Okay weird history first.

Ned Kelly and his gang (partly relatives) were Irish “Bush Rangers” operating in Australia/New Zealand in the late 1800s. Finally the Australian lawmen caught up with the gang, surrounded their cabin, and a gunfight ensued. Typical Western stuff if through an Aussie filter, right?

Except, probably thanks to Tennyson’s medieval romanticism in popular media of the time, the gang had decided to make themselves plate armor.

Actual medieval armor is made to be mobile, but these guys cobbled together thick stuff out of literal plows which was way too heavy to move much… and nigh impregnable. The police dumped ammunition on the Kelly Gang and eventually they started hitting gaps in the armor. With his fellow bush rangers bleeding out, Ned decides he’s going to blast his way free of the cabin, revolver in one hand and a repeating rifle in the other.

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He stumbles out, wearing a drover’s coat over homemade plate armor and bucket helm, only using his revolver because he’s been hit in one elbow. Eventually he goes down from blood loss. By the time the law hangs him high, he’s literally sick, poisoned by all the metal carried into his bloodstream.

It’s such a dramatic story I want to co-opt it into *something* though I don’t know what.

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