I've notice that the rules on guns (ITL 124) use the same term ("ready") for both arquebus and blunderbuss.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by ITL124
The arquebus is a large musket. It fires a single ball for
over 400 yards. It is considered a missile weapon, doing 3d+3
dice damage. It is very clumsy; it takes 4 turns to ready, and
12 turns to reload and ready after firing. It must be fired from
a stand. Anyone without Guns talent has a -6 to use this.
...
A blunderbuss takes only one turn to ready, but 12 turns to
reload after firing.
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It seems to me, given the one turn to ready the blunderbuss, that the word is being used in the technical sense of "ready new weapon" and hence the four turns were intended for the length of time to move a weapon from the belt to the hands and be able to fire it. Thus, I think RAW intended that a guy walking in a labyrinth with an arquebus in hand could fire immediately.
Nonetheless, I'll house rule two turns to move from belt to hands and two turns to set up the stand (one turn with a helper).
Mind you, even now, I'm not confident of my reading of RAW, but I'm presuming that "ready" means the same thing in all three uses quoted above and I doubt that a blunderbuss takes one turn to set up when readied. I'm also leaning on the fact that "ready weapon" has a well-defined meaning elsewhere.
It bugs me somewhat that the arquebus mentions reload and ready and the blunderbuss doesn't use the term "ready" when discussing reloading. That could be just normal sloppiness in written English or it could be significant.