Rabid Pearl Blunderbuss

Rabid Pearl Blunderbuss rests on the vendor’s cloth, its barrel a flawless arc of pale, almost iridescent ivory that catches the lamplight and throws it back in a dozen tiny bubbles. The metalwork around the muzzle gleams with a soft brass luster, like sunset catching a harbor bell, while the stock wears the patina of long travels—streaks of rain, henna-dark oil, and the telltale grooves from years of steady hands. Inlayed along the grip and along the receiver are delicate scrolls, carved with shells and a single jagged line that seems to pulse when the weapon is manned. The name is etched in a script that catches the eye—the Rabid Pearl Blunderbuss—its letters edged as if they’d bitten into the wood and left a mark that time can’t erase. There’s more to it than beauty, though: a faint, almost animal scent clings to the metal, a hint of something wild and fevered, as if the gun soaked up the air of quick, desperate confrontations and holds onto the memory of them. In daylight the piece might appear ceremonial, a relic of some old quarrel between cartwrights and alchemists, but it’s no museum piece. The Rabid Pearl Blunderbuss is built for the heat of battle. Its mouth spouts a tight cone of shrapnel and congealed powder, a storm of pellets that blooms in a sudden, brutal spray the moment the trigger kisses the dish of the hammer. It’s not a sniper’s tool, not the clean, precise whisper of a long-range rifle; it’s a close-range answer, a burst of controlled chaos designed to break lines, pin down advancing crowds, or scatter a shielded foe into a dozen quick, metallic heartbeats. The weapon’s weight sits well in the hand, balanced by the smoothness of the grip, and the action—when you cock it and hear that satisfying click—feels predatory, as if the gun itself wants the moment to arrive. Lore whispers that the pearl inlay isn’t just decoration. Some say the shellfish from which the pearl was harvested were rumored to glow when anger rose in the trenches, and that such a glow found its way into the metal, giving the weapon a temper as fierce as its name implies. Others tell of a gunsmith who traded cunning, not coin, to steal back a piece of a storm-cursed coast to forge a weapon that could chase down fear itself. Whether those stories are true doesn’t matter as much as the weight they give the gun when you heft it—the sense that you’re not just handing out lead, but handing out a story, a warning, and a promise. On the street, the Rabid Pearl Blunderbuss is coveted by a certain breed of hunter—the sort who moves through markets and backrooms with the same practiced ease that a fisherman shows handling a boat. The price isn’t whispered aloud, but it travels in copper and coin along the way, often sealed with a trade at Saddlebag Exchange. There you’ll hear the murmured quips of merchants who know the weapon’s bite, and the anxious nod of a buyer who recognizes that this is a tool meant for intimate, urgent moments—moments when a single blast can tilt a night from peril to possibility. It’s a weapon that lives in stories, and in those stories, it keeps finding its way back into the hands that understand its roar.