Power 4 Acc +2 Range 40 Shots 12
It's odd to say this about any item of Vaputech, but
the Lepid Gun is honestly a work both of art and of craftsmanship - even if it was
made by the Baroque Weapons Division (motto: "For all your Evil Mastermind
needs"). The craftsmanship is
obvious: there is none of the usual Vapulan shoddiness, haste or poor design
flaws enshrined in the gun. It looks
exactly like what it is: a properly machined over-and-under pump action shotgun
with no corners cut and all sensible bells and whistles. The artistry is self-evident, too, showing
up mostly in the carefully selected materials that it's constructed from - and
the way that someone with a real aesthetic sense carefully chose how those
materials were put together to please both the eye and hand. In short, this gun is functional, reliable
and really, really pretty.
It's a shame that it can only fire dead bugs.
Corporeal Forces: 1 Strength:
2 Agility: 2
Ethereal Forces: 0 Intelligence:
0 Precision: 0
Celestial Forces: 0 Will:
0 Perception: 0
Vessel Equivalent: 1 Body
Hits: 4
Skills: Fighting/5, Dodge/4
Songs: Numinous Corpus/1 (Acid)
Disadvantages: Need/3 (Blood)
This is your standard, everyday Undead
butterfly. Well, admittedly it's an
Undead butterfly with razor sharp wings and a taste for human blood, but even
so it's not really unusual for zombified creatures. It's got a mean temper, too.
Once it gets going, it doesn't stop until either it goes down or the
targets do: usually the former applies, as Razorwings on their own aren't
exactly the most dangerous zombis out there.
This is why, of course, that Vaputech decided to use them as self-mobile
ammunition. There's something about the
idea of a bullet that can cut it's way out of a target and go looking for more
to slice and dice that just appeals to the Technological mind.
The delivery method is simple enough. A standard shell is just that: a translucent
blue gel cylinder with the Razorwing in the center. The blue gel collapses shortly after firing, cushioning the
initial shock while allowing the Razorwing to survive both the firing process
and the later impact with the target: it also keeps the zombi in stasis (so as
to avoid the degradation process). Once
the Razorwing 'wakes up', it cuts itself out and attacks anything within
range. This includes the owner of the
gun, so keeping your distance is probably a good idea. If you want to seriously maim or freak out a
bunch of humans, this does quite nicely.
For celestials, well, there's always Tickshot.
Corporeal Forces: 1 Strength:
1 Agility: 3
Ethereal Forces: 0 Intelligence:
0 Precision: 0
Celestial Forces: 0 Will:
0 Perception: 0
Vessel Equivalent: 1 Body
Hits: 2
Skills: Fighting/6, Dodge/3
Songs: Numinous Corpus/1 (Acid)
Disadvantages: Need/3 (Essence)
These
are, well, Undead ticks. A standard
ammo load is about fifty or so, which can be important. Note how well the initial gun attack
succeeded: for every point that the roll succeeded by, ten ticks will attach
themselves. They only do active Body
hit damage when they first attack: afterwards, they merely burrow in and start
sucking out Essence. Every ten ticks
that infest a target will suck out 1 Essence immediately and 1 more per hour. If they go more than 4 hours without sucking
Essence, a Tickshot will drop off and go look for another victim. Aside from the obvious Essence drain,
there's the problem that the Essence is immediately spent, meaning that the
target is now regularly causing disturbance.
This has made the gun popular among some elements of the Game.
The bottleneck for the Lepid Gun is, of course,
ammunition - but not as much a one as some might think. It would seem that some Vapulan industries
produce Razorwings more or less industrial pollution: the Lepid Gun transforms
this from a minor annoyance into a benefit.
However, Tickshot is much harder to acquire, to the point that most
Lepid Gun users usually only have one at any given time.