Project Silence: E.D.O.
By Michael Cleveland
The two angels ducked behind the car, gasping for breath as the hail of bullets rained destruction down around them. As the gunfire slowly began to chew their cover away, the Seraph nodded to his partner and began the shift to celestial form. After the Malakite finished his shift, the two rose from their hiding spot and moved outward to survey the damage to the Tether.
"Bless, Azaviel. Dominic's going to be livid about this. What is wrong with these people?"
"I have no idea, Ogram. I'm just glad we made the shift when we did. Another few seconds of that and my vessel would have died. Come on. We should make sure we can identify these guys while they cannot hurt us."
As the two angels moved forward, one of the soldiers that had been chasing them started slowly moving his head around the parking lot, then locked eyes with the Malakite. Without turning away, he spoke to the others with him. "They've gone cross-dimension on us. Got a blackfeather and one of the golds. Range is 20 meters and closing. EDO. Now."
Ogram turned to his superior, chewing his lip. "Azaviel, they can still see us. You sure we want to just go walking out in the open like this?"
The Seraph made a serpentine shrug. "Why not? We can't be affected by their weapons. The monkeys no longer pose a real threat to us." Turning toward the soldier who had spotted them, he spoke again. "Even these uplifted primates know that their guns are useless against us now. They are bluffing."
The soldier smiled nastily as he pulled an odd-looking ammunition clip off his belt, chromed and with a slit so one could see the rounds inside. As he moved it slowly across his wrist, the ammunition inside becan to emit a sickly greenish light as blood flowed past the slit and runes began to flare on the bullets inside. As the angels looked each other nervously, they realized that the other soldiers were brandishing similarly glowing weapons. The soldier on point ejected the clip in his rifle and quickly slammed in the new one, and then shook his head, chuckling.
"Still sure we're bluffing?"
E.D.O. (Extra Dimensional Ordnance)
Created by a little-known alchemical procedure, these rounds can be used to affect extra-dimensional (Celestial) targets, even when they have crossed to another plane. Damage is standard for the ammunition of the weapon type, but will do celestial damage to targets unprotected by a vessel.
Although EDO rounds are powerful for an alchemical device, there are certain drawbacks to using EDO ammunition. First among them is that they're not easy to make. Each round must have certain runes carved into it, requiring a successful artistry roll before the enchantment can even hope to take place. These must be carved by hand at the moment - automated production of EDO has thus far proven unsuccessful. Once the runes are in place, the enchantment can take place, although Project Silence sees this as 'extra-dimensional science', rather than the 'magic ritual' that's used. The enchantment is relatively simple in and of itself, provided one has a bunch of difficult to acquire and rare substances, not the least of which is blood from an 'alien husk' (vessel). The other substances are up to the GM, but should be somewhat dangerous to acquire or use, or extremely expensive.
The next problem is really an extension of the first - because of the difficulty of making these rounds, they do not come cheap. For authorized government agencies that have clearance to buy this ammunition (Project Silence and any possible foreign counterparts) the cost is approximately 50 US dollars per bullet for commonly used sizes, and up to 200 per bullet for ones not commonly in production. As a result, an M-16's 30 round clip will run somewhere on the order of 1,500 dollars. As members of an agency with little to no official funding, Silencers are highly recommended to use these only when necessary.
In order to use Extra-Dimension Ordnance, one must bring the ammunition into contact with blood to activate the dimensional properties - as a result, most EDO clips have a sharpened edge for slashing the wrist. Once the blood makes contact with the bullets, the runes will activate and start glowing. This is a dead giveaway that something is different about the weapon - perceptions rolls to notice automatically succeed once the ammunition is charged. The blood is typically burned off by the heat of the gunpowder while inside the barrel, so these weapons have a tendency to smell, look horrific, and jam unless cleaned regularly. No system is required for this, only the GM's imagination.
Last, but not least, EDO ammunition is unstable. Once activated, the user has only 3 minutes where the ammunition is guaranteed to work. After that, the failure rate increases slowly but surely. To date, no one has seen a EDO round still active after 18 minutes. In game terms, make a roll for intervention when the ammunition is activated. EDO will stay good for 3 minutes times the CD of the roll. On a favorable intervention, no damage will be done in slashing the wrist ('just a flesh wound'). On an unfavorable intervention, the runes may have been miscarved, either causing complete failure of the enchantment, the gun to jam, or something equally upleasant.
EDO ammunition cannot be further enchanted. No undetectable EDO rounds. No EDO Holy bullets. No Summonable caches of unlimited ammunition. Any Vapulan that tries typical experimentation should suffer typical Vapulan results in the worst way.
Happy hunting.
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