#Firearms (火器)

Contents

Authority. The data-card values of this document are narrow Canon — canon only within this volume, and they cover over no entry of the weapon catalog. Operating variations such as the gunshot rule and the black-powder reload are Variant — as with every variation of this volume, premised on GM permission. And this document is the touchstone of this volume's balance. If the numbers written here waver, the spine — "this book is not a book that makes the modern person strong; it is a book that gives the drama of a future being consumed" — wavers.

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#Scent — Beside the Thunder

#Opening Fragment — Appraisal (鑑定)

It was under the eaves of the encampment (陣場), the rains having lifted. As the man wiped a rifle with a wet cloth, the smell of the matchcord came first, and the shadow came after and stood.

A teppo-gunner with a leather powder flask slung on his back — an outsider whom no one in the camp called by name, but only "Namban." A gaijin.

"Show it to me." The outsider held out his hand.

The man hesitated a while. Only after pulling the magazine and emptying the chamber did he hand over the gun.

The outsider received it like a newborn. To gauge the weight he shook it twice or so on his palm, and aiming the muzzle at the sky beyond the eaves, he closed one eye.

"A groove has been cut inside the barrel," the outsider said. "Not straight — but twisted. Whose mad artisan's craft is this?"

"Let us say a hundred artisans made it."

In place of an answer the outsider drew back the bolt. As the iron sound slid as smoothly as water, his hand stopped for the first time. The eye that could find neither matchcord, nor flint, nor touch-hole (火門) circled the same spot for a long while.

"There is no smell of powder," the outsider said, putting his nose to the chamber. "...No. The smell of a powder I do not know."

"It is a thing different from your powder."

"I understand." The outsider nodded and laid the gun across his knee. With the hand-motions of an artisan appraising a treasured object of the Spirit Realm, he tapped the butt-stock and ran his thumb over the front sight. "A hundred years — no, farther still. This is a teppo of a hundred years hence. A thing come from the place I staked my whole life to reach."

"...So, the price?"

"The price of a treasured object is set by the one who appraises it." The outsider asked, handing the gun back, "How many rounds are left."

"Fifty-eight."

"That is the price of this gun." The outsider rose and slung his own matchlock on his shoulder. "If there is one who tells you to sell it, refuse. A dying thunder is not a thing to sell. It is a thing to listen to, at its side, to the last."

#Scent — The Teppo of a Hundred Years Hence

The modern firearm is the most dangerous thing in this volume — to the enemy, and to the balance of the table alike. So the design proposition of this document is set at the head. It is stronger than the teppo. But the teppo is supplied, and this one dies. It is the outsider's appraisal exactly — the price of this gun is not performance but the remaining rounds, and the remaining rounds move in only one direction, as the Depletion System has decreed. Every hand that pulls the trigger pays its own future, one round at a time, with that same hand.

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#Law 1 — The Numeric Design Principle (a Public Declaration)

#The Reference Point — The Teppo

The firearms of this volume were not drawn from a blank sheet. The reference point is the canonical teppo — the Tanegashima and the Nicchoho the gaijin handles, and the grammar of the gun line of the weapon catalog: fixed Target Number 11, [Pierce all], one round 1 Wounds, range in zones. The modern firearm lays exactly three advantages atop that grammar.

And on the fourth row, something the teppo does not have is appended — [Depletion]. The three rows of advantage all pay their price with this one row.

#The Design of Sixty Rounds

A Self-Defense Officer's rifle starts at around 60 rounds (combat-deployment-type basis — Self-Defense Officer Set). This is not a number chosen to be cruel but a number chosen so it ends. Spend ten rounds in one session and at the mouth of the sixth adventure the gun falls silent — a design that must bottom out within a single campaign. The GM can raise this number with the dial (GM Guide) — but first read the "Heroic Tale" warning of the Depletion System. Increased ammunition is not a lengthened heroic tale but only a deferred ending.

#There Is No New Scale

• The firing check is 2d10+Archery(+card modifier) >= 11 — the same axis, the same fixed Target Number as the teppo.
• Damage is Wounds, cost is Energy, time is round and breath — all canonical units. The one scale this volume invented is [Depletion] alone.
• Range uses the zone unit only. Nowhere in this document is a measured range annotated, and Law 3's teppo comparison table is the same. The zone is the distance — how many paces that is, the terrain of that scene decides.
• The breakdown check is the firearm formula 2d10+Finesse+Archery, and maintenance is Depletion System Law 3 as is. This document lays only per-card specials atop it.

#Who Can Fire

• The skill is Archery. The Archery of the canon skill list is a ranged martial art encompassing the bow and the teppo — modern firearms stand on the same axis. If unskilled, the unskilled penalty as is.
• A person of this era (a PC or NPC of a canonical occupation) who first grasps a modern firearm has no structure in the hand. They are treated as unskilled until they spend one interlude under the teaching of one taken by Kamikakushi (regardless of holding Archery). The exception is the gaijin — the artisan's eye skips the interlude. Even a teppo of a hundred years hence, a teppo is a teppo.
• Teppo schools cannot be layered on. The teppo branches (Inatomi-ryu, Namban-ryu) of the canon bow and gun schools and the techniques and secret arts of every teppo school in that lineage — canon or expansion — do not apply to modern firearms. They are techniques forged on the premise of the matchcord's breath and the weight of black powder. Rapid-fire methods do not change the magazine faster, and the role of the third gun in the three-stage volley is one the bolt already plays. The schools belong to the teppo — leave them be.

#The Gaijin's Place

The modern firearm does not push the gaijin aside — their roads differ. The gaijin's strength is not one gun but a system: schools and techniques, the teppo squad, and the supply lines of Sakai and Kunitomo. The gaijin grows by climbing tiers, and the rifle shrinks by shaving rounds. On the morning the Self-Defense Officer's sixty rounds run out, the party's ranged firepower returns to the gaijin's shoulder. If there are two in one party — one is a thunder wearing down, and one a thunder being cultivated. So that each other's end and beginning interlock, every number of this document keeps that line.

#The Gunshot Rule — A Gunshot Is Not Free (Variant)

The gunshot of a modern firearm is of thunder's rank — by the reckoning of our time, a hundred and twenty to a hundred and sixty decibels; the only thing in this era that can compete with that sound is real thunder. And the fields and nights of this era are far quieter than those of our time. In the open field a sentry ten cho (町) off lifts his head, and if the wind helps, a village one ri (里) off wakes from sleep. In valleys, by the water, in the dead of night it carries farther still (Glossary of Terms and Measures).

The instant the trigger is pulled, two things happen.

1. End of stealth — all infiltration and ambush of that scene is broken. Regardless of zone, the infiltration state is lifted, and no infiltration check can be rolled again in that scene.
2. Drawing an encounter — when the scene ends, the GM rolls or chooses from the table below. The gunshot is on credit (外上). The trigger is pulled as if free, and the bill comes in the next scene.

Scene Tool — d10: The One Who Heard the Gunshot

| d10 | The one who lent an ear |

|------|------|

| 1~2 | No one — this time. The wind carried the sound to the mountain. |

| 3~4 | The village — within a few days the rumor that "a dry thunder strikes in the mountains" reaches a lord's ear. |

| 5~6 | Nobushi — a thing that makes thunder is costly. They come reckoning its price. |

| 7 | A scout — the scout of the nearest army records the direction of the sound. An army that knows the teppo knows even that the sound is not a teppo. |

| 8~9 | Yoma — they come not for the sound but for the out-of-era smell clinging to the sound. |

| 10 | One who knows — someone who hears that sound and knows exactly what it is. Those who can do so in this era are — not many. |

There is no suppressor in this volume. It does not come out of the drifted-goods heap, nor can it be made by the hands of this era. The gunshot is the price this volume has set on firearms, and the part that erases the price is not for sale.

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#Law 2 — The Data Cards

The cards follow the seven-field standard format of Depletion System Law 4. The common matters of the six cards are set down first.

• Firing is Energy 2 (if a card states otherwise, that takes precedence). The check is 2d10+Archery+modifier >= 11.
• Reloading (magazine exchange, loading operation), unlike the teppo's reload, does not occupy a defense slot and does not block movement.
• The breakdown check is the firearm formula 2d10+Finesse+Archery. A card's Degradation Special records only its unique trigger and wear effect.
• Every card bears [Depletion N·rounds]. A different cartridge type cannot be fed across — remaining rounds are counted separately by cartridge type.

See first that all six cartridge rows differ. A rifle cannot be fed with a pistol round, and a hunting rifle cannot be fed with shot. There is no record of "remaining rounds total forty-two" — there is "pistol rounds twelve, rifle rounds thirty," four hourglasses that do not mix with one another.

#Automatic Pistol (自動拳銃)

The rescue worker's (police) revolver is a separate card — 5-round loading, a design whose lifespan is not bound to ammunition. It is handled in the Rescue Worker Set.

#Type 89 Rifle (八九式小銃)

#Shotgun (散彈銃)

#Hunting Rifle (獵銃) — Bolt-Action

#GM Only — The Upper Tier of Thunder

The next two cards are GM only. The starting drifted goods are one backpack, and vehicles and heavy weapons do not fit in that backpack. These two appear not as a PC's equipment but as an event of the scenario — as a nightmare fallen into a hostile faction's hands, as the cargo of an escort commission, as a loan-piece for a single siege. The grammar is borrowed from the canon cannon and mortar, and the ceiling is the same: whole zone 2 Wounds. There is no firearm in this volume that exceeds it. If a PC has, in the end, gotten hold of one — give it. [Depletion] will soon take it back.

#Machine Gun (機關銃) — GM Only

#Sniper Rifle (狙擊銃) — GM Only

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#Law 3 — The Ammunition Economy and the Dream of the Reload

#The Practice of Tracking Remaining Rounds

The record of remaining rounds is the PL's part — exactly the responsibility of the record the Depletion System decreed, written on the remaining-count sheet by cartridge type and erased each time you fire. How many rounds drop is decided by the firing mode.

Burst and full-auto are strong — and the unit of that strength is not Wounds but rounds. Spray full-auto six times with a sixty-round rifle, and the campaign grows an act shorter. To put that bargain in the PL's hand is the purpose of this table. Zone-scale suppression and harassment is the part not of the weapon but of training — handled in the set technique of the Self-Defense Officer Set. The machine gun's sweeping fire follows its card special.

#Starting Remaining-Rounds Guide (Scene Tool)

The starting remaining count is, in principle, the card default, but the circumstance of acquisition adjusts that value. It is the GM's knob.

#The Dream of the Reload — Black Powder (Variant)

On the road by which the gun goes toward silence there is one side-path. Filling an empty case with this era's powder — the road of substitution the Depletion System Law 3 foretold. The dream is dreamed with three materials.

• The case — brass this era knows too. A case fallen where it was fired you pick up on the spot if the firing was unhurried; one flung off in combat returns only half (rounded up) after the scene ends, by searching that zone.
• The powder — this era makes it. The powder merchant of Sakai, the artisan of Kunitomo, or the party's gaijin. But however finely it is ground, it does not become smokeless powder.
• The primer (雷管) — cannot be made. A primer once struck is a dead primer, and no hand of this era can revive it. Live primers come in only as a scenario reward — the baggage of another Kamikakushi, a box that crossed over together, the share drawn out of the remaining rounds of a gun that fell silent first. The number of primers held is the ceiling of the reloaded rounds.

Procedure: one interlude + tools + the three materials. Per bundle (10 rounds at most), 2d10+Wisdom+Disable >= 13 — succeed and the bundle is completed; fail and only the powder is discarded (the primer and case remain). The Engineer Set lays its own technique onto this check.

The performance of the reloaded round (Black) — record it on the sheet distinguished from the original round. One letter, Black (黒), will do.

The dream of the reload is not a road to keep the gun alive — it is a road to kill it slowly. Soot fills the rifling, a weak charge makes the mechanism fumble, and still the gunshot sounds once more. To choose a death slower than silence — that too is a compromise with this era, and this volume stands on the side of that compromise.

#The Teppo Comparison Table — The Long Reckoning

Last, the heart of this volume's balance is set down in a single table. Range, here too, is counted only in zones.

The upper two rows are the modern's, and the lower two rows are the teppo's. And the campaign — grows longer downward.

In the long game, the teppo wins. The first battle is the rifle's. The tenth battle one must reckon out. On the field of the hundredth battle it is the teppo that stands. Every number of this document was chosen to keep this one sentence.

The outsider knew it from the start. So even having appraised the teppo of a hundred years hence, he did not set down his own matchlock — beside the dying thunder, the thunder being cultivated keeps growing.

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Thunder is borrowed. After it has sounded sixty times, it must be returned to the sky.