Gloria

Gloria is one of two hellfire cannons created over the past decade through the joint work of Imperial engineers, Archon wizards and gnome craftsmen brought in from various regions. Its twin is Invictor.¹

Hellfire cannons

Hellfire cannons may look like massive cannons, but they do not fire the shot of ordinary guns. They are crafted entirely through metallurgy working hand in hand with magic, and they hurl compressed magical energy at the enemy as a devastating fireball. While the cannon fires it overheats, and those who serve it must cool it constantly with water and wet cloths.¹

The project that produced Gloria and Invictor consumed resources and manpower beyond imagining. Its success has given rise to rumours that further cannons, never announced, are being built. Both weapons are difficult to move and to use.¹

A weapon of fear

It is held that the cannons inflict no more destruction than a powerful Imperial wizard, but that their effect on the mind is undeniable. Psychological warfare can win a conflict before it begins, which matters greatly to an empire as vast as The Empire, which must reckon with uprisings within as much as with powers outside. Through these weapons the Red Eagle sends a message to every noble house that contemplates rebellion: "Your high walls cannot protect you."¹

In Sürgün Günlükleri

In the campaign Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles"), Gloria is unveiled at a night celebration outside Gromkar. Guests were brought by carriage along half an hour of rough road to a cleared stretch of forest on the land of a local lord, Bartos, where a great red work tent stood among magical lights and glowing stones. Ghost stories had been spread on purpose to keep people away, and the place was watched and warded.²³⁴

The unveiling

Under its cover the cannon was nearly six horses long and thicker than a horse. A dwarf engineer with a partly burned beard, who led the work, announced that the cannon was ready for use but that its protective enchantments and runes were still being laid. He thanked the team of the Imperial Engineering College, the wizards of the Archon, above all for the new use of bloodstone energy, the dwarf metalworkers and the hired wandering mages.⁵⁶⁷

When the cover came off, a giant cannon with a griffin-headed muzzle and clawed feet stood revealed, its gold and silver protective inlay still unfinished. The engineer said that the Emperor had named it Gloria, a sister to two earlier cannons, which he called Indominus and Imperium, and claimed that it could strike from miles away and set a small village ablaze with a full shot.⁸⁹

The professor's account

The naturalist Galevan, called in for the work's effects on nature, explained that the earlier hellfire cannons drew on energy from a lower plane and on magical powder, and that bloodstone made Gloria at least twice as strong, though unwieldy and hard to use. The builders had followed his advice for keeping the bloodstone's residue from harming the land: deep wells, spreading it through the soil, and burning some of it into the air.¹⁰¹¹

He thought the cannon had cost more than a year's work and great expense, and said that eight cohorts of soldiers had come to take it over. Its real purpose, in his view, was to tell the nobles that they were not safe even in their castles, and so to deter rebellion.¹²¹³

A debate at the ball

Bartos asked Sarah to judge between him and a mage who had worked on the cannon. Bartos called it a useful advance; the mage called it a grave mistake. A wizard, he argued, learns the consequences of destruction through years of training, while the common soldier who lights the fuse is handed a power he does not understand; still, since it would be built anyway, he had helped to make it safe. Bartos answered that the Empire needs reliable firepower that does not depend on mages, since even pirates have small cannons. Sarah said that such a weapon might push others to arm themselves, but that soldiers under orders could limit the danger, and each of the two thought she had taken his side.^14151617

Sarah later told her companions of the unveiling, and Ephorus said that a gnome from whom he had been asked to steal letters was working on Gloria.¹⁸¹⁹

Spoiler: Gloria in battleRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #44 · Say what you have read

In a later battle against the drow, Gloria was set on a commanding height and warded with magic; since it is slow to reload, a single shot was expected. When the goblin and orc vanguard, driven on by their drow masters, charged the dwarven shield wall, the cannon swept the advancing line with a great roar of flame, and the battle went on against the drow themselves.²⁰²¹²²

In Yeni Dünya

In the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), Gloria is named among the Empire's two very large cannons: unwieldy weapons drawn by many animals, slow to fire and strong enough to bring down a castle. The gnome engineer Finli once set a small model of a Gloria cannon before a vase to illustrate the point, and the vase shattered.²³²⁴²⁵