Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
As Lucerne Personal Defense expanded into the personal armor field, it became clear that in order to get an edge above its competitors, it could benefit improved materials science. While it could lean on its parent company Lucerne Labs for many solid materials originally designed for use in droids and vehicles, no clothe-like material was readily available from that source, leading the company to use a variety of existing, widespread materials. This lead the company’s leader, the bothan Tresk Ek’ala to fund two limited materials science research projects: one using traditional materials engineering code-named Waterdown and the other project, Sunstream, a biomimetic design. Waterdown led to Defensa, a composite fabric that uses many existing materials already in stock at Lucerne Personal Defense but combined into a new form due to its sandwich-like construction.
This new blend results in some complementary effects of its existing materials. Against energy weapons, insulation from spun-blast, heat resistance from thermal gel, and raw energy absorption from microbes and armorweave provide the user with multiple, simultaneous efforts to disperse common energy weapon attacks, such as blaster bolts. Similarly, spun-plast coating and burthan thread provide some initial and long-term flex and wear from impacts, but the actual shock of these attacks is absorbed through the use of thermal gel. Perhaps the most interesting effect of this composite construction is a limited ability for this armor to self-seal, making it an attractive choice for clothing designed to protect users from harsh environments such as the vacuum of space or areas filled with poisonous gas.
Pleased with the ability to use existing materials, Tresk almost immediately authorized full production of the cloth once its development was complete. Defensa is likely to be used as a base cloth material for many of the company’s future products, from lightweight jumpsuits to heavy power
- Intent: To provide a textile armor material for use in future personal armors
- Image Source: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Closed-Market
- Model: Defensa Textile
- Modularity: No
- Production: Mass-Produced.
- Material: burthan thread, armorweave, spun-plast, barabel microbes, thermal gel
- Classification: Textile
- Weight: Light
- Resistances:
- Energy (And other Blaster type weapons): Very High
- Kinetic: High
- Lightsabers: Average
- EMP/Ion: Average
- Radiation: Very Low
- Sonic: Very Low
- Elemental: Average
- Environmental: Average
- Sandwich construction: A single sheet of Defensa cloth, despite appearing relatively thin at casual observation, is actually made out of several layers. A pair of armorweave sheets sandwiches a thin film of thermal gel in which barabel microbes are suspended. This armorweave sandwich is then linked together with burthan thread stitching whose intervals are dependent on how large the thermal gel pockets are intended to be (and thus defining flexibility and stiffness as well). Lastly, the cloth is dipped into a spun-plast solution in order to receive a waterproof coating which can provide some additional durability against physical threats and provide some minor insulation to ensure that the dormant microbes receive some insulation from environmental extremes.
- Cloth Substitute: Defensa is a fairly lightweight and flexible material, allowing it to be used as a substitution for armorweave and many other fabrics in most pieces of clothing.
- Self-Sealing: Defensa is a self-sealing material, which can be useful in protecting its wearer from certain threats. When the material is penetrated, the spun-plast almost immediately reverts to its last relative location. In small penetrations, this reversion may be enough on its own to seal the material (especially if heat was applied such as from a blaster, causing the spun-plast edges to melt together). In larger penetrations from energy weapons, the microbes rapidly multiply and fill in the gap before dying off just as quickly, once again sealing the material. Penetrations from larger kinetic threats and other weapons tend to be more effective and the self-sealing process tends to be less effective. If an attack involves heat, the microbes may be triggered to a degree to multiply just as in an energy attack, but typically to a lesser degree.
- Resistant (Energy Weapons): Defensa was designed primarily to protect against the most common threat on most battlefields: blasters and related energy weapons. To that end, it borrows heavily from existing blast armor material, using insulation in the form of spun-plast, energy absorption from microbes and armorweave, and heat resistance from thermal gel. All of these features collectively provide Defensa’s wearer with much better protection than average for a material of its flexibility and light weight.
- Resistant (Kinetic Weapons): Spun-plast impregnation and burthan thread provides some protection from glancing hits of physical weapons, but Defensa’s main protection is the use of thermal gel pockets, which stiffen up and absorb kinetic energy upon impact before spreading its energy across the rest of the connected cloth, providing the user with reasonable protection from many low-caliber physical threats.
- Susceptible (Sonic Weapons): Defensa provides very little protection against sonic weapons due to its lightweight construction and frequent fluid pockets (through which sound transmits through easier than many solid materials of similar depth).
- Susceptible (Radiation Weapons): None of the materials used in Defensa provide much protection from radiation weapons, in large part due to its thin and flexible layers. Perhaps even worse, the microbes embedded in the weave are living things, and radiation (aside from heat from weapons like blaster bolts) consequently can quickly kill them. This not only can lessen Defensa’s protection against energy weapons, but the debris from their destruction can rapidly become enmeshed with other debris or frayed fabric strands, leading to reduced flexibility that cannot be repaired.
As Lucerne Personal Defense expanded into the personal armor field, it became clear that in order to get an edge above its competitors, it could benefit improved materials science. While it could lean on its parent company Lucerne Labs for many solid materials originally designed for use in droids and vehicles, no clothe-like material was readily available from that source, leading the company to use a variety of existing, widespread materials. This lead the company’s leader, the bothan Tresk Ek’ala to fund two limited materials science research projects: one using traditional materials engineering code-named Waterdown and the other project, Sunstream, a biomimetic design. Waterdown led to Defensa, a composite fabric that uses many existing materials already in stock at Lucerne Personal Defense but combined into a new form due to its sandwich-like construction.
This new blend results in some complementary effects of its existing materials. Against energy weapons, insulation from spun-blast, heat resistance from thermal gel, and raw energy absorption from microbes and armorweave provide the user with multiple, simultaneous efforts to disperse common energy weapon attacks, such as blaster bolts. Similarly, spun-plast coating and burthan thread provide some initial and long-term flex and wear from impacts, but the actual shock of these attacks is absorbed through the use of thermal gel. Perhaps the most interesting effect of this composite construction is a limited ability for this armor to self-seal, making it an attractive choice for clothing designed to protect users from harsh environments such as the vacuum of space or areas filled with poisonous gas.
Pleased with the ability to use existing materials, Tresk almost immediately authorized full production of the cloth once its development was complete. Defensa is likely to be used as a base cloth material for many of the company’s future products, from lightweight jumpsuits to heavy power
