Bloodsteel Barb

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Description

Vicious barbed spears, the bloodsteel barb is patterned after a fishing spear, with wicked protrusions designed to tear flesh and scrape bone, or to hook clothing or skin and allow a sharp twist to snap or fracture a limb. At it's most effective it easily penetrates light leather or padded cloth and inflicts catastrophic damage on the soft meat beneath.

While the orichalcum alloy head of a bloodsteel barb is often reddish-gold in colour, the weapon takes its name more from the traditional method of forging and tempering the metal. Once the metal has been purified in a bath of beggar's lye, living blood is mixed into the alloy. In certain darker times the final quenching of the spear would be in the body of a living orc, to give the weapon a taste for orcish blood. If the orc prisoner was not killed in a single thrust the weapon would be melted down and the crafting process begun again. This cruel practice has fallen out of favour in these more civilised times; perhaps more importantly, there is evidence that it gave rise to hateful, twisted weapons whose bloodthirsty hunger tainted the wielder and tempted them into barbarism and ultimately drove them to madness. In some cases the weapon failed to strike at a vital moment, dragging the wielder to his death at the hands of the orcs.

Today, it is much more likely that an artisan will allow several drops of their own blood to run into the metal. Anyone who actually committed a murder while creating a bloodsteel barb would face the full fury of Imperial Law.

Rules

• Form: One-handed Spear.
• Effect: Twice per day, you may call CLEAVE with this spear.
• Materials: Crafting a bloodsteel barb requires thirteen ingots of orichalcum, seven measures measures of beggar's lye, four ingots of green iron and four measures of ambergelt. It takes one month to make one of these items.