Ghyll:Justice Device
The Justice Device was the primary weapon used to great effect in the Second Avazian War. Although it provided no decisive victory for any of the five clans waging battle bloody day and bloody night [Weren't all the Avazians women? If they slept at night, where was the blood coming from? --Burgengute], it did wonders for their mental instability and troupe morale.
Invented by a team calling themselves The Whiteguard Avazians, the Device was an indirect "1-Up" against The Blackguard Avazians' winning invention from the First Avazian War. Deployed as a response to an unexpected sneak attack (which often caught the women with their pants down), the Justice Device was intended to cause slow and painful retribution on the assailants.
The Justice Device was often thrown or dropped in a circular array around a group of enemy Avazians. As the magnetic device was jarred into life, it would form a magnetic field projected inward toward its captives. This field generated a magnetic pull further strengthened by the number of nearby Devices forming the same pathological circle. If anything tampered or even touched a planted Device, it would explode, causing a chain reaction that detonated other Devices nearby. You would think the Device relatively easy to circumvent if not for the logical conclusion of a sneak attack: suiting up in armor for the offensive onslaught of the surprised. Armor is made out of metal. Magnets like metal. And thus, the horrors begin.
At first, the magnetic pull of a Justice Device starts slow, teasing the stunned captive into disbelief at its inadequacy. As the subjected boldly strolls to the edges of the circle to merely step over the Device, the pull gets exponentially stronger, literally dragging the captive into the face of her final moments (and unfortunately, the final moments of her similarly trapped companions). Even a running jump has no effect, slamming the hurdler into her demise as if she were a puppet on a string that had just been violently jerked. Watching your loved ones get blown up at the pinnacle of their escape is not a very pleasant circumstance for those outside the magnetic circle.
The next logical conclusion for those who valued their wholeness was to sit in the center of the circle as furthest away from every Device as possible, where the magnetic pull was the weakest. This is entirely unpleasant as well. Not only do you, as captive, get to watch your friends blow up trying to help you, but they get to watch you grow ever more impatient, fidgety, and aching for release. Oftentimes, the very thought and agony of watching your estranged and worried friends and relatives get blown up during a rescue attempt is enough to yell off all helpers, deciding instead to wait out the Devices, hopeful they'll break, fail, or otherwise disarm. Justice Devices share the impatience: the longer they're active, the stronger the pull becomes, eventually dragging even the most stalwart and entrenched to their doom.
The only true defeat of the Justice Device wasn't an acceptable solution: simply don't wear any armor after you brutally slaughter another clan's family in a sneaky attack of equal parts cunning and cowardice. Many prefer the immediate suicide of a Justice Kiss than the slow death of a knife in an unprotected gut.
The most well-known use of the Devices was in the carpet bombing of Avaz Minor at the beginning of the Third Avazian War (itself also taking place, as the Wars before it, on the full moons of both Pinky and Perky). Shortly thereafter, the Avazian Box was invented by the Blackguards, disabling all active Devices and, well, pretty much everything else.
Citations: Avazian Box, Pinky, Third Avazian War.
--Morbus Iff 19:48, 19 Nov 2004 (EST)
