Petite Plutonium
This too shall pass.
Beckton leaned out sideways and pulled the gun into his shoulder in one movement. He placed a little nugget of his attention right between the two burning coals that seemed to serve as the creature's eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun shivered a little instead of kicking, but still sent a tightly spiralling helix of white bolts blazing out of the barrel and through the target.
It roared soundlessly back and hit them with another punch of flame, merely heating the air above Beckton who was safely behind the workbench. He worked the bolt, watching a brass cartridge eject, and listened carefully. There was some yelling, and then whizzes, cracks and flat thuds against his cover that indicated mortal men had joined the fray. That was fine. He popped up over, saw two in the edge of the doorway, and targeted both with a squeeze of the trigger.
Both dropped like puppets whose strings had been cut away. Beckton shivered and dropped back down behind cover. It was too easy.
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Comments (3 so far!)
HSAR
(continued)
Beckton's M1903 Springfield is a fairly old design that is bolt-action - that is, rather than having mechanisms to put a new cartridge into the chamber after each shot, the bolt is pulled backwards and pushed backwards to extract the empty cartridge and feed a fresh one. Such bolt-action weapons are still common today for their reliability and simplicity.
Petite Plutonium is the name of the device detonated as the first ("Able") test in "Buster-Jangle" series of nuclear tests. It "fizzled", producing an unmeasurably small detonation, but this was partially expected as one of the purposes of the test was to see how small a nuclear core could get before it failed to explode.
- #3130 Posted 7 years ago
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Robert Quick
Still good, still fun, still interesting. Love the attention to detail for both history and D&D.
Something about 'roared soundlessly' bothers me. Eh, not important. The last line looks like it wants to either be important by implication or IS the implication but it's not clear which. If the former, then it lacks punch, if the latter it lacks connection to the character making the observation. I think. Maybe I'm crazy.
- #3165 Posted 7 years ago
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0
Inspired by (sequel to):
Shrapnel pounded the heavy workbench and zinged its way overhead. Beckton popped up to assess the si…
Teller-Ullam- Published 7 years ago.
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HSAR
As noted before, Magic Missile is a damage-dealing spell that fires bolts of arcane force. It provides dependable armour-piercing (when applicable) damage that is never quite spectacular. Because of this, it doesn't put much of a dent in this unknown fiery enemy - but it's more than enough to deal with two men protected only by overcoats.
The weapons fired by these men were probably wartime-manufactured submachine guns like the M3 "Grease Gun" and M1A1 "Tommy Gun" in the .45 ACP pistol caliber. Lightweight and capable of rapid fire, they wouldn't be able to do much damage to a solid wood workbench. Additionally, they are significantly lacking in firepower against Beckton's weapon.