your opponent away in the specified direction. | |
| Backhandspring | Leap out of the room striking someone on the way out. | |
| Syntax: | BHS/BACKHANDSPRING <person> <direction> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 2.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | With the backwards handspring, you may leave the room while simultaneously kicking someone on your way out. | |
| Raze | Attack the defences that would keep your weapons out. | |
| Syntax: | RAZE <target> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers and denizens | |
| Cooldown: | 2.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | With raze, your sword will become a weapon of destruction, attacking the defences of your enemies that serve to keep your weapons out. | |
| Abscond | Swing down and abscond with the rector's daughter! | |
| Syntax: | ABSCOND <target> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 2.50 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Swing down from the trees, hanging on to a perilously thin rope. Grab your target and continue in a graceful arc back to the trees, victim in hand! This requires a rope commodity. You must be in the trees with your target below you. A failed abscond attempt may result in a broken limb. | |
| Acciaccatura | Tunesmith your songblessed rapier against a specific limb. | |
| Syntax: | TUNESMITH <your songblessed rapier> ACCIACCATURA | |
| Required: | 50 mana | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Details: | Concentrate the powers of song on your rapier to strike a damaging blow at one of your opponent's limbs on your next limb-targetted jab. This requires the Targeting ability in Weaponry. | |
| Arrowcatch | Pluck arrows from the air with the greatest of ease. | |
| Syntax: | ARROWCATCH [ON|OFF] RELAX ARROWCATCH | |
| Required: | Mana drain | |
| Cooldown: | 2.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | At the cost of a constant mana drain, this ability will give you a chance to pluck arrows fired at you from the air. | |
| Drunkensailor | A stance designed to make your movements unpredictable. | |
| Syntax: | DRUNKENSAILOR UNSTANCE/STANCE NONE | |
| Required: | Mana drain | |
| Cooldown: | 1.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Enter the stance of the drunken sailor. Makes you much harder to hit with normal attacks from physical weaponry. There is a mana drain associated with this stance. To end the stance, either switch to another stance, or select STANCE NONE or UNSTANCE. | |
| Envenom | Coat a weapon in venoms. | |
| Syntax: | ENVENOM <weapon> WITH <venom> WIPE <weapon> | |
| Details: | With this ability, you may layer venoms on an edged weapon. Each time that weapon hits somebody, one venom will poison your opponent, and disappear from the weapon. They work on a last-on, first-off basis, so if you put xentio on a weapon, and then put voyria on, the voyria would come off first, and the xentio second. You must have the selected venom in a vial in your inventory. In order to get rid of the venoms on a weapon, simply WIPE <weapon>. | |
| Somersault | Quickly somersault past obstructions, even when bound. | |
| Syntax: | SOMERSAULT <direction> | |
| Cooldown: | 4.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | With this ability you can escape a location even if you're webbed or paralysed. It is faster than 'tumbling' in Survival, as a bonus. | |
| Martellato | Knock your opponent to the floor with this tunesmithing. | |
| Syntax: | TUNESMITH <your songblessed rapier> MARTELLATO | |
| Required: | 50 mana | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Details: | The power of your songblessed rapier will knock your opponent to the floor on your next jab. | |
| Highleap | The sky is within your reach. | |
| Syntax: | LEAP HIGH LAND | |
| Cooldown: | 2.25 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | So powerful are your legs that you may leap high into the sky, briefly eluding gravity's grip. Beware that you lack the control to move about while up in the air. | |
| Dodging | Avoiding attacks from the sky. | |
| Syntax: | DODGING [ON|OFF] RELAX DODGING | |
| Required: | Mana drain | |
| Details: | At the cost of a constant mana drain, this ability will allow you to dodge any attempts to hoist you off the ground. | |
| Heartsfury | An aggressive stance that gives a chance of counterattack. | |
| Syntax: | HEARTSFURY UNSTANCE/STANCE NONE | |
| Required: | Mana drain | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 1.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Enter the stance of heart's fury. If you are damaged while in this stance, you will attempt an automatic counterattack. There is a mana drain associated with this stance. To end the stance, either switch to another stance, or select STANCE NONE or UNSTANCE. | |
| Lunge | A deep, piercing blow from an adjacent location. | |
| Syntax: | LUNGE <target> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 3.00 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | When starting from an adjacent location, you may lunge at a target, causing quite a bit of damage. You must be wielding a sword to use this ability. | |
| Balancing | You're like a cat, you are. | |
| Syntax: | BALANCING [ON|OFF] RELAX BALANCING | |
| Required: | 50 mana and mana drain | |
| Details: | With this ability, you will have superior balance, making it much more difficult to knock you off your feet with abilities such as sweepkick, or the earthquake vibration. There is a mana drain associated with it, however. | |
| Deathfromabove | The name says it all. Death, from above! | |
| Syntax: | DEATHFROMABOVE <target> | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Cooldown: | 2.50 seconds of balance | |
| Details: | Leap down upon your unsuspecting enemy who is knocked to the ground and caused to black out momentarily by your brilliant attack. You must be in the trees, a ship's rigging or leaping into the air to begin with, and your target must be on the ground below. | |
| Trueparry | Such is your mastery that you may parry a larger area. | |
| Syntax: | PARRY left leg|left arm|right leg|right arm|head|torso TRUEPARRY centre|left|right|none | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Details: | The trueparry ability, combined with the weaponry parry ability, allows you to actively defend attacks against two parts of your body. 'centre' parries attacks to both the head and torso. If you do not have the weaponry parry ability, then trueparry allows parrying, but not trueparrying. | |
| Pesante | Stun an opponent with the power of your tunesmithed rapier. | |
| Syntax: | TUNESMITH <your songblessed rapier> PESANTE | |
| Required: | 50 mana | |
| Works against: | Adventurers | |
| Details: | Deliver a stunning percussive blast to your opponent on your next jab, providing they do not have the deafness defence. In the event the target has deafness, it will be stripped instead. | |