Hisarköy Anomalies – Google Docs
The Hisarköy Anomalies are named for their original location (Hisarköy, a Turkish village found on the ancient Byzantine site of Amorion). A clandestine NATO archeological operation (assisted by half-rogue Turkish military semanticists) uncovered the artifacts in early 2016, and managed to get them quietly airlifted out of the country by year’s end. Currently, the Anomalies reside in a black facility at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, and are being analyzed to a fare-thee-well.
Description: technically, the Hisarköy Anomalies consist of a shield and a mace. “Technically” because the shield is a battered standard-size octangular Stop sign with leather straps and a wooden edge attached, and the mace is a steel pole embedded in a hunk of concrete mixed with rebar (again, with a leather handle crafted on). Carbon dating on the leather dates it to about 600 AD, which matches all the organic material in the underground catacomb where they found the Hisarköy Anomalies. Other peculiarities: despite weighing about sixty pounds, the mace can be effortlessly operated by anyone, and can crack an engine block; while the shield is just as effectively weightless when used, and can stop a .45 caliber bullet.
There are many questions about these items, and not just the ones that immediately pop to mind. Mysterious origins are actually easy to work around: if worst comes to worst, the entire thing can just be classified as a miracle and then people can concentrate on practical questions. Such as “Why do we have no records of somebody using this item in Anatolia?” or “Who was the guy in that tomb?” (there was no actual corpse to be found there) or even “Why would anybody just bury a perfectly good set of magic items, anyway?” These are the questions that currently occupy the time of the Top Men, which means that these are the questions that field research teams will be sent out to suss out. Best bet would be to start in Hisarköy itself; after all, maybe there’s a clue that the first teams missed. Enjoy Turkey! It’s still technically in NATO, so you shouldn’t have any problems.
Oh, and you should probably bring along this Stop sign and hunk of pole in concrete that Requisitions sent over. You know. Just in case.
Minor edit, 2nd paragraph initially refers to a sword and a mace.
Visualization problem – i can picture a piece of rebar with a hunk of concrete on the end as a mace but am having trouble grasping a pole with rebar on the end. Is it possibly a hunk of concrete with rebar bits sticking out on the end of a pole?
Yeah, that first needs a fix. As to the second, I was thinking of rebar mesh mixed with concrete, but if you’re thinking of poles, then there needs to be a rewrite.
Annnnnnd fixed. Thanks! Always good to have a second set of eyes on things. 🙂
Yes, Turkey is *technically* still in NATO these days.
But I don’t think that Erdogan is going to quietly overlook the fact that some rather unusual and potentially powerful magic items were smuggled out of *his* country. Hopefully the hapless agents won’t be caught in the middle of whatever he tries to do to get the items back on Turkish soil.
What an awful complication that would be, for sure.