Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a long range, heavy hitting slugthrower in Lucerne Personal Defense’s Catalogue
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Silver Jedi Concord, Directorate, Closed-Market
- Model: LPD-47 Firespear Rifle
- Modularity: Rail attachments (Sights, scopes, foregrips, underbarrel weapons, etc); barrel attachments (flash hiders, silencers, etc); ammunition
- Production: Mass-Produced.
- Material: Phrik barrel, picatinny rails, and receiver, condensed-matter composite recoil pad, Ultrachrome bayonets, ceramisteel internal components, permex furniture, magnatomic grip panels
- Classification: Slugthower
- Size: Large
- Weight: Heavy
- Ammunition Type: slugs (rifle) / powerpack (electrobayonet)
- Ammunition Capacity: Small - 20 rounds
- Effective Range: Long Range
- Rate of Fire: Average
- Stopping Power: Extreme
- Recoil: High
- Slugthrower: The Firespear is a fairly traditional gas piston operated slugthrower that uses a rotating seven-lugged bolt. As with several other Lucerne Personal Defense slugthrowers, the gas block port is adjustable, allowing the weapon to be optimized for different ammunitions and/or barrel attachments. As the weapon relies on chemical reactions and physical mechanics to work, it is not affected by ion or EMP weapons or tech-dampening fields.
- Modular Ammunition: The Firespear uses its own proprietary cartridge, 10.5x70mm Firespear Magnum, which has a relatively large bullet, reasonably quick velocity, and fairly flat trajectory. The relatively large size of the Firespear’s bullet allows it to support specialty bullets with unusually large payloads, much like its conceptual predecessor, the Czerka Model 57 Homesteader. Like that weapon, the Firespear primarily uses solid and explosive detonator rounds, but there are some other specialty payloads available to this weapon dependent on the environment, situation, and opponent.
- Picatinny Rails: The Firespear has a pair of full length picatinny rails that allow the Firespear’s user the ability to easily attach a wide variety of aftermarket sights, scopes, lights, foregrips, bipods, underbarrel weapons, and other devices to the weapon.
- Threaded Barrel: The Firespear’s barrel is threaded, allowing users to easily attach a wide variety of barrel attachments to the weapon such as flash hiders, compensators, and silencers.
- Adjustable Stock: The Firespear’s permex stock is designed to be fairly adjustable in order to ergonomically fit the user. It does this by using an adjustable comb in order to provide a better cheek weld to the user and by incorporating removable spacers between the butt of the weapon and its recoil pad in order to get the optimal length of pull.
- Retractable Electro-Bayonet: The upper and lower rails conceal a retractable electro-bayonets. When a button is pressed near the trigger guard, a pair of spring-loaded ultrachrome spikes jump out to extend just beyond the barrel. A powerpack in the rifle’s grip provides an electrical current to these two spikes. When the spikes are inserted into a target, a fully complete electrical circuit is thus formed, causing the target to have large amounts of electricity dumped into it. On organics, this typically results initially in a taser-like effect that with prolonged exposure results in potentially lethal electrical burns or cardiac dysrhythmias. On more artificial targets like droids, it can cause power surges which can fry circuits or other electrical devices on the target.
- Excellent Power: The Firespear fires rather heavy rounds at reasonably high velocities, giving it an excellent punch against organic infantry and light vehicles.
- Long Range: The Firespear’s relatively long barrel provides good accuracy which combined with a high velocity round results in an effective long range, making it an ideal marksman’s weapon for picking off opponents at a greater distance than what is typically possible than the average infantryman’s weapon.
- Modular: Like many other slugthrowers, the Firespear is an exceptionally modular weapon, capable of utilizing a wide variety of aftermarket accessories and able to support different specialty ammunitions.
- Bulky: The Firespear is a rather large rifle, making it more tiring to carry and more difficult to maneuver around in close quarters compared to the typical infantry rifle.
- Small Magazine: The Firespear has a relatively small magazine, especially compared to blaster rifles which can hold hundreds of shots before needing to reload.
- High Recoil: The Firespear’s relatively large round and high velocity means that it transfers a fair amount of the resulting recoil back into the user’s shoulder.
After the Silver Jedi encountered Bryn’adul forces on Yurb, Lucerne Personal Defense decided to design a new slugthrower weapon that could compete with the marauder’s weapons on more equal terms. To that end, the team turned to the dated but highly serviceable Model 57 Homesteader for inspiration, primarily because it was thought that its detonator rounds might provide an adequate means of defeating the unusually tough aliens. With this conceptual predecessor in mind, Lucerne Personal Defense repurposed their preferred gas piston slugthrower operating system and built it around a new large, magnum rifle round designed intentionally to support unusual and powerful payloads. The resulting weapon is noticeably larger and heavier than most slugthrower rifles in the galaxy, but it also has an extended range and packs a significant punch to the point where it can be effectively employed as an anti-material rifle against droids, light combat vehicles, and fortified positions. In the right conditions, the Firespear can accurately hit person-sized targets that are thousands of meters away or a hopelessly cripple a landspeeder with a few well-placed shots. But to the key to its effectiveness in regardless of the situation is selecting the right ammunition. Lucerne Personal Defense manufactures the following rounds for the rifle, but secondary producers are starting to introduce their own specialty rounds for the weapon as well.
Solid: This is the most basic, common slugthrower cartridge with a bullet consisting of a durasteel core covered in a plasteel jacket. This bullet uses a spritzer shape with a boat-tail heel for increased aerodynamic performance which has resulted in its reputation as a fast, accurate, and flat-shooting round that is ideal for precision shots. Ideally it is best employed against traditionally soft targets such as enemy infantry or large game animals, in which it can create large and debilitating wound channels with large amounts of bleeding.
Kinetic Penetrator: This round uses a relatively large depleted baradium core covered in a plasteel jacket that uses a flatnose bullet shape. In order to resist deformation upon impact, the dense baradium core undergoes ion macrofusing before being sheathed in its jacket. This projectile’s composition and shape greatly enhance 10.x70mm’s ability to pierce through battle armor, thick animal hides, and other barriers, but these design choices also mean that it is less accurate at long ranges and typically creates narrower wound channels.
Detonator Round: Modeled on the detonator rounds of the Model 57 Homesteader, this round consists of a detonite core covered in a plasteel jacket. High velocity impact with a solid or hard surface ignites the detonite, creating a small explosion with 0.5 meter blast radius that tends to perform well against armored targets and artificial constructs such as droids and light vehicles.
Incendiary Round: This round contains a small detonite tip which acts as an impact primer for plasticene thermite gel contained within a plasteel jacket. Upon impact, the detonite ignites the gel, heating up the immediate impact area to almost 5000 degrees Celsius, which is more than capable enough of starting fires and burning through many armor materials. Combined with the round’s high velocity, it tends to create deep, tunneling internal burns on organic targets. It appears to be unusually effective against the Aeravalin of the Bryn’adul.
CryoBan Round: This round consists of a thin, plasteel container filled with condensed CryoBan. Impact causes this thin outer shell to rupture, releasing a relatively small, but highly concentrated burst of CryoBan. Combined with the round’s high velocity, the shell tends to rupture inside organic targets, causing devastating internal injuries that are not easily staunched or healed. Like many of other CryoBan weapons recently introduced by Lucerne Personal Defense, this round is intended to be used against the Baedurin of the Bryn’adul hordes which are currently ravaging the Galactic Southeast.
Most of the initial production run of Firespears (along with Incendiary and CryoBan rounds) has been slated to go to groups engaged in fighting against the expansionist Bryn’adul. Large numbers of the rifles are also being issued out to the forces of the Silver Jedi Concord and the Directorate, both of which use it as a complementary weapon to the Firespray Shotgun: While the shotgun is devastatingly effective at close ranges, the Firespear gives these allied troops the ability to engage Bryn’adul from long distances. This extended reach along with its excellent stopping power seem likely to make its production steady for a long time, even if the Bryn’adul threat recedes from the galaxy.
