by iKarith » May 21st, 2021, 7:26 am
Daedalus wrote:Sounds useful for discovering pit traps.
Actually, I'm CERT-trained. CERT, the Community Emergency Response Team, is essentially a citizen volunteer group. They're the guys with the green backpacks and hard hats. Some places take theirs seriously—Portland calls CERT "NET" (because our SWAT is called "SERT" since SWAT, "sounds sooo military!!!!11!one!", f**king Portland sissif*grumble*…)
…anyhow, when we finish our training, it's at the firefighters' training course. You're going into several floors of a building. It's pitch black in there, and … you've got flashlights but the haze makes it so you can't see anything with them. And you're looking for people who survived. And people who didn't. Nobody could see squat.
One person on the team didn't need to see. I'm an albino, I'm used to not being able to see in sunlight, but I have and use that white cane, and it works as well in the dark as in the light. In fact, I trained to use it wearing a blindfold. If anybody on the four teams I was part of that day wondered what good a blind man would be on an emergency team… yeah. There's other stuff I can't do very well of course—takes a team. Same as HeroQuest.
So yeah, it would be good for finding and triggering traps from a safe distance. Problem is it's sort of susceptible to being crushed (it's hollow and made of a graphite weave…) But it's lightweight, it would fit in a backpack or a belt sheath when collapsed (it telescopes), and while it wouldn't do more than 1 BP of damage no matter what I did with it, it can be used to disarm and capture a prisoner and ensure their compliance through pressure points to lead them out of the dungeon.
(I learned how to use it to that purpose at a dojo across town some years ago, it's extremely useful for small circle jujitsu!)
[quote="Daedalus"]Sounds useful for discovering pit traps. 8-)[/quote]
Actually, I'm CERT-trained. CERT, the Community Emergency Response Team, is essentially a citizen volunteer group. They're the guys with the green backpacks and hard hats. Some places take theirs seriously—Portland calls CERT "NET" (because our SWAT is called "SERT" since SWAT, "sounds sooo military!!!!11!one!", f**king Portland sissif*grumble*…)
…anyhow, when we finish our training, it's at the firefighters' training course. You're going into several floors of a building. It's pitch black in there, and … you've got flashlights but the haze makes it so you can't see anything with them. And you're looking for people who survived. And people who didn't. Nobody could see squat.
One person on the team didn't need to see. I'm an albino, I'm used to not being able to see in sunlight, but I have and use that white cane, and it works as well in the dark as in the light. In fact, I trained to use it wearing a blindfold. If anybody on the four teams I was part of that day wondered what good a blind man would be on an emergency team… yeah. There's other stuff I can't do very well of course—takes a team. Same as HeroQuest. :)
So yeah, it would be good for finding and triggering traps from a safe distance. Problem is it's sort of susceptible to being crushed (it's hollow and made of a graphite weave…) But it's lightweight, it would fit in a backpack or a belt sheath when collapsed (it telescopes), and while it wouldn't do more than 1 BP of damage no matter what I did with it, it can be used to disarm and capture a prisoner and ensure their compliance through pressure points to lead them out of the dungeon.
(I learned how to use it to that purpose at a dojo across town some years ago, it's extremely useful for small circle jujitsu!)
