Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a beserk rifle equivalent in LPD's catalogue
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: beserk rifle
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Lucerne Personal Defense customers
- Market Status: Closed-Market
- Model: LPD-75 Stormbolt Magnetic Accelerator Carbine
- Modularity: Underbarrel attachments; sights/scopes; ammunition
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Durasteel barrel, Ceramisteel internal components and frame with condensed-matter composite reinforcement, Permex furniture, Magnatomic Grip Panels, various beserk rifle components
- Classification: beserk rifle
- Size: Average
- Weight: Heavy
- Ammunition Type: metallic projectiles / power pack
- Ammunition Capacity: Average (~60 projectiles / power for approximately ~180 shots)
- Effective Range: Average
- Rate of Fire: Low
- Damage Output: Very High
- Recoil: Average
- Beserk Gun: The Stormbolt is a derivative of the old Beserker Rifle design, using magnetic coils to rapidly accelerate and electrify its projectiles. Not only do these projectiles impart great kinetic impact on their targets do their high speed, but the crackling electricity which surrounds the slug can electrocute or stun most organic targets or even ignite combustible materials. This magnetic accelerator is less sophisticated than many of the verpine shatter guns, but it is also noticeably simpler in construction. Making it easier to maintain and also much more durable than shatter guns or blasters, being only slightly more complicated than many old fashioned chemical-driven slugthrowers. This simplicity makes it easy to maintain and repair even on hard scrabble Outer Rim worlds.
- Ruggerized: Unlike many magnetic accelerator weapons like shatterguns, the Stormbolt was designed to be very rugged through simplification and heavy build quality. Not only are the magnetic accelerator mechanisms fairly simple and overbuilt, but the gun's chassis and furniture are similarly built to withstand a greater beating in the hard outdoors. As part of this, not is the magnetic accelerator system fully environmentally sealed, but some of the armor paneling has been extended to at least partially encase the picatinny rails and the accessories that might be attached to them.
- Variable Ammunition: Like some high-end shatter guns, the Stormbolt features a multicaliber magazine and bore as standard. This allows the Stormbolt to accept a variety of different ammunition types and calibers up to 3 centimeters in diameter. Obviously, larger projectiles take up less space than smaller ones in the weapon's magazine, but it does provide the user with a wide variety of options that wouldn't otherwise be available for most projectile weapons. While Lucerne Personal Defense does manufacture a selection of ammunition specific to the Stormbotl, some common aftermarket options found in use include simple explosive slugs, flechettes, flash quarrels, and tranq slugs. Theoretically, the Stormbolt can even fire common battlefield debris, such as durasteel rebar from a destroyed building or shards of vehicle wreckage, in an an emergency.
- Picatinny Rail: The Stormbolt does have top and bottom Picatinny rails situated around barrel, which allows it to use a variety of over the counter weapon's attachments such as targeting lasers, tactical lights, grappling spike launchers, scopes, bipods, and secondary weapons like small underbarrel grenade launchers.
- Heavy Hitter: The Stormbolt can launch relatively large projectiles at high speeds, giving it great kinetic energy. Encasing the projectile in crackling electrical energy gives it an additional punch against many targets.
- Versatile: As with many projectile weapons, the Stormbolt can fire a wide variety of different payloads.
- Heavy: The Stormbolt is a fairly heavy weapon, in large part because of the extended cylindrical powerpack on the bottom, and its heavy chassis build.
- Low Rate of Fire: With rugged but relatively basic circuitry, the Stormbolt is limited in how quickly its capacitors can build charge to accelerate projectiles, leading to a relatively slow firing rate of every five seconds on average.
Never one to put all of its eggs in one basic, Lucerne Personal Defense did not only design and manufacture the LPD-58 Stormwrath Shatter Pistol and LPD-59 Stormlance Shatter Rifle based on verpine shattergun technology, but they also investigated a more rugged magnetic accelerator: the beserk rifle. While this technology development was put on hiatus with the successful introduction of the previous two weaons, it was decided that there was a niche between high tech and sensitive weapons like the LPD-58 and LPD-59 and much older, conventional chemical propelled slugthrower weapons. Many Mid Rim worlds and more civilized Outer Rim world denizens had sporadic access to blaster gases, but they did not want to pay the full price of shatter guns but didn't feel like low-tech slugthrowers would be effective weapons against some of their more high tech foes.
The LPD-75 has largely split the difference between these two extremes of technology. It is significantly cheaper and more rugged than most shatterguns, but it offers higher kinetic penetration than most common chemical propellant based slugthrowers. Yet the Stormbolt is not a simple compromise solution. Almost unique to projectile weaponry, beserk rifles encase their launched projectiles with crackling electricity that is discharged into struck targets. Large amounts of voltage can easily electrocute targets, stun them, cause muscle convulsions, or cause deep tissue electrical burns on organics. Against artificial contructs, this electric energy can overload and fry circuits on droids and personal-scale electronics, much like a DEMP gun. Still, the majority of the damage typically dealt by the Stormbolt is via its kinetic energy, followed closely by the effects of some specialty projectiles, of which Lucerne Personal Defense has developed a wide array of options:
Solid Bolt: A simple solid slug of mirrsteel, ferrocarbon, or some other ferromagnetic metal. This is probably the most common and cheapest ammunition available for the Stormbolt. The sheer mass of the projectile typically gives it a pretty noticeable "knock-down" effect on most organics, not only imparting its energy to destroy tissue, but often forming a concussive effect that literally causes creatures to stagger backwards or get knocked down to the ground if the target is wearing armor. If the target is not wearing armor, it's not uncommon for the round to simply zip straight through on account of its velocity, sometimes capable of going into or even through people or objects behind the target. While this overpenetration can be liability, it can also be used to the user's advantage, with shots going through many pieces of light cover, such as trees or walls, to hit the targets behind them.
Safety Slug: Because of the problem with overpenetration with simple, basic solid bolts, Lucerne Personal Defense devised a frangible round made out of a thin tube of durasteel filled with plastoid pellets. This round breaks apart and shatters on impact, directly transferring all kinetic energy directly into the target with little chance of penetrating through a target. This makes it useful in areas where there's a possibility of collateral damage, though it noticeably is much less effective than simple solid bolts against armored targets.
Armor Piercing Explosive Slug: This is basically a hollow-point bolt whose internal cavity filled with detonite. When the slug collides with the target or object, the kinetic impact detonates the detonite. Because of the shape of the metallic portion of this bullet, it actually acts as a small shaped charge, with the detonite being focused forward into the target. This ammunition, like its Galactic Civil War counterpart, is well-suited for penetrating through many heavy body armors or light vehicle armor.
Explosive Fragmentation Slug: This slug is almost entirely detonite contained within a thin gilding of pre-stressed plasteel. Unlike the previous ammunition type, the explosive blast in here is not shaped forward but is actually omnidirectional. While not as good as piercing through armor, it produces a larger blast radius with some shrapnel, making it equivalent to a C-22 fragmentation grenade with a noticeable blast radius. Subsequently, a direct hit can be capable of creating grievous deep internal injuries or frequently outright amputating limbs on most humanoids. The explosive, fragmentation nature of this slug also means that near misses can still create significant injuries or injure multiple nearby targets.
Poisoned Bolt: Officially marketed only for use against dangerous apex predators, this round consists of mirrsteel barbed slug that contains Cyanoxis D-570. Upon impact, the barbs irregularity carve up deep channels into the wound and then act to make bullet removal more difficult and damaging, while the rupturing slug releases the poison which furthers blood loss, frequently leading to deep internal bleeds and blood trails that can be easily followed.
Stun Bolt: This round consists of lightly-constructed plastic shell that contains bothan stun spores. Upon impact, the spores either enter the body or can be inhaled by the target. Depending on the target, the effect can range from mild nausea and vomiting to unconsciousness. This is largely equivalent to a Spore/B stun grenade.
Acid-Filled Bolt: At a glance, this appears to be a typical solid bolt. However, the jacket of this round actually acts as a reservoir for Trifaraleen gas. If the slug penetrates into the target, the gas will be released into the target itself to rapidly eat at tissue. Against impact against armor and other hard objects, the gas will rapidly corrode a portion of the impacted target before dissipating away.
Incendiary Bolt: This bolt 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. Ths is typically used as an anti-vehicle round, where it is often effective at going through many medium-grade armors, such as those found on medium tanks or walkers like the AT-TE, given enough time to burn.
CryoBan Bolt: This bolt consists of a thin durasteel bolt that contains condensed CryoBan. Upon impact with a hard surface, the tip of the durasteel bolt 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, though the relatively large amount of cryoban in it means that it can affect targets within several meters of the bolt's impact.
A solid mid-tech weapon, the Stormbolt hasn't met great success near the Core Worlds, where more advanced weapons are typically expected. However, its simplicity and power has made it fairly popular the further one gets from the Core, especially on worlds with large, organic predators. Stormbolts are commonly found in local Outer Rim defense forces associated with the Silver Jedi Concord or the Directorate. It seems some limited in use within those two organizations as well, where it is a common alternative to a grenade launcher when used with specialty bolts.
