Training Regimen
Sixteen months from wildfire to wielder — the StarTeam training doctrine that turned a self-taught kid into a controlled star.
The problem
When Neris arrived at Astraea Prime in Cycle 1165, she could level a dock ring and couldn’t light a candle without scorching the table. Her power was stellar; her control was, in Master Rook’s assessment, “a natural disaster with good intentions.”
The StarTeam’s training doctrine for wielders — control discipline — had never been tested on anyone with a Starheart Core. Rook’s solution was characteristically blunt: “Same drills. Bigger room. Osei on standby.”
The three gates
Control discipline rests on three principles, drilled until they’re reflex:
- Never draw what you can’t name. Every technique begins with naming the exact weave pattern. Neris’s early habit of “just pushing light around” was broken in week three, when Rook made her name all forty-seven lattice forms before breakfast.
- Never hold what you can’t release. The Starlume Barrier is a held technique; holding too long is how wielders burn out. Trainees practice releasing mid-hold until letting go is as trained as holding on.
- Never spend what you can’t recover. The Core tempts overspending. Neris’s crash episodes — migraines, nosebleeds, blackouts — were the curriculum’s harshest teacher.
The daily regimen (trainee year)
- Dawn: breath and lattice drills — weaving starlight into geometric forms, holding them, dissolving them. Two hours. “Meditation with consequences,” Neris called it.
- Morning: physical conditioning with Jax. (She can bench-press his gunship. She still does the push-ups.)
- Midday: tactical education with Veyne — not just fighting, but when not to. The Reckoning is taught as a case study in what holding the line costs.
- Afternoon: live-fire weave practice with Rook — targets, shields, the blast, the barrier. The training hall’s scorch marks are still there. They’re a point of pride.
- Evening: energy-sense training with Osei — learning to read the “music” of star-energy without drowning in it.
- Night: study. Star-charts, Ashen tactics, first aid. And, unofficially, racing Lyra.
The trial course
StarTeam trainees face a final trial: a simulated disaster — collapsing station, civilians, enemy interference — run solo. Neris failed her first attempt. Deliberately. She later admitted she wasn’t ready to be “done” being a trainee; the team was the first home she’d had since Port Selene, and passing meant the kid-gloves came off.
Rook knew. He always knew. He ran her second attempt at double difficulty, and when she passed — barrier held, all “civilians” extracted, zero unnecessary force — his entire evaluation was: “Now stop performing and start fighting.”
Ongoing training
Full membership didn’t end the regimen; it changed it. Current training focuses on three frontiers:
- Dampener-breaking: developing weave patterns the Ashen dampers can’t tangle. Her first success — the “braid-break” — is Flick’s favorite thing she’s ever done.
- Nova control: the terrifying project of making the Nova State survivable, or at least less unsurvivable. Osei supervises personally. Progress: slow.
- Teaching: Neris now runs the dawn lattice drills for junior trainees. Rook’s assessment: “She’s better at it than I am. Don’t tell her I said that.”
The philosophy
Veyne’s training philosophy for Neris was stated once, on the record, and never revised: “I’m not training a weapon. I’m training a person who happens to be a star. The person comes first, because the star will take care of itself — and if it doesn’t, no training would have mattered anyway.”
Source notes
This page is a fan reference for a fictional character. All training details are invented in-world lore from the StarTeam record as presented in the Vizlings “Neris Sen” character concept. No real people are depicted. Images are AI-generated dramatization art produced in-house .