Hellfire cannon

The hellfire cannons are the great cannons of The Empire. They look like massive guns, but instead of ordinary shot they hurl compressed magical energy at the enemy as a devastating fireball, and they are made entirely through metallurgy working together with magic. In the campaigns Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") and Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel") they appear as the work of the Emperor's engineers.^{1 2}

The two cannons

According to the Mercenary Compendium, Imperial engineers, Archon wizards and gnome craftsmen brought in from various regions built two hellfire cannons over the past decade, Gloria and Invictor. The project consumed resources and manpower beyond imagining, and its success has given rise to rumours of further cannons that were never announced. Both weapons are hard to move and to use.¹

The same book holds that the cannons cause no more destruction than a powerful Imperial wizard, but that their effect on the mind is great: through them the Red Eagle tells every noble house that thinks of rebellion that its walls cannot protect it.¹

In Sürgün Günlükleri

Kemp Corvus knew that two hellfire cannons had been made before, one at Batı Kalkanı and the other at a second site, and that both were kept where they had been built, because moving them was too dangerous. When the governor Melvin Roche spoke of urgent quotas of timber and coal sent to him by the officials and planners of the Marble Palace, the companions wondered whether a new cannon, a city, a fortress or other weapons were being made; the project was never named to them.^{3 2}

Near Gromkar, an old letter called a travelling gnome to a great imperial project close to the city for his knowledge of safety and of making powder. A second letter thanked him, told him that his part was finished and that he could return to his own work.^{4 5}

At a celebration in a cleared stretch of forest outside Gromkar, a dwarf engineer with a half-burnt beard declared the project complete, though its protective enchantments and runes were still being worked. He thanked the Imperial engineers, the Archon wizards, the dwarven metalworkers and hired travelling mages. When the covering was lifted, a giant cannon stood revealed, its mouth shaped like a griffin's head and its feet like claws; it was announced that the Emperor had named it Gloria, a sister to the earlier Indominus and Imperium.^{6 7 8}

The naturalist Merrick Galevan explained that the earlier cannons had drawn 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. He thought it had cost more than a year of work and great expense, and that its true purpose was to tell the nobles that they were not safe even in their castles.^{9 10 11}

In Mürekkep ve Çelik

At the Emperor's ball in the Marble Palace, the palace's chief engineer, an old and respected man escorted by members of the engineers' guild, announced that the cannons the Emperor had ordered were made and would be sent to support Batı Kalkanı. He later came to the table of Castor and Yotun and said that he had recently designed the hellfire cannon himself. He also recalled that great cannons firing special ammunition had already been cast for the Monette house, in the hope that they would never have to be used.^{12 13 14 15}