The Mountain's Fist

The pre-Charter fortress sits on an isolated rock spire, abandoned when the Hush rolled through last month. Its lamps are dark and its main gate hangs open. On the upper gun battery, beneath a frost-stiffened tarpaulin, looms a shape far too massive to be an ordinary cannon.

Beneath the tarpaulin sits a massive black-iron catapult cradling a cask-sized boulder—built without cranks, springs, or gunpowder. A brass warning plate reads: "Powered by the ley. Do not stand before it in a storm."

In dead air it is inert, but to the east the sky is already bruising violet with an approaching ley storm.

With the massive iron catapult lashed to your foredeck, your ship rides nose-heavy and responds sluggishly to the helm.

To the east, the ley storm glows low on the horizon. Crossing the dead air with this much iron on your bow will put a heavy strain on your ship.

Behind two iron doors lies the fort's dry ammunition magazine, stacked to the ceiling with heavy bolts. Hanging beside the last rack is the garrison's final log slate:

"Siege engine moved during the night. Turned east on its own. Requested orders from command. No reply."

Outside the gate, an Admiralty demolition sloop is pulling up to the rock.

As your ship enters the violet ley storm, the boulder levitates a hand's breadth above its iron cradle and begins slowly rotating.

Out of the clouds emerges an Undertow warship overgrown with Hush pipes. Her captain hails you: "That stone was quarried from our homeland hills before the Crown stole them. Sell it to us, or we will take it from your wreck."

The engineer lieutenant has a sloop packed with blasting powder and orders to demolish the fort so the Hush cannot use it. She glances up at the stripped cradle and the boulder still sitting in it.

"You've saved me the trouble of stripping the iron," she says. "I'm under orders to blow the upper battery off the cliff. The Admiralty pays for survey bearings and demolition labor."

Even outside the storm, the boulder hovers above its iron cradle while a second stone slowly materializes out of the black iron beneath it.

The Mountain's Fist hurls a massive boulder that crushes ship rooms, then slowly forms another stone—and every Undertow vessel on the front now knows you carry it.

The Undertow captain crosses the boarding ramp and lays a hand on the hovering boulder.

"My grandmother's village stood on the hill the Crown strip-mined to build this weapon," she says. "Name your price for it, Captain: silver and mana crystals, or an Undertow navigation instrument that predicts the Hush."