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Post by Noa on Jul 4, 2020 20:27:16 GMT -6
The concept wasn’t a difficult one, and once again, Rici picked it up rather quickly. By now, Havoc had developed a real suspicion towards Aster, so he paid a lot more attention to where Aster was standing. That meant he didn’t have much trouble with keeping up with this change either. The only one who made more gradual progress was Velvet, and he could sense her reluctance to be moving around so much. But eventually the lure of food and the annoyance of the foam darts did their carrot and stick magic, and she was paying attention to where Aster was, and dodging the darts accordingly.
Aster kept them at this stage for a couple more sessions, just to get them used to it, and to give Velvet a chance to catch up to the other two. After he was comfortable with their progress here, he decided to move on to the final stage, and set up fake leafy barriers around the fencing of the pen, so that he could still shoot at the whelps through it but they would have more trouble seeing him.
And then he shot darts at them like he had been doing before.
The whelps knew what the 'game' was now, so they knew well enough to dodge the darts when they came, but at first it was harder for them to avoid the darts because they couldn't tell where Aster was with the same accuracy as before. Aster got a few square hits in because of that.
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Post by Noa on Jul 4, 2020 20:31:56 GMT -6
But because they had already been acclimated to the dodging, it didn't actually take them that long to figure out how to avoid these darts. Aster supposed they must have been listening for him, or scenting him in the air, or even paying more attention to any movement they could see through the fake leaves, but the longer he kept at it, the less he managed to hit.
It took another couple of sessions before they could dodge him all the time, and he kept the trio of them practicing for a couple more sessions after that just to be sure. This kind of pre-emptive sense was pretty much required these days to make a good showing if Aster wanted to put any of them in the pit. It might have been overkill against an untrained brown, but even so.
Eventually, however, they got to a point where it seemed almost instinctive for them, at which point Aster could consider himself satisfied. It was a bit of a chore to teach, but he always felt better when he was finished with it.
"Alright, you lot, that's it for today," Aster said, giving them all a last treat for their hard work, then getting to work putting away all the things he had used. He hadn't quite decided what this lot's futures were going to be, but at least this part of their training was over and done with, and he felt that he had bonded enough with Havoc that the red wouldn't try too hard to kill him when the time came for breaking.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:17:20 GMT -6
Aster had two more broken drakes than he used to, which had been… a process, to be sure. It had been some time between Roland and the last time Aster had broken a drake--- it might well have been Aurelius before him, Aster thought. The process was never pleasant, though he did find that it went much more quickly now, and in these two cases, at least, much more cleanly than he was used to. Magic helped a great deal, he supposed. The gold drake, he was content to leave alone for now. Roland didn’t have the disposition to be a fighter, and even after reaching his full growth, he remained, if not necessarily very small, at least a more slender animal. His more docile temperament suggested a future as a breeding stud, or perhaps even a show animal, if Aster found the time to work with him a little more closely. 1
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:17:32 GMT -6
Havoc, on the other hand, had grown up relatively bulky, and had the confidence to make a reasonable showing. Aster didn’t have any grand expectations of a first tier drake whose lineage was still full of wild individuals, not with the way the Sarane tournament scene had become. But Havoc might run the gauntlet, at least, where the standards for victory were much lower.
He had a good start on him already, what with all the work that Aster had done with him and the hens he had been raised with when that lot was still only half grown. All he needed now was to learn how to actually strike his opponent. Aster didn’t imagine that to be too much of a challenge, considering how aggressive Sarane were already.
Still, it would be interesting working with a fresh drake. It was definitely something Aster hadn’t done in a while.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:18:42 GMT -6
“Come on,” he said, leading Havoc out of his stall and onto a training field, where Aster had set up some dummies. The drake tossed his head when Aster opened the gate, but otherwise followed him without much fuss. He was used to being led around by Aster, so while he didn’t know the exact command the way a better trained beast might, he got the general idea. Aster wouldn’t be taking him to any populated places without more precautions, but on his own expansive property, that wasn’t an issue.
Now it was just a matter of teaching him to strike. Easier said than done, though Aster had been through this process many times before too. But it had also been some time since Aster had done combat training with a fresh creature; as of late he had mostly been working with the creatures he had already trained before.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:19:38 GMT -6
For his own part, Havoc was investigating the dummies with only a nominal interest, nosing at them in a decidedly halfhearted fashion. They weren’t food, and he could clearly tell they weren’t food, but they were just about the only noteworthy things in front of him. Aster let him do it, thinking to himself about what would be easiest for the drake to learn.
After some deliberation, he settled on the idea of having Havoc use his claws. It was the simplest and most intuitive thing to teach, Aster thought; it was easier for Havoc to let Aster handle one of his limbs than for Aster to try handling his head. Most of the times he’d had to teach a bite attack, it inevitably involved coating a stick or something with meat, or provoking a creature into snapping at one without trying to make it look appetizing.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:19:54 GMT -6
Both of those seemed like more trouble than they were worth right now, and he always felt a little bad for the poor beast who was having to chew on wood as part of the training process.
“Rend it is,” Aster said, mostly to himself. “Well, alright then. C’mere, you.” Havoc looked up at the sound of Aster’s voice, and with a little bribe, Aster brought the drake over to where he was, situated in front of one of the dummies. From there, Aster picked up one of the drake’s forelimbs. Havoc let him, though with some evident confusion; he hadn’t been handled like this since he was a whelp who was small enough to be picked up. Before Havoc could think too hard about it though, Aster said, “Rend,” and dragged his claws across the dummy. Then he let Havoc go, and fed him a treat. “There’s a good boy.”
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:20:33 GMT -6
Havoc took the treat gladly enough when Aster gave it to him. Now that he was older, he wasn’t ravenous the same way he had been when he had still been a growing whelp, but he wasn’t about to say no to a morsel either. He looked to Aster expectantly for more, to which Aster laughed. “Work for it,” he said. “Let’s have another go. Rend.”
Once more, Aster picked up Havoc’s forelimb and dragged the drake’s claws across the dummy. He did so slowly, but pressed the claws deep, so that they tore into the fabric of the dummy and scraped the wood beneath. “Good,” said Aster, and fed the drake another treat. Once Havoc was done eating, Aster repeated the process, going a little faster this time.
After about five tries, Havoc had had about enough of being handled and guided through the process.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:20:46 GMT -6
When Aster next said ‘rend’, the drake picked up his claws of his own accord. He didn’t quite get to swiping at the dummy before confusion got the best of him, but it was a good first step to doing it on his own, so Aster gave him another treat.
“You’re getting the hang of this, huh?” he said. “Okay, let’s try one more time. Rend.” Again, Havoc lifted his claws, but didn’t move beyond that point. This time Aster picked up that claw and raked it over the dummy again before giving Havoc his treat. He didn’t want Havoc to get the idea that he was being rewarded just for picking up his leg; that wouldn’t be teaching him anything useful.
The next time Aster gave the command, Havoc picked up his claws and touched the dummy on his own. “Good,” Aster said, and gave him a treat for that.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:21:20 GMT -6
Of course, as soon as he did that, Havoc stopped there, so Aster guided him the rest of the way the next time he gave the command. But they were getting to where they needed to be, slowly but surely. Aster was pretty satisfied with the pace they were going at, anyway.
From there, they shaped the desired behavior in little stages. If Havoc did more on his own, Aster rewarded him; and if he didn’t go past that point, then Aster would intervene and guide him through the rest of the movement. It didn’t actually take that long, though it did take several repetitions--- an attack was a quick thing, after all. Soon, Havoc was making the motion of clawing the dummy all by himself, complete with follow-through, which was pretty good for a first session. So Aster called it there, and decided they would continue with it tomorrow.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:21:31 GMT -6
He didn’t want to have Havoc tire himself out or get too bored with what they were doing, and Havoc wasn’t in the habit of being trained a great deal, so Aster didn’t want to push him too much too soon.
The next day, after a few warm-ups to refresh Havoc on the concept of clawing the dummy, Aster began to selectively reward him. Only the fastest strikes--- which, at this stage, still weren’t very fast--- got Havoc rewarded. This took him a little time to figure out, but once he did, things proceeded smoothly, until Havoc was swiping at the dummy at a speed that Aster found acceptable. Fortunately for the both of them, Aster didn’t have to further refine it by the depth of the strike; he had done it early on by making sure Havoc always sank his claws deep into the dummy, so Havoc had simply kept that up when he started doing it on his own.
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Post by Noa on Jul 11, 2020 21:22:35 GMT -6
The force of the blow came with the speed of it, so by the time Aster was satisfied with what Havoc was doing, it was basically a combat-ready ‘rend’. They practiced it over a few more sessions just to make sure Havoc had the idea down though. A live situation would have more excitement and more distractions than anything Aster could do with him in the training fields, so Aster wanted to be sure that Havoc knew the attack well enough that he could still perform it under those circumstances.
It would be hard to know for sure whether the training would still hold up in a real fight until they’ve had one, but eventually Aster was satisfied that they had prepared as much as they could.
"Let's see how you do out in the ring," Aster said. Now to see about arranging a bout for Havoc to make his fighting debut...
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:21:03 GMT -6
Aster… honestly didn’t know what had possessed him to do this. He had his hands full enough with all the other creatures he was training, and should have been training, without taking on a new project that he didn’t expect to do anything with in the long term. He stared at the Laredo, who stared back at him, and blinked one eye lazily. Or at least Aster thought it was lazily, anyway. He didn’t know very much about these guys, except that they were reptiles, and he was in the business of dealing with large reptiles. So at least it wasn’t a huge departure from what he was used to in that sense, though the Laredo certainly did look rather more… reptilian than his other charges. Which was to say, the kind of lizard Aster might expect to see sunning itself on some rock, without much regard for anything else, or much to indicate intelligence.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:21:13 GMT -6
But the species encyclopedia that he owned, which he had pored over a little in preparation for this, did say these guys had at least a passing level of intelligence. Nothing up to, say, what a dog might have, but not so dense as those… elemental golem things. So it wasn’t as though there was nothing to work with here, he reasoned.
Still, looking at it… He had to resist the urge to sigh.
He really didn’t have time for this. He was even outsourcing some of the work, to a guy who did, admittedly, look as though he was desperate for work of any kind. Usually Aster tried to spend time with and bond with the creatures he was working with, but in this case, he decided it was alright to get someone else to take care of the whole ‘get the creature accustomed to being around people’ part.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:21:25 GMT -6
And the Laredo wasn’t startling at his every move or hissing at him non stop, so Aster had to assume the other guy had done an okay job.
He could stand here all day contemplating this creature and whether he thought it would be any good at doing anything… But that wouldn’t get him anywhere. The best way to find out whether it was capable of learning what he wanted to teach it was to begin, unfortunately.
It was going to the pit, so the first order of business was to give it a fighting chance by teaching it how to get out of the way of an incoming attack. To that end, Aster decided to try the method that he had done with the half grown Sarane that he had been raising as of late, and led the Laredo to the same pen that he had used for that purpose.
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