Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-26397825-20170714130723/@comment-24534644-20170731014017

Right then. Here's my newest weapon to go with the Semblance I made the other day:

- Name: Nefol Crux (from Welsh ‘ Nefol’, meaning ‘heavenly; celestial’)

- Wielder: Marigold Eirwen

- Maker/Smith: Marigold Eirwen

- Classification: Precision Crook Sling-Staff (PCSS)

- Weapon Derivation: Shepherd’s crooks and slings. Also this.

- Form 1 Design: The weapon takes the shape of a conventional shepherd’s crook, with a long staff body and a curved hook-like shape at the top, reaching a total height of roughly 5 feet (almost as tall as it’s wielder). There is also a small pointed tip at the bottom of the staff. The weapon tends to be too large to carry around at all times, so when inactive it is split into two attachable halves (the bottom piece of which collapses into a yet-smaller shape). Both pieces are then carried on either side of the hip.

- Form 1 Aesthetics: The weapon is colored white/gold in a simple segmented pattern, with the bottom quarter and head of the staff being gold, and the middle being primarily white with two gold bands at the center, separated by a small black line. It is along this line that the weapon splits into its compartmental form. A small black section is noticeable on the inside of the curved portion of the weapon, but plays no part in how the weapon operates until it shifts into its alternate mode.

- Form 2: The weapon shifts into a staff slingshot. This is done via the press of a button on the upper half of the weapon. This triggers the head of the weapon, the actual curve, to begin rotating along the tip of the staff itself via a sliding mechanism built into the outside of the curve, so that both ends of the curve are pointing skyward. As this rotation takes place, five smaller pieces on the inside of the curve, located beneath the aforementioned black section, also begin sliding into place along the inside of the curve, pulling the black flexible socket into the center of the space within the curve via highly elastic bands.

- Form 2 Aesthetics: The weapon looks largely the same as in its base form, the only notable difference being that the head of the weapon is positioned differently, becoming twin prongs rather than a hook. The black piece mentioned earlier, which is a socket composed of a flexible-yet-sturdy rubber material, is now suspended in the center of the space between both prongs via five white elastic bands; two attaching to mechanisms at the tips of the prongs, two more at the center of both sides, and the last attaching at the bottom where the head connects to the rest of the staff.

- Dust Usage: Various Dust types used (Fire, Water, Air, and Earth primarily), in powder form, contained within small spherical glass casings that are infused with Aura and, after being fired, can either release their effect midair or on impact with a target. Effects vary depending on the Dust type used.

- Ammunition: Typical usage involves small, inexpensive copper spheres, usually half an inch in diameter. Fired individually for accuracy, or with multiple at once for damage.

- Usage: In melee combat, the crook mode of the weapon operates akin to a multi-purpose bo staff, used for both defending and as a blunt striking weapon. The hook-shaped head of the weapon facilitates a number of different usages, chief among them is extending the wielder’s reach and enabling her to latch onto objects and/or people or creatures from a distance. In slingshot mode, the weapon is used to ‘snipe’ from long distance, having much greater distance and power than a conventional sling or slingshot, aided further by the user contributing a small amount of Aura to each shot. The height of the weapon brings the slingshot portion itself to about eye level when positioned upright, making shooting easy and efficient. Despite having a small spear-like metal point at the bottom of the staff, it is rarely used for combat purposes; instead, it is often planted into the ground while the weapon is in its slingshot form, in order to provide added stability when aiming and shooting.

- Planned/Possible Upgrades: N/A

- Notes: Seeing as the character is an allusion to Mary Had a Little Lamb, it should be quite obvious why a shepherd’s crook was chosen at the weapon basis. For it’s alternate mode, besides being the only weapon that feasibly works well with a crook, it so happens that shepherd’s themselves were also commonly known for using slings. Although the types of slings they used looked a lot different, so I figured a slingshot would work best in this scenario. As for its name, Crux was chosen both for sounding similar to ‘crook’, and for it’s meaning alongside Nefol. Nefol means ‘heavenly’ in Welsh, and Crux is a word referring to the most important, central point of a matter: in other words, the ‘heart’ or ‘essence’ of something (which are synonyms for it). So, depending on how it is interpreted, the name can mean “Heavenly Heart/Essence”, or “Heavenly Center”.