Here are some of the doodles that I've done. I normally don't post these hyper rough doodles as most of the mare not polished, some are copypasted and others are just kinda.. bland. They're practice! Especially these ones are broadly focused on practicing slings and staff slings. But there are also some general pose practice things with javelins instead of atlatls. Mostly due to the change of scenery reflecting a variation of technology and, while I am not planning on there being super violent action scenes in the next story, there will be some hunting and I wanna be set for those potential poses.

But for those who read rambles here are some rambles

I am a slinger by hobby, I still practice slinging to this day as an excuse to go out, walk a fair distance to a practice spot, and burn calories slinging stones. And of course Slings are not a new topic to the DragonScape at all, in fact there have been quite a few drawings on them in the past few weeks even mostly just out of a need to practice drawing them. But they have appeared in TLH, will pop up in the next chapter, they're a common weapon in the dragonscape!

They're very quick and easy to make, even with nothing. If you can braid a rope you can make a sling and even if not, if you can do a simple tan on a hide and cut it, you have a sling anywho. Slings are easy to make, Riverstones are fine for general slinging and if more consistency is desired then projectiles can be from materials readily available to any drek or orm. Glands and bullets of Clay or pecked stone work, or metal glands of lead, aluminum, copper or bronze would work well too with varying availabilities. But really at the end of the day I sling with rocks, they do the job well for hunting levels of accuracy.

So slings? Easy to make, definitely harder to use with a great deal of accuracy but very easy to make. But thats fine, drekir have nothing but time to learn how to use them. And for hunting they would be reasonably effective for small-medium game. Particularly for larger insects and armored reptiles that may be easier to crush than skewer. Biomechanically, slings don't necessarily get a ton of benefit from a dreks anatomy, but rather they do a great job of getting past the problems of a dreks short arms. Simply leverage does a lot of the heavy lifting and with some training and proper footwork to maximize the energy generated by their whole body a drek could certainly sling effectively with a very lethal amount of force.

Staff slings are another way to get more leverage, a shorter sling hafted to a stick. They are easier to get a hang of overall and are fine weapons! Maybe a bit clumsier to use than a normal sling but more leverage in this case is a good thing. For those who aren't in the know think of a staff sling like a far smaller trebuchet, same concept and manner of function.

Of course like with humans and slings, a sling struggles with larger game in a hunting scenario as while you could kill a large animal with enough slung stones. It's not really fast nor causes a lot of bleeding (external or internal) to drop the animal quickly. Which is important as just pelting an animal with rocks without necessarily crippling it makes it likely to get away and the hunter without a meal. So for hunting, as with human slings, drekir slingers are typically targeting medium to smaller game that can be more easily crippled or killed quickly by stones.
Slings are of course used a lot in conflicts. As a drek slinger can definitely drop a human sized target or a drek sized target, and breaking bones and inflicting pain can debilitate a drek far faster than a giant snake. Slings are plenty dangerous weapons! Be it a dreks hand, an orms hand or a humans hand.
Drekir could, with practice, sling a stone upwards of 150 meters. But more practical ranges for actually hitting targets with individual accuracy tend to place that distance between 30-50 meters. Perhaps one of the more long range weapons amongst drekir projectile weapons.

And also javelins as, while atlatls are common in the Americas and exist in logáu, the people of Logáu tend to more commonly use javelin based technologies. This is mostly due to the sivilão survivors of the 100 years prior to the awakening broadly were more acquainted with javelins and so their descendants over the decades would continue to use and develop that technology. In this case its common in Logáu to see (mostly) drekir constructing various forms of throwing spear that are heavy, usually designed to be thrown by hand or often some sort of throwing strap, throwing string, ankyle or amentum to help give leverage and/or make the javelin easier to throw with more force.
Combined with a dreks ability to move, if given space, they can definitely throw a spear with some extreme force. a drek throwing a spear can be compared a horseback rider with a javelin really. Lots of sprinting speed that can be used to drive a javelin forward or, with proper footwork, a drek can transfer that energy generated by their legs into a throw. This makes a drek more than capable of throwing even a relatively heavy javelin or spear upwards of 30 meters. Sometimes these spears are fletched with fletchings of various materials, but unfletched javelins are overall the most common in Logáu


so yeah lazy doodles but there you go