Editing Against a Dark Background (section)

===Lazy Guns===
The eight Lazy Guns were mysterious ancient objects, discovered together a long time before the events of the book. A Lazy Gun is roughly half a metre long, 30&nbsp;cm wide and 20&nbsp;cm tall. The Lazy Gun is "[[weight|light]] but [[mass]]y", and weighs three times as much when turned upside down. The Lazy Gun is the only weapon known to display a sense of humour. When fired, some calamity or cataclysm will befall the target on whatever scale is necessary to assure its destruction. The effect is random and in no way limited by its own implausibility, ranging from (for example) an inexplicable wild animal attack in the case of humans to a spontaneous cometary impact in the case of a city.

In addition to being susceptible to ordinary damage, tampering with the Guns usually results in a mundane but profoundly powerful explosion that destroys the gun and everything in the vicinity. Only one of the original eight guns survives. The seventh, also found by the Lady Sharrow before the events of the book, was destroyed by the university it was sold to when they tampered with it. The resulting explosion devastated the city the university was located in. Sharrow still carries the guilt of this catastrophe.