Artifacts/MaggotRevolver
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The Heart Seeking Banquet Revolver
The Revolver is an evolution of the horrid Maggot Casters used by the dead. Abyssal Exalted, always looking for new and exciting ways to hurt people, simply improved upon the old design. While the original design of a Maggot Caster requires returning to special gardens and reloading by hand - good luck catching or raising the disgusting beasts - the Revolver instead uses a different takc: a Bone Maggot Queen, specially infused with blasphemous magic, makes its lair within the weapon itself. With proper care and feeding, described below, the Queen may replace any fired maggots.
The Revolver, in its normal configuration, holds five "firing" maggots. They're arranged in a five-cylinder rotating chamber. Each slot in the chamber has a gap going backwards to an elongated barrel just above the handgrip, where the Queen makes her lair and births replacement maggots.
Statistics of the Banquet Revolver
The Banquet Revolver is an Artifact **** item, and is constructed of Soulsteel. It has two Universal Mounts, usually equipped with Soulfire Crystals. If the character does not purchase any additional Soulfire Crystals, the Revolver is considered to come equipped with one crystal containing six motes.
The Banquet Revolver requires the commitment of 6 motes of essence, and the Bone Maggot Queen requires 3 motes to be fed to her per day if the character wants to keep his weapon functioning. Not feeding her for three days causes her death, rendering the weapon useless.
The Banquet Revolver's combat statistics are as follows:
- Acc +2, Dam: Special, Range 75 (maximum), Rate 2
Reloading the Banquet Revolver takes a full turn and a dice action, and requires the Abyssal to spend 2 motes per maggot "reloaded."
Each discharge drains 1 mote from the Soulfire Crystal(s) mounted in it. No more motes in the Crystal means no more firing.
Maggots fired from the Revolver do not automatically burrow into their targets; instead, they latch on to a target and begin feeding. Thin cords of calcified Essence connect the maggots to the Revolver, allowing their feeding to benefit the device.
When fired, a Maggot latches onto his target; on the next turn, at initiative 12 if the target is armored, or immediately if the victim is unarmored, they begin to feed. Such feeding causes one automatic health level of lethal damage per turn, and feeds 1 mote of essence back to the Revolver.
The Abyssal may choose to claim the Essence himself, to recharge the Soulfire Crystal, or to put it towards feeding the Queen.
The threads connecting the maggots to the Revolver may be severed, which immediately kills the Maggot when done violently; the threads possess 1 HL and a bashing/lethal soak of 4.
The Abyssal may call the Maggots back, detaching them from their victim, at any time; they are available for firing again at initiative 12 on the next combat turn.
Alternatively, the Abyssal may detach the Maggots on firing; using them in this fashion duplicates the effects of a Maggot Caster, except Maggots fired with a Revolver act on initiative 12, rather than 10.
A Bone Maggot Queen is likely only to be found in a Deathlord’s garden, and woe to the Abyssal who has to beg for a replacement…
Botches with this weapon can prove incredibly entertaining; some possible effects are that all existing threads to Maggots already fired immediately dissolve, killing those Maggots, or the maggot about to be fired receives an overdose of Essence, and explodes in the chamber – necessitating cleaning before firing from that chamber again, and costing 2 motes from the Soulfire Crystal rather than 1.
Comments:
Have you considered the unfortunate fact that this gun will only work in the underworld? Admittedly, the maggots may well be spectral creatures, but if they are not, some way of channelling essence into the gun without a soulfire crystal is suggested. Maybe the abyssal can just spend essence, and doesn't need the crystal. It certainly makes sense, because ghosts are not renowned for having a lot of essence.
-- Darloth
