The Mechanized Halberd

"There's no way to get this into mass production, is there?" The King of Nasse looked closely at his weapon, freshly refitted.
"Pointless, liege. It takes a team of six power engineers and smiths at least a full day to prepare this monstrosity after you use it. The flywheel is fragile and rips itself apart on release, and the armature bends on impact." The armorer sighed. "If we devoted every power engineer in your vanguard, we could perhaps maintain seven or eight of them. For officers only, presumably, and the power-wagon shock thrusts would have to be put on hold."
"I understand." The King of Nasse tapped the weapon. "Perhaps in time we could develop a more robust version of this halberd. I will say that cleaving through an armored plate and cutting someone in two is a strongly intimidating move, but not worth losing our powered cavalry."
The armorer nodded. "Yes, well, we'd need to figure out what to make the armature out of besides hammered steel. I don't know anything that can withstand the impact force without bending or breaking."

Mechanics & Inner Workings

The Mechanized Halberd is a halberd in name only; while it is a long polearm weapon with a speartip and axe head, it is tremendously heavy and inferior to a normal halberd for the purpose of combat. The weapon actually consists of two hafts running in parallel and cut to near fit; near the head of the halberd is a elbowed joint connecting the two hafts. This joint actually contains a very small flywheel spinning incredibly quickly. Upon pressing a button near the butt end of the haft, the flywheel is instantly mated to the joint and the second haft launches and rotates out at a high speed, bringing another axe blade to cleave through an unfortunate target. The speed and torque of the motion requires a great deal of strength and control from the wielder of the halberd, but is so powerful that it can cleave completely through unarmored enemies and sunder armor.
As this was an prototype weapon of the early days of Power, the weapon's design is insufficiently robust for the cleaving action to strike more than once; the weapon requires a full refit and refurbish between uses. After the cleave, the halberd is effectively just a mundane poleaxe, albeit far heavier and longer.

Significance

The Mechanized Halberd was the First Princep's personal battlefield weapon, an early application of Power technology to infantry warfare. It's currently a museum piece in Etoile Capital City.
A number of stories associated with the Mechanized Halberd are recorded in Etoilean lore, most of which involve the First Princeps personally engaging in hand to hand combat with it and cutting his enemies in half. Although the First Princeps took the field during The War of Unification, it is known that he preferred fighting with his Power-Wagons in the cavalry, and it is not clear if he ever actually fought on the battlefield with the halberd.

Item type

Weapon, Melee

Current Location

Etoile Capital City

Related Technologies

• Power

Owning Organization

Principality of Etoile

Rarity

Unique

Weight

45lb

Dimensions

7ft

Raw materials & Components

The strength of the cleaving action necessitated an all-steel construction of both hafts and weapon heads.

Tools

A full Power engineer's suite was needed to forge and maintain this weapon.