Malign Steam Rifle of Force

Malign Steam Rifle of Force gleams under a dim lantern, brass panels scuffed from rain and road dust. Its barrel is tempered steel, a copper coil spiraling along the length like a serpent kept alive by pressure and will. The stock is walnut lacquered black, with small notch marks along the grip and a crest—an angular, jagged sigil—that hints at a long-forgotten guild of tinkers. The receiver breathes with a soft, oily chuff, and a glass pressure gauge clings to the side, glowing green when it’s ready. Every rivet carries a memory: a scratch here, a nick there, as if the rifle itself has shoulder-smacked the air’s history and won. The Malign, as the vendors murmur it’s called in crowded markets, carries more than metal. Rumors say it was forged by a reclusive artificer who bargained with storm-touched minds, someone who believed that force could be coaxed from steam the way a rope is coaxed from a coil. The lore is patchy and dangerous as the night—but the weapon’s presence is undeniable: a low, deliberate cadence when you fire, a surge of heat crawling along the forearm, and a clean, decisive crack that slices through the murk. The barrel’s mouth holds a captive scent of ozone and oil—the scent of possibilities—and the assembly’s seams catch light like a constellation stitched into wood and brass. In the field it reads less as a gun and more as a statement. You line up a target beyond the smoke, squeeze, and the rifle answers with a push of force that seems to bend distance itself. The projectile rides a gust of compressed energy, a steam-driven shock that can crack shields and topple the momentum of stubborn foes in a single breath. It rewards patient watchers, as much as bold runners; you time your shots with the wind, step into cover, and let the steam carry your will toward the next engagement. Engineers whisper about calibrations—pressure, coil resonance, and the delicate balance between heat and recoil—and hunters test that balance with each dawn, chasing the thrill of its command. Market days pulse through the city’s arteries, and that pulse leads many to Saddlebag Exchange, where traders lay out kettles, pistons, and pocketed myths on rough canvases. There you’ll hear the rifle priced with wary respect: a handful of gold, plus salvaged parts, and a handshake that might become a trade if you can prove you can handle the beast without losing a finger to the steam. Some walk away with the Malign still warm in its case; others depart empty-handed, bearing only stories stirred by the crowd. What remains, as with any weapon tied to a rumor, is the sense that you carry more than artillery. You carry a fragment of a world where force and forge share a dangerous, elegant mathematics, and that calculus changes the way you step onto a battlefield long before the first shot is fired.