Tierseur

Tierseur, n. French. A third-bore rifle, esp. used for the hunting of dangerous game.

In the French Empire, no hunt is more revered or mythologized than the tiger hunt. And just as no iconic Great White Hunter IRL is complete without a big-bore double rifle, no great French hunter is great without his weapon of choice: a tierseur.

Tiers: the cartridge

What defines the tierseur can be expressed in three digits, or three words: tierce une pouce. 0.333". To qualify as a tierseur, a rifle's caliber must be precisely one-third of a French inch: no more than fractionally different from 9.02mm, slightly larger than the world-standard 8.8mm.

Within this limit, tierseurs are built around a bewildering number of cartridges - doubly bewildering, because most of them have no reason to exist. Some are rimmed, others rimless; some are longer, others fatter; some are necked, others straight-cased - and almost all of them are proprietary. Tierseureries are by commission only; anyone who can afford their products can also afford small batches of custom brass. Tierseurs are a Veblen good if ever there was one.

No matter the case architecture, tierseur cartridges have essentially identical ballistics: fairly heavy bullets (250+ grains) producing a muzzle velocity of ~2400fps. (A few tierseureurs have established their own niches by subtle deviations from this norm. As long as Innocent Cauvigne et Cie. retains its royal charter, they remain just that: niche.)

-eur: the gun

Around the tiers is built the tierseur, the designs for which can be rather baroque. Tierseureries are commission only; anyone who can afford their products can also afford the tailoring process, which is never included in the catalog price.

In the public imagination, tirseurs are magazine rifles. This may not always have been the case, and it may not be true now; but no matter. Modeste rifles, and their use in such newsworthy incidents as the hunt for the Tigers of Shimoga, have led the plebeians to expect that a tierseur ought to have a magazine, and in any case their owners appreciate the worth of bullets in reserve. What kind of magazine is a tierseur? That depends on the studio.

Lever-actions are the most common, simply because of the Modeste, but surprisingly strong straight-pull bolt-actions are just as popular - in part against the Modeste. The tierseureries are ambivalent about pump-actions or mechanical guns; something about them isn't traditional, isn't authentic.

With one exception, a tierseur is expected to be decorated. The pride and honor of a tierseurerie is in their ability to perfectly blend beauty and lethal functionality into their works. If they can be stodgy and traditional, they can justify it; every gun they craft is a work of art, both a precedent set for the future and a legacy that must be upheld forever after. No two tierseurs are necessarily the same, even using the same actions; each is subtly tweaked to balance at just the right point, to point in just the right way,

The proud owner of a tierseur, even the least of them (see below), can rest assured that their gun can kill anything up to, and including, the greatest game of all: the Indian tiger.

The culture of the tierseureurs

Other, lesser guns are made by armorers. Other best grade guns are made by artisans. Only the tierseur (as any owner will remind you) is made by artists. The tierseur is expensive only compared to other guns; next to symphonies, marble sculpture, and portraits by masters, they're priced quite reasonably.

This is why tierseureries aren't competitive against each other. This is why they're staggeringly expensive. This is why they're always decorated. This is why they're always tailor-made - tierseureurs are artists. When you buy a tierseur, you aren't just buying a gun that can kill anything up to and including the greatest game of all - you're paying for a lifelong relationship with a lineage of artists.

This is a stub. It will be expanded upon.