Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To add a small, versatile melee weapon to Lucerne Personal Defense’s product line-up
- Image Source: Original here, modified by yours truly
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Silver Jedi Concord, Directorate, Closed-Market
- Model: LPD-50 Silverthorn Stiletto
- Modularity: Injector Payload
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material:moleculary bonded Beskar blade and handle, spun-plast grip and single-use reservoir seal, agrinium reservoir and other injector components, micrel power supply
- Classification: Stiletto
- Size: Average
- Weight: Average
- Hollow Spike Blade: Silverthorn uses a simple, spike blade that has been hollowed out to have a small channel that runs from the tip of the blade into a reservoir in the knife’s handle. This blade has a narrow but strong cross-section, making it ideal for penetrating through many body armors (or weak chinks in armor such as the joints) and deep into flesh.
- Injector: While Silverthorn can be used as a classic stiletto, its main advantage is its ability to inject substances into the target. An injector motor powered by a micrel allows the entire reservoir to be rapidly injected into a target within a matter of milliseconds. When a target is struck, the user taps an almost imperceptible activation stud to initiate the injection sequence. This activates the micrel-powered pump motor, which rapidly pushes out the liquid or gas in the handle’s 10 mL reservoir up the blade channel, dislodging the spun-plast seal at channel’s end near the tip of the blade and into the target in a matter of milliseconds. A wide variety of substances can be stored in the handle, potentially making it a highly versatile weapon. The classic choice of course is a poison in either gas or liquid form, but in a variation of this, many user expecting to fight Bryn’adul fill it with CryoBan, allowing it to be directly introduced into the target’s bloodstream. Other common choices include acids, which not only are effective against organics, but also against nonorganic targets such as droids and security hardware. Many aquatic divers simply fill it with carbon dioxide & helium mixture – when a fish or other underwater creature is stuck with the blade, the introduction of this gas into the target causes it to float to the surface for easy and nontoxic retrieval later on.
- Penetrating: The narrow and strong blade structure of the classic stiletto combined with its dense material make the Silverthorn excellent at penetrating targets.
- Concealable: The narrow blade shape and its relatively small size makes it exceptionally easy to conceal. The simple electric pump mechanism also doesn’t tend to stick out on weapons scanners, given the use of similar technology in personal medical devices and computer electronics, making it easier to pass through these detectors than many other weapons.
- Variable Payload: Silverthorn can hold an almost infinite variety of substances in its reservoir, making it a very versatile weapon.
- No cutting edge: While its spike blade shape is excellent for penetration, it does not have a cutting edge at all. This severely limits its utility for purposes other than combat and makes it uneffective with some some fighting styles.
- Short-Reach: The Silverthorn’s small size gives it concealability, but also means that it has very little reach compared to traditional melee weapons like longswords or lightsabers.
- Single Use Only: The Silverthorn’s injects its entire payload in one use, which can make it devastatingly powerful for one attack. After that, the Silverthorn acts like any stiletto, which is often a far cry from the common vibroblade. (It’s worth noting that the Silverthorn can be refilled later on, but this is a time-consuming process that typically cannot take place in combat).
The Silverthorn is a small, highly concealable weapon that combines two ancient technologies: the stiletto blade and a syringe. The stiletto blade uses a dense construction of molecularly bonded beskar, which combined with the blade’s narrow cross-section makes it ideal for penetrating attacks, even through barriers like armor, deep into an enemy’s flesh. Once a solid penetrating attack has been made, the user can opt to inject the target with a wide variety of substances, introducing a new threat deep in the enemy’s body past many of its initial defenses – poisons and pathogens can freely enter a target’s bloodstream while acids can dissolve flesh and cryoban can almost instantly necrotize nearby organs. These methods of attack can often make a single hit lethal, which combined with its small size, make it an ideal covert weapon for assassinations or a back-up weapon for close-quarters use by combatants who typically prefer larger ranged weapons.
The potential for Silverthorn to be misused by criminal elements is well-understood by Lucerne Personal Defense, and unlike many of its offerings, isn’t offered in its catalogue to the general public. Instead, the Silverthorn is almost entirely restricted to sale to government entities and only a small number of proven individuals. Most of these weapons are earmarked for more clandestine use, and the weapon is commonly found in resistance groups supplied by Lucerne Personal Defense for use against high-priority soft targets such as high-ranking government officials and military officers. Directorate infiltrators along with a number of other elite military units also use it as back-up weapon. It seems likely to enjoy a quiet and steady production time for some time to come.
