Threshold winnower

> "*From every mouth a maw; from every door a death.*"
> ― Old heptarchate chant
>
>

A **threshold winnower** is an exotic weapon used in the heptarchate and hexarchate. Threshold winnowers appear in Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem.

## Description

> "*Weapons that attempt to target loyalty-states are better known for fratricide.*"
> ― Brevet General Kel Cheris
>
>

Threshold winnowers resembled kinetic sculptures of wires, wheels, and shafts. The first winnowers had no shelter zones for operators; modern winnowers indicate a shelter zone with a faint glow when active. They can also be operated uncrewed. Either way, their operation is notoriously finicky. When active, winnowers release a vast spindle of wind and produce sounds variously described as "like a furnace exploding, like wineglasses singing shattered, like bells slamming from side to side."

Every door and opening affected by a winnower exhales corpselight, a deadly radiation, including the eyes of its victims. Removing or covering affected eyes does not change the result. Other effects may include bleeding from every pore in the body and more eyes, each looking at the active winnower, boiling out of toothed, snapping gashes which form in victims' skin. Those affected die in agony, mutated, exsanguinated, or baked to death. One known survivor's damaged eye was observed to shine with ghostlight.

Though they do not damage nonliving objects, most winnower variants kill living beings indiscriminately. There have been attempts to get them to target heretics selectively.

## History

Threshold winnowers are considered a weapon of last resort due to the extent of their horrific effects. Kel Command used them sparingly, even centuries after their development.

The first threshold winnowers were activated by General Shuos Jedao at Hellspin Fortress, destroying heretics and Jedao's Kel troops indiscriminately, with a survival rate of hundreds out of over a million dead. Jedao's use of threshold winnowers for this notorious massacre tainted their historical image so profoundly that they are still associated with Hellspin's slaughter and treachery hundreds of years later.

An instructor of Kel Cheris at Kel Academy had once witnessed a threshold winnower in use, and described it to her class. Ghostlight glimmered from the instructor's left eye, which had been damaged in the attack.

During the Siege of the Fortress of Scattered Needles, Captain-magistrate Rahal Gara brought Brevet General Kel Cheris a proposal for getting threshold winnowers to work under the Fortress's heretical calendar, potentially targeting heretics only. Despite reservations, Cheris allowed the possibility to be investigated. The threshold winnowers were later used.

During the Swanknot swarm's first engagement with the Hafn invasion swarm, all twelve of the swarm's threshold winnowers were launched uncrewed into dispersed orbits around the Fortress of Spinshot Coins. They were not activated, but the Hafn recognized them and fled.

## Trivia

* In the acknowledgments for Revenant Gun, the author thanks Peter Berman for helping with the mathematics of threshold winnowers.

## References

1. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
2. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6
3. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6
4. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
5. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1, 3
6. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
7. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
8. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
9. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1
10. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6
11. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
12. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1
13. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
14. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
15. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1
16. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
17. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter
18. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter
19. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 6
20. ↑ Revenant Gun: Acknowledgments