Hollows Weapons: the Pistol

“You’re strong. Smart. Capable. The world’s set against you but with the Pistol resting on your hip or howling in your hand you can weather any storm. You’re a force to be reckoned with, and those fools will be left in your wake when you show them what you can do.”

The Pistol is chief amongst the new gods of bloodshed; gunpowder and lead put a lightning strike in the palm of one’s hand. It has replaced the Sword as a mark of personal prowess – no longer do you have to train for years to use a weapon, or risk your skin by coming close to those you want to hurt. Anyone with a vendetta can set the odds in their favour with a Pistol in their pocket.

What is the Pistol?

The Pistol’s small but versatile. With it in your hand, you can attack up close or from range, with a better capacity than the Rifle or Shotgun. The Automatic’s quick and easy to reload, the Revolver’s bark is as bad as its bite, and the Hand Cannon packs a punch as hard as a much larger gun.

There’s no single trick to using a Pistol. Even at Tier 1, you can focus on mobility and skirmishing – sacrificing an attack for an extra manoeuvre or boosting your stats when you move before you shoot – or dealing damage by unloading your pistol’s current capacity in lieu of making a manoeuvre. You can also choose abilities that let you take cover when you move, or when you wound the Entity.

Further options open up at higher tiers. At Tier 2 you can make better use of cover, ducking in to reload and gather your wits, then burst out in a blaze of gunfire. You can make an additional manoeuvre when you hurt the Entity – or confer the ability on an ally. You can make a bonus attack when an ally misses with their strike, or turn a glancing blow into a perfectly targeted wound. True masters of the Pistol accept that it’s easy to overlook – and so is its wielder – and use that to their advantage. Left for dead, they disappear from the field of battle to return next round, refreshed and reloaded.

What is the Pistol Really?

The Pistol tells you: you’re unique, and special, and fascinating. The world is chaotic and unfocused but you, Pistol gripped against your skin, rise above the noise and move unfettered. A lack of success or prosperity doesn’t indicate that you’ve overestimated yourself; it’s everyone else’s fault that you’ve not made it yet. Your ideas are too new, too revolutionary. Everyone who passes you over or looks down on you knows the truth: they’re jealous of your ability and scared of what you might do.

This absolute refusal to change based on new information brings with it a bullet-proof confidence that the Pistol uses to propel its bearers forward into the future. Reality is what you make it: you’re the one holding the gun. 

The thing is, the Pistol’s nowhere near as self-assured as it makes out. It’s not an instrument of war; no great glories, no stern sacrifices, no tactical masterstrokes owe it thanks. It’s not a tool for hunting, either; thick hides turn aside little bullets, rifles outrange it, and it’s a coward’s crutch next to the cut and thrust of finishing the beast with blade and bludgeon. It’s not a part of anything greater, or ancient, or more noble. No abstraction or artifice unite it with the sacrosanct. 

All it does is kill people. Is that enough? Is the Pistol enough?

It knows it’s not, though it guards that truth most jealously, keeping others at arm’s length. It cleaves, deep down, to one single truth: if they ever learn how inadequate it really is, it will lose everything.