Berserker's Steam Speargun of Smoldering

Berserker's Steam Speargun of Smoldering gleams with burnished brass and lacquered wood, its barrel a coil of blackened copper threaded with steam-pipes that thrum softly when the weapon breathes. A glass cartridge sits in the heart of the gun like a captive ember, liquid warmth winking through a seam, and every notch in the stock is etched with runes that glow a pale, hungry orange when the heat climbs. The muzzle wears a jagged crown of iron teeth, not for decoration, but for the moment when a shot skims along a foe’s shield and bites into armor with a crackle of hot air. The grip is wrapped in worn leather, scarred by voyages, and the trigger guard carries a small, sun-faded badge—an old crest of a tide-rider who once rode storm fronts into a sunless harbor. It feels heavy with memory, as if it remembers every river it ever leaped—every brackish shoreline where steam and salt mingled in a single breath. Legend has it the weapon was forged in a plateau forge where dials ticked with the patience of a thousand lullabies, and the smiths whispered to the furnace as if coaxing a living flame. They called it Smoldering because it seems to pull heat from the air itself, to lay a slow, greenish burn along the blade and down the river of its shots. Those who’ve held it say the gun remembers its wielder’s intent: a berserker’s impulse to punch through iron and fear, a hunter’s patience in a spray of ash and steam. When you press the trigger, the ember core fans outward as if the boiler were exhaling a small cyclone, and a spear-like projection shoots forth with a hiss that sounds like a storm waking from a long sleep. If the shot lands, the air itself seems to flare; the enemy’s skin slicks with heat, and a burn blooms, orange and cruel, as if the weapon were feeding on reckless courage. In combat, it’s a weapon that wants to be close and loud, yet has the reach to keep a line of foes at the edge of a smoke-wreathed shoreline. The bullets crackle with molten light, and the steam gusts behind them like a living tailwind, adding momentum to every strike. A true Berserker’s tool, it favors aggression and precision—fire that bites, reach that sustains, and a tempo that turns a skirmish into a loud, rolling battle-song. Allies learn to watch for the telltale hiss after a shot—it signals a brief window when the flame licks brighter, inviting a follow-up strike or a bold dash through the broken guard of an advancing squad. On a rain-lashed morning, I stood in the market’s edge where the hustle never stilled, and the Saddlebag Exchange clerk pried the price from a ledger that smelled of oil and old coins. Four gold, he said, with a shrug and a hawk-eyed smile, negotiable if you spoke the right words or traded something of similar worth. The price wasn’t just a number; it was a chain of stories—tales of ships that burned their hulls against hot seas, nights spent under a canvas of smoke and stars, and the quiet relief of a hunter who finally found a weapon that felt like home. The Gun has become part of a larger story, carried from harbor to harbor, a relic that still breathes, still lends its courage to whoever chooses to wield it, and still remembers the old world the way a tide remembers the shore.