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Falchion Pistolet
Ornate sword of the Highborn, combined with a wheel-lock firearm, finely etched and decorated with inlaid engravings. A famous marque of manufacture amongst these combination weapons was the House Of Dumonthier.
Some Dynastic Highborn retain an affection for these antiquated relic weapons, carrying them and practising their ceremonial use across the centuries. They are often treated as heirlooms, and bestowed from one generation to another.
Amongst the Dynastic Highborn there exist elaborate rituals regarding the use of blades and firearms. Some see echoes in the elaborate Highborn code of honour duelling, such as La Verdadera Destreza.
Yet others cite the old customs dating back to the age before the singular Voidships, when the god-Arks of the Generation Vessels journeyed across realspace. The Highborn feared the discharge of weaponry within the fragile hulls of those ancient space vessels - no feud was worth imperilling the billions of souls on board the generation ships, no individual's honour worth endangering the loss of a complete civilisation.
House Urthekau decreed that no mortal, Highborn or otherwise, could be trusted with a gun or firearm; they carried only swords, and gave cannon and fire-lance only to their trusted synthetics and drones.
House Galdra feared the opposite: they trusted no Machine or algorithm with firepower superior to that of Man. Galdra equipped their war machines and drones with rams, drill-lance and scything blade, using no artillery, and entrusted kinetic weaponry and cutting beams only to their human followers.
All other Highborn adopted variants of these two competing traditions, to preserve the sanctuary of their dynastic peace.
In later years, with the coming of the Synthemata and the Isonomy, the proliferation of advanced weaponry such as the Fractal Tides - such distinctions became meaningless. The Highborn Houses increasingly hired mercenaries, not of their own Blood; men who had no compunction of adhering to Highborn codes and taboos, as the Warguild were willing to kill anyone, by any means they could lay their hands upon.
