The Cerbat

The cerbat, or cerbattan is a magical ranged weapon used by some Mage Mercenary working for Mercenary Guilds, particulary in Arros.

Mechanics & Inner Workings

Once an elemental mage takes a Cerbat in his hand, they can activate it by transfering their mana to the weapon, via the Mana receptors covering the handle. The mana then travels up the weapon, via the tin rod inside, itself isolated from the outside by a steel casing. Once the mana reaches the tip of the weapon, it is converted into a specific elemental output.
The type of output is determined by the type of mage holding the weapon, as each type of mage produce sligtly different mana, and the weapon responds to those difference. While the specifics of this phenomena are yet to be fully understood, they are predictable to an extent. Ice and Water mages have nearly the same Mana signature and the weapon tends to convert both of their mana inputs into Ice.
Once the mana is coverted, the resulting elemental mass is forcibly ejected from the coverter by the subsequent amount of mana entering the converter. This has the effect of creating a snow ball effect, where more mana within the mage's body is pulled inside the weapon to be converted. If not trained adequatly, this can rapidaly result in Mana sickness, where the mage's mana reserves are too depleted to regenerate normaly.

Manufacturing process

Just like with its distant cousin, the Battan, the Cerbat's manufacturing process is kept a secret and only a few select institutions in Arros have the knowledge to make them.

History

The invention of the Cerbat is directly linked to the invention, spread and subsequent mass adoption of The Battan during the last centuries of the Second Age. The manufacturing was, and still is, a close guarded secret of the The Shield of Saol, the sole producers of these weapons, who during that time, were called Sokralians and practiced Sokralism , a branch of the Solian Fate that viewed mages as pions of Uxal, which needed to be killed off.
To do this, they relied on the cult having many scholary members in order to create weapons capable of dealing with mages effectively, and this leads to the creation of The Battan, amongst other things. The invention of the battan lead to many new discoveries regarding Magicalurgy. Thanks to this new discovery, the door opened to create new types of Talismans not just as Enhancers, suppressors or for matters of defence, but also as weapons.
The first weapon that was created after this discovery was the Cerbat, largely based on the design of The Battan, but with a key difference. The imput of nexurium came from a different source and the output took the form of an element, instead of the usualy small lightning bolts of Wild Nexurium. The invention of the Cerbat is largely credited to a professor named Eris Sertas, who was an expert on Lycen crystals working at the university of the City of Aleida 
Starting in the year 48 BC, he and his colleages at the university did numerous tests with lost battans they sparingly recieves from mages who managed to deafeat cult members. Those tests and examination lead to the discovery of the Charged Tin Bronze interaction within the battan, which is what made the weapon so powerful. They immediatly saw the potential that this had and after successfully replicating the CBT interaction, they started working on the creation of a similar weapon with the help of the many local Metalmage of the region that they enlisted for help.
It took many tries, and some of those ended quite poorly. One atempt in particular with a Icemage volonteer wielding one of the prototype weapon nearly killed both him and many reserchers, while also destroying a large section of the university's reserch wing. Despite this setback and others, they pressed on. Finaly, in the year 43 BC, they managed to create the first offical version of the Cerbat (Which at the time was originaly called Cerbattan), which was solid, resiliant and produced a steady and powerful of elemental material, while taking a constant, smaller inflow of mana from the mage wielding it. 
Its creation happened just in time for The Fall, where it was used extensively by Mages combatting The Blight Monster hordes that were rapidaly spreading throughout the Arrosian continent.

Significance

Cerbats are considered to be very prestigious weapons for numerous reasons. For one, they cary a great deal of history significance in them as they were the main tool used by the united mage army against the The Blight Monsters hordes rampaging during The Fall.
The second reason is because of the rarety, meaning both the low number of these weapons that exists in circulation throughout the continent, but also the very low number of people who have seen mages weild them in person. Of course, they are images and stories from The Fall, but nowdays, seeing them weild them in person is quite rare.

by Ephraïm Boateng (Me)

Item type

Weapon, Ranged

Creation Date

43 BC

Rarity

It takes a lot of hard work, connections and luck for a mage to be given a cerbat, as the ones who make them are very picky on who they gift their products to. The long list of potential reasons for the attitude are debated, but one most can agree does figure on said list is the fact that Cerbat are very powerfull weapons, meant to be weilded with care and mindfullness, so they are unwilling to give them to everyone able to weild them, which makes them even rarer.

Dimensions

55 cm long; 3-4 cm wide (Around 12 cm between Mana converters)

Base Price

Generally cannot be purchased