Essence of theArchetypal Cowboy

This bottle is labeled with ‘XXX’, but lacks any other distinguishable details… actually, it looks more like a movie prop than anything else. Tastes like sand, moonshine, and polished metal.

• You are now the cowboy. Transcending even the western genre, you embody what it means to be the desert wanderer, the six-shooting rider with no name.

• You possess a body more like comic book peak human than anything realistic, of your own design. It doesn’t have to look how an actual human capable of your feats would, and in fact has a preference for the leaner, more unassuming (but still surprisingly attractive) kind of build.

• Even if you choose an outlandishly noticeable appearance with anime protagonist hair, your ability to blend into crowds and remain hidden until the right moment is transcendental. With a wide-brim hat and a poncho, you could bundle yourself up a bit and instantly become one with a crowd. Even the most talented investigator wouldn’t be able to tell a thing about you, and wouldn’t even notice you at first.

• This street is two-way though: with even an unassuming, modest outfit, you may also toggle an effect of equally transcendental emotion. While the strong-willed will not back down with this, you could stand in the middle of the street and barely shift your weight and instantly be recognized as the most dangerous gunslinger in the world to any who see you. Whether or not you actually are this dangerous is up to you; but your ability to inspire awe/fear/whatever other emotion is incredible and ignores normal boundaries. Even an emotionless AI would sweat in the brow.

• Your aptitude for firearms of any sort ignores realism. Ricochet a bullet off a metal sign while shooting over your shoulder and using the reflection in a window across the street to aim and your bullet would be square between the eyes of your target. This extends to all forms of ranged weapons, but guns are more cinematic. You also have no trouble maintaining or reloading weapons, and in fact so long as the ammo is somewhere on your person or in a quickly accessible form of storage you don’t need to worry about reloading manually.

• Any damage you deal with a ranged weapon is at least doubly effective, while maintaining the same visible damage. For example, a shot to the chest with an arrow wouldn't normally be instantly fatal by any means, but anybody you hit with an arrow will fall like they’d been hit by a gun, even if the only damage you can see is an arrow in their chest.

• You instantly know how to operate any man-portable guns you gain access to. If you have the right controls available, you’re also a much better shot with things like artillery or ship’s guns than anyone else too, but not quite so dramatically perfect.

• Your small actions may have significantly wider reaching consequences, wherever you desire. Your minor good-natured behavior could overnight lead a whole town to respecting you more, your vanishing into a crowd making you seem more like a boogeyman than a real human, your exploits in gunfighting reaching legendary status in no time… However it applies, it will only ever be in a way that you would actually want. You could simply want to go under the radar and none of these effects would ever trigger, or perform good deeds while still being renowned for your evil instead and vice versa.

• You are supernaturally skilled at any feats a fictional or real cowboy would be skilled at. Ranching, thievery, macgyvering, demolitions… anything that would just make sense in the moment for a cowboy to be capable of, you will be beyond peak human at.

• You are a conceptual rider. You could do something like wave your hand in a placating gesture over the head of the most dangerous and untamable of all mounts and it would instantly respect your command. They will never be frightened by the boomstick you fire off their back, nor will they ever be struck by random chance. They will live long, healthy, but probably very exciting lives, unless explicitly targeted by an enemy. Even then, they will functionally be about 2x the peak of their species in all aspects.

• Anytime you use a creature that has been established as a mount of some kind to get somewhere, you may choose to invariably arrive in time for whatever you’re doing. Need to cross the world overnight? Hop on a horse, you’ll make it just at the last minute. This applies in the most fashionable or cinematic way you can think of, maybe your memories (and everyone else's) are replaced with a badass riding montage, maybe everyone saw you riding through town real slow and recognized how badass you are, despite there being no way you were in town so soon… whatever. It’ll probably be suitably badass however it happens. This has a one-week cooldown. Even when not using this ability, your mounts are at least double as fast as even the peak for their species is, and you have no problem keeping up with riding them at these speeds.

• This extends, again to a slightly lesser extent, to vehicles as well. Maybe you’re a biker cowboy?

• You may induct others into your Posse. This requires spending at least three days working or living alongside them for most of the time, and they may choose to decline. If they accept, they will gain access to weakened versions of all your abilities, progressively improving over time to your level. You may choose to withhold certain abilities from them or cap them at certain levels, and they will be none the wiser.

• You have the option to gain any or all of the following:

  • An Iconic outfit that reforms itself if destroyed or damaged at all, but retains upgrades made to it. The only limitation is that these upgrades cannot extremely change the overall aesthetics of the outfit, which will always be cowboy-esque. This can be somewhat far removed, like leather jackets and jeans or whatever, but it will still trace its roots back to the cowboy style. You can summon it to yourself at any time regardless of obstacles, unless it’s so severely damaged as to be unrecognizable. In that case, it will take a day to rebuild itself before you can recall it. This may optionally be a wardrobe of several similar outfits.

  • An Iconic hat. It has all the protections and properties of the rest of the outfit, but is unique in that it will never wind up far from you unless you desire so, and repairs near-instantly. You could get nuked (supposin’, of course, you could survive a nuclear blast) and reach into the ash a couple feet away, pull it out, and dust it off. Tilting it provides a unique effect depending on your mood and how it’s angled. Want to be mysterious? Just having your eyes shaded with it will make you as unrecognizable as you want. Want to be threatening? Lift it up slowly to level a steely-eyed gaze worthy of the gods. Want to be slick? Tilt it to one side a little, and look supremely cool instantly.

  • Iconic firearms. Up to one long rifle, one shotgun, and two pistols/sidearms. Most likely from real world history, or inspired by it. These guns are double the effectiveness of any real world counterpart, which is then multiplied by the previously mentioned ranged weapon boost when in use by you. If they don’t have a real world counterpart, they will default to ‘closest applicable’. They can update when visiting new worlds/time periods to an equivalently strong weapon for their time, such as becoming very powerful crossbows in pre-gunpowder civilizations. These weapons can physically absorb others from their same category for stat boosts and access to special abilities. Their outward appearance is up to you, but will by default be refined by aspects of each new example you subsume. They return to your hand or any applicable storage space on your body/part of you when called, and cannot be fired against you in any scenario unless you truly desire so.

• Of course, this is all toggleable, or a sliding scale, adjusting to your liking.

• Optionally, be inserted into a specific or generic setting that features cowboys or archetypally similar rogues.