Carrion Steam Pistol rests on a faded leather pad, its brass body catching the room’s lamplight with a stubborn glow. The barrel is long and slender, raked with shallow grooves that reflect a lifetime of steams and sparks. A riveted copper frame runs along the underside, supporting a tangle of pipes that feed a small pressure gauge. The grip is wrapped in weathered leather, stiff with oil, and a crest—an etched skull stitched with gears—grins from a brass plate near the trigger. Steam hisses softly from a vent near the muzzle, curling in damp rings that cling to your sleeve. The finish wears a map of scars: dings from fists and field tests, a dent where some improvised plate once buckled under pressure. Its weight sits oddly balanced, as if engineered to coax the hand into a precise, practiced rhythm. The Carrion Steam Pistol carries a rumor in its brass: that it was born from a pact between scavenger ingenuity and the lingering memory of carrion-haunted markets, a weapon cobbled from plague-shrivelled relics and clean-running steam. In combat, the pistol speaks with a smart, calculated hiss. A robust pistol shot launches a riveted slug that clears space at close range, then a second puff of steam follows, ready for the next trigger pull. It rewards patience and tempo, letting a careful operator thread shots into weak points while the steam builds a short-lived pressure window for a follow-up burst. In the right build, the pistol powers through conditions—Bleeding, Poison, or Burning—stacks that chisel away at a foe while you dodge through the smoke. Its compact form makes it ideal for an engineer's toolkit or a street-front scavenger who keeps one eye on the clock and the other on the next opportunity to trade salvage for survival. The weapon’s lore—carrion, steam, and a whisper of old-world machinery—gives it a narrative heft: each shot is a small story of a city trying to breathe again, each plume of vapor a memory of the days when rot and the river met in a single, stubborn problem to solve. On a sun-warped afternoon in the market district, I watched a crowd of traders barter under canvas roofs, the Saddlebag Exchange pulsing with the hum of business. An old merchant, eyes bright behind clouded glasses, named a price that made even the boldest hands slow. We spoke of value in silver and stories, the currency that binds a community when metal and wood fail to hold. He leaned in and told me the pistol had cousins—a lighter variant for scouts and a heavier one for enforcers—traded in the same stalls. If you bargained hard and listened to the telltale hiss of the steam as the weight settled, you could walk away with not just a weapon but a piece of memory. The Saddlebag Exchange isn’t merely a shop; it’s a hinge where craft meets the need to move on, a place where a Carrion Steam Pistol might be priced as a tool or a tale. Carried through rain-washed alleys and ruined libraries, the pistol remains a reminder that the world always tests its salvage with heat and pressure. It doesn’t just shoot; it narrates the wear of armor and the stubborn, stubborn will to endure. When you hear the hiss and feel the slight kick in your palm, you’re listening to a small, human victory: a crafted object that turns decay into defense, a reminder that stories—like steam—need to escape to be believed.