RIGS 3.8 – Bow of the Raven
“I have seen this bow many times before. No matter how I looked at it, it seemed to have a black sheen to it. On its own, it’s impressive enough. But when you have an entire squadron equipped with these things. It can be quite terrifying to behold. The arrows are let loose and then ou see it. One of them turns into a raven. Yes, you heard e right, gods be damned raven. At first, the enemy started laughing, thinking it was something their shaman had done to cripple the attack. Then the birds started to dive and attack and the battle started going very bad for them”
Bow of the Raven
Power Level: Minor (3)
Activation: Random
Approximate Age: Many – 48 years
Condition: Poor (3)
The bow of the raven was the first attempt by a kingdom to mass produce an improved bow. As there was a heavy druidic presence in the kingdom, they sought to make something that reflected not only their powerful allies but the national bird, the raven. The concept was quite simple – Any arrow fired from the bow would turn into magical raven that would attack the intended target repeatedly rather than just one shot. Being able to fly and dodge incoming attacks would help quite a bit as well.
However, they were forced to quickly make a design due to various factors. The makers of the bow could do one of two things. 1 – Make the bows work perfectly on only a few bows. 2 – Make they work unpredictable and random but on an as many as needed to outfit their army. The queen who had commissioned the bows decided to go with mass rather than a few, her reasoning being that more chances of the bow working could work in their favour, rather than just having it in the hands of a few. This worked out well as in the first battle over half the bows that had been enchanted this way fired off, at least, one raven-arrow and led to them winning the conflict.
The bows themselves are as varied as normal bows, some are short, some are long and others are compound. There is as yet no crossbow of the raven as the first and only known attempt to make one work on a crossbow resulted in the summoned raven flying very fast and for some reason exploding halfway to the target. As the raven was considered to be a holy symbol, they took this as a sign from the gods to stop working on this version and shelved the project.
There are rumors circulating that they are working on what can best be described as a siege version of the BoTR, capable of summoning an entire flock of ravens or one really big one.
The BoTR works better when used in large groups, as it seems to increase the rate at which the raves spawn.
R.I.G.S. Results Volume 2, available here
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/171360/RIGS-Result-Volume-2
For details and explanation on R.I.G.S and its terminology, read this post
https://www.enneadgames.com/item-thursday-intro-itemthe-sun-match/
