Bow and Arrow

Roughly fifty thousand years ago a meteorite fell on a thinly settled stretch of Cape York in Greenland. When a mining survey cracked the surrounding rock open in 1978, it uncovered an alien virus that had slept inside the stone, one that seemed built to wipe out human life entirely, sparing only the rare person whose hidden nature let them endure and, in surviving, awaken a Stand. Centuries before that find, a man hungry for the power of gods had already shaped some of the rock into arrowheads that could unlock a Stand in anyone carrying the latent potential for one.

The arrowheads vanished into history until 1986, when a dig in the Egyptian desert, one of whose members was a young Diavolo, turned up six of them. Diavolo made off with the lot and sold five to Enya the Hag, keeping one for himself, and from there the Arrows scattered among figures such as Polpo, Yoshihiro Kira, and Keicho Nijimura.

When one of the Arrows pierces a living being, it forces that being's sleeping Stand awake. The mechanism traces back to the meteorite's virus: most who catch it die, but a scarce few carry an intangible trait that pulls them through, and their survival is rewarded with a manifested Stand, a process likened to natural selection. Anyone lacking the spirit to bear the strain perishes from a mortal wound, though the Arrows tend to seek out only those able to withstand them in the first place.

Striking someone who already has a Stand is less predictable. It may unlock a fresh ability, as it did with Kira's Bites the Dust, yet Giorno's repeated brushes with an arrowhead brought only injury. In rarer cases the Arrow can transform a Stand outright into a Requiem form: Silver Chariot shed its old powers to become Chariot Requiem while Gold Experience kept its own, and pulling the Arrow back out usually reverses the change, although the rampaging Chariot Requiem held its new shape regardless.

The Arrow's reach can also run through blood. The single Arrow that pierced Dio, wearing Jonathan Joestar's body, lit up Stands throughout the Joestar line, and relatives too weak to master theirs, like Holy Kujo and the young Josuke, were left dangerously ill with only about fifty days to live unless the person actually struck was killed. It works across siblings as well, since piercing Enrico Pucci passed a Stand to his twin brother, and a child conceived after a parent is pierced seems to inherit nothing, which is why Jolyne stayed dormant until an Arrow shard cut her. A survivable wound simply closes over, leaving a coin-sized hole, and an Arrow can be snapped and rendered useless, its power tied to a tiny insect-shaped engraving on its flat face that must stay whole to work.

Because the Arrows changed hands so often, they created a long roster of Stand users. Enya the Hag used one to give Dio The World, Keicho Nijimura pierced numerous Morioh residents, Yoshihiro Kira awakened his son's Killer Queen, and Diavolo and Polpo spread Stands through Passione, including those of Narancia, Mista, and Giorno. Polnareff's Silver Chariot and Giorno's Gold Experience both reached their Requiem states through the same beetle-marked Arrow, while a shard passed from Jotaro to Jolyne awakened her Stone Free along with the powers of Ermes and Gwess.