Tag: country

#17 Gunsmoke Jones

Gunsmoke Jones

“Any simpleton can make a gun out of metal, but a true and living gunslinger can carve a firearm from anything that is at hand. Furthermore, one’s wits and one’s will are the only true substances one can always guarantee will be at hand. And what wonderful weapons we shall make from them, such songs of fire as to make the gods think second thoughts.”

– Canto XVII, Liber Magnum

Gunsmoke Jones was named such since he was born during a bandit attack. “He come into this world with gunsmoke,” said his father. “Mos’ likely gon’ leave it that way too.” A quiet and curious country boy, while wandering around the Amygdalene Plains he discovers an old, heavy book – The Liber Magnum. He had never heard of the Liber Magnum –literally the “great book” but known to those who keep track of such things as “The Book of The Greater Weapon” — yet he finds that he has an aptitude for its instructions. By mastering its disciplines and creating a weapon with nothing put pure thought, he defeats the bandits who’ve preyed on his town. His folks, and the other villagers, are thankful but also a little scared and worried. They consult the town’s rusty old infobot, who tells him to go to The Eternal City, a utopian metropolis (according to the robot’s outdated databanks), and speak to the Bureau of Memetic Transmission. They should have answers. But his family don’t trust the city, and tell him to be careful and come straight back. As he begins his long journey, following the Gilded Highway to the Eternal City he learns more from the book. The book does not only help him to create constructs and make his mind faster than bullets, but it also whispers dark truths about the world that kind of disturb him. He starts to wonder, is this how the wider world truly is, or are the ideas in the book just colonizing his mind for their own purposes? Hopefully the Bureau of Memetic Transmission in the city will be able to take the book back and sort all of this out…

GUNSMOKE JONES WILL RETURN IN “GUNSMOKE JONES AND THE ETERNAL CITY”