After your rune ceremony in Idris you will go and speak to the Weapons Master. For the New York Institute that is Isablle Lightwood, and with her guidance you will select your signature weapon. As most of you know each Shadowhunter must select their weapon of choice that you will train with in the art of combat, steatlh, agility and endurance. 

It often surprises new Shadowhunters that there are no single set of skills that define us as warriors. All over the world we train in many varieties of combat styles, often these are selected from mundane culture and you will naturally find the style that most appeals to you and with which you are most effective. You will be trained in Western style combat, Eastern martial arts, and often sports styles such as fencing or judo. 

There is a vast common ground of physical ability and prowess underlying almost all of these styles, and so as new Shadowhunters you should ecpect to spend plenty of time on basic training to enhance your strength, speed, flexabilty, and so on even before you pick up a weapon. Your runes may be used to enhance your physical traits, but this is not typically done during training. Your runes can not substitute for the muscle memory that the body learns through repitition and practice. 

Our emphasis on learning from a wide range of sources is supported by tradiditon so by the time Shadowhunters reach the age of 18 they often travel and spend time studying at different Institutes. 

The first Shadowhunters, including Jonathan himself dreamed of a world were someday their people would not need to be warriors. David the Silent, especially loathed fighting and violence. It's believed that the Silent Brothers were in fact founded with the primary mission of reversing the great evil acts of Sammael and Lilith and closing our dimension agaisnt demons.

This philosophy continued to guide the Silent Brothers for hundreds of years. Brother Christopher de Sevilla could still write, in 1504 that the Nephilim's job was to "obsoleteoursevles" by driving the horde back and sealing the doors behind him. 

The fact, however is that a thousand years of work and research has brought us no closer to understanding how Sammael and Lilith acomplished their great Incursion, much less to discovering how it can be reversed. The thread of hope that the endless demonic horde could be turned back has frayed and is now so thin in Shadowhunter culture as to have nearly disapeared. Most believe today that if the Demonic tide it to be turned, it will be Heaven's doing, not our. Our role is to stand behind the open gates and turn them back one by one. And so we fight. 

Here we provide you the outlines of a general course of Shadowhunter training, along with touchstone goals for beginners, for more intermediate students, and for those seeking true experties. It can be deficult for new Shadowhunters to understand their own training progress as we do not have ranks. Most Nephilim have lived in warrior culture there whole lives and the qualities of the well-tempered Shadowhunter have been part of thier upbringing. These suggestions therefore should not be taken as rigid requirements but rather as guidlines that may help you understand your progress. 

Quick note: No one can be an expert in all things. As you train one of your goals will be to find those elements of Shadowhunter life that you wish to pursue more closely, because of either your natural aptitude in them or your interest in deeper study. All Shadowhunters should first aim to achieve at least beginner competence in all of these categories before seeking more advanced study. 

Monomachia (hand to hand) 

Beginner: Basic competence in at least one Eastern martial art or Western fighting tradition. Ability to reliably fend off two or three simultaneous attackers. 

Intermediate: Competenece in three to five mundane fighting traditions. Ability to reliably fend off five to eieght simultaneous attackers 

Expert: Competence in more then ten mundane fighting traditions. Ability to reliably fend off an arbritrarily large army of demons. 

Ranged-Missile 

 Beginner: Competence with standards set of ranged weapons: low bow, crossbow, sling, thrown daggers, javelins, big heavy rocks 

Intermediate: Competence with above while blindfolded 

Expert: Compentence with above while blindfolded and lying down 

Stealth 

Beginner: Ability to pass undetected through darkened alley or room. 

Intermediate: Ability to pass undetected through darkened alley or room filled with small breakable objects precariously balanced atop other breakable objects 

Expert: Ability to pass undetected through open terrain in broad daylight 

Blending & Concealmnet 

Beginner:  Ability to pas a mundane in a typicla public scenario (driving a car, shooping for food etc) 

Intermediate: Ability to pass a mundane at a small cocktail party of reception 

Expert: Ability to pass a mundane in the midst of a mundane demoic cult performing human sacrifice          

Agility & Grace 

Beginner: Basic competence at acrobatics, tumble, trapeze, gymnastics, etc. 

Intermediate: Competence at above skills with wearing thirty pounds of gear, several heavy weapons

Expert: Competence at above skills while wearing thirty pounds of gear, several heavy weapons, a blindfold and iron manacles 

Endurance 

Beginner: Competence at improvised survial skills in typical harsh enviornments (desert, water, forest) 

Intermediate: Competence with above skills in extreme environments (a builidng that is on fire, free-falling from an airplane, high cruising altitute, outer space, hell) 

Expert: Ability to withstand torture by Greater Demons while in above harsh or extreme enviornments 

Tracking 

Beginner: Knowledge of tracking runes; ability to identify telltake signs of animal or demon activity and maintain pursuit. 

Intermediate: Ability to maintain pursitu while also evading similar pursuit by different animal or demon. 

Expert: Ability to maintain pursuit while in harsh or extreme environments (see enduracne above) 

Orienteering 

Beginner: Intuitive graso of altitude, cardinal direction, time of day, weather conditions, etc 

Intermediate: Ability to find a way to known safe locations when dropped inot arbitrary enviornments 

Expert: Ability to find a way to known safe locations when dropped into extreme or harsh environments 

Observation & Deduction 

Beginner: Basic forensics knowledge; ability to "read" the scene of a crime and reconstruct events there with high porbability of accuracy 

Intermediate: Ability to reliably identify revealing detals of the scene that mundane law enforcement would typically overlook 

Expert: As above, but while blindfolded 

Languages 

Beginner: Knowledge of several mundane languages, perferably a mixture of living languages sppken near your geographical base and ancient languages used in religous writings (sanskrit, Hebrew, ancient Greek & Sumerian) 

Intermediate: Knowldege of above and at least two demonic languages 

Expert: Knowledge of the above, at least four demonic languages, and abliity to intuit basic meanings from written or spoken languages never encountered before 

Diplomacy 

Beginner: Ability to talk your way out of being eaten by a demon or killed by angry Downworlders. 

Intermediate: Ability to talk your way out of being eaten by Greater Demons or killed by angery Downworlder political leadership. 

Expert: Ability to talk your way out of being eaten by Greater Demons or killed by angry Downworlder political leadership, and to conivnce said demon or Downworlder that letting you go was their idea. 

Shadowhunters rarely use firearms as they normally do not work for our purpose correctly. Etching Runes into the metal of a gun or bullet prevents gunpowder from successfully igniting. Considerable research has been done into this problem, with little success. 

The prevailing theories today prefer an alchemical explenation, contrasting the heavenly source of our Runes with the demonically allied brimstone and saltpeter that make up classic gunpowder, but this explination does not, unfortunately hold much weight. Demonic Runes have the same impending effect on guns as our own Runes and the problem remains even with the use of modern proellants, which do not contain these supposedly "demonic" materials. 

This remains one of the great unexplained mysteries of Rune magic, and researchers continue to pursue explenations and solutions to this day. Guns can, of course be successfully used to harm Vampires and (with silver bullets) Werewolves, but shots must be made with pinpoint accuracy. The rist of collateral damage and the difficulty of scoring a direct hit, combined with teh understanding that Shadowhunter weapons will be overwhelmingly used to fight Demons rather than Downworlders, has lead to a general rejection of firearms as a part of the Shadowhunter arsenal. 

Finally, it is to the advantage of the Nephilim to have our waepons forged and built by the Iron Sisters as much as possible. Modern gunsmithing invovles elaborate industrial machining that our traditional weapons don't requuire. And if we were to have the Iron Sisters forge firearms, that would drastically change the Iron Sisters' need for resources and equipment.