I put aside a game project I was working on because I found fundamental problems with the premise (no matter how careful you are, white people can find themselves trying to speak for people they have no right to speak for), but I'm fond of some of the small pieces of microfiction I wrote as descriptions of some of the weapons and other items. might as well share before things shut down
"Double-barreled shotguns are reasonably common firearms, triple-barreled shotguns much less so. Even rarer are ones constructed to align with a sacred triad: the trinity of the Christian deity, the Fates of both the Greeks and the Norsemen, the Hindu Trimurti, and others. This particular weapon, nicknamed 'the Crow-Bore' by Black Canvas researchers for the corvids in its intricate surface carvings, appears to invoke the influence of the Morrígna, an obscure triple incarnation of the Celtic goddess of war and fate. Its origin is unknown, but the craftsmanship suggests a gunsmith of the early 19th century; the appearance of wounds on the target just before the trigger is pulled suggests other forces at work."
"[weapon name TBD]: The blade of this Korean polearm, known as a hyeopdo, is believed to have been forged sometime in the 15th century, with the shaft replaced as required. It was rediscovered in the early 1950s in the the effects of a Japanese military officer who fought against the uibyeong ("righteous army"), a series of Korean militias that resisted the Japanese occupation between 1905 and 1920. The officer's daughter cut her hand on the blade while organizing her late father's belongings, and the wound, while minor, would not heal, even after surgical stitching. The blade was acquired by Black Canvas researchers in 1972, as the daughter considered it cursed; she died in 1985 after replacing the dressing on her hand daily for over thirty years."
"The weapon colloquially known to Black Canvas researchers as the 'Feathered Serpent', as its original name is lost, is an arquebus made by a Tlaxcaltec sorcerer-smith in imitation of the Spanish firearms he observed during the destruction of Tenochtitlan. Lacking the knowledge of black powder, he used alternative methods for launching a projectile, which are still a mystery to modern analysts. It has a single bullet, a sphere of obsidian, which returns to the firing chamber when it comes to rest, through an additional unknown mechanism. It causes significant wounds to the Damned, but due to a miscalculation by its creator, passes harmlessly through the living."
"The Book of Nails: In 1312, the monk known as Brother Machiel espoused the somewhat heretical theory that since every angel is assigned a Word, there must therefore be an Angel of Crucifixion. Brother Machiel was found dead later that year from what could be described as especially grievous stigmata; the tome containing his research was overlooked by church authorities, and was recently acquired by Black Canvas researchers."
"The Emperor's Heart: The terracotta army constructed to serve the first Qin Emperor in the afterlife is well-known in popular culture. What is less well-known is that Qin Shi Huang, in his paranoid quest for immortality, also had a duplicate made of himself, with bones and organs carved from marble, ivory, and other materials, assembled together inside a fired clay figure. The figure was intended to die in his place, and indeed when the Qin Emperor was poisoned, the figure shattered apart. The Emperor, however, died anyway. The heart of the figure, carved from basalt, was the only organ to remain intact, and was stolen away by a slave working at the mausoleum where it was kept. It has a poorly-understood ability to keep its owner alive under otherwise fatal circumstances, but should by no means be relied on."
"The Light of Xeglun: This breech-loading flare gun is a modified Russian model OSP-26, discovered in 1974 at a former intrusion site in the Khentii mountains in northern Mongolia, near the border with Siberia. The writing along the barrel uses characters found in the Khamnigan language, but translators have been unable to interpret its meaning beyond possible references to a Tungusic creation myth. The crudely welded metal ring around the muzzle appears to be made of meteoric iron; the leather straps around the grip are tanned horsehide. An unfired, hand-made flare was discovered alongside the pistol, and analysis showed that while the propellant was traditional black powder, its payload was a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and dried elk blood. Testing has shown that flares with similar composition fired from the pistol cause immediate but temporary paralysis to any Damned they illuminate, but neither the pistol nor the flares can replicate this effect on their own."
the "Black Canvas" is, in the game's fiction, basically an antifa/anticolonialist BPRD:
It was founded in 1951 by a Jewish specialist in esoteric artifacts. He escaped the Nazis in Poland, sacrificing the majority of his collection to ensure the safety of his family and himself. After the war, he was able to track down many of the artifacts that had been taken by the Nazi Ahnenerbe group, but every one of them was now purely mundane. Nazi researchers had unwittingly rendered them inert through the very act of acquiring them.
The founder researched this phenomena further and discovered that it was not merely the fascists that had this effect on the esoteric, but any sufficiently powerful organization. Artifacts taken by the Americans, the Russians, even the Vatican or International Business Machines were all reduced to curiosities, items of historical or cultural interest and nothing more. After replicating this process through the controlled leak of lesser artifacts directly to American intelligence, he realized that steps would need to be taken.
The Black Canvas is dedicated to the preservation of these artifacts, and when necessary, their use in the protection of humankind from the fey, from beings of the Stark Realms, and most importantly from the Damned. It remains small and highly secretive, for reasons that should be clear, and calls upon the resources of other specialist organizations as necessary. At any given time there are typically two to five Canvas 'operators' in the field, and around a dozen researchers from a variety of different academic fields.
The founder died in 1992, and the organization is currently led by a pseudonymous figurehead known as 'Professor Eleven'."
you should probably be able to figure out why this turned out to be kind of problematic, as they say, and why I ended up scrapping the project