Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a blaster carbine suited for special operations purposes
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Lucerne Personal Defense customers
- Market Status: Closed-Market
- Model: LPD-72 Shadowfire Special Purpose Carbine
- Modularity: typical blaster accessories such as scopes, underbarrel attachments, different types of blaster gas
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Hadrium barrel and internals, permex furniture, Magnatomic Grip Panel, cautionary pulser, blaster suppressor, combat de-ionizer, typical blaster components
- Classification: Blaster Carbine
- Size: Small
- Weight: Light
- Ammunition Type: power packs / blaster gas
- Ammunition Capacity: Small (100 shots)
- Effective Range: Personal
- Rate of Fire: Low
- Damage Output: High
- Recoil: Average
- Suppressed Weapon: The Shadowfire is equipped with a large, integral blaster suppressor which greatly reduces the sound signature to the point where it is almost silent to most organic's ears. This allows the Shadowfire operators to discreetly take down their opponents.
- Stun Setting: Like most blasters, the Shadowfire does have a stun setting.
- Picatinny Rails: The Shadowfire does have a top rail that allows it to accept a variety of existing aftermarket scopes and other accessories. A pair of half rails on the bottom of the weapon allow it add underbarrel weapons, glowlights, and other similar accessories to be added to the weapon.
- Universal Gas Port: While most blasters can use a wide variety of blaster gases, the Shadowfire is designed to specifically be very forgiving in what blaster gas is fed to it. While it can use most common blaster gases, ideally it uses a special tibanna gas mix also used by the DC-19 Stealth Carbine and the Nightstinger sporting rifle which allows the Shadowfire to fire invisible blaster bolts.
- Collapsible Stock and Vertical foregrip: The Shadowfire has a collapsible stock and vertical foregrip., allowing the user to make it a small weapon for ease of storage or carry - the Shadowfire can very easily be concealed underneath many coats in such a manner. The collapsible stock also allows the length of pull to be easily adjusted to fit the user.
- Covert Ops Weapon: The Shadowfire was designed from the ground up to be used by commandoes, intelligence agents, and others who need a weapon that not only is fairly concealable, but also fairly difficult to detect when in use.
- High Firepower: The Shadowfire mixes a fair amount of power into each bolt, making it roughly equivalent to the bolts of the DH-17: great enough that it can punch through many personal armors, but not so powerful enough that it will create a lot of collateral damage to the environment or overpenetration through multiple targets.
- Limited Ammunition: The Shadowfire, being a small weapon to begin with, does not have much room to store much in terms of blaster gas or power packs, which makes its ammunition reserve much lower than many other blaster rifles or carbines.
- Short Range: While the integral silencer makes the Shadowfire quite quiet, it also greatly reduces the range. A Shadowfire is most effective over several dozens of meters, though it can reach just over a hundred meters with a good marksman.
The LPD-72 Shadowfire was designed from the ground up to be a useful covert operations weapon. Great emphasis was placed on making it eminently concealable and stealthy when in actual use. Its relatively small size is actually due to much of the operating system itself is little more than a clone of the dated but still serviceable DH17 blaster pistol. In order to make it more ergonomic, this operating system was largely fitted with furniture derived from the company's previous LPD-37 Sparkfire Bi-Polar Blaster Carbine. In order to make it actually stealthy though, most of the development time was spent on an advanced integral blaster silencer. After many computer simulations and many physical trial and error experiments, the team was able to make one of the quietest firing blasters on the market. Rather than the typical whine of a blaster bolt, people at most might hear or feel a small change in very local air currents, caused by the blaster bolt ionizing nearby air particles as it passes through the atmosphere. Of course, making a blaster bolt quiet by itself doesn't make it a stealth weapon: blaster bolts are still quite visible.
Despite further experiments with different prismatic crystals, the company was not able to produce an invisible bolt with commonly available blaster gases. It was, however, able to ensure that the Shadowfire could work well with a wide variety of different blaster gases, including the refined tibanna mixture previously used by the DC-19 Stealth Carbine and the Nightstinger sporting rifle. When using this special mixture, the Shadowfire actually does live up to its name, making an invisible blaster bolt.
Tactical applications of this weapon are fairly obvious. It excels at discreetly taking out enemies, whether they are sentries guarding a secure military base for infiltration or dispatching a politician in a public venue from a concealed position. While its concealability and reduced weapons discharge signature make it useful in these types of applications, the Shadowfire is a fairly poor choice for a main combat weapon for most soldiers, law enforcement agents, and other combatants, having a very limited ammunition supply and a short range too. Consequently, Shadowfires are relatively uncommon sights across the galactic weapons scene.
