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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:44:38 GMT -6
Still, even the densest of golems could learn, and the Laredo wasn’t quite that low on the intellect totem pole. Aster had hope. He led the Laredo between the walls again, then said, “Slam!” and hoped for the best.
Luck was with him, or maybe stupidity was. He honestly couldn’t say. It was entirely possible that the Laredo didn’t even realize that the boards weren’t so close together anymore. But it did slam into one of them and knock it over, and scrambled out like it always did. “Good boy,” Aster said, and gave him a treat.
It was too early to call this kind of thing progress, but it gave him an idea about habituating the Laredo slowly. And so for the next try, he moved the boards further apart.
By this point if the Laredo really wanted to just walk away, he could have.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:45:06 GMT -6
The rock blocking the ‘exit’ between the two boards was now too narrow to stop it from getting out - or rather, the space between the boards was too wide. But it didn’t do that, and on Aster’s signal, it slammed into one of the boards and left that way, earning itself another treat.
They continued like this for some time, until the boards were wide enough apart that the Laredo had to actively charge towards it to bash its way ‘out’, but still it did as it had done before. That was some sign of progress. It knew the body slam as a concept, at least. But whether it was associating the action with the command, or merely with the context of the boards themselves… That remained to be seen.
Aster was content to end the session there though. One change at a time was enough, especially considering how slowly the Laredo learned.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:45:17 GMT -6
By the time the next session came around, Aster had devised a way to get the Laredo used to body slamming different things. It hadn’t been easy setting up the training field this time; he’d had to enlist the help of Grunty and even Summer in moving a good deal of heavy objects. But it was sunny enough, and they were all sturdy things, so Aster could leave them out overnight for a few days. In that time, he hoped he would be able to get through this portion of the training.
He led the Laredo between two objects that hemmed it in, just like before. But this time, rather than being boards, they were barrels. They were empty; he didn’t want the creature to hurt itself when it rammed into them, after all. But they weren’t so flimsy that they’d be knocked over with no effort whatsoever either.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:45:40 GMT -6
“Slam,” Aster prompted.
The Laredo seemed confused by what was happening right now. Or at least that was how Aster was choosing to interpret the way it stood there and stared blankly, anyway. Aster wondered if it was just having trouble warming up, and prompted it again. “Slam!”
Maybe hearing it a second time jogged the creature’s memory a bit. It perked up, and then a moment later Aster barely had enough time to get out of the way as it barreled into the… barrel.
It had no problem generating the amount of force needed to smash something like that away, at least. Sometimes Aster had to work other creatures up to that point, but it was gratifying to see that this wasn’t something he had to worry about with this Laredo. Good thing too, or else this might have taken even longer than it otherwise would have.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:46:01 GMT -6
But so far it had worked with one of the alternate targets he’d tried. Right, onto the next.
There was a wide variety of objects gathered, since the point was to get the Laredo used to doing this in association with the word, and not a specific kind of target. Sand bags, punching dummies, old crates, logs, eventually even things like actual dummies and scarecrows that Aster sometimes used for more targeted training. All of these things were set up in the same familiar formation, so that the Laredo would have something familiar about the situation to call back the idea of body slamming the target, other than the word. Aster wanted to make things easier for it if he could. Too many failures in a row and they could really lose their progress here.
The Laredo got through all the new targets, and so Aster decided to try just the one of each now, instead of having one on each side of the Laredo.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:46:13 GMT -6
He started with the wooden walls he had been using before because, again, he wanted to set the Laredo up for success.
Aster walked the Laredo up beside the singular wall, said, “Slam!” and hoped for the best.
But somewhere along the way, all the repetitions must have drilled the idea into the Laredo’s head after all. It smashed into the wall just like Aster wanted, slamming the target with its full weight. “Good,” Aster said, a little stunned, and fed the Laredo its treat. The Laredo snapped up the snack with its usual lack of grace, and they continued onto the next target.
They went on like this for a while, until they had made the rounds on the single targets, and then Aster called that session to an end. From there they picked up where they had left off the next day, drilling in the move to help commit it to the Laredo’s memory.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:46:45 GMT -6
As they did that, Aster also began to move the targets further away from the Laredo, so that the Laredo got used to having to approach something to slam into it, rather than just waiting until its target was right beside where it was. The Laredo… wasn’t a speedy creature, but its opponents were probably also not going to just sit there while it tried to smack into them. This was the least they could do to ensure its success.
It took some work, but this wasn’t going nearly as badly as Aster thought it might. The Laredo had picked up the idea better than Aster had expected. It hadn’t gone quickly, but they had gotten to a place where Aster felt comfortable that the Laredo could perform the move properly in a fight, if it came down to it. And that was good enough for now.
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 1:58:23 GMT -6
It seemed like a strange thing to be doing, training someone else’s beasts for a tournament that he was entering, but… well, sometimes that was just the nature of the job. Aster looked at the creatures in question and frowned slightly. He had thought to save himself some time by training the both of them together, but now that he was seeing the combination up close, he didn’t know if it was going to work out.
Well, he could always keep them in separate makeshift enclosures, to make sure they couldn’t get at each other. Besides which, the things he was trying to teach them wouldn’t be terribly difficult to learn, and there wasn’t a lot of it, so he didn’t expect to be here too long.
The Pasha, Aster could deal with; he had worked with plenty of large reptiles, or reptile-adjacent creatures, and he had done some work with Equillion as well. He was pretty sure she would fall somewhere between the two. The Ghaenelt posed more of a problem. Strictly speaking, he didn’t really know what the Ghaenelt… was. The encyclopedia provided by the labs had not been very informative on the matter.
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 1:58:37 GMT -6
Apparently they liked spiders, and there had fortunately been some dead spiders, dried, to be had at a specialty shop. Still… looking at the stuff, he felt a little dubious about the whole ordeal.
But they both had mouths, and they could both bite, so Aster decided he would start there.
He coated a stick with some… what else could he call it? Meat goo. The creatures here were both at least semi carnivorous, and he didn’t want to provoke them into biting out of anger, so he decided to entice them instead. But he also didn’t want them to associate the command word with eating rather than biting, so it was a stick, and not something more edible. He held it out to the Pasha first, feeling safer with a creature that he felt he might know better. “Bite,” he said to the Pasha.
The Pasha didn’t know what the word meant, of course, but Aster had been training creatures long enough that it was easy enough to entice her into biting the stick when it was thus coated. The pasha let go immediately, probably because of the unpleasant texture, but Aster followed it up with a treat, delivered with long tongs so she wouldn’t snap off his fingers.
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 1:59:00 GMT -6
Normally he would have tried a little harder to bond with a creature before training them things like this, but in this case he was making do as best he could with precautions.
She took the treat, and seemed somewhat placated. Next he turned to the Ghaenelt. “You too,” he said, holding out the stick. “Bite.”
It took a little more time to get the Ghaenelt to take the bait, but eventually Aster got the Ghaenelt to bite the stick. He had to shake said stick a bit to get the Ghaenelt to release it, but once it had, he said, “Good,” and handed it a… spider. He watched as it ate with obvious relish, but he figured the tastes of this particular creature were always going to be beyond him.
Having gotten the reaction he was looking for out of both creatures, he repeated the process once more, taking turns with each. “Bite,” he said to the Pasha, holding out the stick again. The Pasha looked at it with some distrust, but enough careful persistence and Aster managed to sort of goad her into taking a bite again. It wasn’t his favorite way of eliciting the reaction he was looking for, but if he couldn’t manage anything else…
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 2:00:28 GMT -6
“Good girl,” he said, and gave her another treat to reward her. Hopefully soon she would start associating the command with a treat, and be more willing to do it then.
The Ghaenelt, in comparison, either didn’t seem to mind or was picking up the concept faster. When Aster said, “Bite,” it bit the stick readily, and let go more readily this time too, possibly even in anticipation of the treat. Aster gave one to it, as was its due, then turned his attention to the Pasha.
In this manner, Aster kept with them for a while, alternating who got the command and the stick. After a few repetitions, they seemed to get the general idea - word, bite the stick, and then a reward. Even the pasha lost her distaste after a while, knowing there would be a treat afterwards. And possibly she was starting to get the hang of biting with just her teeth, with no need to taste what she was chomping down on.
It was a good place to stop, so Aster did.
For their next session, he presented them with an unflavored stick. “Bite,” he said, holding it out to the Ghaenelt first this time.
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 2:00:57 GMT -6
He repeated this a few times, both to see that they could do it when the stick had nothing on it to entice them, and as a warm up. Then he moved them over to a place where he had set up two dummies. They wouldn’t be training to bite sticks but opponents, be those people or creatures, and while he couldn’t get them to try it on a live target, a dummy was a close enough approximation. He was just wondering if he could get them to make the connection.
The Ghaenelt did seem to be the quicker of the two, so he had his money that it would be the first to get the right idea. But the nice thing about having a dummy for each of them was that the same command could be issued to both at once. He had each of them face a different dummy, which he managed after a little finangling.
“Bite,” he said, and hoped for the best.
At first, nothing happened. Both creatures were, rather understandably, confused by the situation at hand. Thus far they had only been given the command when a stick had been held out to them.
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 2:01:10 GMT -6
But the word was familiar, surely - and when Aster gave it again, which he found sometimes did jog the memories of the creatures he was working with, the Ghaenelt sprang forward and gave the dummy a solid nip.
“Good,” Aster said, and fed it one of the dreadful dried spiders. The Ghaenelt seemed rather pleased with itself, crunching on it with abandon. The Pasha watched it, and Aster wondered if she was managing to make the connection.
He decided to help her out a little. Going to the dummy, he held out one of its arms. “Bite,” he said again.
With the arm held toward her, all the pieces seemed to click into place at last for the Pasha. She came forth and bit the arm. “Good,” Aster said, and fed her a treat as well.
Then he stepped back from the two of them and did it again.
“Bite,” he said. The Ghaenelt was faster off the mark, but this time the Pasha did it too, both of them biting their respective dummies. Aster gave them their treats, then asked them to do it again, until they were doing it consistently and he was sure they had the right idea.
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 2:01:36 GMT -6
But biting wasn’t a difficult concept, and they seemed to pick it up adequately, so he decided that was enough of that. Time to move onto something else.
Next… a claw attack, maybe. Well, for the Ghaenelt, at least. Aster looked at the anatomy of the Pasha; it had claws but not the kind one would use to scratch, he didn’t think. Kicking would be more appropriate.
… Boy, he wasn’t looking forward to that.
They did at least seem content not to bother each other, so he didn’t have to keep them separately enclosed. The Ghaenelt didn’t seem to fuss much, and its spines warned away the Pasha pretty well. It eyed Aster with a certain degree of wariness, but not real alarm, as Aster slowly approached it and picked up one of its foreclaws.
“Claw,” Aster said, and raked the claws over the dummy. Then he fed the Ghaenelt a treat.
While the Ghaenelt ate, Aster picked up the other dummy and approached the Pasha with it from the side, then moved around nearer the back of the creature. Predictably the Pasha didn’t like this, and Aster barely had time to get out the word, “Kick!” before just that thing caught the dummy in the stomach.
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Post by Noa on Aug 8, 2020 2:01:51 GMT -6
Good thing he’d held the dummy out away from himself.
“Good girl,” he said, and fed the Pasha a treat. Poor girl probably didn’t even know why she was getting rewarded just yet, but it would come.
When he came back to the Ghaenelt, it was alert and ready to go. It was taking to this training thing pretty well for a creature who had never been through it before. Aster still didn’t think it was bright or experienced enough, both with this command and in a general sense, for him not to have to hold its claw and take it through the motion though. So he did just that, saying “Claw,” and then raking it over the dummy. After that, he fed the Ghaenelt a treat, and returned to the Pasha.
“Kick,” he said, a little earlier this time. Funnily enough it took a little longer to get the Pasha to lash out. She sidled around, trying to keep him in her sights, before eventually succumbing to the annoyance of it all and giving the dummy another good kick. Aster made sure to reward her, though he felt that it would take her a few more tries to get it.
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