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The Mangler is a giant crossbow built by Hal and Ingvar at the beginning of the Invaders to give the Herons an edge against Zavac and his pirate band. This crossbow is extremely hard to load and only Invar can do it alone. However as a last resort, Ulf and Wulf (the twins) can load this together.
Description[]
The Mangler has a range of three hundred meters, however, it's practical range is around 150 meters. It is immensely powerful due to its great size, strength and fineness of it's crafting. It is Ingvar's job load it as only he, an possibly Thorn, has the strength to load it. Ingvar uses a crank to pull back on the heavy cord to load the bolt. Hal's job is to accurately aim, for it is only he who will be measure and estimate accurately the distance, trajectory and so forth.
Later on in the series, Stig and Lydia both learn how to aim, and shoot the crossbow.
Projectiles[]
The Mangler has a 3 meter piece of wood with iron strips wrapped around the tip. Later Hal made a pottery heads that explodes when it hits a hard objects. The bolts (The projectiles) have wood fletchings. Also in book 8 hal created another projectil that had a paottery tip filled with pithce that woud explode and create light flames.