Skulking Stunray
The Skulking Stunray was a naval weapon devised by the artificers of the Golden Age using Magitechnology.
Skulking Stunrays were named for, and perhaps inspired by, the Stunray, a flat fish with the ability to deliver powerful shocks to the area around it. The weapons bear little physical similarity to their namesake, being spherical devices of metal, dotted with small rounded protuberances of adamant. These protuberances are opened as the weapon is positioned, allowing it to hold itself in place below the surface by riding the local essence flows as they move through it.
The movement of these flows also allows the Skulking Stunray to detect changes caused by objects passing within its range. The living Essence of creatures and even Exalts has no effect on the mechanism, but when it detects the hull of a seagoing vessel, or a Magitech-armoured diver such as one wearing Dragon Armour, it detonates.
The detonation of the Stunray unleashes a burst of shocking energy, which resonates through the plating and hulls of its targets. Against a wooden hull, the effect is most often cracking and splintering of wood, and intense pain for crews, the damage often opening gaps through which water can sink the vessel. However, it is not particularly effective at this purpose, and shows its power when striking the targets it was designed to destroy as a counter-Magitech weapon.
When its energies strike a Magitech hull, the resonance is intensified by the artifact’s own internal essence conduits, causing the vehicle to shudder and shift as it begins to scream. For those on deck, this screaming inflicts severe pain in addition to the shock coursing through the air, worsening over a few moments to a level few mortal minds can survive. For those below deck, the effect is even more intense, as the contents of their skulls are rendered liquid. The effect on armoured targets is similar.
Production of Stunrays was limited during the time of the Golden Age, the weapons primarily used as part of blockades against the rare Threshold principalities who defied the Deliberative’s will. The Usurpation saw knowledge of their construction lost, along with access to components vital in doing so… but those examples which remained in old Solar armouries became eagerly sought by the Dragonblooded due to their effectiveness: the weapons were able to strike at crews and wearers, but leave valuable First Age vessels and armours intact.
The most significant deployment of the weapons took place in the last century of the Shogunate Era, when a hundred mines were deployed by the daimyo of Crane Bay to stop a rival force mustering for a crossing at the Marin Lighthouse. These mines, spread through the waters of Marin Bay, rendered those waters nearly unnavigable until they were destroyed when the Scarlet Empress unleashed the powers of the Imperial Manse to end the Great Contagion. A more limited deployment occurred during the siege of Lookshy in the Second Realm Invasion of the Scavenger Lands, when Imperial forces deployed a dozen of them to bottle the Seventh Legion fleet in its harbor. The Stunrays deployed there survived the end of the war, eventually cleared when Lookshy commandeered wooden vessels on the Yanaze to sweep the area and render it safe for passage.
The Realm continues to control a small stockpile of Skulking Stunrays, though it has not deployed them since… for the few Threshold powers controlling First Age hulls, this remains a grave concern, as while such warships greatly reduce the Scarlet Empire’s advantage in sheer number of wooden ships, that advantage could be restored by deploying Stunrays. No other stockpiles are known to exist, but it is almost certain that at least a few examples left by Shogunate battles still lie in forgotten coves or isolated Western waters, waiting for targets to present themselves.
The Stunray is the basis or inspiration for two other naval weapons, all-but lost to the present era, the Swimming Stunray and the Bursting Stunray.
