So yes, I am participating in GLOGtober! I’ll be releasing a short article every day, less dense than my usual fare. Day 1’s theme is Guns, so here’s three powerful artifacts for your villains or perhaps even your players. Now, take it away Archmage Kul-Kashan, and steal liberally and unapologetically as always, my friends!
Across the universes of the Author, there is but one constant: lead, be it in writing implements, baked into brownies or lodged in your skull. Thus, here I will mark my findings on some of those most powerful of lead-launching instruments, for your perusement.
The Chronorevolver
At the very centre of the Time Vortex, lodged in the minute hand of the Clock of the Exarch, lies the Chronorevolver, the gun that shot time forward. In the beginning, it is said, the Gunslinger fired one shot from its six chambers, creating the first timeline as the bullet continued forward to this very day, leaving time itself in its wake. However, so great was the recoil that the Chronorevolver was ripped from the Gunslinger’s hand, drifting through the cosmos, never to be found again.
There are five bullets left in the gun, and the many Academies of Bullet Magic have been debating for thousands of years as to what their purpose is. Do they simply create another timeline? Do they do something else, far beyond our comprehension? And most of all, what would happen if someone found it before the Gunslinger did? All terrifying questions, and I, for one, hope we never find out the answer.
One rumour reigns supreme, however. It is said that the Chronorevolver’s next bullet has the power to erase time, to edit it to your whim. To create your perfect timeline. To kill the past. There are many people indeed who would give anything for such an opportunity, even myself if I am to be honest. But it is not our place to meddle with the weapons of the gods, though we spend our lives trying. Who knows what you could mess up if your aim was off?
The Holy AR-15 of Saint Pulsarim
Many years ago, in the town of Grishom, there was a cowardly priest named Horace Pulsarim. He worshipped the gods diligently, and did all the good he could for his townspeople. But his fearful nature hindered him constantly, and it was to be his downfall, for when the Vampire Hordes of Count Vikhasha came from the mountains to the north, he hid away, doing nothing as his people were assimilated, becoming unfeeling, ravenous undead thralls under the Count’s control.
As he lay in the basement of his church, curled up and sobbing to himself, he realised what he had done. He should have helped stop them, to destroy the Count. He had the protection of God, didn’t he? But he had hesitated. He had condemned those people to death just as much as the Count had, and that was unforgivable.
But it was in that moment that God herself appeared in front of him. “You have a chance yet to redeem yourself.” She said to him. “Take up arms, Horace, and fight back the hordes, knowing that I will watch and protect you.” He stood up, wiped the tears from his eyes, and took an AR-15 from the local lord’s castle. The lord was a vampire now, anyway, so he wouldn’t mind.
With nothing but absolute faith, he caught up to the vampire horde and waged a guerilla war with them, entirely alone. God blessed his rifle, and it was given healing properties, turning any vampire it hit back into a human. The people he freed joined him in battle, every vampire killed becoming a soldier for Pulsarim’s army, until all that was left was the Count Vikshasa. Pulsarim shot him, turning him back into the kindly man he had once been, and was pronounced a Saint.
A nice story indeed, but with a few inconsistencies. Chief of these strange things is that the world Pulsarim inhabited had no gods, nor any contact with the Author. Thus, Pulsarim must have hallucinated his meeting with God. What that does not explain, however, is that the part about the rifle becoming magical is entirely true. My theory, while admittedly unlikely, is that his sheer faith and unquestioning belief in his non-existent God managed to imbue the AR-15 with power by force of will alone, an absolutely astronomical feat.
These days, the rifle turns up every once in a while still, whenever an undead threat of large proportions threatens a world. The rifle chooses a wielder, and they become a Pulsar, a powerful vampire-killing gunman with an unquestioning belief in ‘God’, a non-existent being that apparently talks to them in their head.
The Hungering Gaze of Kil’gattan
Kil’gattan, the City of Demons that exists in nearly every universe, a hive of such evil that even the demons who live there fear what lies in its deepest depths. The Pit Lord Kharkik, a demon warlord feared throughout the universes, travelled there in search of the Stygian Forge, trekking through the forgotten places of the City until he eventually found it. There, he spent many years working on one thing: the shotgun known as the Hungering Gaze of Kil’gattan, crafted from the eyes of the City itself. Kharkik took this weapon and used it to kill the Nameless Fear, taking its title and place among the Black Lords of the Chaos Emperor.
The Hungering Gaze is one of the few weapons in existence capable of killing a Greater God permanently, and seeks to do so constantly. It has a portion of the will of Kil’gattan, the progenitor demon killed by the Author at the end of the Great War between Law and Chaos, and so wishes nothing more than to kill her in revenge. Merely holding the gun will turn you into a Lesser Deity of the Godkilling Domain, with all the power that entails. Let us hope then, that no one ever finds it.
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