Firemace

The Firemace is a weapon from Heretic. Although it looks like an ordinary mace, it is used as a ranged weapon. When fired, its spikes rotate and it launches Mace Spheres that bounce and break into a trio of smaller spheres. Using a Tome of Power allows the Firemace to launch huge metal balls that bounce around, seek enemies, and kill any non-boss in one hit. The power mode shots may also travel through teleports and can even telefrag the one who fired it. If a player has a Chaos Device in his inventory when a powered sphere hits him, he will automatically use a Chaos Device and lose half of his health. Neither mode is capable of hitting ghosts and will simply disappear when they bounce into a liquid. Maximum capacity is 150 shots, or 300 with the Bag of Holding. A notable feature of the Firemace is that when multiple Firemaces are placed in a level, only one appears, allowing for some minor randomization in Heretic maps. In Heretic v1.0, the surplus mace spots would spawn other objects, depending on the episode number of the map: Disciples of D'Sparil in E1, Weredragons in E2, Ophidians in E3, and (through a bug) Shadowspheres in the E4 secret slots. However, later versions removed this substitution effect, placing nothing on the extra mace spots.