Duncan Maddox
The Psi-Slinger
Duncan Maddox
The Psi-Slinger • The Never-Empty • The Blasphemer • Maddox the Ghost-Eye
Vital Statistics
The Man Behind the Gun
Duncan Maddox was born where dust buries the dead quick and the living even quicker. Mid-thirties, lean, scarred, always carrying the smell of sweat, smoke, and sunburn. His eyes are gray as spent ash, his voice rough as gravel, and he wears silence like other men wear coats. He's walked battlefields, caravan trails, and outlaw camps, leaving behind nothing but whispers and bodies.
He doesn't think of himself as a hero. Never did. Heroes, to his mind, are just corpses that didn't know when to quit. Duncan's just trying to keep one more sunrise between him and the grave. But the frontier doesn't care what a man thinks of himself—it makes legends out of blood and gunsmoke whether you want it or not.
What Makes a Psi-Slinger
Born wrong. Born with lightning and hunger where a man's peace ought to sit. The Current—that raw power flowing beneath the Veil—chose him at birth, marking him as one of its conductors. When his hand touches steel, the storm listens. When he squeezes, it answers. Not with powder and lead but with thought made solid, will given lethal form.
Folks say it's a gift. They say it's a curse. Truth is simpler: it's a debt. Every bullet he shapes costs him something he may never get back. Some shots leave only a prickle in his veins, like pins dragging across skin. Others dig deeper, taking memories, carving away pieces of who he was until he can't remember the boy he used to be.
Psi-Slinger Powers
Psionic Bullets
The foundation of Duncan's power—bullets manifested directly from his mind, pure psychic force given lethal form. They shimmer faintly as they fly, trailing colors that shift with his emotional state.
- Manifested from thought: No physical ammunition needed—he creates rounds from pure psychic force
- Unlimited but costly: Never runs out, but every shot burns a spark of his essence
- Color-shifting: Bullets glow according to his mood:
- Cool silver when calm and focused
- Ember-red when angry or desperate
- Bruised violet when despair gnaws at him
- Spectral white when pushing too far
- Supernatural impact: Strike both flesh and spirit—can harm ghosts, Veil entities, and protected targets
- Wounds that don't heal right: Psionic bullet wounds smoke and scar strangely, sometimes never fully closing
- Variable cost: Plain bullets drain him minimally; advanced tricks demand blood, sanity, or days of sleep
Core Abilities
The signature techniques Duncan has mastered through years of desperate survival. Each one pushes the boundaries of what psionic bullets can do—and what they cost.
Ghostshot
Phases through barriers, striking the spirit instead of the body. The bullet passes through walls, armor, and flesh like they aren't there, targeting the soul directly. Leaves no visible wound but drains the target's will to fight, leaving them hollow-eyed and broken. Costs Duncan a day of nightmares where he feels what his victims felt.
Mind-Burst
A fan of psychic shrapnel that shreds multiple foes in close quarters. Duncan's revolver erupts with dozens of fragments that tear through minds as much as bodies. Effective against crowds but leaves him disoriented, sometimes unable to tell friend from foe for precious seconds.
The Long Eye
Slows time in his perception, letting him take impossible shots. For a few heartbeats, the world moves like honey while Duncan aims with perfect clarity. He can thread bullets through gaps that shouldn't exist, hit targets mid-leap. Afterward, time catches up—sometimes too fast, leaving him stumbling and aged.
Phantom Draw
His revolver leaps to his hand with a thought, faster than nerves could twitch. The gun appears in his palm as if it was always there, bypassing the physical act of drawing. Makes him nearly unbeatable in a quick-draw duel. Costs him coordination for hours—sometimes his hand reaches for things that aren't there.
Echo Round
Fires a bullet that ricochets off thoughts—hitting not just flesh but the memory of a wound. If you've been shot before, this bullet finds that scar and reopens it, making old injuries fresh again. Particularly brutal against veterans. Makes Duncan remember every wound he's ever taken, all at once.
Advanced Tricks
Techniques Duncan learned through desperation and near-death experiences. These abilities push him to the edge of what psionics can do—and what a man can survive.
Soul Brand
A shot that sears the target's aura, leaving them marked and traceable. Anyone with psionic sensitivity can track the branded target for days, seeing their trail like glowing footprints. The mark burns with shame and exposure. Costs Duncan a headache like hot nails driven into his skull, lasting until the mark fades.
Iron Mirage
Bullet splits mid-flight into illusory doubles. The target sees five bullets coming when there's only one real round. Causes panic, wastes enemy ammunition, creates chaos. The strain leaves Duncan's vision blurred for hours—sometimes he sees his own phantom bullets still flying.
Shattercry
A scream in bullet form. When it impacts, glass bursts, eardrums split, horses bolt in terror, and men drop to their knees clutching their heads. The sonic backlash often deafens Duncan in one ear until dawn. He's learned to read lips in the aftermath.
Hollow Promise
Doesn't harm flesh but buries raw terror straight into the mind. The bravest men shake, seasoned killers weep, and hardened outlaws flee screaming. Each use strips Duncan of a little of his own nerve, leaving him cold and hollow until he sleeps it off. Too many uses in a row and he stops feeling anything.
Last Light
A bullet so bright it burns shadows from the ground, banishing illusions and exposing hidden things. Cloaked enemies become visible, shapeshifters revert, and Veil entities recoil from its radiance. Rarely used—costs him near all his energy, sometimes dropping him unconscious with the gun still smoking in his hand. Waking up after Last Light feels like resurrection.
The Price of Power
Every bullet fired is a piece of Duncan given away. The frontier may fear him, but psionics like him are walking toward a fate worse than death—hollowing out, becoming nothing but the echo of power with no person left inside.
Physical Toll
- Immediate effects: Nosebleeds, headaches, trembling hands
- Heavy use: Seizures, temporary blindness, coughing blood
- Overuse: Collapse, days of recovery, permanent scars
- Aging: Each major fight takes years off his life expectancy
Memory Drain
- Forgets faces of people he's killed—then people he's known
- Loses songs, stories, entire conversations from his past
- Can't remember his mother's voice or his father's advice
- Sometimes forgets his own name, has to read it on wanted posters
- Each psionic shot burns away tiny fragments until the man disappears
Soul Scarring
- Overuse leaves scars in his aura—visible to sorcerers, shamans, and spirits
- Makes him easier to track or bind magically
- Each major use creates new "weak points" others can exploit
- Clara can see the damage accumulating, growing worse with each fight
Psychic Echo
- Each manifested bullet screams in the astral plane
- Attracts unwanted attention—spirits, predators, things that hunt psionics
- The more he fires, the more visible he becomes to supernatural entities
- The Rider Who Stays found him because his bullets sing so loud
The Personal Mythos
In the saloons, he's told as two men—sometimes as one. The stories contradict, embellish, and transform him into something larger than life. Duncan knows the truth: he's just a man with a curse trying to survive. But the frontier doesn't care about truth. It wants legends.
The Outlaw Legend: Maddox the Never-Empty
The man who can shoot a whole posse without pausing to reload. They say his bullets glow with ghostfire, that he's made a pact with devils, and that no cover can hide you from him. Some claim he can fire through walls, through time itself. Others swear his guns whisper names of the men they'll kill next.
The Reluctant Protector
Stories paint him as a rider who appears at dusk to even the odds, vanishing after the last body falls. A lonely guardian with a gun fueled by something beyond steel and lead. Children believe he protects the innocent. Mothers tell stories of him saving lost travelers. He never stays to hear their thanks.
Inner Struggles
Behind the legend walks a man carrying more weight than any psionic power can shoulder. Duncan's greatest battles aren't against outlaws or supernatural horrors—they're against himself, against the slow dissolution of everything that makes him human.
The Ledger of Blood
Duncan keeps a mental tally of every life he's taken. Not out of guilt—killing is sometimes necessary on the frontier—but out of fear that if he stops counting, he'll stop caring. The number grows heavier with each addition. Some nights he can recite every name. Other nights, the list blurs, and that terrifies him more than any bullet.
The Myth Problem
He's terrified that "Duncan Maddox" has become a mask he can't take off. That he's less a man than a gun in human form, a walking legend with no person left inside. When people look at him, they see the Psi-Slinger. He's forgetting what it felt like to be just Duncan.
Faith vs. Fire
His mother's stories of saints and spirits clash with the brutal math of survival. She taught him to pray; the frontier taught him to shoot. His psionics feel less like a gift from heaven and more like a curse from something older and hungrier. Stroud calls him blasphemer. Duncan wonders if the preacher's right.
Isolation
He's never fully part of any group—too dangerous to be trusted, too valuable to be ignored. Clara calls him by his first name, but even she keeps distance. Maeve loves the legend more than the man. Crowe respects him but would arrest him tomorrow. Duncan walks alone because everyone who gets close becomes collateral damage.
Relationships
Key Connections
- Clara Vey: The witch who knows he's dying, one of the few who calls him "Duncan"
- Ezekiel Stroud: The preacher who wants him burning, sees him as ultimate blasphemy
- Maeve Callahan: The outlaw queen he can't quit, sometimes lover, sometimes enemy
- Sheriff Crowe: The lawman who respects him, sworn to bring him in
- Liza Marrow: The oracle who sees his death in every future, calls him "Shadow Horseman"
- The Rider Who Stays: Death itself, patiently waiting for him to burn out
In His Own Words
The Question That Haunts Him
If he fires every bullet he has left, burns away every memory, empties himself completely—
will there be anything left worth saving?
Or will he just be another Hollow Man, still walking, still pulling the trigger,
with nothing behind his eyes but storm and smoke?