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Post by Kreans on Aug 4, 2018 21:29:06 GMT -5
Bows were a strange thing to him, if you wanted a person dead in Kreans' mind you close the distance with them and attack them with whatever weapon you have in your hands or if nothing then your bare claws themselves. Using a bow from far away and shooting at an opponent without ever seeing the whites of their eyes or smelling their fear seemed wrong to him, unless circumstances prohibited you from closing in on your opponent then maybe it was acceptable, to him it seemed more a weapon that he wouldn't want to use unless he had to because there wasn't much choice other than to do so. Still, even if it wasn't a weapon that he thought he would be using much it was still something to learn, another weapon to add to his arsenal that he could use should he have to and another way to rid the world of the SKC and the filthy Elkagr as well as those that sought in any other capacity to oppress his kind.
To begin with it took them a while to find him a bow that he could actually use properly, the shortbows they'd been intending to use for the practice weren't even close to big enough for him to use so he'd had to wait while someone scoured the barracks for a longbow that he could use far better. Again he resolved that if he was going to be using a bow even somewhat regularly then he'd have to make his own, luckily he had some skill in carpentry from his trip to Innorsford previously so he thought that making a bow likely would be something he was capable of doing. He'd need one to match his size so that he didn't have the problems that even a longbow was still causing, albeit far less than what the shortbow had before.
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Post by Kreans on Aug 4, 2018 21:36:28 GMT -5
It started with them teaching how to string the bow, and how to destring it should the need arise as well as the most basic safety measures such as not getting the bowstring wet and of course not pointing the arrows in the wrong direction even if the bow wasn't drawn. Kreans thought that this stuff was common sense, but it seemed that some of the humans were somewhat lacking in intelligence so maybe it was a legitimate concern so he was glad that these tips were given so no human would accidentally shoot him and he would have to tear their head off. He was bored of it quite quickly however, it seemed useless to be hearing so much about a weapon that he wouldn't really be using, moreso when most of what the female instructor was saying seemed to be things that were already known to anyone with even half of a working brain, but at least the tips ended quite quickly and for that he would forever be grateful.
Initially the targets were quite close, arrayed only fifteen feet away from them and each stepped up to the firing line to shoot their quiver into it, one arrow after the other until they were empty at which point they would go and pull the arrows out in order to start emptying the quiver all over again. It was very repetitive and Kreans found a certain calmness in it, the weapon still felt unnatural in his hands and his shots missed about as often as they hit home but it was a constant action at the least of drawing and firing at the target with as much accuracy as he could muster. As far as he was concerned in no way did having a bow in your hand compare to the pure feeling of having a weighty sword, spear, axe or hammer but it was something and he'd seen it used several times to great effect by slavers and bandits moments before the Shadowscales tore into them.
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Post by Kreans on Aug 4, 2018 22:17:29 GMT -5
By the end of the session he was hitting far more than he was missing, and so the targets were moved further and further back each time it seemed as though his progress was improving. It quite quickly got to far away for him to hit it with any degree of reliability and so was left there for him to practise his shots on, he was by no means an Elkagr when it came to archery and he wouldn't wish to be one of the foul creatures but he was becoming a better shot than he had expected when he'd initially come to be taught how to use a bow. He wouldn't be swapping out his spear for a bow anytime soon but it was possible he'd make himself one to keep around for situations where it could be useful to have such a thing, although with the size of a bow he'd need to make for himself it'd be more like him slinging spears into his prey rather than arrows. Now that he thought about it that didn't sound like such a bad idea really, throwing spears at the enemy at a shorter distance rather than arrows from afar, that idea was saved away in his mental archives for later.
As a final exercise they were tasked to hit more complex targets, it was unlikely that the SKC's forces were just going to stand still and watch as arrows were shot at them so they were being trained to work on that at least to some extent. Now the training dummies had shields on them that you had to shoot past in order to hit the actual dummy and have it considered, how exactly they thought that this meagre training on a stationary dummy was going to prepare the majority of these people to fight in a war he had no clue. For the most part it seemed that blanketing the opposing army with arrows and hoping for the best due to sheer quantity of arrows was all they'd be capable of, it was unlikely that most of them would be able to hit a singular target running at them and attempting to dodge or block the arrow, much in the same way that Kreans was fairly sure he'd be unable to do so. He didn't have to at least, he'd always have his spears and other close combat, it was the true way to fight after all and properly display your strength as a warrior.
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