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Fighting with knives and blades



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Fri May 22, 2020 8:29 pm
Shadeflame says...



Hi everyone!

I need to know how an assassin would train to fight with knives/and or blades. How would the instructor start teaching them? The girl being trained is more resistant to pain than humans, and is very hard to kill.

I also need to know how training with a gun would work.

I know this is a lot to ask and I don't know if anyone can answer this but thank you in advance. :D :D :D

-Shadeflame
English isn't a language, it's three languages stacked up on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat.
  





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Fri May 22, 2020 8:42 pm
Tenyo says...



Are you looking at any particular time period?
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Fri May 22, 2020 9:26 pm
Shadeflame says...



No, just any tips on how to write it and how they work.
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Fri May 22, 2020 11:01 pm
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Tenyo says...



Okay. So, this comes from my knowledge of known historical assassins and of assassins in the armed forces.

One of the key factors is that assassinations are high risk, and rely more on temperament and mental aptitude to do the job than weapons skill. It makes training them impractical because of the amount of investment it would take to train someone who might turn out to not have that mental aptitude, or who might flunk their first job and get caught. Even in the case of child assassins they're rarely trained in hope to become competent adult assassins, they're trained because of their usefulness as children.

That's why a lot of freelance assassins don't have formal training. They're self taught or trained in other skills and they're hired because they already have that aptitude to do a particular job. Assassins aren't actually steel faced, cold blooded killers. If they were they'd be too obvious- part of their job is to blend in and be agreeable. It's another reason why training them in any kind of restrictive environment such as an academy wouldn't work, because they wouldn't develop the social skills required to blend in to a natural environment.

Where they are trained as part of a group for a specific purpose they're usually picked up for their mental attributes and baseline physical aptitude. They then get briefly trained by an instructor and expected to practice on their own. It would basically be a case of 'this is your equipment, this is what you do with it. Next time I tell you to use it I expect you to know how.'

In terms of knives and blades, they'd be taught how to manoeuvre, where to aim, and how to conceal if necessary (though dropping the weapon is more practical.) They might get taught how to manoeuvre various types of blades in the case that they had to improvise.

Training with a gun would be similar. They'd be taught how to handle different types, how to load, conceal, silence, ect. More importantly would be getting to places of tactical advantage and getting away with the equipment. Then they'd learn and get better at aiming.

Many forms of combat training, like knife fighting, martial arts and artillery are more the tasks of soldiers. Assassins, ideally, never end up in a fight. They need to be opportunistic and invisible. They also need to be able to get out as quickly as possible. That's where their training would be focused. Getting caught is worse than failing the job. It allows them to be taken captive and have information extracted from them.

Because of this, being hard to kill wouldn't actually be a benefit. If the situation comes where she ends up with someone trying to kill her then she's probably already messed up. Being more resistant to pain would be useful in terms of mental aptitude because it would allow her to push her body further, such as coping with muscle strain if she had to hide in an awkward position, holding her breath under water for longer periods, or being able to think clear even with an injury.

Hope this helps. Give me a nudge if you have any more questions. It's a fun topic so I don't mind if I have to go and revise or do a fact check.
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Sat May 23, 2020 6:41 pm
Shadeflame says...



Thanks for posting this for me!
I think it will really help, even though now I have to revise part of my plot to add this in.
(I have the start of my plot all planned out, and what she's like at the end, but I still have to figure out the middle and why she is what she is at the end.)
This is for a backstory sort of thing, so....yeah.
English isn't a language, it's three languages stacked up on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat.
  








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