Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide an aquatic environment weapon in Lucerne Personal Defense’s inventory
- Image Source: Matanza Arms CARB Shotgun from AVATAR
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Closed-Market
- Model: LPD-46 Trident Aqua Rifle
- Modularity: picatinny, rail attachments
- Production: Mass-Produced.
- Material: synthetic waterweave receiver, ceramisteel barrel and internal components, blaster rifle components, speargun components, permex furniture, Magnatomic Grip Panels
- Classification: Underwater Blaster Rifle / Speargun
- Size: Average
- Weight: Average
Beam Rifle Repeating Blaster Speargun Ammunition Type Blaster Gas / Power cell Blaster Gas / Power cell Harpoon Canister Ammunition Capacity Average - 300 shots Average - 300 shots Very Low - 1 Harpoon Effective Range Average Personal Long Range Rate of Fire Low Very High Very Low Stopping Power High Average Extreme Recoil Average High Average
- Underwater Blaster: The Trident is an underwater focused blaster in the vein of the GAR’s old DC-12U beam rifle in that it is designed for improved performance underwater. To that end, the Trident doesn’t actually fire typical blaster bolts, but actually produces sustained pulses much like the old-fashioned pulse-wave blasters. These pulses improve the efficiency of energy traveling through the water, making it a fairly damaging weapon albeit with a somewhat slower rate of fire than the typical blaster rifle. In order to improve underwater handling, the Trident uses a receiver casing based on the LPD-45’s but made out of synthetic waterweave. While designed to specifically be effective underwater, the Trident can be used in normal atmospheres and space with almost equal effectiveness as a typical blaster, albeit sometimes accuracy can be lower if the static pulse discharges are misaligned from rapid shifts between different operating environments.
- Spear Gun: The Trident has a speargun designed originally to help users fight large, underwater creatures. The tube underneath the blaster rifle contains a single pressurized canister that holds a barbed mirrsteel harpoon connected to a long, coiled spool fibercord. The operating system is effectively that of a simple, single shot firearm. A mechanical firing pin strikes the canister’s plasticene thermite primer to rapidly overheat and combust the pressurized gas, which then rapidly combusts the pressurized gas to rapidly expel the harpoon at tremendous speeds. The harpoon itself initially appears to be a traditional fishing harpoon, having a multiple barbs across its shaft to help with retention once it has pierced through flesh along with a tail of fibercord to help the user haul in or follow their quarry. The endpiece of the canister can be secured against objects such as natural terrain features or vehicles to act as an anchoring point to keep this quarry in place. Unlike fishing harpoons, however, the Trident’s harpoon conceals hollow head filled with nitrogen trichloride with almost microscopic ports initially sealed with tekonite. Upon impact with a hard object or surface, the tekonite shatters, releasing the nitrogen trichloride. Especially hard impacts or exposure to water can actually trigger the nitrogen trichloride to explode or burn, even underwater – the original intent of the harpoon design was for the piercing action of the spear to explode inside sea creatures itself. Otherwise, on soft hits, the impact is enough to trigger the reaction at a slower rate, effectively leading the compound to break down into an acid and base that is toxic and corrosive to organics underwater or when inside a body cavity, which is further exacerbated if the harpoon is retained in the body on the account of its barbs. If this reaction occurs in the air, it actually produces a tear gas like effect. While exceptionally powerful, the harpoon is typically limited in accuracy to large targets at long distances or person sized targets at ranges less than a 100 meters. Replacing a harpoon canister is a lengthy process, as the old canister must be manually removed and a new one slid into the tube before it is locked in place. This process is longer still if the old canister is going to be anchored to something in order to help physically restrain the target. While originally designed to be employed against sea creatures, the spear gun is fairly effective against armored personnel, light ground armored vehicles, and aquatic vessels on the account of its explosive payload.
- Variable Fire Modes: The Trident has a “repeating” mode that drastically increases its rate of fire by rapidly discharging energy bursts before they can fully coalesce. This significant rate of fire increase comes at the cost of damage output and reduced range.
- Stun Setting: Like other blaster weapons, the Trident does have a stun setting that can be used in either blaster fire mode.
- Picatinny Rails: The Trident comes up with picatinny rails on both its top and bottom, allowing a wide variety of different attachments to be added to the weapon for easy customization, ranging from night sights and scopes to foregrips, lights, and underbarrel attachment weapons.[/FONT]
- High Stopping Power (Standard mode / Spear Gun): The Trident’s pulsed blaster bolts produces a fair amount of damage for a weapon of its size, while the large size of the trident’s chemical payload combined with its high speed make it exceeding dangerous to large creatures or light vehicles.
- Rapid Fire (Repeating mode): In repeating mode, the Trident is able to rapidly discharge series of only partially formed bolts, allowing the user to blanket areas with effective suppressive fire.
- Low Rate of Fire (Standard Mode / Spear Gun): Forming sustained pulses necessitates that the Trident discharge its built-up heat via a cooling cycle that is noticeably longer than that of a typical blaster rifle. The speargun portion of the Trident is a single shot weapon, and reloading a harpoon canister is a lengthy process.
- Things Fall Apart (Repeater Mode): The Trident is able to accomplish such rapid fire by only using partially formed blaster bolts, leading to a reduction in range and damage compared to the weapon’s normal firing mode.
With the development of the Marrab series Synthetic Soldier, Lucerne Labs turned to its subsidiary to provide a basic issue weapon for their amphibian battle droid. To that end, Lucerne Personal Defense turned to the Grand Army of the Republic’s DC-12U Beam Rifle effectively used by clone troopers underwater during the Clone Wars and fit it into the basic chassis of an already existing weapon, the Firespray Shotgun. Their derivative weapon, the Trident sports much in common with that weapon along with a few characteristic refinements. The most notable of these is an alternate repeating fire mode inspired by the company’s own Firebolt Blaster Rifle. Other smaller refinements include the use of a synthetic waterweave housing and ceramisteel components in order to improve corrosion resistance and handling underwater, while the inclusion of picatinny rails allows the weapon to adopt a wide variety of aftermarket devices, from low-light scopes and soni-optics to underbarrel weapon assemblies and vertical foregrips. While it was an effective enough blaster against person sized targets, Lucerne Personal Defense found that the blaster was not powerful enough to deal with many of the large underwater creatures users might face.
To that end, the designers turned to the traditional underwater speargun designs used for hunting and protection by underwater peoples for centuries. This speargun occupies the underbarrel tube that used to house the Firespray Shotgun’s tubular magazine. In terms of the basic operating features, the Trident’s speargun is conventional to the point of banality. At a glance, it’s spear also seems fairly conventional, using multiple barbs and a fibercord tail to retain a target. However, it’s harpoon internals have a fairly unconventional design in that it contains a pressurized reservoir of nitrogen trichloride, which depending on how it is exposed to a target, can either act as an explosive, corrosive agent, or tear gas depending on the circumstances. Against most large aquatic sea animals, the harpoon explodes inside the target’s body almost like a grenade, making it a devastating weapon against even the largest of creatures if employed against the right target site. Because of its explosive and/or corrosive effects, it is quite effective against vehicles and persons wearing battle armor. Ironically, it tends to be less effective against soft, small organic targets because the harpoon does not reliably explode against such targets. This makes it an almost ideal complementary weapon to the underwater blaster rifle portion of the Trident.
Compared to the extensive use of blasters across the galaxy, the Trident is unlikely to be in the large numbers characteristic of other blaster rifles because it is such a niche weapon. However, its niche focus will likely see it remain in steady and sustained production, especially with it being paired in sales packages with Marrab series Synthetic Soldiers. Most other buyers of the weapon appear to be aquatic species looking for ways to defend their watery homes from interlopers, especially those that live by the borders of the Bryn’adul and Sith Empires.
