TEXT: The World of Aden originAlly creATed by ShAne lAcy henSley
  Although later eclipsed by the more utilitarian discovery of steam 
  power and the discovery of manite, one of the most fundamentally revo-
  lutionary discoveries in Aden was the development of gunpowder. At the 
  time that gunpowder and firearms became more prevalent, most existing 
  armor afforded very little protection against bullets, and learning to use 
  a firearm was vastly quicker and easier than learning to master a bow or 
  even a crossbow. There was little large-scale conflict present in the world 
  at that time, but what skirmishes did exist were transformed completely 
  by the presence of guns on the field of battle. Those who possessed them 
  suddenly became the victors almost by default if their opponents did 
  not. The world adjusted, as it always does, but the learning curve 
  was a steep one, and those who could not change quickly 
  failed to survive it.
  It has been more than four centuries since gunpowder 
  was first developed, and the secret of its creation 
  is no longer secret at all. Most settlements of any 
  significant size have a steamwright or arcanist who 
  can produce it with relatively simple ingredients. 
  Likewise, most metal workers are familiar with the 
  basic components of a firearm’s mechanisms, and 
  can repair them if not produce their own. The 
  production of quality firearms is as much art 
  as it is science, however, and there are those 
  throughout the Known Lands who have made 
  a name for themselves by crafting exception-
  ally high-grade items. In the difficult times 
  following the Darkfall, enthusiasts have trav-
  eled across the entire continent, a life-threat-
  ening and extremely expensive proposition 
  to be sure, to patronize such experts.
  Credits
  Written by: Shawn Carman
  Editing: Shawn Carman
  Interior Artwork: Tanyaporn Sangsnit, 
  Publisher’s Choice Quality Stock Art C Rick 
  Hershey / Fat Goblin Games, and Pawel Dobosz
  For Kyoudai Games
  Shawn Carman, Creative Department
  Rich Wulf, Mechanical Design
  Ryan Carman, Logistics & Development
   
  Butch Carman, Chief Financial Officer
  Mike Brodu, Graphic Design & Branding
  Original Graphic Design: Robert Denton
  1
  
  Heimlocke & Sons
  In the Urbanan city of Blackport there is a small, modest workshop, 
  easily overlooked if one is not deliberately hunting for it, where one of 
  the greatest living gunsmiths in the Known Lands plies his trade. Dieter 
  Heimlocke is nearing seventy years old, which is an incredible age for 
  a human to reach with the perils that face the people of Aden today, and 
  has been crafting firearm components since he was a child, learning at 
  the knee of his father and grandfather. Heimlocke & Suns has been in 
  business for almost two hundred years, although there have been brief 
  periods where they have been shut down for one reason or another, and 
  Dieter currently works alongside several of his own children, a nephew 
  or two, and even one of his oldest granddaughters. Together, they craft 
  some of the finest firearms in Western Aden, possibly the entire conti-
  nent.
  The success of Heimlocke & Sons is almost an accident. When Diet-
  er’s grandfather began his business, he could not get all the raw mate-
  rials he needed, and thus began building pistols with a slightly larger 
  bore than others. This required him to produce his own packed rounds 
  for it as well, which meant that those who purchased their firearms from 
  him had to purchase their ammunition from him as well. This kept him 
  in business while he began to build a larger customer base, until his 
  pistols were well known and well regarded enough that others in the 
  area began to make and stock rounds for “Heimlocke Pistols” to sell 
  to their own customer bases who happened to own one. To this day the 
  family is uncertain where this was merely happenstance or a deliberate, 
  canny move by the original Heimlocke designed to build dependence 
  upon his fledgling business.
  Members of the Heimlocke family begin working in the family busi-
  ness from a very young age in hopes of discovering their particular 
  talents. Most find that they are skilled at some aspect of the process, 
  whether it’s the crafting of incredibly fine-tuned mechanical compo-
  nents, mixing the perfect blend of components to create high-quality 
  gunpowder, or even just being especially good at managing money and 
  logistics. If someone can’t find their niche within the family business, 
  of course, they’re free to go and find something else to do with their 
  life; the Heimlockes accept that not everyone has a talent for the firearm 
  business, but they try to keep as many members of the family involved 
  as possible to keep outsiders from poaching their techniques and busi-
  ness.
  Heimlocke Firearms
  Heimlocke & Sons sells a standard array of firearms in both standard 
  and masterwork varieties. Their specialty, however, is the Heimlocke 
  Special, an exquisitely crafted masterwork pistol with a slightly larger-
  bore barrel that allows for rounds with a correspondingly larger quan-
  tity of gunpowder. Because of this, all range increments are increased 
  by 20 ft. Within close range, the pistol also does an additional +1 
  damage. However, the cost of this bonus is the sharply increased recoil, 
  which makes any additional ranged attacks made during the same round 
  (from a matched pistol, for example) suffer -1 to the attack roll. These 
  specialist weapons cost double the normal price for a masterwork pistol.
  Breath of the Dragon
  The signs for this firearm workshop bear the symbol of the dragon, 
  the greatest of the Ten Beasts whose philosophies govern all aspects of 
  life in Vanora. Under normal circumstances, this would be considered 
  tantamount to heresy, for only the Dragon Emperor and his vassals are 
  permitted to bear the sign of the dragon. The proprietor, an elven alche-
  mist and metalworker named Toshimoko, is something of an oddity, 
  however. She did serve in the Vanoran militia, as do a great many citi-
  zens, but was never chosen to serve among the Sons of the Dragon. 
  However, she did prove an exceptional quartermaster and equipment 
  specialist, and served the Sons in this manner although she never bore 
  their emblem herself. However, during one large-scale exercise on 
  behalf of the Sons, Toshimoko was one of the called up to be on duty. 
  At some point, the Emperor’s personal firearm malfunctioned and, 
  rather than return to the palace for his personal gunsmith to attend to 
  it, he handed it over to Toshimoko. She promptly made several small 
  adjustments that dramatically improved the weapon’s performance. The 
  Emperor, a firearm aficionado, appreciated the work and complimented 
  Toshimoko’s skill, asking how he could repay her for her expertise. She 
  simply requested the right to use the dragon emblem when she opened 
  her own firearm workshop, and the Emperor readily agreed.
  It would be several more years before Toshimoko’s service to the 
  Empire was complete, and by that time the Darkfall had taken place 
  and the Emperor’s son had taken his place on the throne. The previous 
  Emperor’s promise was documented in writing, however, and so Toshi-
  moko proceeded to open her workshop as intended. The novelty of the 
  dragon emblem and the story behind it was sufficient to ensure that 
  Toshimoko did not lack for customers, and often had to turn them away 
  because she could not possibly hope to fill all the orders that were 
  submitted to her. Once she had been in business a short time and was a 
  demonstrable financial success, she began to be slightly more selective 
  in taking new clients, choosing tasks that challenged or interested her in 
  some way. She has also taken a pair of apprentices, young elves whose 
  families have been friends with hers for a very long time, and skilled 
  enough to master several of her rudimentary techniques, such as those 
  she used on the Emperor’s firearms years ago.
  Although Toshimoko has created several innovations that have been 
  duplicated by competitors throughout the Known Lands, undoubtedly 
  her most significant development has been the creation of a breech-
  loading rifle, which has dramatically decreased loading time for most 
  rifles. She has likewise been working on the notion of firearms that 
  contain multiple rounds and can be fired several times consecutively 
  before requiring reloading, but at the private request of the Emperor, 
  she has halted her research into “lever action reloading” rifles until such 
  time as the Emperor can provide her with proper security and facilities 
  to ensure that no one outside the Sons of the Dragon will possess such 
  a powerful upgrade in weaponry.
  Toshimoko and her apprentices prefer to work on projects involving 
  rifles. As an adjunct to the Sons of the Dragon, Toshimoko shares their 
  belief that close quarters combat is an honorable pursuit that should, 
  when possible, be performed with a blade. For that reason, she produces 
  fewer pistols than anything else, despite that they are quite popular with 
  the common people, as they are the only products of hers that they can 
  afford. This has not prevented her from developing new innovations in 
  that area, however, as her popular Dragon’s Breath Blunderbuss can 
  attest.
  2
  
  Dragon’s Breath Firearms
  One of Toshimoko’s earliest and most popular designs is the 
  so-called Dragon’s Breath Blunderbuss. It is a pistol-sized scattergun, 
  although Toshimoko prefers the term blunderbuss, which was a less-
  effective version of the scattergun that existed fifty years or so ago, 
  with an enhanced and reinforced chamber specifically designed to 
  hold a dose of alchemist’s fire. This allows the weapon to shoot alche-
  mist’s fire with twice the range increment it could normally be thrown. 
  Reloading takes twice as long as normal due to the delicacy required in 
  pouring such a volatile alchemical creation into the weapon’s compara-
  tively small chamber. This is considered a masterwork scattergun and 
  priced accordingly. 
  Longswords
  This unimaginatively named shop is one of a number of blacksmith 
  shops operating in the city of Sea Reach, the capital of Arasteen. The 
  shop is a second-generation business, opened by the mother of its 
  current proprietors when she was a young woman, and over several 
  decades of service it has developed a reputation for good service and 
  excellent craftsmanship. The current proprietors are Bjorn and Sven 
  Skaldson, and their younger sister Ysilla. Ysilla is a brilliant steam-
  wright who loves to experiment with new ideas, and has managed to 
  automate enough of the shop’s traditional blacksmithing equipment that 
  her older brothers can afford to spend more time with their families or 
  drinking with their friends (more often the latter), and so they allow her 
  to pursue whatever interests she desires in gratitude for their increased 
  freedom.
  Ysilla was always a brilliant child, but some years ago a chance 
  encounter with the merchant captain Jacinda MacIntyre, a noteworthy 
  gunslinger, in one of the city’s open-air markets. So proficient was 
  Captain MacIntyre in dispatching an ambush by some of her unsavory 
  competitors that Ysilla genuinely believed for some time that she had 
  used magic. Once she recognized that the captain was merely extremely 
  skilled, she tried for more than a year to replicate some of her maneu-
  vers, but found her physical skills wanting. Thus, she turned to studying 
  firearms themselves, and found much more success in that regard. As in 
  all things, Ysilla’s thoughts turned to matters of efficiency, and how to 
  improve upon the shortcomings of firearms in general. Reloading time, 
  in particular, was something that she found offensive, and reasoned that 
  if her personal hero, Captain MacIntyre, had not had to carry so many 
  pistols on her person, she would have been capable of even greater 
  feats. Excited by the prospect, Ysilla turned her attention fully to this 
  proposition.
  Most of the patrons of Longswords are aware that the shop now 
  sells a small number of firearms in addition to its normal wares. Only 
  those who truly study firearms and their use have any inkling of the 
  importance the shop holds among the circle of true aficionados. Word 
  of her specially crafted goods has spread throughout Arasteen, and 
  even among certain high-level practitioners in other nations as well. 
  Although her family doesn’t really understand it, they do know that 
  there is more new traffic in Longswords than before, and that a lot of 
  it is there for Ysilla’s goods. She never asks for much in return, just 
  a share of the profits so that she can continue her new developments, 
  technologies, and materials. Frankly her brothers love the new normal 
  and encourage her to continue as much as she wants. The elder of the 
  twins, Bjorn, is more financially aware than his brother, and he worries 
  somewhat that if Ysilla’s new suitor, a half-elf ranger who works with 
  the city guard, ends up marrying her, it could impact their shop’s bottom 
  line, and for that reason he has taken to carefully discouraging the rela-
  tionship between the two whenever possible. His brother remains obliv-
  ious to the matter and, if he were to become aware of it, would probably 
  take Bjorn strongly to task for prioritizing profit over family. 
  The Fourth Blade
  Although outsiders find the title confusing, Ysilla’s greatest success 
  to date is named for an old Arastinian proverb extolling the virtues of 
  persistence that states when the first three blades fail to slay an enemy, 
  surely it is the fourth blade that will prevail. This massive rifle literally 
  has four barrels, one situated on top of another. A normal rifle requires 
  a move action to reload, but the Fourth Blade has a simple crank that 
  allows a new barrel to rotate to the top position with a half-turn, making 
  it a free action. The Fourth Blade weighs triple the weight of a normal 
  rifle and costs three times as much. Most who are not familiar with 
  its purpose find its appearance bordering  upon the ridiculous, but this 
  opinion often changes when they see it put to use by one skilled in its 
  applications. 
  The Toymaker’s 
  Workshop
  This oddly named business is closed the vast majority of the time, 
  as the proprietor travels across the Known Lands and into the Southern 
  Seas throughout much of the year. The workshop is open a maximum 
  of two months out of the year, and often not in consecutive periods of 
  more than a week or two at a time, usually opening with little announce-
  ment and closing with only a day or two’s notice. Despite this, there 
  are those who watch the shop closely and wait for any sign of activity, 
  knowing that once it does open, getting in to see the owner early is 
  essential to getting a successful contract completed. 
  The Toymaker’s Workshop is one of numerous businesses and 
  estates maintained across the face of the Known Lands by the enigmatic 
  mechamage known as Mikal the Toymaker. Generally regarded as a 
  tragic figure, Mikal’s past is the subject of conjecture by a great many 
  of those who have met him or who have even only heard of him. He is 
  not prone to discussing his past and turns away any potential customer 
  foolish enough to ask with assurances that they will never be a patron 
  of his business again. He seems to regard the pursuit of improving and 
  developing technology as one of his foremost priorities, and returns to 
  Balaquim at random intervals when he feels as though he has new ideas 
  for firearms that need to be implemented or merely tested. Unfortu-
  nately this is not exactly a predictable schedule, which makes his pres-
  ence in the city at his workshop highly erratic, much to the chagrin of 
  those who are interested in his work. 
  3
  
  Mikal’s firearm modifications are entirely unique, and he rarely 
  repeats himself when modifying a weapon. He doesn’t always even 
  take the owner’s requests into consideration, which is something that 
  those who seek to hire him must accept before he will even consider 
  providing them with his services. His most famous creations are as 
  far beyond conventional firearms as a firearm is beyond a shortspear, 
  however, and only a handful of them exist anywhere in the Known 
  Lands. As a mechamage, Mikal has a particular fondness for steam-
  powered golems and their applications, and his personal golem takes 
  the form of a clockwork falcon that has a staggering array of appli-
  cations, which many of his enemies have found out to their chagrin 
  very shortly, sometimes immediately, before passing from the mortal 
  coil. The time, effort, and enchantments that Mikal has invested into 
  his personal golem ensure that there are none like it anywhere else, but 
  there are a few far less advanced models that he has made for others 
  on occasion. Rumor has it that there are potential customers who have 
  camped out in Balaquim for more than a year at a time in hopes of 
  convincing Mikal to make one of the devices for them, but he is notori-
  ously selective in which customers he accepts. 
  Mikal & His Toys
  For more information on the Toymaker, see Heroes & Villains of 
  Aden.
  The Toymaker’s most famous ware in his Balaquim workshop are 
  the extremely limited number of his so-called Aerial Falcon Rifles, 
  extremely complex and ridiculously expensive weapons that he crafts 
  personally for those who impress him with their requests to own one. 
  These are patterned after his personal steam golem, but lack that entity’s 
  autonomy and versatility, essentially existing as remote piloted fire-
  arms. An Aerial Falcon Rifle is, as the description indicates, a heavily 
  enchanted, steam-powered device roughly double the size of a normal 
  falcon and in the same rough shape. It is controlled by a small console 
  roughly the size of a man’s hand, which includes a small crystal that 
  allows the controller to see what the rifle is pointing at. The device can 
  travel up to one mile from the controller and operate normally; farther 
  than this and it stops and awaits instruction once the controller moves 
  within distance. It works as a sniper rifle with normal damage and range 
  increments. The aerial rifle has a flight speed of 15, hardness of 5, and 
  20 hit points. They cost 10,000 crests.
  4
  
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  System Reference Document. Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, based on material by 
  E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
  Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. Copyright 2009, Paizo Inc.; Author: Jason Bulmahn, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.
  The Book of Experimental Might. Copyright 2008, Monte J. Cook. All rights reserved.
  Tome of Horrors. Copyright 2002, Necromancer Games, Inc.; Authors: Scott Greene, with Clark Peterson, Erica Balsley, Kevin Baase, Casey Christofferson, 
  Lance Hawvermale, Travis Hawvermale, Patrick Lawinger, and Bill Webb; Based on original content from TSR.Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary. © 
  2009, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Author: Jason Bulmahn, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Player’s Guide. © 2010, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Author: Jason Bulmahn
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Magic. © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Jason Bulmahn, Tim Hitchcock, Colin McComb, Rob McCreary, 
  Jason Nelson, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Sean K Reynolds, Owen K.C. Stephens, and Russ Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Combat.  © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Dennis Baker, Jesse Benner, Benjamin Bruck, Jason Bulmahn, 
  Brian J. Cortijo, Jim Groves, Tim Hitchcock, Richard A. Hunt, Colin McComb, Jason Nelson, Tom Phillips, Patrick Renie, Sean K Reynolds, and Russ Taylor.
  Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Equipment. © 2012 Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors: Dennis Baker, Jesse Benner, Benjamin Bruck, Ross Byers, 
  Brian J. Cortijo, Ryan Costello, Mike Ferguson, Matt Goetz, Jim Groves, Tracy Hurley, Matt James, Jonathan H. Keith, Michael Kenway, Hal MacLean, 
  Jason Nelson, Tork Shaw, Owen KC Stephens, and Russ Taylor.
  Thunderscape: The World of Aden. © 2013 Kyoudai Games, LLC; Authors: Shawn Carman and Rich Wulf.
  Thunderscape The Aden Gazette #11, Legendary Gunsmiths, Volume 1. © 2018 Kyoudai Games, LLC; Author: Shawn Carman.
  5
  
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