The Lore of Gladius Lucis

“My illness is curiosity, and the cure is invention. But as my knowledge grows, the ‘treatment’ becomes ever more costly. Even my generous benefactors cannot always provide the materials for my contraptions, and when my desire grows larger than my fear, I venture beyond the safety of the barrier to scavenge for elusive parts. These clandestine escapades have brought me into contact with the undesired denizens that haunt the outer wastes, and I have found traditional means of self-defense subpar at best.

So I resolved to design a weapon that would satisfy both my appetite for novelty and my desire to hunt for ancient relics without relinquishing my life. I envisioned it as being formed largely from a cylindrical metal tube, whose upper aperture could generate a sustained beam of plasmodic energy—meant to cut through all known metals like a heated knife through candle wax.

The most challenging aspect was forging its exterior. I needed to fabricate a housing for a power core and a focused crystalline chamber, but the latter liquefied my early iterations. I eventually discovered that the conduit did not need to be fully enclosed to perform its duty—a fortunate revelation, for it lent the device an elegance I had not anticipated.

And why stop there? I indulged my artistic bent by etching graceful ornamentation into every spare surface, weaving new beauty among the salvaged parts’ original forms until the whole became a work of deliberate harmony.

My greatest surprise was the sound it emits—wholly unique to this device. The ignition sequence crackles with the vigor of an energy bowstring being pulled taut, and it roars like a steam furnace, resounding with a chorus of gyroscopic clockwork.

This device is merely the first, and already there are more designs coiled in the corners of my mind. I can only hope that my next scavenging expedition yields the materials required for those future projects. At least I now have my ‘Sword of Light’ to illuminate the path forward—my very own ‘Gladius Lucis.’”