The First Gunner

Lore & Background

Before the Gun King ruled the Gungeon's upper halls, before the Gunner's child drew their first shot, there was a single figure who pushed through the entrance and found only endless, shifting corridors. The First Gunner is that figure. They arrived with the same hope every Gunner carries—the belief that a weapon at the end of the maze would change their life. What they found instead was a dungeon that rewrote them, layer by layer, armor over armor, memory over memory, until the person who walked in bore little resemblance to the person who still fired the gun.

The Gungeon does not build itself randomly. It grows around its inhabitants, and its earliest inhabitant left the deepest scar. The First Gunner's room, their weapon, their heavy plating—all of it is a fossil record of the dungeon's first act of transformation. The Gun King, in their later and more terrible form, is an echo of this same process taken to its logical extreme: a Gunner so thoroughly rewritten by the Gungeon that they became its sovereign. The First Gunner is the proof that this is not a one-time event but a cycle, a slow digestion that the Gungeon performs on everyone who dares to enter.

For the player, facing the First Gunner is less a traditional boss fight and more a confrontation with the Gungeon's own memory. The bullets they fire are not random; they trace the same patterns the player has been navigating for hours, as though the dungeon is replaying the first time someone tried to escape. Defeating them does not free the Gungeon. It simply adds another layer to the stack, another Gunner who entered, was changed, and was eventually forgotten by the corridors that will outlast them all.

In Their Own Story

The corridor was wrong. Not wrong in the way the Gungeon is always wrong—shifting, contradictory, a staircase that ended in a ceiling—but wrong in a specific, personal way. The walls were older here. The brickwork was worn smooth by something that had walked this path ten thousand times, and the floor was scored with the same groove, the same groove, the same groove, like a record stuck on one note.

The First Gunner stood at the far end of the hall, and they were enormous. Not tall in the way the Gun King is tall, imposing and regal, but *thick*, layered, as though someone had kept adding armor over the original body without ever removing a single plate. The visor was cracked. Behind it, something blinked that was not quite an eye. The gun in their hands was the size of a doorframe, and when they raised it, the barrel hummed with a frequency the player felt in their teeth.

The first shot came not from the gun but from the floor, a bullet threading up through the tile as though the Gungeon itself had loaded a round. The player dove. The second shot was a spray, wide and lazy, the way a very old hand shakes. The third was precise, aimed at the gap in the player's armor, and it *missed by a hair* because the Gungeon had already decided, in some ancient and tired way, that this one would not die here. Not yet.

The player fired back. The bullets struck the layered armor and pinged off like coins dropped on a table. The First Gunner did not flinch. They adjusted their aim with a slowness that was almost gentle, the way a parent steadies a child's hand, and the next volley was different—tighter, angrier, the gun barking in short bursts that left the walls smoking.

It took longer than it should have. The player's health bar bled down in long, slow drips. The First Gunner's armor cracked, then split, and behind the plating there was not flesh but more plating, and behind that, more, and the gun never stopped firing until the very last plate fell and the figure collapsed in a heap of rusted metal and something that looked, in the flickering torchlight, like a hand reaching for an exit that was no longer there.

The corridor was quiet. The groove in the floor was still there. The player stood in it for a moment, feeling the shape of ten thousand footsteps pressed into the stone, and then walked on, because the Gungeon does not let you stay, and the next room is already rearranging itself around your back.

Reader's Guide

The First Gunner encounter unfolds in a single, elongated corridor that feels deliberately older than the rest of the Gungeon—worn brick, deeper shadows, a layout that resists the usual randomization the player has come to expect. The boss is positioned at the far end, and the fight is a back-and-forth across this narrow space.

The First Gunner's attacks come in escalating patterns. Early volleys are slow and telegraphed, giving the player room to learn the rhythm: a wide spray, then a aimed shot, then a floor-bullet that threads upward through the tile. The Gunner's movement is minimal; they do not chase or reposition. The Gungeon does the work for them, spawning hazards in the corridor as the fight progresses.

The player's role is reactive and positional. Dodging the telegraphed shots, breaking line of sight behind debris, and returning fire during the Gunner's reload windows are the core loop. The Gunner's armor means damage is slow to register, stretching the fight and forcing the player to manage their own health carefully.

Narratively, the beat reframes the Gungeon from a random dungeon into a *record*. The First Gunner is not a generated enemy; they are a remnant. Their fight is the Gungeon replaying its first day. The player realizes that the Gun King is not an alien invader or a random boss—they are the logical endpoint of the same process that turned the First Gunner into a rusted, layered monument. The Gungeon does not create its enemies. It *makes* them, from the people who walk in, and the First Gunner is the oldest and most honest example of what that process produces. Defeating them does not break the cycle. It simply confirms it.

Did You Know?

• The First Gunner's heavy, layered armor design visually echoes the Gun King's own plating, reinforcing their shared origin as a Gunner transformed by the Gungeon.
• The First Gunner's fight takes place in a corridor that feels architecturally older than the surrounding Gungeon rooms, with more worn textures and a layout that resists the game's usual randomization.
• The First Gunner's attacks include bullets that emerge from the floor itself, a mechanic that visually reinforces the idea that the Gungeon is actively participating in the fight rather than merely hosting it.
• The First Gunner is one of the few bosses in Enter the Gungeon whose entire identity is tied to a specific narrative role—the first person to enter—rather than being a generic elite enemy scaled up for a boss fight.