Ribaldo

A ribauldequin is a real fourteenth century war machine: a frame carrying seven barrels side by side, aimed not at a man but at a line of them. Hell has no such thing and could not have one; the game is what puts it here, and it says so through the place it lets you find it.

It lies in the pitch of the barrators. Barratry is the trafficking of public office, and making a commune’s war machine disappear is exactly that crime: one of them had taken it down with him, and the pitch gave it back along with him. It was the only way to find a weapon like this down here without inventing a workshop.

Its verb is to sweep, and against a single body it is a waste: four nails a volley, eight bodies at most, and then two seconds in which there is nothing to do but back away. Like every other weapon, it kills nobody. The line the game shows over it says seven barrels on a frame, tarred to the stock; that it was taken down by the man who sold a commune’s defence, and the pitch gave it back with him; that the barrels are there and the nails are not.