touhou is one of those things that is going to live forever 3000 years from now people will still be drawing reimu
Just look at this ancient cave drawing
insane how every creative decision made about starfield that bethesda elaborates is making me less excited for it
"yeah so there was a war between mechs and one faction used alien beasts to fill out their ranks where mechs weren't enough"
oh so we're gonna have mechs?
no they're all derelicts for setdressing
what's the hook of this. why can everything interesting about your setting be filed cleanly into "happened before the game" or "won't happen until long after the game"
I attack first. I draw my blade and take a swing. You look rather confused. This confusion is justified as we are 40 ft apart in the middle of a showdown.
"parry this you filthy casual"
wait, yeah, this is rad af
Real-life combination weapons might be highly decorated Rich Boy Toys, or starkly functional military weapons.
They sometimes featured multi-shot revolvers, but usually took the form of one or several single-shot guns attached to some other weapon - spear, sword, dagger or axe - that would continue as a weapon after the gun(s) had been fired and there was no time to reload.
Here's a boar spear with paired wheel-lock pistols.
A set of table cutlery (!) with built-in flintlock pistols:
An "Elgin Cutlass" single-shot percussion pistol and a Bowie-knife pinfire revolver:
A sword with a double-barrelled flintlock pistol and a sabre pinfire revolver:
An Indian katar punch-dagger with a pair of flintlock pistols...
...and a tabar battleaxe with a matchlock gun and hidden dagger:
A couple of boarding axes with flintlock carbines:
And finally this extraordinary six-shot (five from the head, one down the haft) battleaxe, saved until last because of Reasons.
Nowadays this would be equivalent to a watch "with complications", the sort of watch with so many other functions that actually telling the time gets lost among them.
Back then...
Well, the Royal Armouries call it "Possibly a novelty or curiosity", and - like those watches - it's so elaborate that its primary function isn't primary any more.
In this case, it couldn't fulfil the basic battleaxe purpose of hitting people without risk of breaking some part of itself, and because the battleaxe head is hollow and its "edge" is a flat lid covering several gun muzzles, it was never much of an axe anyway.
Here's the RA description:
The axe-head with long fluke is hollow and contains five barrels, the muzzles concealed by a hinged cover forming the edge of the axe-blade.
The topmost barrel is ignited by a matchlock fitted on the left side, the mechanism concealed by a brass plate in the form of a lion, the second by a wheellock, the mechanism of which occupies most of the outer surface of the axe-head on the opposite side, the remaining three barrels by a hand held match as is also a sixth barrel forming the handle or haft.
There is a tubular extension to the pan of the wheellock, intended to hold a length of match which would be ignited by the flash of the priming and then withdrawn to ignite the remaining barrels.
On the left side is a belt or saddle-hook.
Traces of blueing remain on parts of the wheel-lock mechanism.
Wow...
*****
Now I'm getting into speculation.
This is so far beyond a normal "gunblade" that IMO it was a "Meisterstück" (Masterpiece) made by a journeyman to prove his technical competence for promotion to Master and gain the right to open his own guild-recognised workshop, train apprentices and sell goods under his own name.
IIRC, some guilds demanded that Masterpieces were a pre-determined object, for instance a certain style of clock or piece of furniture, whose construction techniques were exactly to guild specs.
Others let the journeyman create something unique - though again, being a demonstration of what he had learned, he always used the skills taught and approved by that guild.
*****
As mentioned before, I'm sure that this strange contraption was never intended for combat.
Besides the chance of breaking something vital at the first impact, its balance would be non-existent, aiming the various guns would be vague at best, and operating two different firing systems for three separate sets of gun in the heat of action would raise fumble-fingered panic to performance art.
What mattered for a Masterpiece was that it assembled and, when required, came apart in the proper ways, and that any mechanical parts worked as they were meant to. The additional trick of using the wheellock to ignite the matchcord - think Zippo lighter mechanism - is both a touch of "wait, there's more!" genius and entirely in keeping with adding "a personal touch".
As I said before, Wow... :->
