The Builder's Multitool

The Builder's Multitool (Artifact 5)

• Attunement Cost: 8 motes

Description

During the height of the first age there lived a Solar of the Dawn Caste, whose name is long-lost to time. He was known as The Builder, because he felt it was a moral imperative to not destroy something, barring that you then create two more things, and by so doing ensure that Creation is never diminished by your actions.

The builder built a great many things – from the invisibly-tiny, to massive works the shape of which still influence the geography of Creation to this day. The Builder also felt that it was a moral imperative never to forget what it is like to work with one's own two hands, and so he eschewed the enslaved demon workforces of his peers, and only enlisted the aid of mortals when undertaking a project monumentally beyond the scope of two hands enhanced by warstrider size and strength. He often found himself in need a plethora of different tools, and found the charm Craftsman Needs No Tools, while adequate, unsatisfying.

And so he created his Multitool. Though not conceived as a weapon, it soon found a place at his side on the battlefield, being monumentally overengineered in the style of everything built by any member of the Dawn Caste.

The base of the Multitool is a chassis – with one vertical handle at the back, and one large, looping handle providing a horizontal and vertical handle, the Multitool's true strength comes in it's ability to use Hearthstones to power a mind-bogglingly diverse arrangement of heads, it's handle and controls capable of adjusting themselves to suit the use of the tool and the wielder's physical preferances. Three were originally designed and come with the device as part of it, the Saw of Endless Teeth, the Disk-Saw of Impeccable Precision, and Drill of Infinite Variance. All three such tools double post-soak damage inflicted on inanimate objects, and require a Hearthstone 2+ to be socketed in the weapon to function - this Hearthstone provides it's magical power to the weapon's wielder, though it does not provide essence regeneration.

The Builder's Multitool's various heads remain Elsewhere – when removed from the Multitool they return Elsewhere, to be drawn forth at no essence cost by the owner attuned to the artifact and inserted as a Ready Weapon action. Additional heads owned and attuned by the Multitool's owner behave the same way, but return from Elsewhere if their commitment is allowed to lapse. The Builder's Multitool is considered an Oricalcum weapon, though the Magical Material bonus has not been factored into the statistics below.

The Saw of Endless Teeth

Any Solar with moderate strength and a Grimcleaver or a Daiklaive can fell a tree. Any Solar with a lot of strength and a Grand Daiklaive or a Grand Grimcleaver can fell a tree in one blow. The Saw of Endless Teeth was originally conceived of to not only chew smoothly through a tree's trunk in a matter of mere seconds, but to be capable of carving it up into planks and logs just as readily. It turned out quite capable of sawing directly through stone, flesh and blood as well. In form, the Saw is a three-foot long, oval-ended guide with a groove along it's edge, through which flows an endless sequence of toothed saw blades which may adjust their geometry to suit cutting through any material imaginable. Wielded in combat or against objects, it has the following characteristics and uses the Melee skill:

• Speed 4, Accuracy +3, Damage +6L, Defense +2, Rate 3, Minimums: Str 2, Melee 3, Tags: 2, R
  • Stats based on the Tsunami Blade (Scroll of the Monk). Martial Arts minimum of 1 swapped for Melee 3 minimum, use with the Martial Arts skill swapped for Melee. The 2-handed tag was added, and the Reach tag was added.

The Disk-Saw of Impeccable Precision

A powerful weapon for making calculated, precise cuts in objects (or people), the Disk-Saw has nowhere near the reach of the Saw of Endless Teeth, putting a large, vertical disk directly on the front of the multitool. This disk and it's attachment head can vary themselves to suit a number of tasks, from complicated guides and rods to ensure a perfect cut every time, to a bare spinning disk to maximize contact area in combat. The disk's composition itself can vary to perfectly suit the task it's put to, from an un-toothed but gritted grinding edge suitable for working on metal, to an edge with long teeth that jut straight from the surface then turn radically in the direction of spin, the best to inflict savage furrows through flesh with.

As an additional twist, when his mind was first turning to the possibility of replacing his Daiklaive full-time with his Multitool, the Builder had occasion to witness a Terrestrial Exalt of the Air Aspect wielding an Infinite Jade Chakram. Jealous, the Builder engineered a similar function into the Disk-Saw head, allowing the spinning disk to be detached and hurled forward with incredible velocity and force; forgoing the volume of fire of the Infinite Jade Chakram for one extraordinarily powerful ranged attack.

Used in battle or in the workplace, the Disk-Saw of Impeccable Precision has the following characteristics. It uses either the Melee or Archery skills, and uses the two statistic blocks given below:

• Melee:
  • Speed: 5, Accuracy +2, Damage +12L/4, Defense +0, Rate 2, Minimums: Str 3, Melee 3, Tags: 2, O, P
    • Stats based on the Grand Daiklaive. The Reach tag has been removed, and it's been given the Melee 3 requirement.

• Ranged:
  • Speed: 5, Accuracy +2, Damage 12L/4, Rate: 1, Range 50, Minimums: Dex 3, Archery 3 Tags: 2, O, P
    • Stats more or less made up based on the stats given above and the Range is that of the Infinite Jade Chakram. It costs nothing to launch a disk, nor does it require any action to re-arm for the next action.

The Drill of Infinite Variance

The Drill of Infinite Variance is exactly what it's label says – a drill head that can range in size from five feet to as small as it can be desired, with a thickness and geometry which can be adjusted for anything from boring out a hole in the ground suitable for setting entire logs into, to boring a thin hole in thick metal or stone. In battle, the Builder quickly learned that it could be used very effectively to leap onto magitech war machines and drill through them to disable vital components – or to drill through warstrider armor to the soft, fleshy pilot within.
Wielded, the Drill of Infinite Variance has the following characteristics:

• Speed 6, Accuracy +2, Damage +14L/4, Defense -2, Rate 2, Minimums: Str 3, Melee 3, Tags: 2, O, P, R.

Directional-Attraction Essence Field Manipulator (Artifact 3)

• Attunement: 5

The first attachment head designed for the Builder's Multitool separate from those it was designed with, the Directional-Attraction Essence Field Manipulator (otherwise known simply as a Attractor Arbalest,) was designed during a period in the Builder's life when he found himself grappling with the fallout of a Twilight Caste's disastrous experiment with soulsteel, having invented a form of the stuff which cut through any physical protection, no matter how magical, sapping life-force instantly. As this attack was not a direct attack on the body and as such Adamant Skin Technique was ineffective, the only ways to manipulate it were to either use a full-sized warstrider (whose arms were sufficiently divorced from the operator's) or to bat it about with Goremauls (entertaining, but imprecise and inefficient – and while the stuff could be struck momentarily relatively, attempts to pick it up with a net or basket on a stick proved futile).

Twilights came together to attempt to solve the problem of disposing of the stuff efficiently, and while it was eventually decided the best way to be rid of it was to simply dump it into the underworld (after all, ghosts had no more life-force to drain), they grappled with and failed to come up with a way to actually move the stuff safely. The Builder stepped in; if one could not touch it safely without repeatedly invoking defensive charms (which would rapidly deplete your Essence supply,) the solution was simply to not have to touch it! He invented the Directional-Attraction Essence Field Manipulator head for his Multitool, and in short order had collected the stuff for transport (via cart attached to a clockwork steed) to it's final dumping ground.

In typical Dawn Caste fashion, of course, the Attractor Arbalest was overengineered, and it soon became the Builder's favorite tool. Being capable of attracting objects from very vast distances away, lifting extremely heavy objects and holding them beyond arm's length, and even hurling them to extreme distances with mighty force, the Attractor Arbalest was capable of manipulating objects crudely, but with a certain undeniable finesse.

As a Miscellaneous action, the Attractor Arbalest may perform any of the feats of strength (or equivalent,) on page 127 of Exalted, using it's wielder's Essence + the hearthstone rating of the Hearthstone installed in the Builder's Multitool in place of Strength + Athletics. This combination is also used as an effective Strength score for the Attractor Arbalest in combat, modifying the damage output of it's combat ability, and it may draw objects at a rate of that many yards per tick, up to that many yards times ten. That number may be enhanced for a scene by an additional commitment of Essence; each additionally-committed mote, up to a maximum of the user's permanent Essence score, adds directly to the wielder's Essence + the Hearthstone for the purposes of the Multitool's attributes.

In combat, objects the Attractor Arbalest may project (as an Archery Attack) fall into three categories generally, barring exceptionally volatile objects like kegs of flame powder or magical grenades which would explode upon impact or other special ammunition (such as Fire Pearls which would react much the same as if they had been launched from a fuel-bolt launcher) after being shot from the Directional-Attraction Essence Field Manipulator thanks to having been charged with residual essence from the shot.

These three categories are 'Lethal', and include objects which are especially lethal, such as sawmill blades, discarded axes or swords, fence posts and the like, 'Blunt' (by far the most common object to find,) which includes such objects as tree stumps, sawn logs, wagon wheels and masonry blocks, and 'piercing', which includes sharp-pointed objects hurled with exceptional force, such as spears, iron rods, daggers or swords flung point-first, arrows collected from the field of battle, and the like. The statistics below represent the maximum power output – the damage may be tuned down freely by means such as selecting a smaller object or hurling it with a lesser force.

Although it's range is decidedly inferior to a Powerbows' (and in fact it earns a Thrown weapon's Magical Material range bonus instead of that of an artifact bow,) the projectiles hurled by the Attractor Arbalest deal considerably more damage; the values listed below are added to the wielder's permanent essence plus the rating of the Hearthstone set in the Multitool.

• Lethal Objects:
  • Speed 6, Accuracy +2, Damage +9L/3, Rate 1, Range 50, Tags: 2, O

• Blunt Objects:
  • Speed 6, Accuracy +2, Damage +14B/4, Rate 1, Range 50, Tags: 2, O, P

• Piercing Objects:
  • Speed 6, Accuracy +2, Damage +6L, Rate 1, Range 100, Tags: 2, P

Lastly, it should be noted that the Attractor Arbalest has no direct effect on creatures with an awakened Essence of 2 or higher. It can, however, intercept incoming ranged attacks which involve a projectile; the wielder must declare they are awaiting such attacks coming from a specific source, and the Arbalest can function as a Perfect defense against any one such projectile without invoking a Flaw of Invulnerability. This won't protect the user at all against a 'swarm' attack (such as a beehive shell from a warstrider), or from multiple attacks, but it can be extremely useful in proper circumstances, such as being targeted with a fire pearl from a fuel bolt launcher – not to mention allowing the wielder to throw the captured object straight back!