Approved Armor ICP-I | "Ashgrave"

[Ethanael Halscott]

ICP-I | "Ashgrave"​

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: To create the standard-issue field kit of the Commonwealth Army's line infantry a cheap, mass-produced helmet, respirator, and protective uniform that protects the common soldier against shrapnel, the elements, and battlefield atmospherics without pretending to be the sealed powered warplate of the Marine Commandos. This is the equipment of the Commonwealth's mud, snow, and numbers.
• Image Source: Midjourney
• Canon Link: Plastoid, Armorweave
• Permissions: N/A
• Primary Source: MCW-II "Tide-Breaker"

PRODUCTION INFORMATION

• Manufacturer: Imperial Commonwealth of Dosuun
• Affiliation: Imperial Commonwealth of Dosuun; Commonwealth Army
• Market Status: Closed-Market
• Model: ICP-I "Ashgrave" (Infantry Combat Pattern, Mark I)
• Modularity: Yes, various weather and multiple environmental uniform variants; officer's greatcoat-and-cap dress variant; webbing configurable to role (rifleman, grenadier, support, medic, signals).
• Production: Minor
• Material:
  
  • Plastoid-composite helmet shell
  • Armorweave-reinforced field jacket and load-bearing vest
  • Pressed-fiber and ballistic-cloth uniform (environment-rated)
  • Filtration respirator with replaceable cartridge
  • Polarized goggles / visor
  • Standard field electronics (short-range commlink, basic HUD-less optics)

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Classification: Infantry Field Kit
• Weight: Light
• Resistance as follows:

Energy Weapon Resistance, Low: The plastoid helmet shell and armorweave-reinforced vest will turn a glancing or spent blaster bolt and protect the soldier's head and core from incidental fire and spall, but the ICP-I is not a sealed combat shell and makes no pretense of stopping aimed blaster fire. A direct hit to the protected zones may be survivable; a direct hit anywhere else is not the kit's problem to solve. This is mass-issue equipment — protection is partial, by design and by economy.

Kinetic Weapon Resistance, Average: This is the kit's real strength and its reason for being. The helmet and armorweave vest are built first and foremost against the things that actually kill infantry in the field — shrapnel, fragmentation, debris, shockwave spall, and ricochet. Against artillery splinters, grenade fragments, and the general murder of a contested battlefield, the ICP-I meaningfully improves a soldier's survival odds. Against aimed slugthrower or rifle fire it offers only the protection of its limited plating; a direct, well-placed round defeats it.

Lightsaber Resistance, None: The ICP-I offers no resistance to lightsabers whatsoever. It is field cloth, pressed fiber, and a plastoid pot. A line soldier who finds themselves in front of a lightsaber is in trouble that no infantry kit was ever meant to answer.

Other, Sonic, Low: The helmet and padding provide modest dampening against concussion and sonic discharge, enough to take the edge off a blast wave at distance, no more.

Other, Elemental / Environmental, Average: Here the kit earns its keep. The respirator with replaceable filtration cartridge protects against smoke, particulate, battlefield gas, and contaminated atmosphere; the environment-rated uniform shields against cold, heat, wind, and the elements across the cold-weather and arid variants. The ICP-I keeps a soldier fighting in conditions that would otherwise put them down — but note: it is a filtration respirator, not a sealed life-support system. It cannot operate in vacuum or in a fully toxic, oxygen-absent environment. It cleans bad air; it does not replace absent air.

Other, EMP/Ion, Very Low: The kit's minimal electronics — a short-range commlink and basic optics — are unshielded and trivially disrupted by ion or EMP effects. In practice this matters little, as the soldier loses only their radio and remains entirely combat-effective; the kit's protection is mechanical, not electronic.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Helmet & Respirator:

• Plastoid-composite combat helmet (shrapnel and spall protection)
• Replaceable-cartridge filtration respirator (smoke, gas, particulate, contaminated atmosphere)
• Polarized goggles / visor (glare, flash, and debris protection; low-light tint variant)
• Integrated short-range squad commlink
• Helmet mounts for field lamp and basic optic

Field Uniform & Kit:

• Armorweave-reinforced field jacket and load-bearing vest
• Environment-rated uniform (standard, cold-weather, and arid variants)
• Modular webbing and pouches (ammunition, grenades, rations, medical, entrenching tool)
• Reinforced gloves and field boots
• Identification and unit markings (Commonwealth red shoulder insignia)

Officer's Variant (dress / command):

• Greatcoat and peaked service cap in place of field jacket and helmet
• Rank plaque worn at the breast
• Retains respirator and sidearm provision; sheds the load-bearing infantry kit

STRENGTHS

• Built for the Real Killers: The ICP-I is optimized against shrapnel, fragmentation, and battlefield atmospherics — the hazards that actually account for most infantry casualties — rather than against the aimed fire it could never hope to stop. It keeps the common soldier alive against the field itself.
• Cheap and Everywhere: Mass-produced at the largest scale the Commonwealth sustains, the kit can be issued to every line soldier and replaced without hesitation. Numbers are the Army's doctrine, and this is the equipment of numbers.
• Environmentally Hardened: The filtration respirator and environment-rated uniform let Commonwealth infantry fight in smoke, gas, cold, heat, and contaminated air that would otherwise break a formation.
• Light and Tireless: At roughly six kilograms, the kit imposes no meaningful mobility or endurance penalty. A soldier can march, dig, and fight in it for days.

WEAKNESSES

• Not Sealed, Not a Warplate: The ICP-I is an unsealed field kit, not powered combat armor. It cannot operate in vacuum or oxygen-absent environments, and it will not stop aimed blaster or rifle fire to unprotected areas. A soldier in this kit is a soldier protected against the battlefield's chaos, not against a determined gun.
• No Force Defense: The kit offers no protection of any kind against lightsabers or Force powers. None.
• Filtration, Not Life Support: The respirator cleans contaminated atmosphere but cannot supply oxygen where there is none. It is defeated by vacuum and by fully toxic, airless environments.
• Partial Coverage: Protection is concentrated at the head and core. Limbs and joints are field cloth only — fast and comfortable, but exposed.
• Unshielded Electronics: The kit's commlink and optics are trivially knocked out by ion or EMP, isolating a soldier from squad communications.

DESCRIPTION

The Marine Commando is the Commonwealth's gleaming spearpoint, sealed, fitted, void-rated, and issued to a chosen few. The Army is everything else. It is the mass of the Commonwealth's land power, the soldiers who hold the line and take the ground and pay for it, and there are far too many of them to wrap each one in molytex and powered systems. For them, the Commonwealth built the ICP-I, the Infantry Combat Pattern, the field kit of the common soldier, and the most-produced piece of military equipment the faction fields.

There is no pretense to it. Where the Marine wears a sealed shell, the line soldier wears a helmet, a mask, and a coat. The helmet is a plastoid pot, rounded and brimmed, built to turn shrapnel and spall and the splinters of artillery, the things that actually kill infantry, rather than to stop a rifle bolt it was never going to stop anyway. Over the lower face sits a filtration respirator with a replaceable cartridge, because the Commonwealth's wars are fought in smoke and gas and the burning ruin of contested ground, and a soldier who cannot breathe is a soldier who cannot fight. Goggles guard the eyes against glare and flash and grit. Beneath the helmet, the uniform is reinforced field cloth and an armorweave vest, environment-rated against cold and heat, hung with the webbing and pouches of a soldier's working life: ammunition, grenades, rations, a medical kit, an entrenching tool.

It is, deliberately, a grim and grounded piece of equipment. The Commonwealth's Army does not look like the future. It looks like every army that has ever marched into the cold and the mud and the ash and won by being there in numbers when the other side ran out. The soldiers in their masks and pots, advancing through firelit ruin with their rifles low, are meant to evoke exactly that, the attrition, and the unglamorous, indispensable infantry that no amount of elite gear ever replaces.

The kit's honesty is its design. It will not save a soldier from an aimed shot, and it makes no promise to. It cannot follow the Marines into vacuum; its respirator cleans bad air but cannot conjure air that is not there. Its limbs are cloth, its electronics are a cheap radio that the first ion burst will silence, and against a lightsaber it offers precisely nothing. What it does, it does well and cheaply and for everyone: it keeps the common soldier breathing in poisoned air, shielded from the storm of fragments that is the true texture of the battlefield, warm in the cold and dry in the wet, and light enough to march and dig and fight for days on end.

Officers wear a different face of the same pattern, the greatcoat and the peaked cap, the rank plaque at the breast, the authority of command in place of the load-bearing kit. But the soldier in the snow with the mask and the rifle is the true image of the Commonwealth Army: not the spearpoint, but the spear's whole length. The Marines break the enemy. The Army is the reason there is a Commonwealth standing behind them to break the enemy for.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Under Review.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Ethanael Halscott

Great work. I especially like the image rotation here for the various versions. Looks good. Enjoy! Approved!