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This is for research only, tee hee hee.

Ok folks its like this. Basically, my protag gets captured by assassins to be taken to the antag for interrogation. After a quick scuffle the assassin stabs the protag with a dagger coated with a drug/poison which I made up for ease and simplicity. The question is what part of the body would a professional assassin stab in order to introduce the drug to the system, but not cause any major damage to any vital organs or anything?
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
Hello Aidan, in this case the best option would be to simple cause a cut in the victim's skin with the poisoned dagger, it's not really necessary to stab =)
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
It would depend a lot, I expect, on the type of poison and how much was on the blade. It would have to be a pretty strong and powerful poison to kill from a cut, since typical blood-flow patterns would push the venom back out. Even with a virus like AIDS, I'm pretty sure that kind of contact would only a small chance of infecting the victim (random guess, based on just a few facts I know, I'd say less than 10%).

A pin-prick is a little different from a cut, going deeper with a small hole, but you can't do that with a knife. I'd suggest - having no idea what kind of poison it is - the shoulder might be a good place to stab.
 
It would depend a lot, I expect, on the type of poison and how much was on the blade. It would have to be a pretty strong and powerful poison to kill from a cut, since typical blood-flow patterns would push the venom back out. Even with a virus like AIDS, I'm pretty sure that kind of contact would only a small chance of infecting the victim (random guess, based on just a few facts I know, I'd say less than 10%).

A pin-prick is a little different from a cut, going deeper with a small hole, but you can't do that with a knife. I'd suggest - having no idea what kind of poison it is - the shoulder might be a good place to stab.

Thanks, I might give him some kind of the needle or something. The poison can change for convenience, at the moment its just something to knock him out for a few hours.
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
There are some poisons in the natural world so powerful that they can kill by mere skin contact...
 
If the assassin is just trying to drug the MC, rather then murder him, stabbing him with a dagger seems a bit excessive.

I'd just have him use a syringe or some other kind of specialized tool. Seems more professional that way.
 

Giant

Minstrel
You could always have your assassins just make him drink something. That kind of assures that the poison will run through his body. Maybe they just stir the drink with a dagger that was dipped in the poison or venom of an animal.
 
What if the assassin had a deadly powder in his hand that he "sneezed" or "coughed" into his victim's airstream as he walked past?

Stabbing is rather obvious. Unlike Assassin's Creed, where you can stab someone and just hide for a few minutes and everyone forgets about it :)
 
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You could always have your assassins just make him drink something. That kind of assures that the poison will run through his body. Maybe they just stir the drink with a dagger that was dipped in the poison or venom of an animal.

Nice idea, but quite similar to something that happens earlier in the story. I was thinking more about having like a fast action scene that ends with the protag being poisoned, but the readers don't find out until the next chapter that it wasn't lethal.
 

Giant

Minstrel
Could your assassins release a poisonous animal onto the protag? Perhaps a scorpion, snake, some weird frog? Or you could do like a Wrath of Kahn thing where a worm or parasite attaches itself to the protag. You could leave the chapter ending with the assassins dropping some creature in the room, then when the protag returns in the next chapter, his personality could be noticeably different to the reader.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
There are some poisons in the natural world so powerful that they can kill by mere skin contact...

Oh absolutely. But they work differently. They access the body through the pores instead of being inserted into the blood stream. And there are definitely poisons which are concentrated enough to enter the blood stream from even a paper cut. But for the most part, poisons that powerful are extremely rare, and I find that giving such rare poisons to every would be assassin in every piece of fantasy literature gets out of hand. It's better writing, in my opinion, to work with the limitations of a more believable poison.
 
Thanks guys, good answers coming in. I am quite stubborn about it being an action scene though, also quite keen on having it done by my master assassin character, to create a bit of personal hate between them.
 

Ravana

Istar
The assassin would stab the victim over the head with a sock filled with sand. No professional going for a capture would risk an unexpected reaction to the poison, or accidentally killing his target in the scuffle.
 
Thinking about it, the traditional way to do this would be to simply hold a rag soaked in something like chloroform - you force the victim to breathe vapors that have a strong anesthetic effect. After all, even heroes need to breathe.

Thanks guys, good answers coming in. I am quite stubborn about it being an action scene though, also quite keen on having it done by my master assassin character, to create a bit of personal hate between them.

Perhaps some kind of dart, then?

The assassin would stab the victim over the head with a sock filled with sand. No professional going for a capture would risk an unexpected reaction to the poison, or accidentally killing his target in the scuffle.

If you want to be realistic about it, then giving someone a blow to the head is probably even more dangerous. In real life, people don't actually get knocked out for long periods of time only to wake up just fine aside from a headache, like they do in movies. In fact, if you pass out from a blow and remain unconcious for more then five minutes, you will probably suffer at least a concussion and possibly traumatic brain injury with cerebral bleeding.

Of course, reliably knocking someone out with a drug without killing them isn't easy either - you need to dose the stuff with meticulous precision, because if you use too little you only annoy your victim and if you use too much, the victim dies. Still, I'm assuming a guy who is trained to kill people will have an intimate understanding of poisons. (And also know that hitting someone in the head with a heavy blunt object is usually a good way to induce death.)

Anyway, I'm not saying we can't take artistic liberties with that sort of thing. But if I was aiming for realism, I'd go with the drugs.
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Thanks, I might give him some kind of the needle or something. The poison can change for convenience, at the moment its just something to knock him out for a few hours.

Again, in a big knife fight, I think the shoulder would be the best place to stab someone without killing them.

If you want a more intense action scene, a common method of subduing someone would be to grapple the person in what's called a "come along" position, holding their hand behind their back with one hand on their shoulder. You can google it. From that position, it would be easy to then stab a poisoned needle into the back of the hand (not a syringe which didn't exist until recently). I think that would show your assassin's skill level and abilities the most.
 
Well there are two places that leap forward in my mind.

The fatty under part of the arm the "double wave" area, or a glancing blow to the side just above the hip bone.
A third option now that I think about it would be the thigh but that is much harder to pull off in a fight with people moving about quickly.

Hope that helps.
 
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Ravana

Istar
If you want to be realistic about it, then giving someone a blow to the head is probably even more dangerous. In real life, people don't actually get knocked out for long periods of time only to wake up just fine aside from a headache, like they do in movies. In fact, if you pass out from a blow and remain unconcious for more then five minutes, you will probably suffer at least a concussion and possibly traumatic brain injury with cerebral bleeding.

True, and I did think of that. But the odds of an accidental kill–at least short-term: I doubt the assassin or his employers are worried about long-term prognosis–are far lower, and the victim doesn't need to be rendered unconscious for long. Or at all: just needs to be dazed long enough to get him restrained properly. I'd also add that a "master" assassin would never allow the encounter to become a "scuffle" in the first place, so he'd have the choice of where to precisely place his blow, no matter what he was using, and how hard, which would essentially reduce the chances of an accidental kill to nil, unless he somehow contrived to trip at the very instant of delivering the blow–which will remain a danger regardless of what he uses.

(This, of course, assumes that a "master assassin" is a plausible construct in the first place: you'll discover that, historically, most assassins had kill totals of around… well, one. But that's a different discussion.)

Of course, reliably knocking someone out with a drug without killing them isn't easy either - you need to dose the stuff with meticulous precision, because if you use too little you only annoy your victim and if you use too much, the victim dies. Still, I'm assuming a guy who is trained to kill people will have an intimate understanding of poisons.

A guy trained to sedate animals in a zoo or in the wild has at least as intimate an understanding of his craft, and yet it remains an amazingly tricky thing to do, as much art as science. That's even when the exact body mass of the animal is known, as when it's in a zoo. One thing they never show you in Wild Kingdom is how many shots they have to make–each on a different animal: you'd never shoot the same one twice–before they achieve a successful one.

Poisoning somebody with the intent of killing him is hard enough; there, at least, you don't have to worry about applying too much, only too little. And it's still by far the least reliable way to make a kill. I'm unaware of the Hashishin ever using it (though it would hardly surprise me), and the ninja certainly didn't rely on it (I know of more documented attempts made by firearms, in fact). For the most part, ancient "blade" poisons were auxiliary measures… smear something on your weapon to cause a wound to become septic and kill the victim over time.

A big part of the problem is delivering enough poison with a blade to make a difference. Another big part is onset time: vanishingly few poisons act within seconds, or even minutes… and the situation under discussion calls for the former. One of the most toxic of natural substances, tetrodotoxin, requires between 15 minutes and 4 hours before symptoms appear (and, conversely, is so often lethal that it is inapplicable for present purposes). Curare, used to poison arrows and darts for hunting small monkeys, requires the hunter to pursue his target for several minutes after achieving a hit; while it can be delivered in small enough doses not to kill (it is used as an anesthetic in some surgeries, in fact), calculating how much to deliver to guarantee survival would be tricky at best. Snake venoms take minutes to hours even when delivered by a snake, and it would be highly unusual for an envenomed weapon to get a comparable amount into the bloodstream, even if this were considered a desirable thing.

Which is problem number three: when delivering by weapon, the amount the target receives will depend on how much of the surface area of the weapon penetrates into underlying tissue. You can have your dose calculated perfectly, but unless you get 100% of the delivery surface past the target's skin–and clothing, and anything else–you'll be off. That's also before considering such matters as subcutaneous fat or, on the other extreme, hitting a major blood vessel. Will a shallow cut serve your purposes? If so, a deep one probably won't. And so on.

So, pretty much, if you want your assailant to be using a knockout poison, you're going to have to invent one. And if you want it to be delivered during a fight, it had better be by a flunky, not a "master." The master can have prepared the poison and the weapon–but a master would never give the target a chance to react.

Me, I'll stick with my weighted sock. ;)

-

Actually, a blow to the thigh is one of the easiest ones to perform in a fight: people are less likely to protect it, and in most fighting stances one leg is out in front of the body slightly. The simplest way, assuming the attacker is intending to use a drugged weapon, would be to have the weapon palmed in the off-hand and to close to a grapple: all you need to do at that point is move the hand forward, and the target will never see it coming. However, complications of the drug aside, this also risks hitting the femoral artery–so the weapon of choice better not be very long, though in that situation it wouldn't have to be… an inch would be plenty. Which would also have the virtue of making it easier to control the dose: you just ram the whole thing in to the hilt.
 
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SeverinR

Vala
Alright, the problems with cliche ways to "knock out or disable a person":

1.hit em in the head; just as likely to kill the person as knock them out. (see blunt force trauma)

2.poison; poison(non-lethal) takes a while to take affect and must be in a correct dose, something that knocks out at the right dose can kill if to much is given, and the method of delivery is unreliable. They might get half a dose or almost nothing. Breathing poisons work faster(chloroform) but also it is faster to overdose too. (Theres a reason modern surgeries have a team of people in there, to balance the person in slumber but not let them lose thier ability to breathe.) Also gases have the possibility to knockout the attacker also, ie ether, the victim and the attacker will breathe it, possibly both could pass out.
Slipping them a micky; the most reliable, placed in something they will consume all of, ensures they get the dose, and if proper dose will knock them out, but it can take several minutes or hours to take affect. The headace after words is much like a hangover, because the "medicine" overwelmed the liver to keep the blood pure, just like when drinking alcohol. Thirst would be the same too, also the more fluids(other then more alcohol) the victim drinks the faster they will recover. (delutes the poison, and takes it away from the brain.)

3.stabbing in a safe place; shoulder-unfortunately the brachial arteries and nerves run through the shoulder, hit the artery the person will bleed to death(7th fastest way to kill...I think) hit the nerve the person will never use the arm or hand again.
thigh: good big muscle, arteries and veins are safe, slice a muscle and the person will never be as strong as they were without reattaching the muscle. This can be minimized (Imo) by keeping the blade vertical, part the muscles rather then cutting them.

Sleeper hold; used by police forces for many years, it does have the problem of not knowing if a person is faking it or actually out cold, too long and the person will have brain damage or die. (The reason most police restrict the practice anymore.)

Since this is fantasy, how about a magic taser? The affects I hear are much like hitting your funny bone hard, numbness and tingling make it difficult to move them properly, disoriented unable to speak or scream.

To disable my MC, a mage used an electric based spell, delivered by placing hands over both sides of the head, knocking her out.
I merely point out the dangers, the writer can make each one work "perfectly" but knowing the possibilities might help prevent
unrealistic occurences and give possible handicaps.
 
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