“Krutgubbe” , lit. (gun)Powder(old)man; “A person, usually an old man who is unusually active and aggressive for his old age”.
This is about a Krutgubbe’s glass eye…

First of all; Nisse Lätt or his glass eye is not made up in any way, he has actually excisted and just like my earlier artifact idea (Paracelsus sword) everything I say here up until the actuall magical powers is real.
Im starting with the life of Nisse Lätt to describe what made the Eye into what it is and then start with the description.

(Since english isnt my first language I hope anyone reading this will forgive my spelling and lousy grammar)

Nisse Lätt
Take a man, any man who – perhaps – is a bit on the impulsive side. Take a man from the working class and throw him head first into the Spanish Civil war, one continent away from his home in Gothenburg Sweden. Nisse Lätt was the kind of guy who would take that as something positive.
He was a sailour and as such had been to Spain several times before, it was also in Spain he first came into contact with Anarchosyndicalism and he stayed true to the social revolution all his life.

Spain
When the Spanish civil war started Nisse Lätt quickly joined ranks with the Durrutti-brigade (Durrutti was, and is, even though hes dead, one of the most influential anarchists in Europe) and the CNT/FAI groups (CNT= the Spanish Anarchosyndicalistic union, FAI= the Spanish anarchist federation) out of Barcelona.
Being that impulsive man he always was he became known as a bit of a hot-head and he was, supposedly, saved from certain death by another antifascist who later moved to Sweden, Helmut Kirschey, when he was stopped trying to run over to the francoists foxhole unarmed.
It was during the war that he lost his left eye to some granade shrapnell and had to, to his own personal dismay, spend some time in the liberated parts of Spain surrounding Barcelona.

The Grudge part one
After the war was lost Nisse Lätt like the rest of the anarchist, council communist and other left wing socialist groups felt betrayed by the Moscowites who had, on orders from Russia, betrayed the resistance since it didnt want to pay lip-service to Stalin (remember that the people Stalin and other right wing communists shot first after any revolution where the anarchist and other left wing communists). But he also felt let down by the CNT members who had followed in suit with the republic and betrayed their ideals for a “petty morsel of power”; a place in the republican state council. This sentiment carries on by the way and you can to this day find an aversion amongst anarchosyndicalists against anyone having anything to do with parlamentaric democracy.

The Grudge part two
After the war Nisse Lätt was well known agitator, he travelled all around Sweden and fought viciously for the working class where ever he came. During the second world war, he like many other communists (even though he would have beaten someone up for calling him that) where hunted and harassed by the Swedish authorities who where with the chief of police, the royal family and the right wing parliamentarics almost all pro-Hitler. The war came and went and Nisse Lätt like so many others who had helped various left wing resistance groups out in Europe, not to mention smuggling people across the border to the relative safety of Sweden and arranging false passports felt a strong hatred towards the Swedish government who now, after Hitler had lost said that they had been pro-allied all the time.
(The Swedish police hunted jews during this time and if a jewish refugee was caught they where sent straight back to germany, same with resistance men, union people and left wingers. The Swedish Nazi party was one of teh strongest outside of Germany at the time and it had the complete backing of the royal family aswell and the (at best) blind eye of the government)

Nisse Lätt didn’t forget a grudge, communists (which he considered where people who where moscowites and stalinists) and parliamentarics aswell as right wingers and nationalists where now his own personal enemies and thats where all the arguments started.

Late 1970’s
Nisse Lätts is to hold a speach at the Spanish Volantears meeting (for people who fought Franco). He notice a pair of young communist belonging to the moscowite youth group called RKU (revolutionary communist youth). He starts the speech with the words;
“If it wheren’t for the party-communist whores we would have beaten Franco aswell as Hitler…”
This so enfuriates the two young men that they quickly hops up on the stage to beat up or intimidate this 60-something old man. Nisse Lätt looks at them and says;
“Wanna fight?” and quietly takes out his one glass eye and puts it on the table and starts to advance on them. This puts them both in such an uncomfortable mood that they both back down.

Early 1980’s
Nisse Lätts optitian comes in to the SAC office in Gothenburg (SAC = the Swedish Anarchosyndicalist Union) and asks them to tell him that he will under no circumstances repair Nisse Lätts glass eye again. Appearently NIsse Lätt got into a fight again this time with someone who didnt fall for the “jus’ gonna pick ma eye outta its socket an we can start”-rutine. So Nisse had appearently thrown the eye at his main opponents head causing the eye to crack a little and the young man a concussion.

1987
Nisse Lätt’s had just been in a radio show where someone mentioned the communists and he had gone spare. The host of the show had to take him aside to calm him down because he just would stop talking about the communists and “what they really are” and Nisse Lätt wasn’t a very “clean” speaker. He swore – like the sailor he was.
This so enfuriates Helmut Kirchey (the other Gothenburg living antifascist at the time who had saved Lätts life in Spain) who happened to come form a communist family in Germany who where all murdered by Hitler and being the same old bastard that Nisse Lätt was he doesn’t let it go.
That winter a meeting takes place which both Nisse Lätt and Helmut Kirchey attends. Kirchey starts of, picking a fight.
“I heard you on the radio, ‘småborgare'” (meaning petit borgouise an insult used by communists against left wing communists)
“I’d rather be a småborgare than a fascistlackey like you stalinists”

… less than a minute later people had rushed the pair to hold them appart. Helmut Kirchey in his 80’s and Lätt in his late 70’s have started with throwing their chairs on each other and then both rushed the other using their walking canes as clubs. Both are bleeding and insulting the people that hold them back.

Nisse Lätt died 1988 and Helmut Kirchey in the late 1990’s and to this day yopu can ask anyone in the Gothenburg LS of the SAC if they have a story about Nisse Lätt and they will all be ready with one. Insult any of the two and you will (Im not kidding) visit hospital in hurry. Many anarchists have gone to his appartment in Haga in Gothenburg to ask advice conserning political moves aswell as union affairs.

Ok what about the Eye?
First of all Nisse Lätt was NOT a masterless man. He propagated freedom – but freedom for all, not the superficial freedom of a loner. He was not a Demagogue because the message didn’t matter. Like all anarchists he praised words and theory but thought that without practice they where pointless. Nisse Lätt wasn’t magical, he wasn’t an adept or the follower of an archetype – he was just a guy. Without that unfortuitous granade he would be just a normal person, with the eye he was a force to be reckoned with.

The Eye has named columns in newspapers (“The Evil Eye” a column in the SAC weekly paper) aswell as books and it have made it into songs of various sorts. The eye is its own myth when combined with the modern myth of Nisse Lätt. The Eye itself was not important, it was just your average glass eye made to fit Nisse. Nisse himself was not metaphysicly important, he was just an old man. But together they became more than they where apart. The Eye held all that Nisse Lätt had seen, it held all the anger and frustration from Spain, the second world war, the Paris Revolt in 68, the cold war and the tumoltuos 80’s that Nisse Lätt had witnessed.

The symbol of Odin, Oden, Wotan is a most potent one and its also a symbol closely connected to warfare, aggression and wisdom. Nisse Lost his eye to the greater good, like Odin he sacrificed one of the, for humans, most important sensory organs he had. Like Odins his life was struggle, combat, warfare. Like Odin he was a part of the absent eye as much as the replacemet or the empty socket was a part of him.

The Eye filled Nisse with rage, it carried him across the hinders of his age and helped his arms and legs as they fought. It stored the memories of comrades fallen to betrayal. It kept the sights of state and capitals oppression that had created such sorrows to display for him whenever he felt weak. It let him remember that until he died or the class war was over he could not rest. The eye filled him with the fury that was his life.
When Nisse Lätts body finally gave in to the hardships of his living years he made sure that he wasnt to be buried with it. The eye had become part of him but he has also become a part of it. The eye isn’t sentient, it doesn’t have a personality but it does have motive, force and a sense of philosofical direction. It watches, it wispers, it gives council and courage.

The Eye sits in display in Nisse Lätts old appartment in Gothenburg which is now a small informal museum. It lies there collecting dust, staring into the empty void, a pale blue iris in a yellowing white a perfect black dot its center. Every now and then someone from the Nisse Lätt fund will come by, maybe with some visitors that wants to see the eye but in the same time to be seen by the eye. It waits for another host, another person to whom it can convey the stories of betrayal, struggle and pain that is the class war.

What The Eye does
IF someone would have lost an eye, preferrably in a fight and would replace it with the glass eye of Nisse Lätt they would gain the same effect as it had on Nisse.
The wearer of the eye cannot give in, no matter what. Not mental or physical pain and weakness can make him or her stop the fight.
No matter how much of your body is lost to damage you go on without penalties. If you die, you’ll stay up until the fight is over and after that keel over.
You dont have to roll for any violence checks until well after the fight and you get a +30 shift when you do – the eye justifying all you did.
The eye also holds allot of historical information that you become privy to. Everything that Nisse saw is now accessable and you can remember it as if it where your own memories.
The eye has one big problem though. It and its wearer are an active part in the class war. If the wearer refuses or belongs to the “other side” of the class war thats when the problems begin. The socket becomes infected at first – pus filled and puffy. Any doctor will say its because you haven’t cleaned the glass eye enough but no matter how well you do it the infection wont go away. After a while the nightmares will start, horrid vivid dreams of slaughter, carnage and betrayal. Stories of police killing workers will flash through your eyes. Speeches of Hitler, The Swedish King and Allied leaders all proclaiming the “sin” of the workers movement will screech in your ears. The Eye doesn’t want to be part of you so it does all it can do to evict itself from your body and unless you take it out you will either die from the infection or go insane, which ever happens first.

some explanations
SAC: Svenska Arbetares Centralorganisation. (Swedish Workers Central organization) The anarchosyndicalist union in Sweden divided up in Local Sections that you join and the local sections are in turn members of the SAC.
Lätt: an old soldier name that farmers and workers where given in the 1700-eds. The nobles just took a word and used that as your last name. Lätt means “light” (ref. to weight or that something is “easy” to do). Blixt= lightning or Skjöld= shield are other common names.
Petit Borgouise: In the 1800eds a worker who owned his own tools aswell as artisans who didnt have a boss. According to slander they are the basis of the anarchist tradition.
Left wing communists/Right wing communists: its a common misconception that “communism” is one unified theory that grew into fruitation with the Soviet union. In actuality the Soviet union was a communist right wing controlled state and the exact word for that political tradition is Marxism-Leninism. One of the first people shot where anarchists, council communists (Hungary 1956, France 1968) and other left wing communists.
anarchosyndicalism: a branch of anarchism that organizes itself around the union structure and propagate that the revolution shall be a form of general strike, a blood less form of revolution. Closest american organisation is the IWW (industrial workers of the world).