Motif · Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

The crossbow of the Scavenger Mother

Hekla's repeating crossbow, looted by Katia from a minion of Hekla's own corpse: unique, buffet-enchanted, wieldable only by a woman, +25% per woman in the party up to thirty, and Birth Defect against generators. Its card tells of Nekhebit, the vulture goddess the elf mothers abandoned for Apito, who cursed the high-elf court's seed into the Fae Diaspora. 'Warning: You have a dick.'

Segment appearances

• Chapter 3 — Messages from deceased Crawlers
• Chapter 5 — Vernon the conductor
• Chapter 21 — Brynhild's Daughters
• Chapter 22 — The kebab plan
• Chapter 23 — Rush
• Chapter 24 — Brynhild's Daughters is no more
• Chapter 25 — Seven hundred hats
• Chapter 27 — Physical
• Chapter 29 — The Bolt of Ophiotaurus
• Chapter 31 — The Iron Tangle, signing off
• Chapter 32 — Prepotente

Progression

Hekla's 'ranged chainsaw' (ch. 22); on the far side of a locked door with half her corpse (ch. 24); then in Katia's hands. Slower for her — crossbow skill four (ch. 27) — mounted in a sentinel-gun form on three legs, and the reason Hekla surrounded herself with women. Mordecai buys a Bolt-Thrower's Workshop for it (ch. 30).