Order's Reach

In the beginning, when the Gods of Influence had not yet sprung from the dreams and fears of the First Ones, there were only the Six Who Are, who demanded nothing and gave only the laws that allow the world to exist. And as the minds of the First Ones began to awaken, and they looked upon the world, they were confused and wanted guidance and understanding. Yet, there were those few who saw, and comprehended with terrible clarity. One of those had stared deep into the caverns of the earth, and there found the strange order of the ore, of the metal, and of the crystal, thus looking unknowingly into the face of Kestreth, ruler of the world's stony foundation. He fell upon his face, and there he said the first prayer of wonderment, and surprised, that Lord shared some small piece of His Knowledge with that First One.

For long, the ancestral man meditated upon that knowledge, and began to craft, whispering his knowledge unto the tool of his making. Now, in those days, to speak a thing of true knowledge was to make it so, for there was no difference between speech and spell, and what he distilled from the crystals of the deep cavern collapsed into an utter certainty in his hands, a nameless tool, meant for war.

Turned upon the tribe to the west, which had harassed his tribe, and stolen the fruits which they had stored for the cold times, the impact of that first arrow obliterated the western encampment in its entirety, and in horror, he threw the bow back into the cave which had inspired it. It was not until much later that it would be found again, and named as the reaching hand of the One Who Is that allowed its creation...

In appearance, Order's Reach is little more than a simple, tapered stave, strung with only the faintest curvature. It is it's color that first gives it away as a thing beyond, a strangely perfect black, from which no light reflects, save at the very edges, where light seems to filter through that odd black. So too, does lifting it betray its nature, for it is far heavier than any such slender stick has a right to be, and it is cold to the touch, the warmth of the hand seeming to pour forth into it without warming it.

Even if the hand has the strength to heft the bow, no hand can draw it, neither mortal, nor of the gods of mortals, for the stave of the bow is impossibly stiff and inflexible, being composed of what men will eventually call degenerate matter, perfectly compressed and free of disorder and entropy. Rather, one must understand its nature and speak the truth of its flexure and release to it, a truth which is concealed upon its surface, in ancient cuniformic markings that cannot be seen with the eye, but which must be felt with the cold-numbed fingers. It is an understanding of the nature of how a material can be deformed and returned elastically, and is as much mathematics as it is a prayer, and many are the minds that will stumble upon it.

Upon that flexure and release, the arrow fitted to the bow becomes the same degenerate matter, and flies forth as aimed with a furious velocity. Whatever it strikes is hit as though the arrow were a falling star, an impact so great that it alone might eliminate a small building of stone. Yet, it is the return of the arrow from that degenerate, perfectly ordered state that causes far more destruction, for only in the most extreme of conditions can matter exist without entropy permeating it. All the power that is required to eliminate that entropy is released, creating a blast so terrible that the air itself burns for a moment, shattering all for hundreds of yards in every direction. Only Order's Reach will be undamaged, compressed as it is within its envelope of perfect order... and it provides no protection for its wielder.