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eroock
Since: Sep, 2012
16th Apr, 2023 06:25:27 AM
Properly Paranoid comes to mind.
walking-wolf
Since: Mar, 2022
17th Apr, 2023 12:08:05 PM
Hmm... Good thought. It's close, but it's not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking more like a cross between that and Crazy-Prepared, only the "preparation" is more mental than physical.
"Narn, Centauri, Human, we all do what we do for the same reason: it seemed like a good idea at the time." - Ambassador G'kar, Babylon 5
A stock lesson that often appears early in a Training from Hell scenario: never, ever let your guard down, because an enemy could attack you at any moment. It often comes in handy later in the story, when a character detects a surprise attack precisely because they were taught to be on watch every minute.
Example: in the Riftwar Cycle novel Shadow of a Dark Queen, Erik von Darkmoor and his comrades are being trained as special-forces-type soldiers in a secret army camp. After a day of very hard manual work, the Drill Sergeant Nasty lines them all up and asks how they feel — tired? maybe more tired than they've ever been? Next thing they know they're all hit from behind and taken down, all except a trainee named Sho Pi. His attacker is the one on the ground.
Sergeant: How did you do that?
Sho Pi: By never for one moment assuming that I'm safe, Sergeant.
Edited by walking-wolf