Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a shotgun pistol in Lucerne Personal Defense's line up
- Image Source: here modified by yours truly
- 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-73 Stormfist Scatter Pistol
- Modularity: sights/scopes; ammunition; different chokes
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Mirrsteel barrel, frame, and cylinder, Ceramisteel internal components, spun-plast recoil-dampening grips, autosteady gyro-gimbal, Magnatomic Grip Panel
- Classification: Scatter gun pistol
- Size: Average
- Weight:Average
- Ammunition Type: shotshells, shells, slugs
- Ammunition Capacity: Very Small (5 shots)
- Effective Range: Average
- Rate of Fire: Low
- Damage Output: Extreme
- Recoil: Average
- Slugthrower: The Stormfist is an unusual, break action cylinder revolver with a double or single action trigger design that fires shotgun cartridges consisting of a projectile, propellant, and primer. This relatively simple design makes it exceptionally reliable in the field and unaffected by ion or EMP weapons. Unlike some slugthrowers using autoloading features, ammunition quality and propellant amount can vary considerably with no appreciable effects on reliability. Combined with its heavy build quality, the Stormfist has become popular with those who largely distrust modern technology or want something that works flawlessly every time
- Targeting Laser: The Stormfist does have an integral, variable power targeting laser located in the crane around which the cylinder rotates.
- Modular Sight Mount: While the Stormfist does come with a traditional, blade-style front sight, it's rear sight mount is modular, allowing it to take a simple "U"-style notch rear sight, or more advanced optics like the company's Zolta-series Targeting Scopes or TruSight-series Multi-Optic Sights.
- Modular Slugs: As with many other conventional slugthrowers, the Stormfist has a wide variety of ammunitions available for it, ranging from classic canister shot such as bird and buckshot to large solid slugs to saboted rounds and a vast array of specialty munitions including different types of microgrenades. It is also backwards compatible with many other ammunition types offered by third party vendors.
- Heavy Hitter: The Stormfist is chambered in the heavy hitting 12 gauge, perhaps one of the more common, powerful shotgun cartridges in the galaxy. It can often take down quite dangerous game at close ranges.
- Versatile: As with many slugthrowers, the Stormfist can take a wide variety of cartridges and payloads, making it quite adaptable.
- Limited Ammunition: Like many archaic revolvers, the Stormfist only has five shots, which is absolutely tiny compared to the hundreds of energy bolts that many blaster pistols can produce.
- Low Rate of Fire: As much as technology develops, some mechanical principles stay the same. The large size of the cartridge combined with the reliance on actual hand power to rotate the cylinder via a traditional pawl and ratchet system make it slower firing than most blasters and autoloading slugthrowers.
While most of Lucerne Personal Defense's products are made for military service, it has produced a number of designs aimed primarily for the civilian market. The LPD-73 Stormfist is one of them, actually made for civilian, personal defense. Taking note of many planetary laws that were restrictive of many blasters, autoloading slugthrowers and caliber restrictions, LPD made a revolver that uses a common hunting cartridge: 12 gauge scatter gun. While a seemingly ill-advised design because of the significant recoil of most 12 gauge ammunition, the Stormfist actually has a fairly high quality autosteady gyro-gimbal which substantially reduces the weapon's felt recoil. Like many other shotguns, the Stormfist also comes with a set of screw-in barrel chokes, ranging from full chokes (for a tighter spread of pellets at long ranges) to a cylinder bore (for using single-piece slugs or producing wide spreads with pellets). This allows the Firespray to use a wide variety of ammunition types with close to maximum performance, much of which was originally made for the LPD-45 Firespray:
Birdshot: This shotshell contains dozens to hundreds of tiny durasteel pellets. When fired from the Stormfirst, these pellets spread out to encompass a relatively wide area of effect, whose exact pattern width and density is dependent on the choke screwed into the Stormfist's barrel. While traditionally used to hunt birds and other small game with a minimum of tissue destruction, this is also sometimes used to intentionally wound (but not kill) targets or in instances where there are concerns about overpenetration, such as in crowded urban areas or in pressurized vessels like suborbital freighters and passenger shuttles.
Buckshot: This shotshell contains approximately a dozen durasteel balls, each of which is roughly the size of a small pistol bullet. Like birdshot, these pellets spread out somewhat when fired, with the exact spread pattern depending on the choke uses. Buckshot has been traditionally employed when hunting medium game animals such as banthas, but it is quite effective against human-sized targets: at short ranges, being hit with a single buckshot shell's contents is roughly equivalent to being shot ten times by a blaster pistol. This is probably the most commonly used round with the Stormfist.
Solid Slug: This is essentially a common slugthrower cartridge, consisting of a large durasteel slut with an internal Mirrsteel penetrator designed to increase penetration against armor. Unlike many other slugthrower ammunitions, the slug relies heavily on its large mass and inertia to inflict damage rather than its speed. While this does not make it a good projectile at long-ranges, it is excellent at breaking through physical cover (such as walls, trees, foliage, etc) relatively unopposed before inflicting heavy damage. This is probably the second most commonly used round by civilian owners.
Explosive Slug: This shell is has a projectile slug composed of detonite covered in a thin jacket of durasteel. Upon the jarring impact against a hard surface such as a wall or battle armor, it violently explodes, producing a brief fireball several meters in diameter. Unsurprisingly, it tends to be very effective against targets wearing battle armor, droids, and light vehicles. Conversely, sometimes the impact will not detonate upon impact with soft, unarmored targets as there is insufficient kinetic jolt for the detonite to ignite.
Micro-Grenade Shell: Stormfist can support the use of many existing micro-grenades already found throughout the galaxy thanks to an adaptor shell. The microgrenade is simply and snuggly pushed into the adaptor shell, which otherwise merely contains a shotgun shell's primer and propellant. Commonly used micro-grenades used by the Stormfist include fragmentation, stun, and ion. Due to the use of chemical propellant, micro-grenades typically have a shorter range through the Stormfist compared to dedicated micro-grenade launchers, but the Stormfist also can operate unaffected by ion and EMP attacks and be silenced, unlike conventional micro-grenade launchers.
ElectroStunner: This slug contains a small power cell, transitor, a quartet of metal prongs at its tip as well as six metal spikes that extend laterally from the projectile while in flight. Upon contact with the target, as long as two of the prongs or spikes makes contact with the target, an electric current is introduced into the body that overlaps the frequency of electricity used by most organics to control their muscle systems. This effectively can trap its target in a series of uncontrollable muscle spasms for about half a minute until the powercell's power is depleted.
Gas Shells: This shell contains a very thin ceramic container filled with a weaponized gas. Upon contact with a hard surface, the container shatters and releases its payload in the immediate vicinity. Commonly used gases include plank gas, coma gas, and Agent T-238. The shells contain only a small amount of gas which quickly disperses, making it a useful precision weapon to deploy these agents.
Incendiary Shell: This shell contains a very small amount of detonite to act as a kinetic impact primer along with a substantial filling of plasticene thermite gel contained in a very thin ceramic shell. Upon impact, the detonite serves to ignite the gel, bringing up the local areas up to almost 5000 degrees Celsius, more than capable enough of starting fires and burning through many armor materials.
CryoBan Shell: This slug consists of a thin durasteel shell that contains condensed CryoBan. Upon impact with a hard surface, the tip of the durasteel slug deforms to release the CryoBan, ideally directly into actual organic tissue or focused up against armor. The focused release of this agent is designed to create deep, penetrating cold injuries into the target, making it more of a precision weapon than an area of effect munition.
While originally conceived to pass legal loopholes on the civilian market for self-defense purposes, the Stormfist has also become popular among military forces, particularly those who appreciate a powerful weapon in a compact package like urban guerillas and marines. While the company does sell the weapon in large batches to many government and security forces, it is by far most commonly sold by the company in small lots to private distributors for sale to the civilian market.
