Executioner Log

[19:02] Time to get to work. Another day, another project. Brass tacks- or, in this case, arcanium ones. And not tacks, either, but a revolver.

She'd been given the arcanium to work with, as well as the sword which had, literally, taken a chunk out of the Prince Kassarus Falkenrath.

But this was just business. Plain and simple.

In two separate crucibles she begins melting down the metals. One takes the blade of the sword and the other accepts the three hunks of fresh arcanium.

In the mean time, the artificer starts finalizing rough sketches of the final product.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[19:07] A weapon to kill immortals. That has to be...the third one, now? That has come calling? It left a strange taste in her mouth, a foreboding sensation, too. The idea that another of her creations might be her undoing isn't lost on her.

But the insurance will come later.

The molds for ingots are ready and the arcanium and the orchilacum and mithril mix are set to cool in them separately.

She returns to her sketches in the mean time. An arcanium barrel and firing mechanisms. The mithril and orchilacum for the cylinder. Blusesteel with pearl accents for the handle.

Guns were sure coming back into style, apparently.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[19:14] Katrin finishes the initial sketches, the rough draft. She's made more than her fair share of guns. Even if rifles were more her preference. A gun was a gun at the end of the day.

While the 'lesser' mix of metals in the orchilacum and mithil cool- tinted a subtle red from the blood spilled prior- she takes up the still hot arcanium.

Cool enough to hold shape, but still warm enough to be malleable. She takes the contents of the phial of blood that Dietfried had brought and beings pouring it over the metal.

It's not her first time working with a vampire's blood either. As it sizzles and spits and hisses she folds in the scorched liquid into the arcanium. It, too, starts to take on the same crimson sheen as the other metal.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[19:21] She molds and mixes, working the blood into the metal like she's done so many other times before. Really, in an ironic twist, Dietfried could have asked for few better for the task.

...Or worse. Depending on one's point of view, really.

Roughly a third of the arcanium is divided off, meant to be used in making all the firing mechanisms, hammers, and pins for the revolver.

The rest she takes and begins fashioning not into a single, cylinder. Instead she fashions it into two halves. An odd practice. But part of the insurance she so strives to make.

Katrin will be twice damned if another weapon she makes is going to kill her all over again.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[19:29] The end product will not be affected in the long run. Her expertise and magics can see to that. She can still remember the runes she'd seen that day.

Runes intended for remote detonation. Katrin flips back through her notes. Achyon's people had been clever and very covetous of their best technology. Naturally they would so zealously guard some of it with such fail-safes. Now, to her advantage.

On the interior of the barrel, hidden from sight, she starts to carve them all carefully. And, as if that weren't enough, she draws the runes and fills the etchings with crushed fire runes.

'Insurance' really was the best word she could think of to describe it. If he ever came to know what she was, or intended for this gun's first act to be her death?

He would be sorely surprised.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[19:36] Once the runes are etched and the powdered crystal set, the artificer heats the edges of the split barrel to press them back together from the exterior. She cleans up any of the little magmatic welds, brushing away any stray beads. Like nothing had ever happened.

She sets her sights next on what remains of the arcanium while it's still hot, returning it to more malleable form with a flash of intense heat.

It's familiar, even moreso since she'd been making another firearm all too recently. Katrin portions off little bits of the metal at a time to carefully construct the more delicate mechanisms of the revolver's interior working. Moving parts, tiny pins, and even the firing hammer. All things that would benefit from the rigidity and magical conductivity of arcanium.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[19:57] The barrel completed? Check. The firing pins and interior mechanisms? Check. A failsafe in case her work is turned against her?

...Also check. Unfortunate, but necessary. Such is the life she must lead in order to save her miserable, cursed hide. Better to trust the work of her hands than the hearts of men or monsters.

That left two things before completion. Creation of the barrel, then the last assembly of all the component parts. Katrin turns to the cooling ingots of orchilacum and mithril alloy.

The ingot is heated up and, again, pressed into a new cylindrical mold. Another piece is lain over top of it, with seven different protrusions; one in the center and six larger ones arranged around it.

It's not an Achyon machine press, but it serves her purposes just fine. The artificer smashes down the extra piece over it to stamp the cylinder with the pattern for the bullet holes.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[20:04] Once it has a chance to cool for a third time, the artificer retrieves the stamped cylinder from her rigged up contraption.

What the press doesn't accomplish she cleans up by hand. Extra material if singed away, lines are refined, edges made tidier. Katrin will not suffer imperfections and flaws if it can be helped.

Now. Assembly. The final work, and also a final chance to erase any errors or misaligned parts.

Her magmatic magic makes it handy. Anything out of alignment merely takes a bit of heat to be coaxed back into position. Pins and moving parts slide against one another. The cylinder is fixed to a central rotating point. She tests its spin and hears the satisfying, buzzing 'whirr' as it twirls.

Music to her ears. Second, perhaps, only to the clatter of coin and the roar of a forge.
(Katrin Weiss)
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[20:06] It would not be complete without a few final touches, of course. It wouldn't be her work without a little bit of flourish, something to give it soul and personality.

She takes the pearls she'd foraged, little things meant only for minor accents. From some spare bluesteel she fashions the grips and, on opposing ends, sets split pieces of the pearl.

A little polish, a little shine, and she sets the handles of blue with bits of white onto the gun.

"...'Executioner'...what a grim fuckin' name for ya," she mutters, reaching for a cigarette.

"And here I had to be cute and suggest it."
(Katrin Weiss)
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