Approved Tech LPD-44 Razorthorn Needle Carbine

[Gir Quee]

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: To Provide a needler-like weapon in Lucerne Personal Defense’s catalogue
• Image Source: DP-23 Rifle by Daniel Kulikowski
• Canon Link: N/A
• Permissions: N/A
• Primary Source: LPD-37 QuietNeedle

PRODUCTION INFORMATION

• Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
• Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi, Closed-Market
• Model: LPD-44 Razorthorn Needle Carbine
• Modularity: Scopes, after-market sites, and other similar devices can be added to top and bottom picatinny rails
• Production: Mass-Produced.
• Material: ceraglass barrel and internals, permex furniture and internal silencer baffles, magnatomic grip panels, miscellaneous airgun components

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Classification: dart launcher / Air Gun
• Size: Average
• Weight: Average
• Ammunition Type: darts / compressed air
• Ammunition Capacity: Small - 30 darts / gas for 120 shots
• Effective Range: Average
• Rate of Fire: Average
• Stopping Power: High
• Recoil: Average

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Pneumatic Operation: The Razorthorn uses highly compressed air through preloaded gas cartridges to provide propulsion for its darts. A 'rack-it' style pump built into the fore-end allows users to refill its compressed gas reservoir if there are no gas containers available for reload, making it an excellent, long-term survival weapon. As a compressed airgun, Razorthorn also works remarkably well underwater. Razorthorn does not use an electricity to operate, meaning that it is unaffected by EMP, ion, and other similar weapons.
• Stealthy: The Razorthorn uses very little metal in its construction aside from a few springs and valves. This typically makes it very hard to find with metal detectors or weapon scanners.
• Subsonic: The Razorthorn fires darts at subsonic velocities, making it a very quiet (typically almost silent) weapon.
• Modular Payload: The Razorthorn can fire a wide variety of darts, many of which have more esoteric payloads. Most commonly, Razorthorns typically use hypodermic darts filled with paralytics or sedative to subdue targets with a minimum of damage, especially when trying to take targets alive. Hypodermic darts can be loaded with a wide variety of drugs, poisons, or payloads. Other payload darts include explosive rounds, cryoBan rounds, incendiary rounds, and homing rounds.
• Picatinny Rails: The Razorthorn has a pair of picatinny rails, on the top and bottom of the weapon, which allow various scopes, bipods, targeting lasers, and other weapons attachments to be easily fitted to the weapon.
• Magnatomic Grip Panels: The Razorthorn has magnatomic grip panels, making it more difficult for the user to drop it or otherwise be disarmed.

STRENGTHS

• Modular Payload: Razorthorn has a wide variety of specialty ammunition available for it, allowing it to be easily tailored for certain situations or to fight certain foes.
• Stealth Weapon: Razorthorn is an exceptionally stealthy weapon. Its nometallic construction (with the exception of a few springs) makes it difficult for weapons scanners to pick up. It’s operating system is almost silent when firing, and its munitions travel at subsonic velocities, meaning their travel through the air is also almost silent.

WEAKNESSES

• Small Ammunition Capacity: Razorthorn has a relatively small ammunition capacity for a weapon of its size, especially compared to modern blasters.
• Slow Reload: Razorthorn takes somewhat longer to load than the average weapon, largely because it has two things may need to be reloaded: air and physical ammunition. The former takes an exceptionally long time to reload if not using a preloaded compressed gas canister.

DESCRIPTION
After the introduction of the QuietNeedle, the Directorate requested a larger, rifle-sized variant that could equip its commandoes and guerillas. It was found that the QuietNeedle did not always have the range or power necessary for some operations. To that end, Lucerne Personal Defense scaled up the basic pneumatic operation of the QuietNeedle and placed it into an existing rifle chassis of the DP-23 Blaster Rifle already used by Coldstream-class CryoBan Rifle with a handful of modifications mostly centered on the Directorate’s requirement to keep its ferromagnetic content low. However, the mere scaling up of the QuietNeedle’s operating mechanism produced more sound than was acceptable to the Directorate, nor did it provide quite the range and power wanted by its potential operators. Lucerne Personal Defense responded by increasing the gas pressure to obtain more power and range, while offsetting the resulting spike in sound by turning the barrel itself into an integrated silencer using multiple baffles to better control sound output. While these design changes did allow the Razorthorn to meet the design requirements, it also reduced the weapon’s rate of fire due to more time being needed for the gas to diffuse. This was considered to be acceptable. In order to keep logistics simple, the Razorthorn uses the same darts used by the QuietNeedle, though several more variants have been added in order to take advantage of the increased power and range of the Razorthorn. While it can accept a variety of nonstandard manufacture darts due to its relative simplicity, darts supplied by Lucerne Personal Defense all initially appear to be Kamino saberdarts at a casual examination:

Solid Flechette: A Mirrsteel flechette where the only damage it can inflict is kinetic. Probably the least powerful of ammunition, this is mainly used for practice purposes, but it also has the advantage in that the ammunition can be recovered and used almost indefinitely. If the dart is damaged, it usually doesn't much effort or tooling to fix it. Typically comparable to a small caliber slugthrower pistol in performance.

Electro-Dart: An electro-dart, used to temporary stun and paralyze targets, especially useful for self defense purposes. Other uses include nonlethal subduing in crowded areas or abducting personnel in covert operations.

Lecepanine: This dart is almost an exact copy of the Saberdart, but is loaded with Lecepanine, a strong chemical tranquilizer. Another favorite for users looking to capture their targets alive and unharmed.

FEX-EX: This dart is another exact copy of the Saberdart, but is loaded with the neurotoxin Fex-Ex, also known as Blue Harvest. Typically used for quiet assassinations or on the battlefield as a back-up weapon.

Banthazolate: This dart is almost an exact copy of the Saberdart, but is loaded with Banthazolate, a powerful hallucinogen. Commonly used by spies to create distractions or enable other means of disposing of targets (such as pushing the now confused target out of a window, etc).

CryoBan: This saberdart copy is filled with cryoban and comes with an armor-piercing turadium needle. It is designed to pierce the thick hide of Baedurin and other armored targets before directly injecting the cryoban into the target. If the needle does not pierce, the cryoban cannister typically breaks apart on impact, throwing the cryoban directly onto the target's surface.

Incendiary: This saberdart copy is filled with plasticene thermite gel along with a detonite impact trigger. Upon contact with the target, the gel covers/sprays the target while the detonite ignites it.

Explosive: This dart is filled with detonite, providing the user with an effective means to attack individuals wearing battle armor, battle droids, and other hard targets that typically can't be pierced by the Razorthorn's needles.

Transponder: A transponder node dart, used to track targets such as droids and vehicles for several hours. This dart is significantly smaller than the other darts, making its attachment to the target to be less likely noticed.

Hollow: A hollow copy of the Saberdart, with the payload often created or collected by the end-user. Common payloads include industrial acids (to sabotage items like security cameras) or custom poisons, such as xenotoxins.

Like the QuietNeedle, the Razorthorn isn’t an openly advertised product within Lucerne Personal Defense’s catalogue. Its existence is only known officially within the Directorate ranks itself as an unmarked weapon from an unknown manufacturer. Despite that, knowledge of the weapon (but not its source) and its capabilities are fairly well known within underground cultures, especially among resistance and guerilla groups because they often receive it as material aid through Directorate Trade Agent teams. While the Razorthorn seems likely to become much more widely spread than the QuietNeedle, its production seems likely to remain a drop in the bucket for the company compared to the company’s more conventional arms.