Consolidation Embrace Thy Judgement

[NPC of the Day]

Zerhast, Southern Manufactorum District — Zenithian Capital Province

The rain came down in sheets of ash-grey, washing the soot from the red-brick alleys of Zerhast’s Manufactorum Quarter. The scent of oil, char, and wet iron clung to the air as if the city itself breathed industry. Beneath the shadow of the gear-spired Parliament of Steam, the forges still belched smoke, their chimneys clawing toward the overcast sky like the iron fingers of a dying god.

Within the arc-lit confines of Vokrum & Daughters Munitions Guild, the rhythmic clang of hammer on steel resounded through the vaulted chamber. Sparks leapt from the forge as apprentices scurried like beetles across the stone floor, hauling copper coils, raw blackwood stocks, and barrels of alchemical pitch. At the center of it all stood Armin Vokrum, master gunsmith, hunched over the workbench like a priest before an altar. His face was lined, his beard cinched in brass rings, and his soot-smeared apron bore the scars of a thousand prototypes.

The musket on the bench before him—Model 47c, Precursor Coil-Fire Assembly—lay in pieces, its brass internal coil arcing gently with blue light. Armin cursed under his breath. Another misfire. The flashback from the discharge chamber had charred the wood again. Unacceptable.

He was not alone.

“I see your toy’s still exploding,” came a sharp voice from the doorway.

Commander Isadora Wren, gaunt in her polished cuirass and naval bluecoat, strode in with the discipline of a woman raised by war. Her mechanical arm hissed as she pulled off her leather gloves, revealing intricate clockwork digits that flexed with a faint hum.

Armin didn’t look up. “It’s not a toy, and it’s not exploding. It’s expressing its flaws.”

“Exploding expressively, then.” She stepped closer, her gaze sweeping across the smoking weapon. “This won’t do, Vokrum. You’ve had three months. Parliament demands a prototype before the end of quarter. Queen Nepheli herself is watching.”

He slammed a wrench on the bench. “You think I don’t know that? The old muskets misfire if you so much as sneeze too hard. But this—this is different. She wants a weapon that can judge, Commander. One that answers the chaos of the sea and land with order. Firearms worthy of the Zenithian name. Do you know what that means?”

Isadora folded her arms. “I know what it means for my soldiers to die in the field because their powder’s wet. You’re a gunsmith, Vokrum. Not a philosopher.”

“And yet they keep coming to me with questions of fate.” He smirked. “You want judgment. You’ll have it. But you’ll need to change the way your military thinks.”

They stood in silence for a moment as the forge hissed behind them. Finally, she asked, “Can it be done?”

Armin sighed, wiping sweat from his brow. “Not like this. The ignition coil is flawed. I need stabilized steam capacitors—fine-grade. And brass etched with script runes for conduction, not decoration. Parliament’s cutting corners.”

“Then talk to Lady Ignessa Aurel, Minister of Allocation. She controls the alloys. Get her to fund your materials.” Isadora turned to leave.

“She hates me.”

“Then flatter her. Lie. Tell her this is the future of Zenith. Tell her it sings.”

---

That night, as rain crackled on the rooftops and lightning lanced across the skyline, Armin Vokrum drafted the first blueprints of what would become the Judicator Pattern Musket. He scrawled the name in ink thick as oil at the top of the page, and beneath it, a simple phrase—“Let the Flame Decide.”

The embers of necessity had been lit. What came next would forge a legend.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Aurelian District, Zenithian Capital Province — One Week Later

Lady Ignessa Aurel did not take meetings unannounced.

Her manor stood like a jewel of excess in the high terraced district overlooking the industrial haze of Zerhast. While the Manufactorum Quarter writhed with steam and clamor, Aurel’s domain was a place of quiet marble and copper-gilded silence. Servants glided across checkered floors without sound. Even the clockwork birds in the arboretum were wound to a hush.

So when Armin Vokrum and Commander Isadora Wren were granted an audience with her, it was not a kindness. It was a calculated gamble—one the Minister of Allocation intended to win.

They were ushered into her study, a circular chamber lined in brass-plated bookshelves and perfumed with the scent of heated ink. Lady Ignessa Aurel herself sat behind a desk of sculpted ironwood, her hands steepled. She wore a gown of indigo and steel lace, and on her forehead was a diadem inscribed with the sigils of the Six Guilds—a symbol of her control over Zenith’s vast material lifeblood.

“You want what?” she asked, not lifting her gaze from the ledger before her.

Armin stepped forward, blueprints tucked beneath one arm. “High-tolerance brass from the Parliament vaults. Engraved conduction coils. Flame-resistant blackwood for the stocks. And full access to your metallurgical engineers for coil calibration.”

Aurel blinked once. “You ask for half the armory stockpile.”

“I ask for what’s needed to build judgment into steel.”

Isadora, standing at Armin’s shoulder, added coolly, “The Queen herself has sanctioned the creation of a weapon that redefines our infantry doctrine. We are not requesting. We are informing.”

At that, Aurel finally looked up. Her eyes were sharp, catlike—too young for her title, too old in her gaze.

“You seek to put thunder into the hands of every mud-slogging conscript,” she said. “Do you realize the implications? If this weapon functions as you say… it replaces the old Guild-Pattern flintlocks. Changes how ships fight. How borders are kept. Even how Parliament exerts control.”

“That’s the point,” said Armin.

She stood, walking to the nearby case of antique rifles on the wall. Her fingers trailed over the lacquered wood of an outdated ignition musket—still elegant, still deadly, still obsolete. “Then prove it to me.”

Armin frowned. “How?”

She snapped her fingers. A servant stepped forward and presented her a simple wooden box. From it, she drew a small, flawed brass coil.

“This was recovered from the wreckage of the VSS Indignance. One of yours. It failed under pressure—just like your last prototype. Solve the heat differential in this coil. Make it survive sustained discharge without warping. Do that… and I’ll fund your judgment.”

Armin stared at the coil like it was a puzzle box made of knives.

“It’s impossible,” he muttered.

Lady Aurel smiled. “Then the war is lost.”

---

That night, Armin returned to his forge with the coil in hand. He did not sleep. He dismantled the copper latticework, exposed the flaws, mapped the warp vectors, and swore in seventeen dialects. Then, slowly, he reached for a compound few dared use in conductive alloys: Star-tempered Tellurium—a trace byproduct from deep-sea mining in the Zenithian shelf.

With trembling fingers, he inlaid it into a new coil. The result? A glow like cold fire… and silence when charged. No hum. No warping.

It held.

By dawn, Armin Vokrum had given the Judicator Pattern its Heart of Brass.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Mid-Southern Coast, Zenithian Gunnery Proving Grounds – Two Weeks Later

The proving grounds were nothing more than a wind-blasted cliffside where gulls screamed and salt sprayed across every crate, barrel, and bolt. Below the crags, the sea boiled as black powder was tested and retested in a continual war against corrosion. Nothing survived long here—except what was meant to.

It was where weapons went to be broken… or baptized.

Armin Vokrum stood ankle-deep in spent casings, flanked by his engineers, while Commander Isadora Wren drilled the first prototype of the Judicator Pattern into the hands of twelve wary marines. Their eyes gleamed with curiosity and doubt in equal measure.

Each man and woman bore the mark of experience—scarred leather coats, brass-riveted pauldrons, soot-blackened gloves. Flintlock veterans. Veterans of failure.

“We will begin with the three-round volley,” Isadora called. “Standard spacing. Fire on my mark.”

The line shifted. Boots thudded into the sand. Each marine raised the prototype musket—longer than most, heavier in the barrel, with a distinct copper-chased coil inlaid beneath the breech. The polished blackwood stocks shimmered faintly, an innovation that had nearly ruined Armin’s budget.

“Mark!”

Twelve thundercracks tore through the salt air. The smoke that followed wasn’t the usual greasy cloud of ignition muskets—it was lighter, thinner. It smelled of copper and burned oil.

Armin’s eyes widened. The Judicator had not misfired. Not one.

“Reload,” Isadora snapped.

Each marine dropped to one knee, unfurling speed-loading casks—another new invention, using rotating cylinder-feeds fed by a steam-assisted priming mechanism. A full reload in under ten seconds.

Another volley. Twelve more rounds. No blowbacks. No delays. Just judgment, roaring through the salt air like prophecy.

By the sixth volley, the engineers were shouting. By the ninth, Armin was weeping openly.

“Mark!” Isadora barked one final time.

Twelve simultaneous detonations cracked the sky.

Silence.

The target effigies—mock soldiers rigged at a hundred yards—had been turned into splinters and shredded cloth.

Then came the cheers. From the engineers. From the marines. Even from the coastal observers. It was not the polite applause of Parliament.

It was victory.

---

That evening, Armin stood beside the ocean, the prototype cradled in his arms. Isadora joined him, arms crossed, eyes on the red-streaked horizon.

“You’ve changed the shape of warfare,” she said.

“I just wanted to make something that didn’t explode in the wrong direction.”

Isadora cracked a rare smile.

“Zenith will want more.”

He nodded. “It can’t be done in a single forge. We’ll need a dedicated production chain. Artificers. Woodwrights. Alchemists. Precision gearmakers.”

“Then get them,” she said. “We’re not building a weapon anymore. We’re building a legacy.”

 

[NPC of the Day]

Forge-Quarter, Capital City of Zenith – One Month Later

The forges of Zenith had never known sleep. Even in the earliest hours, hammers rang like cathedral bells, molten steel screamed in crucibles, and the smell of oil, brass, and soot clung to every breath. Yet tonight, the heart of the Forge-Quarter throbbed with an unfamiliar rhythm—one born not of repetition, but innovation.

In a vaulted warehouse converted into a temporary workshop, dozens of specialists had been summoned under strict contractual secrecy. Armin Vokrum stood at the center of it all, blueprint scrolls spread across tables like war maps. Every corner of the room was filled with moving parts: coiling springs, powder-proof valves, rifled barrels, sealed primer gears.

This was no longer invention.

This was production.

“Begin calibration,” Armin called.

At once, the room stirred. Teams of metalwrights and assembly-line engineers clustered around the steel frames of the next Judicator models. Precision lathes spun. Brass was bent, bolts affixed, firing chambers oiled to a mirror sheen. Artisans murmured to one another in the shorthand of creation, while Armin moved from station to station, inspecting the curvature of stocks, the strength of powder seals, the engraving of the crest on the receiver: a rising sun split by a cogwheel, the seal of Zenithian innovation.

A girl named Petra—barely twenty, with soot-stained hands and a coal-burned apron—lifted a prototype from the bench. “Barrel’s clean. Spiral’s set to your specs. The new primer spring’s running tight, but it resets perfectly under pressure.”

“Show me.”

She did. It clicked into place with a satisfying snap. Armin smiled.

“Perfect,” he murmured. “We’re close now.”

Across the room, a secondary team was working on what Armin referred to as the Skeleton Line: a stripped-down, cost-effective variant of the Judicator for mass deployment. Unlike the gold-inlaid ceremonial versions shown to Parliament, this line would be functional, durable, and—most importantly—affordable.

Commander Isadora Wren arrived, trailed by logistics officers, quartermasters, and a representative from the Royal Navy’s engineering corps.

“I count twenty-eight frames in progress,” she said, examining the shop. “Not fast enough.”

Armin didn’t flinch. “We’re at capacity until we get the dedicated Foundry Tower authorized. Unless you’ve convinced the Ministry to release the eastern crucibles…”

“I have,” Isadora said simply, handing him a wax-sealed writ.

Armin opened it. His eyes widened.

“Three months of unrestricted production, direct allocation of brass, steel, and stabilized powder compound. Dock priority for shipments. Queen’s signature.”

“The Judicator Pattern has officially been adopted,” she said. “As of this morning, it is the standard-issue musket for the Royal Navy and Ground Forces of Zenith.”

Armin looked down at his hands—blackened, burned, trembling slightly.

“We’re going to need more workshops.”

“We’re going to need an army,” she replied.

---

That night, Petra and the other apprentices toasted under the clamor of chimneys and firelight, while Armin stood alone in the workshop, hands resting on the wooden stock of Judicator No. 002.

The future had been cast in brass and fire.

And the embers had only just begun to glow.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Test Range A, Ironfang Fields – Two Weeks Later

The sun had barely begun to rise over Ironfang Fields, but the range was already alive with tension. Dozens of engineers, artificers, and drill officers stood behind reinforced blast screens, eyes narrowed, notebooks ready. Fifty identical Judicator Pattern Muskets—Skeleton Line—had been lined along the benches, each bearing a white painted numeral.

“One through twelve performed within parameters,” barked Master Gunsmith Harlen Kray, pacing along the row like a general reviewing troops. “Accuracy, reload, discharge pressure. No fouling. No backfire. No delays.”

“Now comes number thirteen,” muttered Petra under her breath.

Armin stood at the end of the range, goggles lowered, sleeves rolled past his elbows. Number 013 was his design. The prototype had been adapted with a reinforced powder chamber and a revised flint striking gear. On parchment, it was a leap forward in muzzle velocity.

In practice?

That remained to be seen.

The test rifle had already been loaded by a safety team. Now it sat on a pivot-mounted firing harness, bolted to the reinforced bench. No one wanted to be within ten feet of it—not after what happened to a prototype blunderbuss last week.

“Final checks complete,” called the munitions officer. “Wind: steady. Pressure: within margin. Range: clear.”

“Proceed,” Armin said.

A long pause. Petra pulled the cord.

Click—WHAM.

For a brief, perfect moment, the musket sang. A thunderous crack echoed over the field as the shot tore into the target, puncturing a hole dead-center through the armored plate at two hundred meters. Applause broke out.

And then—

Ka-chak— a hiss. The musket began to smoke.

The rear assembly burst open.

The trigger housing ruptured with a metallic shriek, spraying shrapnel into the test bench like shattering teeth. Steam and powder vented in a howling cloud. One of the safety bolts embedded itself in the blast screen with a thunk an inch from Harlen’s head.

“GET DOWN!”

Cries rang out. Several officers scrambled back. Others cursed, shielding their faces. Petra was already running, toolkit in hand, even as Armin strode into the smoke, face grim, movements surgical.

By the time they pried the wreckage from the bench, the cause was clear: overpressure. The new chamber hadn’t vented fast enough. The priming gear had fractured under the strain, sending the firing pin back into the casing.

It was a miracle no one had been standing directly behind it.

“Too much power for the frame,” Petra murmured, turning the broken firing chamber over in her fingers.

Armin was silent. Then he said, “Bring me the blueprints for Pattern 013. And double-test all fittings for the 014 run. No full production until we solve the pressure recoil.”

“But the new design was more accurate,” one of the Navy engineers argued. “That penetration—”

“Means nothing if the barrel explodes on its second shot,” Armin snapped.

Commander Isadora arrived an hour later, boots crunching across the gravel.

“Report?”

“Pattern 013 is rejected,” Armin said. “We’ll need a new housing bracket, thicker barrel base, and a safety valve. Possibly a reworked hammer-lock mechanism.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And how long will that take?”

“As long as it needs to,” Armin replied flatly. “We’re not issuing muskets that turn our men into shrapnel.”

She didn’t argue.

That night, Armin worked by lamplight, disassembling the failed musket bolt by bolt. In a quiet moment, he scribbled in his journal:

Innovation walks hand-in-hand with failure. We court catastrophe with every improvement. But fire refines iron—and the Judicator will not break beneath the flame.

 

[NPC of the Day]

The Iron League Hall, Zenithian Foundry Quarter – One Week Later

The ceiling of the Iron League’s negotiation hall was stained with soot and crowned with rotating brass fans that clicked like metronomes, ticking down seconds in a room where silence weighed as heavily as the soot.

Armin stood at one end of the table. Across from him sat three members of the Brassblood Consortium—master founders whose monopoly over Zenith’s alloy production made them both essential and impossible. Each wore an iron-and-gold badge shaped like a furnace bell, signifying their rank within the Consortium.

None of them were smiling.

“The tolerances required for the new pattern are too precise,” one of them said, adjusting his monocle. “You want flintlocks with naval-range durability and armor-piercing velocity. That’s an engineering contradiction wrapped in fantasy.”

“You’ve had our schematics for four days,” Petra cut in. “You saw the chamber rework. The housing reinforcement. We need a custom brass-tungsten alloy that can endure repeated overpressure—”

“—Without warping, fouling, or shattering,” added Armin. “We’re not here to bargain aesthetics. We need function.”

“Function costs,” muttered Master Ravelin, the eldest of the founders. “Tungsten’s rare. Your formula would burn through three months of imports in one batch. And you want it blended? Reinforced? Bah. It’s heresy against basic smelting practice.”

“Not if we pre-treat the mold,” Petra replied. “And slow-cool under compression. We’ve run the simulations. We know it can be done.”

Another founder folded her arms. “And if it fails?”

“Then Zenith burns,” Armin said plainly. “We’re building this musket to face an enemy who will not fight fair. One that wears skin thicker than steel and fires shells from sea-cannons as big as your smelters. You know the stories. You know the truth behind the Stormcoast Retreat.”

Ravelin’s silence said everything.

Outside the Foundry Quarter, rumors of the retreat still echoed. The loss of three dreadnoughts. Hundreds dead. Muskets that couldn’t pierce the enemy’s hide. The Navy didn’t speak of it, but the industrial class remembered—and feared what it meant for the future.

“You’ll have your alloy,” Ravelin finally said. “But we want naming rights.”

Armin blinked. “What?”

“When your musket changes the tide of war, we want the stockplate stamped with the Brassblood mark. And in your design papers—our formula credited.”

Petra groaned, but Armin only nodded. “Done.”

“Then you’ll have your contracts in the morning. And we’ll start on a test batch of ingots within the week.”

As the founders departed, Armin leaned against the brass bannister of the hall and sighed.

“Did you just give up the soul of our weapon to a smelter’s guild?”

“No,” Petra said, “you just bought the only chance we have to forge it in time.”

Later that night, deep in the core furnaces beneath the League’s facility, the first alloy crucibles were poured. The molten mix shimmered with golden streaks and a blood-red sheen. It hissed as it cooled—like breath from a dragon’s maw.

The Brassblood Alloy had been born.

And the Judicator had taken its next step.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Saltspire Naval Testing Grounds, Eastern Zenithian Coast – Two Weeks Later

Saltspire was a cruel stretch of black cliffs and saltblasted winds where the ocean thundered against stone like a god in mourning. It was here, in the belly of a forgotten citadel turned weapons range, that the Zenithian Navy tested what other minds had only dared to sketch.

The Judicator Prototype Mk I—brass-blooded and steam-sealed—rested on a reinforced firing bench. Twin compression tanks bracketed the chamber. The flintlock, though traditional in structure, had been modified with a rotating primer drum and adjustable stock tension for heavy recoil. Its bore was longer than standard rifles, and the rifling inside had been cut with surgical precision.

Armin stood beside the engineers, arms folded behind his back. Petra adjusted the sighting notch and tightened a brass knob under the chamber valve.

“We only have six rounds,” she said, not looking up. “Hand-loaded. Triple-capped. Every bullet took two hours to forge and another to treat.”

“Then let’s make each count,” Armin replied.

The first shot echoed like a cannon. A steel plate at seventy meters cracked in two. The vibration punched through the citadel’s wall supports. Salty mist rolled in as if the sea itself recoiled.

Silence followed.

Petra blinked. “That wasn’t powder. That was thunder.”

They moved quickly—resetting targets at incrementally greater distances, testing at seventy, then one-hundred, then one-fifty meters. At each range, the Judicator’s shot rang true. The compressed steam chamber released a hissing shriek with every fire, but the recoil was manageable—harsh, but stable thanks to Petra’s tension rig.

By the sixth and final shot, the barrel steamed and the bolt ran hot to the touch. Armin turned to the waiting squad of naval observers, their jackets whipped by saltwinds and their expressions unreadable.

“Well?” he asked.

Admiral Caelis stepped forward. A silver chain looped across his chest, weighted by twin medals earned during the Skyfire Siege.

“You’ve made a beast,” he said. “But a beast that can be tamed.”

Petra raised a brow. “Is that approval?”

“That’s a requisition,” Caelis said, handing over a signed scroll. “One hundred prototypes. To be delivered within the quarter. The Navy will help fund expansion of your production facilities. Saltspire will become your proving ground.”

Armin barely had time to process it before a storm rolled over the cliffs, lightning cutting the sky in twin arcs. He looked to Petra, whose smirk betrayed the pride she wouldn’t speak aloud.

“We’re not done,” she said. “Barrel fouling is still too high. The valve hisses unpredictably on rapid cycles. And the steam couplings need reinforcement.”

“But it works,” Armin replied, smiling despite himself. “The Judicator works.”

Below, the spent brass casing hissed in the saltwater like a wounded serpent. A new age of Zenithian warfare had just fired its first shot—and the sea had heard it.

 

[NPC of the Day]

The Underfoundry, Cogward District – Zenith Capital, Two Weeks Later

Beneath the smoke-belching furnaces of Zenith’s industrial core lay the Underfoundry—a maze of riveted walkways and gear-choked catwalks where steam hissed like serpents and molten brass flowed like lifeblood. It was here, amidst the clang of forgehammers and the shriek of sawblades, that a rebellion began.

The order for one hundred Judicator prototypes had reached the Cogwrights’ Guild—Zenith’s most feared and indispensable artisan caste. For decades, they had controlled the gears, presses, and engines that powered the kingdom’s technological supremacy. But the demand for the Judicator meant something new: it meant mass production. And that meant change.

They did not take kindly to change.

Armin arrived late in the afternoon, boots ringing against iron-grated walkways as he descended into the Underfoundry with Petra at his side. She carried the prototype in a padded case, flanked by a trio of heavily armed militiamen clad in boilerplate cuirasses. Armin was already sweating by the time they reached the central press hall.

The Guildmaster was waiting. Grigori Thane—broad, soot-smeared, and breathing through a brass-filtered mask—regarded them from behind a pile of shattered dies and snapped forge-jigs.

“You want us to bend this entire facility to a single design?” Thane growled. “To retool generations of precision gearwork into an untested musket?”

Armin opened the case. “The Navy doesn’t think it’s untested. Neither do the Admiralty or the Engineering Office. And neither do I.”

Petra remained silent, letting the weight of the weapon speak for itself.

Thane stepped forward. He picked up the Judicator Mk I, turned it in his scarred hands, and ran a thumb over the machined chamber. “Too many parts. Too many fine tolerances. You’ve made a sniper’s dream—not a soldier’s tool. It’ll choke in ash. Break in frost. Jam the first time a coalbit falls into the lock.”

Armin didn’t flinch. “Then improve it. That’s your task.”

“You dare give the Cogwrights a task?”

“I give them purpose.”

There was a moment of dangerous quiet.

Then Thane laughed. A rough, metallic rasp. “You want a war-musket, Lord Engineer? You’ll get one. But don’t cry when it breaks men as easily as it breaks nations.”

He gestured to the gathered smiths. “Strip the prototype. Catalog every piece. Double the chamber yield and reinforce the stock. We’ll show the crown what industrial precision can really look like.”

Petra leaned close to Armin as the foundry exploded into motion.

“You just insulted half the Guild,” she whispered. “And they’re going to make you a better gun because of it.”

Armin nodded. “That’s the plan.”

Over the following days, sparks filled the forges and the rhythm of industry rose like war drums. The Cogwrights—fiercely proud, unrelentingly exact—tore the Judicator down to its bolts and built it back anew. Thicker barrel. Simplified valve system. Interchangeable parts.

The age of bespoke rifles was dying.

The age of war-forged precision had begun.

 

[NPC of the Day]

The Capital Promenade – Zenithian High City, One Month Later

The air smelled of oil, ozone, and polished brass.

It was a day of ceremony—ostensibly for Founders’ Remembrance, but no one doubted the true reason for the gathering. A battalion of Zenith’s soldiers marched through the heart of the city clad in new crimson-and-iron uniforms, each bearing a polished Judicator Pattern Musket slung across their shoulder.

The crowd lined the Promenade in reverent silence. Not even the chimneywinds stirred above the great flag-strung towers. For the first time in generations, Zenith displayed its military might in the open—not as a threat, but as a promise.

Armin Valdric stood atop the reviewing platform beside Queen Nepheli, the flickering brasswork of her war-crown alive with circuitry. Her face was calm, her whiskey brown eyes glowing faintly beneath the ceremonial veil. Beside her stood Lord Admiral Cressyn, a storm of medals upon her breastplate, and Petra, in the newly minted blue of the Armament Office.

“The first thousand have passed field trials,” Petra whispered to Armin. “The second thousand ship to the North Fleet next week. The Underfoundry’s clockwork lines are fully operational.”

Armin nodded, but his eyes were fixed on the formation below.

The first rank of soldiers—called Linekeepers by their drillmasters—halted with synchronized precision. Then came the command:

“Judicators—present arms!”

One hundred muskets swung forward in perfect unison, the gleam of their barrels catching the high sun. The weapon was unlike anything seen before: shorter than the old arquebus, with a square-cut stock reinforced in brass and a steam-choke valve mounted just behind the firing assembly. Even the bayonets—folding spike-tooth models—spoke of brutal efficiency.

The crowd erupted in cheers.

From the dais, Queen Nepheli raised a gloved hand. Her voice rang out, carried by engineered loudhorns hidden in the arches.

“Let it be known across the waves and wastes: Zenith does not sleep. We do not wait. We build, we rise, we arm. With every cog turned and every spark struck, we remake the world in our image.”

The cheers grew louder. But it wasn’t just national pride in the air—it was awe.

These were not knights. Not relic-bearers. Not mages.

They were soldiers. And the Judicator was their torch.

Later, after the parade and speeches, Armin stood alone in the shade of the Watchspire Tower. Petra approached, holding a folded blueprint.

“The Queen has approved mass deployment,” she said. “We’re officially at Pattern Status: Judicator Mk II.”

Armin exhaled. “It’s real now. Not just a design. Not just a test.”

“No,” Petra agreed. “Now it’s a doctrine.”

He looked back over the plaza, where children were already pretending to drill with stick-muskets and whistleblown commands.

The flame had been lit.

Now it marched.

 

[NPC of the Day]

The Salt Reaches, Eastern Borderlands – Two Months After the Iron Parade

The Salt Reaches were named for the dead brine that once drowned the land—flat, cracked plains littered with salt towers, wrecked siege engines, and the bones of long-forgotten wars. It was the outermost fringe of Zenithian territory, an eternal frontier where raiders and outlanders tested the Crown’s reach.

It was here that the Judicator Pattern Musket would face its baptism of fire.

Captain Morghan Aelric adjusted the pressure valve on his musket’s recoil stabilizer and lifted his monocle scope. Below, across the salt-crusted dunes, smoke and banners of a raider caravan rose—a makeshift warband, mounted and mobile, closing fast. They outnumbered his detachment nearly two to one.

“Sir,” came a call from the trenches behind him. “All squads are loaded and primed.”

Aelric nodded. Around him, a mere forty Zenithian Linekeepers braced themselves in shallow redoubts carved into the brittle salt. Their muskets gleamed, even in the heat haze.

This would be the first field test under real combat conditions. There were no engineers present. No Queen. No scholars.

Just the steel in the soldier’s hand—and the fire it could bring.

Aelric raised his arm. “First rank,” he barked. “Ready position. Fix bayonets.”

Click-clack. A razor-toothed bayonet unfolded beneath each musket’s barrel with a hiss of oiled brass. Steam valves locked tight.

The enemy came into range, screaming war songs, sabers and spears high.

“Present—!”

He waited until he could see the whites of their eyes—until he felt their courage cresting like a wave—

“Fire!”

The Salt Reaches exploded with thunder.

Forty Judicators roared in perfect unison, belching smoke and fire across the plain. Half the enemy’s front line vanished in a storm of shrapnel and scorched flesh. Riders fell. Screams rang out. Horses reared and scattered.

Aelric didn’t wait.

“Repressurize! Second volley—fire!”

Steam valves hissed as the second line surged forward, already reloaded thanks to preloaded cartridges and the musket’s engineered efficiency. The second blast tore what remained of the front charge to pieces.

The battle lasted seven minutes.

When it ended, only salt and silence remained.

---

Later, Petra would receive Aelric’s report through encoded brass-courier:

“…under duress, performance exceeded expectations. Recoil stabilization prevented serious injury. Reload time outpaced conventional arms by twenty percent. Range dominance established decisive advantage. Morale extremely high.”

She read it three times. Then sent it directly to the Queen.

The musket was no longer an experiment.

It was a weapon of war.

And Zenith was at last, unmistakably, armed.

 

[NPC of the Day]

The Spire of Glass, Crown Tactical Command – One Week After the Salt Reaches Skirmish

Within the vaulted observation deck of the Spire of Glass, the crown’s most esteemed strategists gathered beneath shifting clouds of cigar smoke and ozone. Blueprints and maps layered the central war table like scales on a sea beast—each edge pinned down by brass-tipped compass weights and steaming mugs of chicory brew. The air smelled of ink, sweat, and anticipation.

Marshal Ivar DeLance, commander of the 3rd Zenithian Legion and close advisor to Queen Nepheli herself, paced the table’s rim. He was a man whose voice could rattle armor at parade formation, and whose medals told stories few dared speak aloud.

“The musket works,” he said simply. “Captain Aelric’s dispatch was verified by two independent couriers and a third aerial scout. Forty rifles. Seventy dead raiders. Not a single Zenithian casualty.”

There were murmurs. A few brows raised. Others leaned forward.

Petra was already present, hands clasped behind her back, expression unreadable. The Queen had not attended this session—this was Petra’s theatre.

A tactician near the southern quarter of the table, Lord Tavel Omestri, voiced the first challenge. “It’s a singular engagement,” he said. “Against untrained, disorganized savages. What of shield formations? Cavalry charges? Trenches and airships?”

Petra’s voice, cool and precise, cut through the haze.

“That’s why we’re here.”

She turned, signaling to an assistant. The chamber dimmed, and a light engine clicked on behind her. Holographic projections sprang from the center console—steam-lit diagrams of the Judicator Pattern Musket exploded into component views, then reassembled in real-time firing motions.

“The musket is not simply a weapon,” she began. “It is a doctrinal fulcrum. We are no longer training warriors—we are manufacturing precision.”

She motioned, and the display shifted.

“Drilled volleys. Section-fire suppression. Steam-valve overcharge for close-quarters engagements. Integrated bayonet combat. Independent fire teams supported by portable boilers and pressure-hubs. Every soldier becomes a mobile fortification.”

Murmurs again—but more impressed this time.

Marshal DeLance tapped a gloved finger to the musket’s profile.

“And the cost?”

Petra didn’t flinch. “Still higher than flintlocks. But falling. With proper factories in Ironhold and Saint Lera, we can triple production by next spring.”

The marshal looked to the others. “Then we must begin conversion. The flintlock line regiments are obsolete.”

There was silence. Then, slowly, nods of assent.

DeLance turned to Petra. “You’ll write the new doctrine. Training regimens. Combat manuals. Parade codes. Everything. Make them ready.”

Petra allowed herself a rare smile.

“It will be done.”

---

That evening, in the Queen’s private study, Nepheli read the preliminary reports by lamplight, curled in a high-backed chair of sea-lacquered driftwood. She traced her fingers along the final page:

“…the musket does not change how we fight. It changes who we are.”

She closed the file. And whispered—

“So be it.”

 

[NPC of the Day]

Blackstone Range, Zenithian Interior – Three Weeks After Doctrine Ratification

The Blackstone Range was a cold and forgotten corner of the Zenithian heartlands. Rugged, wind-bitten, and wrapped in jagged cliffs, its primary claim to fame had been exile and punishment—until now. On the mountainside, an immense forge-fortress had bloomed from old mining shafts and buried steel veins: The Smoking Choir, first of the Crown’s official Judicator Foundries.

Petra stood at the edge of the factory gantry, dressed in soot-streaked leather and a brass-buckled coat. The air around her pulsed with rhythmic thunder—piston-driven stamping arms, gear-fed mold presses, and the endless chant of forgers laboring beneath sky vents wreathed in ash.

Below her, teams of workers toiled like ants in a hive. Men and women carried steaming barrels of black powder, stacks of cured ashwood, coils of pressure tubing, and precisely milled steel barrels. Each section of the forge had been named like a hymn: The Armory Psalter, The Crucible Lament, The Barrel Canticle.

A whistle sounded. Shift change. Hundreds of workers moved in seamless unison, guided by an ever-ringing bell system synchronized by a central gear-brain—one of Petra’s finest innovations. The musket, she knew, was only as revolutionary as the means by which it was made.

Beside her, a grizzled man in oil-stained robes lit a clay pipe. His name was Volker Senn, once a heretical machinist exiled for attempting to graft engines into war steeds. Petra had pardoned him personally.

“It sings, doesn’t it?” Volker muttered, nodding at the industrial cacophony below.

Petra gave a slight nod. “Every note is war.”

Volker exhaled a plume of smoke. “Seventeen completed barrels an hour. That’s triple our original projection. The pressure feeds help—keep the molten steel hotter longer.”

“What about assembly?”

“Slower, but catching up. I need better threading gears. The rifling process eats our teeth.”

Petra pulled out a small leather-bound journal and made a note.

“You’ll have them. This place must become our cathedral.”

A blast of steam roared below as a new boiler was brought online. In the central processing pit, a row of completed Judicator Pattern Muskets was being racked—long, slender, sleek, and cruel. The light from overhead lanterns caught on their bayonet sockets like drawn fangs.

Above the central forge gate, a wrought-iron plaque had just been installed. Petra had chosen the inscription herself:

“By Fire Made Clean.”

Later that night, she walked the lower corridors alone. The foundry never slept. Neither did she. She passed teams of juvenile apprentices watching their elders with reverence. Others etched serial numbers with trembling hands. They didn’t speak to her—but they stared.

She didn’t mind.

They didn’t see Petra the woman.

They saw Petra the architect.

And they sang in steel.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Eastern Provinces, near the Glasmere Frontier – Six Weeks After Production Commences

Rain lashed the high plains like an insult. Under the bruised sky, a column of Zenithian soldiers—newly armed with Judicator Pattern Muskets—marched in perfect silence toward the Glasmere frontier.

Captain Ravelin Rourke rode ahead, his longcoat flaring in the wind like a pennant of defiance. He had once served in the Pike Regiments, back before the musket was more than sketches and theory. His left arm, now brass from shoulder to knuckle, was a bitter gift from those days.

Behind him, four platoons of infantry trudged onward—bayonets sheathed, muskets swaddled in waxed cloth, powder horns tucked beneath oilskin. These were the first mass field test subjects. Petra’s “Sermon in Iron,” the War College had called it.

Their target was a band of rebel privateers entrenched in the ruins of a border fort. They were deserters from the old Eastern Navy, now turned brigands with stolen ships, black powder of their own, and no allegiance but greed.

But they did not yet know what the Judicator could do.

The rain didn’t let up as the soldiers fanned out across the ridge overlooking the fort. In a stone recess, Rourke pulled back the cloth from his musket and checked the mechanism: flint, hammer, trigger catch—perfect. The bayonet clipped to the underside with a satisfying click.

He turned to his second, Lieutenant Ansel Merrow. “Signal the first volley.”

Ansel nodded, and a signal lamp flashed once.

Below, on the broken ramparts, the rebels jeered—right until the first report echoed like thunder. The Judicator Muskets flared in seamless unison. Rifled barrels spat fire, and at nearly twice the range of any smoothbore, their shots found skulls and chests before the pirates could even raise their own guns.

The second volley came five seconds later. Then the third.

The Judicator’s recoil was firm, but not brutal. Its reloading rhythm—hammer, powder, ball, tamp, prime—had been drilled into the soldiers like gospel. The rain dampened sound but couldn’t mute the horror painted across the fort’s defenses.

Ansel watched with something between awe and pity.

“They never stood a chance,” he muttered.

Rourke didn’t answer. He was already descending the slope, bayonet fixed, leading the charge.

By nightfall, the fort had fallen. Casualties were minimal. The wounded rebels who survived surrendered not out of fear—but out of disbelief.

“Your guns,” one of them whispered. “They bite like thunder.”

Rourke stared at the Judicator in his hands, then toward the northern horizon where more such rebels likely waited.

“They are the voice of the storm,” he said. “And the storm speaks Zenith.”

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

Imperial Citadel, Crown of Zenith – Ten Days After the Glasmere Engagement

Queen Nepheli stood barefoot upon the obsidian floor of the Diviner’s Hall, the space quiet save for the faint ticking of some unseen gearwork behind the walls. The great bronze mural of the Zenithian Fleet loomed over her—a reminder of the storm she’d birthed and now must direct.

Before her knelt Petra Virelock, soot-smudged and unflinching.

“You have done as I asked,” the Queen said, voice low and regal. “Reports from Glasmere speak of a decisive victory. No siege. No drawn blades. Just fire, smoke, and silence.”

Petra’s eyes lifted slightly. “The Judicator Pattern performed as calculated. But its true test was not the weapon, Your Majesty—it was whether our men could bear the weight of it.”

Queen Nepheli descended the dais, her ebony cloak trailing behind her like ocean mist. In her hand, she carried a Judicator of her own—sleek, burnished, elegant. She had fired it once herself, in secret, upon the cliffs behind the palace. She knew its feel. Its soul.

“This is not simply a weapon,” she said. “It is an extension of our will. One cannot wield a storm without becoming a force of nature in kind.”

She handed the musket to Petra, who accepted it with reverence.

“I am told some of the Council grow restless,” Nepheli continued. “They fear the Judicator will replace their favored sons and traditions. That it will unmake Zenith’s honor code.”

Petra allowed herself the ghost of a smile. “Honor, they say, is forged with steel. But steel changes shape in the crucible.”

The Queen circled her once.

“You’ve reshaped our crucible, Virelock. You’ve forced my Realm to confront the future.” She turned to face the tall windows overlooking the harbor, where columns of steamships now brimmed with soldiers equipped not with pikes—but muskets. “But if you are wrong… if this weapon becomes a tyrant in our hands…”

“I will dismantle it with my own,” Petra said, voice steady.

Nepheli studied her for a moment. “No. You will refine it. If the Judicator becomes a beast, you will tame it, not destroy it. That is what it means to be its mother.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, far out to sea.

The Queen turned back toward the mural. “I will give you the full backing of the Crown, Petra Virelock. Workshop, coin, manpower. You will establish a Foundry-College—one that trains not just gunsmiths, but commanders of this new doctrine.”

Petra bowed again. “I will build it in Glasmere. On the very stone where the first blood was spilled.”

Nepheli nodded, then turned to the attendant standing at the side of the chamber.

“Summon the Admiralty. Tell them to bring maps. We must decide where next the Judicator will march.”

 

[NPC of the Day]

Glasmere Bay – Three Weeks After the Royal Audience

The great factory rose from the ruins like a steel-boned phoenix. Where once stood crumbling battlements and shattered bastions now glistened smokestacks, glass-paneled vaults, and spires of brass girders. The people of Glasmere had not just rebuilt—they had redefined their city.

At its heart stood the Stormglass Foundry.

Petra Virelock arrived before sunrise. She wore her workshop gear: thick oilskin coat, copper-buckled boots, goggles pushed up into her wind-curled hair. A team of engineers met her at the gate, led by Master Foreman Drell, a man with a face like cracked granite and a voice that sounded like iron being poured into a mold.

“She’s burning hot and clean, Commander,” Drell grunted as he gestured to the towering crucible-furnace in the central dome. “Three cycles a day. Judicator barrels, hammer-locks, bayonet braces. We’ll be able to arm an entire regiment every twelve days once the next cooling chamber’s installed.”

Petra nodded as she walked beside him, trailing her fingers along the warm steel of the catwalk. Below, young apprentices darted between press machines and lathe stations, overseen by officers from the newly formed Corps of Technic Arms. Some were former soldiers. Others were orphans who had taken to precision like ducks to water.

“What about the refiners?” she asked. “The glassworks?”

Drell gestured to a northern wing still under construction. “Stormglass is trickier. We’ve got the kilns running, but shaping it to act as a heat insulator without cracking under blackpowder stress… We’ll need more field tests. And more alchemists.”

“There are no alchemists,” Petra said grimly. “Only engineers who haven’t learned to lie yet.”

Drell snorted. “I’ll take clever lies over honest failure any day.”

The two of them entered the central fabrication hall, where a line of finished Judicator Pattern Muskets lay in ordered rows—freshly assembled, gleaming, deadly. A flag bearing the twin tridents of Zenith’s naval emblem had been draped across the wall. Beneath it, cadets were practicing fast reloads under the instruction of a woman Petra knew well.

“Commander Virelock,” barked Rhaen Telmund, the newly appointed Drillmistress. “We’ve already shaved reload time down to sixteen seconds. I expect fourteen by week’s end.”

“They’ll need it,” Petra replied. “The Grenadiers of the southern highlands aren’t slow, and they’ve begun carrying tower shields.”

Telmund sneered. “We’ll teach our boys to aim for the ankles, then.”

The laughter in the hall was not cruel—it was spirited. They were proud of their work. Proud of the Foundry. Petra realized, for the first time in months, that she hadn’t seen a single Zenithian officer demand a bow, nor an apprentice treated like a machine. The muskets had done more than change tactics.

They were changing culture.

Drell approached again, holding a sealed scroll.

“Directive from the Admiralty,” he said. “You’ve been assigned to oversee the next stage of deployment. Field officers want to test the Judicator on open terrain—northern plains near Fort Barrow.”

Petra took the scroll without opening it. She looked back at the rows of rifles. Then to the Foundry. Then to the future.

“Tell the Council,” she said quietly, “the Stormglass burns bright.”

 

[NPC of the Day]

Northern Frontier – Five Days After Deployment Orders

The winds of the frontier were colder than Petra remembered.

Fort Barrow stood like a gnarled tooth at the edge of Zenith’s reach—more a relic than a stronghold, its walls half-swallowed by frost and time. Still, it had been chosen as the testing ground for the Judicator Pattern Musket, and Petra Virelock arrived with a full platoon at her back.

They called themselves the First Line Rifles—a mixed company of naval troopers, expeditionary marines, and seasoned guardsmen pulled from three provinces. Clad in reinforced oilskin coats and bearing gleaming Judicator muskets, they looked like a force pulled from the pages of an engineer’s dream.

Captain Halven Roake, the acting commander of Fort Barrow, greeted Petra with a raised brow and a cynical frown. “Didn’t think they’d send the gun’s mother herself,” he muttered.

Petra smiled thinly. “Better me than someone who thinks muskets fire themselves.”

The field was marked by flags and trenches. Opposite the Zenithian line stood a squad of veteran infantry wielding standard flintlocks and long spears—Barrow Regulars trained in brutal skirmish warfare. This would be no parade drill. It was to be a proper live-fire trial, complete with powder, chaos, and bruised egos.

The rules were simple: the Judicators were to simulate a repulsion defense. The Regulars would launch a series of charges—some staggered, some coordinated. No deaths. No live bayonets. But bruises? Broken pride? Those were fair game.

The first horn blew.

Petra stood beside the observation tent, field glasses pressed to her brow.

The Judicator line held firm—at fifteen meters, their squad sergeants barked commands. A ripple of flame and smoke surged across the line. The sound was thunderous. Musket balls tore into the advancing Regulars with a speed and precision flintlocks couldn’t match.

“Reload!” came the cry.

Powder horns snapped open. Charges were measured, balls loaded, wadding rammed, flint hammers cocked.

Fourteen seconds later, another volley.

The second wave of Regulars broke before they even reached the dummies set in the trench line.

“Third phase!” Roake shouted.

This time, the Regulars came at a sprint—using terrain, staggering formations, trying to flank.

The Judicators shifted formation. Two ranks fell to a knee, while the rear line maintained volleys. When the enemy neared the ditch, the rear lines slung muskets and drew short sabers.

Bayonets would have been more ideal. But the sabers worked.

By the time the final horn blew, the battlefield was a mosaic of trampled dirt, shattered targets, and stunned silence. The Regulars had not broken through once.

Roake handed Petra his canteen. “I’ll say it plain. I’ve never seen a rifle do that much work that fast.”

“They’re not rifles,” Petra corrected. “Not yet. Just beautifully made muskets.”

He gave a bark of a laugh. “Whatever they are, they work.”

Later that night, Petra sat by the fire as the stars clawed across the sky. Officers passed mugs of steaming blackbrew between them, murmuring about formations and tactics, about how to train green recruits to handle precision fire under pressure.

But Petra wasn’t listening.

She was staring at a piece of parchment: an early draft of mass unit deployment orders—six companies to be armed within two months, with requisitions for another thousand Judicators by winter.

This was no longer a prototype.

This was revolution.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Naval Artificery Corps Workshop, Blackharbor – Ten Days After Fort Barrow

The word bayonet had become a battlefield.

Not on the front lines—no, not yet—but in workshops, strategy halls, and the offices of naval tacticians who now found themselves pressed to define the future of Zenithian infantry doctrine.

The musket was no longer in question. The Judicator had passed its trials at Fort Barrow with stunning success, and orders had begun flooding the armories. But with the rise of a new pattern came an uncomfortable truth: even the most powerful firearm was helpless once the line was breached.

And that’s where the question returned again and again: to bayonets.

Petra Virelock stood before a long mahogany table lined with men and women of rank. Navy officials, infantry commanders, armsmasters, and engineers—all gathered in the Hall of the Artificery Corps.

“The musket can’t be fired at close range,” Petra began. “It’s unwieldy. You all know this. But if you attach a fixed bayonet, you lose balance, reload time increases, and the barrel becomes vulnerable to stress fractures.”

A grizzled commander, General Rhudain of the Highland Garrison, grunted. “Without it, they die when the enemy gets too close.”

Petra gestured to a tray at her side. Upon it were six variations: socketed spikes, cruciform blades, saber-blade hybrids, and even a three-pronged hook designed by a dockside blacksmith.

“We’ve tested all of them. The socket bayonet wins in durability. The saber-blade hybrids have better cutting ability. But we must consider ease of mass production. Weight. Training time. And—most critically—what role the Judicator is meant to play.”

Commander Isha Merrow, a lean, sharp-eyed woman from the Queen’s Inner Navy, leaned forward. “You mean you don’t intend for them to be shock troops.”

“No,” Petra replied. “I intend for them to stop shock troops.”

A hush settled over the room.

Then Petra picked up the prototype: a socket-style triangular bayonet, forged of hardened brass-steel alloy, hollowed slightly to reduce weight and allow smoke to escape the bore if misfired. A locking ring sealed it to the muzzle with a twist—quick to fix, quick to remove.

“This is the Judicator Spire,” she said. “It keeps the weapon balanced. It doesn’t interfere with the sightline. It won’t snap under pressure. And with proper discipline, it allows a line to hold even under cavalry charge.”

Silence again. Then Isha nodded once. “I want twenty units sent to the Leviathan Guard for drill.”

Rhudain grumbled but acquiesced. “I’ll take some for the western passes.”

By day’s end, the bayonet was no longer a question—it was a doctrine.

That night, Petra sat alone in the barracks workshop, hands blackened by soot and steel. The Judicator Spire prototypes gleamed on the table before her, each one the product of arguments, bruised egos, and a vision too bold for flint and powder alone.

Outside, the winds howled across the iron ramparts of Blackharbor.

The muskets would fire. The lines would hold.

And when the enemy reached them?

They would bleed on steel.

 

[NPC of the Day]

The Lower Armory, Queen’s Powder Hall – Two Weeks After the Bayonet Trials

The Powder Hall was older than most buildings in Zenith. It wasn’t named for gunpowder, not truly—though the barrels of black powder stored beneath the floor gave the name its modern irony. No, the hall had once served as a court of inquiry for royal engineers, back when steam and spark were forbidden sorceries. Now, its echoing marble corridors heard the footfalls of innovation rather than inquisition.

Petra Virelock walked through them with a half-dozen blueprints clutched to her chest, trailing her assistant, a boy named Ilkyn barely sixteen summers old but already thick with coal dust and pride.

“The Queen’s looking for production numbers,” Ilkyn said breathlessly. “Not concepts. They want numbers, Petra. Tonnage. Brass weights. Logistics trails. Rail compatibility.”

“Then they’ll get them,” Petra murmured, stopping before the main vault door of the Powder Hall. “But not until I know what we’re building isn’t going to choke a battalion in the middle of a monsoon.”

Inside the vault, the Judicator Pattern Musket stood in neat rows—rack after rack of polished, locked, and tagged prototypes and early production models. Each bore a stamped seal: Z.N.M.F. Batch 5–Barrow Pattern. The muskets looked identical to the untrained eye, but Petra’s gaze caught the subtle differences—stock curvature, barrel girth, sight length, bayonet lock style. This was her orchestra.

She selected one and set it on a long steel table. “This one. Model 5-G. The grain’s wrong in the wood. It swells in high moisture. We’ll lose shots on jungle campaigns.”

“You want oak instead?” Ilkyn asked.

“No. I want marrow-pine laminated in brass sheet. Heavy, but stable.”

Another musket was lifted. “This sight bracket—Batch 5-D. Too narrow. The lads will lose their zero on the march. We switch to the double-post clamp from the Leviathan pattern.”

Ilkyn nodded, scribbling rapidly.

But Petra paused, lowering the musket.

Something wasn’t right.

The powder.

She walked briskly to the rear barrel room. It was sealed and reinforced, where only senior artificers had access. Inside, barrels of custom-mixed powder—Stormgrain, they called it—rested on iron cradles.

Petra unsealed one and sifted the mix through gloved fingers. Coarse. Too coarse.

She blinked.

Then turned on her heel.

“Ilkyn. Find the quartermaster of the 3rd Forge Division. Now.”

“Why?”

“Because someone’s diluted our propellant. And if one of these shipments goes to the front like that—”

“They’ll misfire?”

“No,” Petra said coldly. “They’ll die.”

For the first time in months, the Powder Hall heard its oldest echo: not the hiss of steam or the roar of muskets, but the thunder of boots racing for answers.

The Judicator wasn’t just a weapon anymore.

It was a promise.

And someone was trying to break it.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Spireholm Sub-Foundry, 3rd Forge Division – Five Days After the Powder Tampering Discovery

Steam hissed in the sub-foundry’s deep lungs, and the forges throbbed like the veins of a wounded giant. Petra Virelock stood before the central crucible, arms crossed, gaze locked on the broad, soot-caked man in front of her. Chief Quartermaster Henrick Tann, the so-called “Forgewalker of Spireholm,” wore his station like an iron shroud—right down to the mechanized braces on his knees and the steam-pulse gauntlet clamped to his left wrist.

“Sabotage,” Petra said without ceremony, her voice clipped but not unkind. “And yet the powder compounds were authenticated, signed with your mark. Explain that to me, Henrick.”

He spat a gob of black phlegm into a nearby grate. “Because I let it happen. Not by choice. But by rot I didn’t see ‘til it cracked open.”

Petra’s eyes narrowed. “Speak clearly.”

Henrick grunted and limped over to a bench cluttered with bronze cartridges and firing locks. “The Judicator Pattern has more eyes on it than just yours and mine. When the Crown pushed for increased output, they allowed subcontracting to private forges. One of them—Dunwick & Sons—was infiltrated. Corporate vultures. Paid by someone… foreign. Maybe Imperial. Maybe worse.”

“You’re saying the sabotage came from within our own logistics chain?”

“Not just saying it. I’ve proof.” He reached into a compartment beneath the bench and retrieved a steel-bound logbook. Inside were pages marked with forged signatures, altered shipment codes, and even a sample cartridge head stamped with a false seal.

Petra flipped through the pages, rage carefully measured behind her still face. “You were going to reveal this?”

“Been digging for weeks. Couldn’t prove it ‘til now. Didn’t want to raise a storm with just smoke. But after that weapons trial? It’s fire, Petra. Full blaze.”

She closed the logbook and exhaled. “Then we act like fire.”

Henrick tilted his head.

“I’m invoking War Clause Forty-Nine. Authority of the Crown. We seize Dunwick & Sons, strip their books, and haul every damned ledgerman and powder mixer before a tribunal.”

“And the musket?” Henrick asked. “We’re only ten days from final review.”

“We don’t delay,” Petra said firmly. “We refine. The trial showed us weakness—and that weakness bled because of treachery, not design. I want your best metallurgists focused on breach seal integrity. I want the new rifled barrels ready in five. And if they aren’t?”

“They’ll be ready,” Henrick grunted. “Even if I have to forge them with my bare hands.”

As Petra turned to leave, Henrick spoke again—quieter this time.

“You ever wonder why it’s called the Judicator?”

She paused, glancing back.

“Because it passes sentence,” she replied. “On all enemies of the Crown. Foreign or domestic.”

And then she was gone, her boots echoing through the sub-foundry like the ticking of a vast, iron clock.

The war to preserve the musket’s future had begun long before its first volley.

And it wasn’t over yet.

 

[NPC of the Day]

Dreadhold Proving Grounds – Zenithian Core Range, Day of Royal Review

Smoke curled from the barrels of thirty prototype Judicator Pattern Muskets, arrayed in ceremonial rows across the blackstone platform of the Dreadhold Proving Grounds. Behind them stood their wielders—handpicked soldiers in freshly pressed uniforms, steam-greased fittings gleaming beneath the midday sun. Before them, seated atop an obsidian dais carved with the sigils of the Crown, sat Queen Nepheli herself.

She was flanked by the Crown’s High Admiralty, several Lords Technocrat, and the Armorer-Primus of the Forgecathedra, all watching in absolute silence. The wind blew sharp and cold through the mountain pass. Somewhere below, bells tolled across Spireholm.

Petra Virelock, wearing a reinforced formal engineer’s coat, stepped forward to address the Queen. Her voice carried without need of amplification.

“Your Majesty, the weapon before you is not merely steel and fire. It is the culmination of innovation, vigilance, and sacrifice. It was forged in the crucible of sabotage and tempered by loyalty to the Crown. Today, it stands ready for judgment.”

The Queen’s whiskey brown eyes were unreadable. “Then let us judge.”

She lifted her hand.

At once, the thirty soldiers shouldered their weapons and locked into formation. Thirty steam-fueled mechanisms hissed as hammer-primers spun to tension. Petra turned toward the targets—rows of armor plates, dummies clad in Imperial steel, and even an armored wagon repurposed from a former enemy convoy.

“Fire.”

The order was spoken without ceremony. Thunder answered.

The Judicator Pattern Muskets roared in a synchronized blast, their rifled barrels spitting smoke and fire. Plates shattered. Armor ruptured. Even the wagon was torn nearly in half, its reinforced frame no match for the penetrative force of the musket’s improved powder load and precision-engineered bore.

Petra watched the smoke settle. Not a single misfire. Not a single cracked stock. She turned.

Queen Nepheli stood. She stepped down from her throne, each step echoing with sovereign weight. Her cloak of storm-thread silk billowed behind her.

She picked up a Judicator musket from a velvet-padded display case. Balanced it in her arms. Studied its shape.

Then, with the silence of thunder before the strike, she spoke.

“This weapon will carry the voice of the Crown to the edges of the world.”

She turned to Petra.

“You have done more than create a musket. You have armed a generation.”

A moment passed. Then another. And then the Queen smiled.

“Let the Muster be sounded.”

The bells began to toll anew. From the mountain passes and hidden forts to the shipyards and airfields of Zenith, word spread like fire:

The Judicator Pattern Musket was approved. Mass production would begin.

Its creators had not simply built a weapon.

They had forged a symbol.

And that symbol would echo across oceans and empires as the Zenithian banner rose higher still—carried on a thunderclap of steel and steam.

Thus ended the tale of its making.

But the flame of Judgment had only just been lit.