[X] The Penitent Gunslinger
Memento Mori (Exalted/40k)
- Thread starter Maugan Ra
- Start date
- Crossover
Can the Contemptuous Scribe talk to the Legion of the Damned?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Gunslinger can recruit them and make them scarier still
Abyssal War is some hot nonsense.
Would the LotD still exist? I mean Big E still seems to be in the process of dying, but once he does go kaput would they continue doing their thing?
All I really remember about them off the top of my head is that their basically. . . I wanna say Emperor daemons that go into impossible odds and kill the other people but I'm not confident in that knowledge.
Anyways vote gunslinger.
All I really remember about them off the top of my head is that their basically. . . I wanna say Emperor daemons that go into impossible odds and kill the other people but I'm not confident in that knowledge.
Anyways vote gunslinger.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly as far as thoughts go, if the Gunslinger wins, considering he was apparently part of a Hive gang, he could wind up putting together the most fucked up version of a Rainbow Coalition in all of history and fiction to shoot all the damn nobles/guards/etc. 
- Location
- Oregon
[X] The Penitent Gunslinger
Vote closed
- Location
- London, England
- Location
- Earth, probably.
- Pronouns
- None/Any
It is time to unleash GUN
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
>EXAMINE SELF AND INVENTORY
>YOU HAVE 2X GUN, WITH FIVE BULLETS
>YOU HAVE A TATTERED DUSTER
>YOU ARE A RENEGADE GUNSLINGER, WITH A THIRST FOR JUSTICE
>YOU HAVE A MAGNIFICENT HAT
>EXAMINE AREA
>YOU SEE A STRANGE MAN STANDING BEFORE YOU
>USE GUN ON MAN
>POW!
>HE IS DEAD!
>YOU SEE A DEAD BODY BEFORE YOU
>YOU HAVE 2X GUN, WITH FIVE BULLETS
>YOU HAVE A TATTERED DUSTER
>YOU ARE A RENEGADE GUNSLINGER, WITH A THIRST FOR JUSTICE
>YOU HAVE A MAGNIFICENT HAT
>EXAMINE AREA
>YOU SEE A STRANGE MAN STANDING BEFORE YOU
>USE GUN ON MAN
>POW!
>HE IS DEAD!
>YOU SEE A DEAD BODY BEFORE YOU
I - An Old Man Dies, a Young Girl Lives
- Location
- London, England
Somehow, getting shot never gets any easier. Twenty years you've walked this road, dancing with las and bolt and solid shot, and in all that time you never got used to how it feels. It's certainly happened often enough, even the luckiest gunslinger gets clipped a time or two, but somehow it never quite stays in your memory enough to feel commonplace. Maybe it's the mundanity of the whole affair, sheer indifference undercutting any attempt to fix it in your memory. A dull impact, like getting punched, and then minutes later a slow burning pain. And the blood, of course.
There is really quite a lot of blood.
"It works!" Lyra calls out excitedly from her position at the head of the train, the joy in her voice warring with nerves and exhaustion. The great engine beneath her feet thrums violently under her feet, filling the echoing hanger with the growl of its motors turning over, and the rest of your makeshift band let out ragged cheers at the sound. You nod tiredly, leaning on the edge of the great outflow pipe and marvelling at her accomplishment. You'd barely have any idea how to get an old machine like this one running at the best of times, much less one left abandoned in an old depot like this for the Emperor alone knows how long, but she did it.
"Good job," you murmur, fighting back a wince. It doesn't hurt as much as you thought it might, which is something of a boon. Every man dies sooner or later, and in Gunmetal City often a great deal sooner, but given the choice you'd like to go out with at least a little dignity.
"Alright, everyone, get your arses on board!" Lyra calls out once more, vaulting down off the top of the engine cab, and you have to choke back a laugh and a grunt of pain both. Whatever happened to the shy, trembling little flower who fled into your favourite bar, master's hounds hot on her tail? Look at her now. She's gone and gotten engine oil on her pretty porcelain skin and calluses on her dainty little hands, and now she's even cussing at people. You think you like her better this way, not that you'd ever say it. Bad for your reputation, something like that. "You too, old timer!"
The others rally to her call, a half-dozen rogues and runaways that fell in with you both over the last… how long has it been? You lost count five ambushes back, you think, maybe six. They all start blurring together after a while, the days and the children both. How many others have come and gone before them, falling one by one while you alone remained alive to remember them? Too many by far. Maybe that is why you did it, why you stood from your chair that day, why you drew on the hounds when nobody else would. No more dead kids. It's a pretty enough slogan, you think. Something worth fighting for, maybe even worth dying for. Convenient, that one.
"Old man?" Lyra is in front of you now, though you don't rightly know when she crossed the distance. She's looking confused, a little concerned. Probably because everyone else is already aboard the train and you haven't yet moved. "Hey, come on. Don't tell me the big bad gunslinger is afraid of a little open air?"
"Well, maybe a little," you drawl, and there must be something in your voice that gives it away because her eyes narrow and she reaches out for you. Her hand comes back bloody, and you see the horror of realisation in her eyes. "Yeah. 'fraid that last one got a little lucky."
"I… no, there must be something," Lyra says, her voice hot and fierce, the mind behind those beautiful sapphire eyes working a mile a minute as she searches for a solution. That's one of her better qualities, you think. Life like hers, and she still believes things can be better, still refuses to accept what everyone else thinks is inevitable. "There's a medical station two floors up, we can still…"
You catch her by the hand, stopping her before she can get herself worked up and burn what she has for something that isn't worth it.
"Lass… Lyra," you say, and she starts at the name, at the sincerity in your voice, "It's alright. Don't go spoiling your chances now, not for a washed up old drifter like me. Not when you've got all those others depending on you, and a real future to give them. Atlantia's waiting, remember?"
Ah, Atlantia. How often did you tell stories about that place when you were a kid, too young for even the most hard-hearted factory boss to bother putting on the line? A silver city upon the waves, out there somewhere, just waiting to be found. A place where the air is clean and the water pure, where a man can walk the streets with his head held high and fear no master's whip. Paradise in a world.
"I don't…" Lyra sniffs, choking back her emotions, knowing what you're asking of her, "I don't know if I can, old man. I don't even know if it's real."
"'Course it is," you say firmly, "and if it isn't, well, you'll just have to build it yourself. We both know you can do it. But… since it might take a while to get there… here."
The Hecuter 9/5 has been with you since the very first time you made your mark, a personal gift from a merchant lord of Fane Orthlack to the young hired gun who won him a fortune with a bit of quick thinking and even quicker shooting. You've had the handle replaced more than once, the grip retextured, a few dents and scratches carefully worked back out, but the core of the gun is still the same reliable piece of metal it has always been. The prince of pistols, some call it, and you flatter yourself to think you helped paved the way for its ascent to the throne.
"I… I can't take this, not now, not when…" Lyra hesitates, unable to say the words even as she closes her hands around the grip, even as her eyes stray down to the blood now seeping out from beneath your armoured vest. You are dying, and to die in this city without a gun in hand is the worst kind of disgrace.
"Don't worry about it," you say, giving her some crooked excuse for a grin, "I've got another. On you go now. I'll watch your back."
Lyra sniffs, and straightens, and takes the gun in her hands. She looks you in the eye one last time. "You're a good man, Solomon. Thank you."
Well, you don't know about that, but it would be pretty churlish to disagree now wouldn't it? So you nod gravely, and you watch without a word as she returns to her new family and starts the engine. The train roars to life, its lights blazing and thousand segmented legs unfurling, with a rattle as harsh as any burst of gunfire it leaves the station and heads out into the wastes beyond. You watch them go, a crooked little smile on your face, and then you fold one arm back across your gut and limp your way back over to the entrance. You didn't mention it to the others, but the last group you tangled with managed to get a transmission off before you put the killing shot through the vox. The hounds will be coming, and you want to be there to meet them.
It's getting cold now, cold and dark. You can't even see the furthest halls or the highest gantries anymore, nor distinguish the icy feeling of your skin from the burning heat of the air. It's not a bad feeling, you think. You can see why the nobles keep the cold to themselves now, insulated in their needletop mansions, high above the soot and the flames that make their wealth. The air still stinks of metal, though, the peculiar burning stench you only get when it meets with molten stone. There must be a breach somewhere below you, no more than a level or two. You hope the locals made it out in time, even though you know they didn't. They never do.
The hounds are here, and they've brought their master with them.
"Well, well," the master drawls, his narrow brow beaded with sweat and his long flowing sleeves hanging limp at his side, "It seems even the mighty Solomon Reeve has a bullet with his name on it somewhere, and it was one of my men that was carrying it all along. Whoever would have guessed?"
He's gloating, you realise dimly. The hounds to his left and right look tense and nervous, fingers tight on bare metal grips as they keep the barrels of their guns - more Orthlack work, they always did make a killing supplying the regulators of their friends and rivals alike - trained on you, but the master has left his iron in the holster. They look like fine quality pieces, Valentines unless you miss your guess, the sort of high-powered las weapon that takes all the sport out of killing another man.
"No words? Ah, what am I saying, of course not. You're barely even conscious, are you? I wonder if you can even hear what I'm saying." The master is saying now, his smile lean and cruel. You took away something he valued, and more than that you defied him, and for that he plans to watch you die and smile all the while. "I hope you can, Solomon. I hope you know that it doesn't matter. Nothing you did here today, or any day in your whole wretched life, matters. She's taken an old walker-train, hasn't she, fled out into the wastes and left you behind? I'll have the family flyers out after her within the hour, and run her to ground by the end of day. Maybe I'll even show her your corpse before we go back home. Yes, I think that would be best, don't you?"
He thinks he is safe. Of course he does, else why would he be here? Why come down here at all, much less leave the safety of his climate controlled grav car to see you in person? Because you are alone, you are dying, and he has a score of heavily armed regulators with weapons ready and levelled. You still have a gun, true, but it is holstered at your side and you've lost enough blood that you might well miss even if you could draw it before his men cut you down. This is a story that only ends one way, and he wants to be there to see it happen.
You lift your head, and look him in the eye.
"No," you say, and pull the trigger.
That is where the story of Solomon Reeve ends. He dies with a smile on his face and a gun in his hand, the body of a rich man at his feet, cut down in a hail of gunfire by the vengeful guards of his final victim. A good end for a bad man, one final act of justice thrown back in the face of a world that so rarely affords such things even for the deserving. With his death he buys the time and freedom necessary for a brave young woman and her newfound family to escape Gunmetal City for good, to flee down the burning slopes of Mount Thollos and find a new life for themselves in the world somewhere beyond. Neither of them would call it a fair trade, but then neither of them would agree who got the better end of the deal.
That is where Solomon Reeve's story ends, but your tale will continue for a little while yet. Because while you are laying there, insensate and broken, a hundred bolts and bullets tearing your mortal frame apart and scattering you across the burning ground, someone new arrives on the scene. A giant in pale plate, his face hidden behind a snarling wolfshead helm, a great cloak of frozen fur hanging from his back and gnawing at his arm. You always wondered what the Emperor's angels would look like, when they came to ferry you on, but somehow you were expecting something else.
"Hey there, killer," the giant says, his words clipped and crude as any Infernus rogue, "got a job for you, if you're interested."
You're not averse to paying work, but you're a bit busy to be taking on new commissions now. Would have to be one hell of a pitch to be worth your time, given the circumstances.
"Down payment's immortality," your would-be client says, and you think the eye on his chest is staring at you now, judging you and finding you wanting. Maybe he really is an angel after all. "Rest is power, enough of it to make you the deadliest man in Gunmetal, if you somehow aren't already."
All that, just for you? Well, you suppose you can hear him out at least. What's the job?
"Need you to kill a man for me," the giant says, as if anyone ever hires you for anything different, "fellow by the name of Marius Hax."
The Sector Governor himself? Well, that's easy enough. You just have to fight your way out of Gunmetal City, find a way across the continent-spanning wasteland, infiltrate a city you've never even seen much less visited, and kill the single most heavily guarded nobleman in the entire Calixis Sector. Simple, really.
"I knew you'd agree," the giant says in a serious tone of voice, "That said, there's a catch."
Oh, really? Do tell.
"Solomon Reeve's a dead man," your personal angel says without pity, "He died well, as it goes, but he's still dead and gone. You'll need a new name, a new title. And, when Hax is dead, there will be more names after him. No rest for the wicked."
Well, that makes sense. Nobody who has a plan that starts with killing a Lord Sector is going to stop there, and even if they did, the number of people who will come after you for it will make a pile higher than the hive he lived in. A deed like that would make you the most infamous killer in Calixis. You don't really have to ask about the alternative - a quiet, lonely death here in the depths of Gunmetal, a free woman and her friends your only legacy. It wouldn't be so bad, you think, but if there's one thing that Lyra taught you it is never to settle for what the world will let you have.
Alright. You're in.
"Then get up, dead man," the giant says, a black star shining in his palm as he kneels at your side, "Get up, and kill them all."
He presses the starfire into your heart, and you take the single sweetest breath of your entire life.
There is really quite a lot of blood.
"It works!" Lyra calls out excitedly from her position at the head of the train, the joy in her voice warring with nerves and exhaustion. The great engine beneath her feet thrums violently under her feet, filling the echoing hanger with the growl of its motors turning over, and the rest of your makeshift band let out ragged cheers at the sound. You nod tiredly, leaning on the edge of the great outflow pipe and marvelling at her accomplishment. You'd barely have any idea how to get an old machine like this one running at the best of times, much less one left abandoned in an old depot like this for the Emperor alone knows how long, but she did it.
"Good job," you murmur, fighting back a wince. It doesn't hurt as much as you thought it might, which is something of a boon. Every man dies sooner or later, and in Gunmetal City often a great deal sooner, but given the choice you'd like to go out with at least a little dignity.
"Alright, everyone, get your arses on board!" Lyra calls out once more, vaulting down off the top of the engine cab, and you have to choke back a laugh and a grunt of pain both. Whatever happened to the shy, trembling little flower who fled into your favourite bar, master's hounds hot on her tail? Look at her now. She's gone and gotten engine oil on her pretty porcelain skin and calluses on her dainty little hands, and now she's even cussing at people. You think you like her better this way, not that you'd ever say it. Bad for your reputation, something like that. "You too, old timer!"
The others rally to her call, a half-dozen rogues and runaways that fell in with you both over the last… how long has it been? You lost count five ambushes back, you think, maybe six. They all start blurring together after a while, the days and the children both. How many others have come and gone before them, falling one by one while you alone remained alive to remember them? Too many by far. Maybe that is why you did it, why you stood from your chair that day, why you drew on the hounds when nobody else would. No more dead kids. It's a pretty enough slogan, you think. Something worth fighting for, maybe even worth dying for. Convenient, that one.
"Old man?" Lyra is in front of you now, though you don't rightly know when she crossed the distance. She's looking confused, a little concerned. Probably because everyone else is already aboard the train and you haven't yet moved. "Hey, come on. Don't tell me the big bad gunslinger is afraid of a little open air?"
"Well, maybe a little," you drawl, and there must be something in your voice that gives it away because her eyes narrow and she reaches out for you. Her hand comes back bloody, and you see the horror of realisation in her eyes. "Yeah. 'fraid that last one got a little lucky."
"I… no, there must be something," Lyra says, her voice hot and fierce, the mind behind those beautiful sapphire eyes working a mile a minute as she searches for a solution. That's one of her better qualities, you think. Life like hers, and she still believes things can be better, still refuses to accept what everyone else thinks is inevitable. "There's a medical station two floors up, we can still…"
You catch her by the hand, stopping her before she can get herself worked up and burn what she has for something that isn't worth it.
"Lass… Lyra," you say, and she starts at the name, at the sincerity in your voice, "It's alright. Don't go spoiling your chances now, not for a washed up old drifter like me. Not when you've got all those others depending on you, and a real future to give them. Atlantia's waiting, remember?"
Ah, Atlantia. How often did you tell stories about that place when you were a kid, too young for even the most hard-hearted factory boss to bother putting on the line? A silver city upon the waves, out there somewhere, just waiting to be found. A place where the air is clean and the water pure, where a man can walk the streets with his head held high and fear no master's whip. Paradise in a world.
"I don't…" Lyra sniffs, choking back her emotions, knowing what you're asking of her, "I don't know if I can, old man. I don't even know if it's real."
"'Course it is," you say firmly, "and if it isn't, well, you'll just have to build it yourself. We both know you can do it. But… since it might take a while to get there… here."
The Hecuter 9/5 has been with you since the very first time you made your mark, a personal gift from a merchant lord of Fane Orthlack to the young hired gun who won him a fortune with a bit of quick thinking and even quicker shooting. You've had the handle replaced more than once, the grip retextured, a few dents and scratches carefully worked back out, but the core of the gun is still the same reliable piece of metal it has always been. The prince of pistols, some call it, and you flatter yourself to think you helped paved the way for its ascent to the throne.
"I… I can't take this, not now, not when…" Lyra hesitates, unable to say the words even as she closes her hands around the grip, even as her eyes stray down to the blood now seeping out from beneath your armoured vest. You are dying, and to die in this city without a gun in hand is the worst kind of disgrace.
"Don't worry about it," you say, giving her some crooked excuse for a grin, "I've got another. On you go now. I'll watch your back."
Lyra sniffs, and straightens, and takes the gun in her hands. She looks you in the eye one last time. "You're a good man, Solomon. Thank you."
Well, you don't know about that, but it would be pretty churlish to disagree now wouldn't it? So you nod gravely, and you watch without a word as she returns to her new family and starts the engine. The train roars to life, its lights blazing and thousand segmented legs unfurling, with a rattle as harsh as any burst of gunfire it leaves the station and heads out into the wastes beyond. You watch them go, a crooked little smile on your face, and then you fold one arm back across your gut and limp your way back over to the entrance. You didn't mention it to the others, but the last group you tangled with managed to get a transmission off before you put the killing shot through the vox. The hounds will be coming, and you want to be there to meet them.
It's getting cold now, cold and dark. You can't even see the furthest halls or the highest gantries anymore, nor distinguish the icy feeling of your skin from the burning heat of the air. It's not a bad feeling, you think. You can see why the nobles keep the cold to themselves now, insulated in their needletop mansions, high above the soot and the flames that make their wealth. The air still stinks of metal, though, the peculiar burning stench you only get when it meets with molten stone. There must be a breach somewhere below you, no more than a level or two. You hope the locals made it out in time, even though you know they didn't. They never do.
The hounds are here, and they've brought their master with them.
"Well, well," the master drawls, his narrow brow beaded with sweat and his long flowing sleeves hanging limp at his side, "It seems even the mighty Solomon Reeve has a bullet with his name on it somewhere, and it was one of my men that was carrying it all along. Whoever would have guessed?"
He's gloating, you realise dimly. The hounds to his left and right look tense and nervous, fingers tight on bare metal grips as they keep the barrels of their guns - more Orthlack work, they always did make a killing supplying the regulators of their friends and rivals alike - trained on you, but the master has left his iron in the holster. They look like fine quality pieces, Valentines unless you miss your guess, the sort of high-powered las weapon that takes all the sport out of killing another man.
"No words? Ah, what am I saying, of course not. You're barely even conscious, are you? I wonder if you can even hear what I'm saying." The master is saying now, his smile lean and cruel. You took away something he valued, and more than that you defied him, and for that he plans to watch you die and smile all the while. "I hope you can, Solomon. I hope you know that it doesn't matter. Nothing you did here today, or any day in your whole wretched life, matters. She's taken an old walker-train, hasn't she, fled out into the wastes and left you behind? I'll have the family flyers out after her within the hour, and run her to ground by the end of day. Maybe I'll even show her your corpse before we go back home. Yes, I think that would be best, don't you?"
He thinks he is safe. Of course he does, else why would he be here? Why come down here at all, much less leave the safety of his climate controlled grav car to see you in person? Because you are alone, you are dying, and he has a score of heavily armed regulators with weapons ready and levelled. You still have a gun, true, but it is holstered at your side and you've lost enough blood that you might well miss even if you could draw it before his men cut you down. This is a story that only ends one way, and he wants to be there to see it happen.
You lift your head, and look him in the eye.
"No," you say, and pull the trigger.
That is where the story of Solomon Reeve ends. He dies with a smile on his face and a gun in his hand, the body of a rich man at his feet, cut down in a hail of gunfire by the vengeful guards of his final victim. A good end for a bad man, one final act of justice thrown back in the face of a world that so rarely affords such things even for the deserving. With his death he buys the time and freedom necessary for a brave young woman and her newfound family to escape Gunmetal City for good, to flee down the burning slopes of Mount Thollos and find a new life for themselves in the world somewhere beyond. Neither of them would call it a fair trade, but then neither of them would agree who got the better end of the deal.
That is where Solomon Reeve's story ends, but your tale will continue for a little while yet. Because while you are laying there, insensate and broken, a hundred bolts and bullets tearing your mortal frame apart and scattering you across the burning ground, someone new arrives on the scene. A giant in pale plate, his face hidden behind a snarling wolfshead helm, a great cloak of frozen fur hanging from his back and gnawing at his arm. You always wondered what the Emperor's angels would look like, when they came to ferry you on, but somehow you were expecting something else.
"Hey there, killer," the giant says, his words clipped and crude as any Infernus rogue, "got a job for you, if you're interested."
You're not averse to paying work, but you're a bit busy to be taking on new commissions now. Would have to be one hell of a pitch to be worth your time, given the circumstances.
"Down payment's immortality," your would-be client says, and you think the eye on his chest is staring at you now, judging you and finding you wanting. Maybe he really is an angel after all. "Rest is power, enough of it to make you the deadliest man in Gunmetal, if you somehow aren't already."
All that, just for you? Well, you suppose you can hear him out at least. What's the job?
"Need you to kill a man for me," the giant says, as if anyone ever hires you for anything different, "fellow by the name of Marius Hax."
The Sector Governor himself? Well, that's easy enough. You just have to fight your way out of Gunmetal City, find a way across the continent-spanning wasteland, infiltrate a city you've never even seen much less visited, and kill the single most heavily guarded nobleman in the entire Calixis Sector. Simple, really.
"I knew you'd agree," the giant says in a serious tone of voice, "That said, there's a catch."
Oh, really? Do tell.
"Solomon Reeve's a dead man," your personal angel says without pity, "He died well, as it goes, but he's still dead and gone. You'll need a new name, a new title. And, when Hax is dead, there will be more names after him. No rest for the wicked."
Well, that makes sense. Nobody who has a plan that starts with killing a Lord Sector is going to stop there, and even if they did, the number of people who will come after you for it will make a pile higher than the hive he lived in. A deed like that would make you the most infamous killer in Calixis. You don't really have to ask about the alternative - a quiet, lonely death here in the depths of Gunmetal, a free woman and her friends your only legacy. It wouldn't be so bad, you think, but if there's one thing that Lyra taught you it is never to settle for what the world will let you have.
Alright. You're in.
"Then get up, dead man," the giant says, a black star shining in his palm as he kneels at your side, "Get up, and kill them all."
He presses the starfire into your heart, and you take the single sweetest breath of your entire life.
Article: The man you were is dead. You are something new, something more, something better… or perhaps worse.
This is the first choice you will make - what is your title?
[ ] Title (Write in)
The One that Walks Behind You
The Maiden of the Mirthless Smile
Kingeater
The Gallows Bride
Voice that Speaks in Silence
The Seven-Degreed Physician of Black Maladies
Mariner of the Final Shore
Celebrant of Blood
All Clad in Tatters Came the Mountebank Knight
Shoat of the Mire
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly I want to have some sort of Title involving that Oponskoye-like place.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The Silver Bullet Upon Which Is Written Atlantia
Or, fuck, I dunno, that doesn't quite fit. But I want something like that. Something that calls out towards Atlantia.
Or, fuck, I dunno, that doesn't quite fit. But I want something like that. Something that calls out towards Atlantia.
- Location
- [REDACTED]
[X] Corpsemaker
Glory is for heroes. This man is only a murderer; let his title reflect his deeds.
Glory is for heroes. This man is only a murderer; let his title reflect his deeds.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
[] The Last Gunslinger of Atlantia
As in, doing violence in the name of being the last to do violence, whether that's idealistic or not. An implication towards either a past (if some 'Atlantia' had existed) and a future (for the Atlantia to come.)
Or even, if we wanted to be even more up our own asses, and this is Exalted so we SHOULD be...
[] The Last and First Gunslinger of Atlantia
As in, doing violence in the name of being the last to do violence, whether that's idealistic or not. An implication towards either a past (if some 'Atlantia' had existed) and a future (for the Atlantia to come.)
Or even, if we wanted to be even more up our own asses, and this is Exalted so we SHOULD be...
[] The Last and First Gunslinger of Atlantia