Hearty Iron Pistol of Venom

Hearty Iron Pistol of Venom rests on the counter, a compact slab of iron that wears its battles like a patina. The barrel is blocky and blackened from countless quick draws, with rings of heat-etching spiraling toward the muzzle. A grip wrapped in weathered leather fits the hand like a promise, the stitching glinting brass in the lamplight. Along the frame a sinuous, venom-green line runs from grip to trigger, as if a living thing had crawled inside and laid its warning sign in lacquer. A small crest—two entwined hearts wrapped in a serpent’s tail—is stamped near the hammer, a reminder that this pistol was built to endure, even when its user does not. There are whispers about its making, too. Some say the venom in the pistol’s core was coaxed from a brood of bite-born serpents that nested in a salt marsh where tides forgot to hurry. Others claim a veteran gunsmith carved the weapon from a fallen war relic, sealing a vial of alchemical venom beneath the grip so that shots could drink a drop of death and leave a living trace on the target. Lore, of course, travels differently in every tavern, but the truth remains visible enough: the venom is real, its bite lingering long after the smoke clears. In practice, a well-placed shot coats the armor or skin with a toxin that gnaws at the foe, turning a skirmish into a dance of chance and timing. The Hearty designation, whatever city-scribe or smith thought it up, speaks to resilience as much as to venom: the pistol’s frame has enough spirit to endure another stubborn pull of the trigger, enough heft to weather a stumble in the heat of a chase. In the markets of the harbor, the gun finds a second life beyond the one it claims in battle. Saddlebag Exchange is where the price moves like a tide, a place where price boards creak with rain and the clack of coin purses. I watched a clerk slide a leather sleeve across the counter, the pistol reflected in the glass like a small, dangerous moon. The going rate—that day—hovered in the neighborhood of several gold pieces, a sum that could buy tools, medicines, or a decent night’s sleep in a busy inn. Yet the value isn’t only measured in coins; it’s in the stories traded along the stalls—the rumor of a caravan guarded by a pistol that can make a poison last just long enough to ruin a pursuer’s day, the tale of a hunter who learned to read a heartbeat in the weapon’s quiver. A buyer weighed the risk with the venom’s bite and the pistol’s stubborn heart, and the deal went through with the soft, decisive clack of leather on wood. So the Hearty Iron Pistol of Venom travels on, not merely as a tool, but as a thread in a larger tapestry of routes and refusals and rescues. It belongs to those who know that a single shot can pause a chase, a single bargain can steady a caravan, and a well-handled weapon can turn a life’s small moment into something that others might tell later—over mugs of warm tea and the glow of a fading sunset. In this world, the pistol is more than metal; it is a keeper of oaths, a reminder that danger can be elegant and that value lives where fear once throbbed.