It’s hard to say if anything good comes out of a War World.

Admittedly a lot of medical and sensor technology comes about as a by-product of the roiling carnage but it’s often years or decades before it comes into use on the streets and even inside some of the companies like SLA or Darknight where it is heavily controlled. Paid for in the blood of billions yearly that are ground up into feeding the massive war machines that have been going for hundreds of years. Most anyone going there doesn’t really know why they’re going or even why they’re fighting each other, the reality is, if they don’t do it on a War World then it will slop out into each other’s backyards.

So, essentially a War World functions like some grotesque gentleman’s agreement, for SLA especially it is for their benefit and to some degree, Darknight’s because they get to keep their manufacturing centres intact, good TV and it gives the general public something to watch and a ‘bad guy’. Except Thresher, who turns up like a drunken uncle at a family reunion, punch out your skinny cousin, steal someone’s car and leave a nuclear device behind in the toilet to block up the plumbing. Both SLA and Darknight hate Thresher for this ‘not playing by the rules’ approach to warfare, but the fact is, there’s probably a universe of several trillion SLA people, a few hundred billion Darknight and maybe a billion or so of Thresher. While the big black fish carves through the shoals of humanity on the field of battle, there are just not enough of them to pose more than an ‘acceptable occupational hazard’, kind of like writing off equipment and employees in an insurance claim.

Being in a ‘state of war’, lets you get away with all sorts of things as a governing body, for starters, all your supporters and public get to see a bad guy on TV killing their kin and provided you make a good enough show of it they will have someone else to hate instead of you. Especially if your SLA, if Darknight or any of the other companies disappeared off the radar, stopped attacking and turning lots of little militia grunts into chopped meat, the company would implode on itself. The proles would have no one else to hate BUT the company and the lack of facilities, housing, medical services and employment it provides. People like Karma would be downsized by about 80% and eventually even the weapons manufacturers would have to stop producing about 90% of their annual output in ammunition and firearms.

That’s why Darknight and everyone else who opposes SLA will never disappear, they’re too useful as a public enemy #1 in the eyes of everyone in SLA.

War is a good thing, if you’re SLA, for the rest of us its just a fact of life and sometimes a little bit of it flutters down like a bloodstained snowflake to where we are and hits the street. Melting and spreading a puddle of blood and tears where it lands. This isn’t equipment that is painted in ‘this seasons’ designers’ colours bullshit or made to a chrome plated ornament for someone in a suit. Oh no.

These are weapons of war, terror and purpose.

Their purpose is to kill and destroy.

They don’t look pretty, they don’t have nice features, creature comforts, polished ornamentation, this years colour co-ordination or made to look ‘hardcore’ for a TV show.

A guide to anything ‘mil-spec’ which is often bandied around in the SLA and Darknight media as some kind of catch cry or selling point, what mil spec usually means is : Simple, practical and effective.

• Simple, because it has to be operated by someone who isn’t very smart under duress and a massive amount of combat drugs in their system.
• Practical, because it costs a lot of money and resources to field an army, if it isn’t practical 99% of the time then they wont pay for it to be included in their soldier’s kit.
• Effective, does not necessarily mean ‘best’ tool for the job, it just means that for what it costs it does on the side of the can it comes in.

Johnny Militia gets 6 weeks basic training, Blocker, Implants, 10mm rifle or 11.35mm SMG, ammo, grenades, comlink, some basic field kit and all the UV and Kickstart he can ram into himself. Officers get another two weeks leadership and tactics training, gunnery operators get another four weeks and pilots get 8months training. Darknight is much the same and considering for the most part the tactics involve throwing waves of soldiers at each other until the other guy runs out of ammo or people. Having a flashy paintjob, several fire settings on your gun and something that requires more than a couple of buttons to operate makes very little difference in warfare on this scale.
Sure, they could start putting people in decent training, armour and with better weapons but due to cost effectiveness, it will not happen while both Darknight and SLA enjoy their status quo of having the cheaper option of lots of bodies for these bone-yards. Thresher has very little human resource so it has to train its people for two years part time plus 6-12months intensive training to just merely survive, that and the fact their ‘mil-spec’ technology is considerably more complicated.

In the meantime, when this stuff hits the street its dangerous, mostly because its damn easy to use and terribly lethal in the hands of a skilled user.

Man portable heavy weapons

It’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be able to find a towed or self-propelled artillery piece on the black markets for less than a few million uni. In any case, they aren’t exactly something you can drag around on a whim. Now remember all the things you’ve undoubtedly learned in SLA about causing too much property damage, using grenades, flammable substances and all that, now kick them out the window.

*punt*

Now adopt a different mindset.

SLA has APC’s and Tanks, SLA has Kilcopters and millions of armed and armoured SHIVER, Militia, Nitro Legion, Necanthropes, Ebb’s and Slops they can throw at you.

And they will.

And some days, you just got to kill every mother f*cker in town before they kill you.

But that’s ok.

You can buy grenade launchers, mortars, rocket launchers, incendiary grenades, high explosive, missile launchers, flamethrowers, anti-material rifles, recoilless guns and all manner of stuff that will wreck a whole neighbourhood. Punch a hole the size of a dinner plate in a tank, knock an attack chopper out of the sky and level a building if you have to.

Grenade Launchers

At its simplest, grenade thrown out the end of tube, either with a chemical charge or gauss propulsion further than you could normally hurl it. At its worst, belt fed monsters mounted out the side of a vehicle or in a pillbox that can hammer out these horrible bundles of death at a very high rate of fire.

Grenade launchers use Autosupport skill.

They cannot fit- Barrel mounted Recoil baffling, Suppressors or silencers.
(But shit hey, it’s a grenade launcher, they aren’t exactly sneaky)

Firers gain no benefits from Laser painters or any other aiming system.

DN Rifle Launched Grenade DNLR-10

Calibre – 10mm
ROF - 1
Recoil - As rifle
Magazine - 1 reload time 2 phases
Weight - 0.5kg
Range - 30 m
Cost - 1500u

Mounted on the end of a 10mm rifle barrel, this sleeve includes a second set of iron sights that are used when launching the 60mm grenade which has a ‘bullet catcher’ built into its fin-stabilised tail. A round travels up the barrel and its momentum carries the grenade off the end of the barrel. The grenade detonates as soon as it hits something hard, often best used as an impromptu mortar this simple launcher has been around for hundreds of years.
The biggest drawback is that the rifle cannot fit any- Silencers, Barrel mounted recoil baffling or Flash suppression and can only be launched with Regular ammunition.

60mm High Ex
Blast Rating 15 Pen 5
900u

60mm Frag
Blast Rating 10 Pen 10
1100u

DN 40-10M Gauss Grenade launcher

Calibre – 40mm
ROF - 1
Recoil - 6
Magazine - 4 Underbarrel
Weight - 2.5kg
Range - 40 m
Cost - 5500u

More or less a knock-off of a SLA version, this critter is designed to be mounted underneath a SMG or Rifle. It comes with a set of iron sights for more accurate fire arcs and can chamber the same grenades as the SLA original that fits underneath the warmonger SMG’s.

40mm High Ex
Blast Rating 15 Pen 0
900u
40mm Frag
Blast Rating 9 Pen 7
1100u

PZHG 2409/GL Grenade Launcher

Calibre- 55mm
ROF- 1 / 2
Recoil - 8
Magazine - 8 round internal gauss fed
Weight - 8kg
Range - 40 metres
Black-market: 26000u

Sold as either an under barrel accessory or collapsible stock as an infantry support weapon. It delivers a serious amount of firepower to a squad and can be loaded with a variety of munitions. This Thresher manufactured monster of a launcher is feared for good reason, large ammunition capacity, high rate of fire and variety of truly nasty grenades for every type of party. They are a tad expensive though and not exactly common or easily available.

PZAG 9707/GL Grenade Launcher

Calibre- 55mm
ROF- 1 / 5
Recoil – 1 /6
Magazine – 40 round belts
Weight - 36kg
Range - 60 metres
Black-market: 95000u

This terrible weapon is more or less rare as hen’s teeth on the streets but when one is sold it doesn't take too long for people to know about it. While not exactly portable or designed to be fired by a single soldier due to its heavy weight, they make a formidable weapons platform in a vehicle, bunker or anywhere it can be set up for an ambush.
Thresher has been known to retro-fit them into their powersuits for suppression use in a shoulder mount.

HEAT –Anti Vehicle
Blast Rating 12 PEN 20
1200u (Requires direct hit)

High Ex
Blast Rating15 PEN 0
900u Radius 3m

Fragmentation
Blast Rating 10 PEN 5
900u Radius 4m

WPS Smoke
Blast Rating 5 PEN 2
800u Radius 5m
Makes IR and visible smoke, burns for 5 phases, sets things on fire.