Alexandria Prototype – Google Docs
The Alexandria Prototype
Simply put, the Alexandria Prototype is a flintlock rifled musket that can be reliably dated to the First Century AD. It’s made out of bronze and wood, used something around .80 caliber lead balls, and the gunpowder residue has an unique composition to it, but the basic gun design is sound enough. The Prototype was found last year in a hitherto unknown tomb or subterranean complex; it had been preserved as well as first-century technology could manage, and the gun itself could probably even still fire, if anybody was daft enough to try.
But there isn’t anything otherwise intrinsically special about the Prototype. It is merely a weapon about a thousand years before its time, presumably designed and created by a single unsung genius, and for whatever reason the Roman Empire never got ahold of a copy to duplicate it. Those researchers cleared for the Prototype have tentatively concluded that it must have been seen by the locals as a potent magic weapon to be feared, and not a mechanism to be duplicated. Or possibly it was an assassination tool. Or maybe it was never actually fired, beyond testing purposes? Certainly there’s been a lot of research of surviving artifacts from that time period to see if there are any hints as to the Prototype’s ‘story.’ However, no clues are yet forthcoming.
And the researchers would like there to be more clues. You see, somebody’s trying to steal the Alexandria Prototype, and they’ve proven to be decidedly determined about it. So far, nobody’s done a simple smash-and-grab, but that’s no guarantee that one won’t happen later. Honestly, at this point the people who control the Prototype would settle for knowing just why ninja-types keep getting sent to steal it. Who knows? If they find out why, maybe an arrangement could be made. There’s not much left to glean from the Prototype at this point anyway.