Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide aquatic armor in Lucerne Personal Defense's line-up
- 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: Ravinak-series Dive Suit
- Modularity: aesthetics; items can be easily clipped to utility belt
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: link-steel / plastoid composite armor plates, layered Defensa-burthan thread base-suit, ceraglass faceplate, Torulus series Artificial Muscles, terenthium atmospheric gas cylinders,Magnetohydrodynamic Engine, spun-plast flippers (optional), various electronics and other armor components
- Classification: Aquatic Personal Armor
- Weight: Light
- Resistances:
- Energy (And other Blaster type weapons): High
- Kinetic: High
- Lightsabers: Average
- EMP/Ion: Average
- Radiation: Very Low
- Sonic: Very Low
- Elemental: Low
- Environmental: Very High
- Composite Construction: Ravinak uses a unique composite construction in order to better protect its wearer from the watery depths. Unusually, the Ravinak uses hollow composite armor plates made out of pressure-resistant link-steel and buoyant plastoid. Such plates protect the torso, the head, and fully encase several of the larger joints. This provides the user primarily with protection against deep pressures, but also has the secondary effect of providing them with some protection against common energy and kinetic threats. A thick pane of ceraglass with almost invisible, fine burthan thread mesh is used for the faceplate, giving the user good visibility in case the suit is electronically disabled and the HUD is inactivated while still providing reasonable protection against many threats. The Defensa-burthan thread bodyglove encapsulates Torolus –series Artificial Muscles throughout most of its length, especially around the larger joints. Not only does this layer provide protection from many battlefield threats, but it also provides a self-sealing mode of protection from water seeping into the suit. Because users swimming in Ravinak might be exposed to high pressures at deeper depths despite the armor's protection, thin bands of Torolus muscles are sequentially spaced across the extremities, ready to constrict and prevent the movement of gas bubbles within the blood if necessary based on readouts from the Asclepius's medi-sensor, especially when the user is ascending or descending rapidly.
- Swimming Systems: Ravinak is designed to augment the user's natural ability to swim both actively and through passive augmentation. The former is quite simple: the Ravinak has a small Magnetohydrodynamic Engine mounted on top of its atmospheric tanks that provides some thrust to the wearer. It's not a particularly fast engine, but it is highly energy efficient which allows for hours of continuous use. The latter passive augmentation is more complex and innovative. The armor plates found on Ravinak are hollow, allowing them to act as ballast tanks. Combined with two way valves and an electrical pump, the user can more easily descend by filling up the armor plates with water or more easily ascend by pumping out the water and replacing it with air. This pumping process is all done automatically based on the swimmer's intentional movements. Knowing that swimming for long periods can be a tiring task, the artificial muscles found layered within the suit are designed not for raw strength, but rather to augment the wearer's endurance, allowing them to swim for longer times at a more consistent performance. Thus, even when tired, a wearer can still move at reasonably good speeds if necessarily. More conventionally, the Ravinak has a removeable pair of spun-plast flippers for the feet.
- Loth-Wolf series Combat Scanner with SC-1 Hardened Comlink: This system provides Ravinak with its standard package of HUD, sensors, and basic power suit command and control systems as described in that submission. An open sensor slot in the Loth-Wolf has been plugged in with a sonar mapper, which provides the wearer with a greater knowledge of the environment around them, whether if its of sunken objects or native sea life. Not only does this provide the user with basic situational awareness, but it also automatically maps the area around the wearer and provides a map on the user's HUD itself, making it extremely useful for not only scouting and exploration, but in the simple but important task of orientation. Loth-Wolf automatically is linked to wrist dartcasters, making the aiming and firing of these weapons very easy and instinctive.
- Quietneedle Dartcasters (left and right gauntlets): Ravinak has built-in dartcasters in both of its gauntlets. Short-ranged and with little ammunition capacity, these are typically intended to be used as back-up self defense weapons against predatory sea creatures rather than as weapons against intelligent life. Electro-darts are commonly used to temporarily stun larger predators while some sportsmen sometimes use simple metal flechettes to outright kill their game. Scientists often use transponder node darts to tag creatures as part of their wildlife studies.
- Asclepius Bio-support Dispenser: This internal device provides basic physiological monitoring, emergency topical bacta/kolto administration, and can also inject users with a variety of emergency or performance enhancing drugs. It is especially important on the Ravinak as it provides physiologicial monitoring during descent and ascent from the depths and can use several of the suit's features to protect the user. It can automatically signal the suit to constrict Torolus muscles around limbs in order to stop blood pooling from pressure changes. It can also inject the user with a variety of medicines depending on the situation, from Plasvol in the case of hypovolemic shock to antidote in case the user is bitten by a venomous sea creature.
- Bia series Portable Fusion Generator: The Ravinak has a single Bia series Portable Fusion Generators in order to provide the suit's artificial muscles with power as well as its onboard electronics. This smaller generator is located on the back just underneath the two atmospheric tanks. It provides enough power for the suit to operate continuously for 24 hours. Redundant restart energy pathways built into this reactor allow the Ravinak to "sputter" along when faced with Ion, EMP, and other tech-dampening threats.
- Onboard storage: Ravinak comes with a streamlined utility belt with several small compartments made out of the link-steel located at the front of the user for easy access. These compartments contain the following equipment: a spool of high tension wire, 2 power packs, two ion flares (for illumination or emergency signaling), a FastMed Emergency Medpac, and three Vaynai Emergency Rations. A number of hooks and other fasteners on the belt allow the user to attach other equipment to the belt, most commonly glowrods or mission specific equipment. A pair of sealable dump-pockets on the pants allow the user to carry some small items with them. Lastly, the left lower leg has a knife sheath that comes with a LPD-34 Cracken Combat Knife.
- Advanced Environmental Protection: Deep waters aren't known for being forgiving environments between the sheer pressure, difficulty to move in, and lack of ability to see in. Each piece of Ravinak has been painstakingly designed to withstand high pressure, largely through the use of link-steel within the armor plates and burthan thread woven into the base suit. The armor plates have been designed to actually fully encase key joints in order to better protect them from extreme pressures (and possible sea creature bites), as even such a minor injury can ultimately be the death of a swimmer. The base-suit includes three layers of self-sealing Defensa textile, which helps ensure that most small leaks are quickly stopped. The Pneuma-series Rebreathing System is not only directly linked to pair of terenthium atmospheric gas cylinders, but are almost always equipped with oxygen symbiote cylinders, which effectively allows the user an indefinite amount of oxygen while underwater until the symbiote itself dies (typically one month). The thickness of the base body glove provide reasonable insulation against most temperature extremes, and some brave souls do use Ravinak series Dive Suits in artic conditions.
- Resistant(Energy): Ravinak's partial plastoid plates and Defensa-blend undersuit provide the wearer with reasonably protection from energy weapons like blasters and disruptors.
- Resistant(Kinetic): Ravinak provides fairly decent protection from kinetic weapons due to its partial plastoid armor plates and use of Defensa textile.
- Resistant(Environmental): Ravinak is made to withstand exceptionally high pressures through the use of specialized materials well-proven for their strength in withstanding such pressures (link-steel and burthan) as well as its unusual composite, self-sealing system.
- Augmented Swimming: Through a combination of a magnetohydrodynamic engine, auto-ballasting tanks, artificial muscles, the suit's light weight, and flippers, most wearers find swimming in a Ravinak to be significantly easier than on their own.
- Low Sonic Resistance: Ravinak has very limited protection against sonic weapons. While the helmet does provide sonic protection for the user's ears through its HUD system, the rest of the suit was not designed with sonic weapons in mind.
- Low Elemental Resistance: No thought was given for providing the user protection from elemental type weapons. Consequently, weapons that use cryoban, flames, or corrosive chemicals tend to work very well against the suit.
- Low Radiation Resistance: Ravinak wasn't designed with any thought of radiation weapons or environments in mind, though its thickness does provide some shielding via simple depth. Radiation can destroy the microbes used in its Defensa cloth, which can permanently degrade the armor's ability to protect against energy weapons.
- A Fish Out of Water: Despite the suit's light weight, it's almost entirely impractical to use out of water.
The Lucerne consortium has a number of a number of underwater facilities on Hast and Voss, largely chosen and built by the cadre of mon calamari and quarren engineers who were part of the company's core in its current iteration. While entering and using these facilities has been easy and second nature for them, it has not been quite as easy for others, including some members of the company's own security teams. Admiral Quee charged Lucerne Personal Defense with developing an underwater suit that could make travelling and patrolling these grounds significantly easier for most of the company's employees.
The result is the Ravinak Dive Suit, which builds off of the company's recent progress in armor subsystems technology. Indeed, many of the suit's features such as its HUD and Bio-Support Dispenser are found on the company's power armor designs, but Ravinak is an altogether different beast driven by a need to make travel through water as painless a process as possible. To that end, much of the suit has been designed simultaneously to withstand the high pressures found in these locations in the deep as well as make swimming through them easier through a combination of active propulsion and passive augmentation. The LPD design team has been proud to say that the resulting suit is one of the most advanced underwater apparel designs available.
Not ostensibly a military design, the Ravinak is unusually rugged and built with features that appeal to both deepwater explorers and military forces alike. While a large portion of the first production run is set to be immediately issued to Lucerne consortium personnel, it is envisioned that more of the suits will be made available to select members of the public and allied organizations with an interest in underwater activities.
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