Space Springhare Firearms (Primitive) (Patreon)

Space Springhare technology fundamentally rely on Bonewood Clay, both in it's material of construction, as well as it's power source. This naturally extends to their weapons as well. While just like any species the Space Springhares can have fancy futuristic firearms that incorporate the latest of their Bonewood China technology or hybrids with other alien tech they come to understand there is always a starting point they must work from, a basic template for the general firearm designs that they can build upon even when reduced to low-tech basic survival environments. What you see here are those basics.

What you see here are the various basic templates in each of the Space Springhares firearm trees. With Space Springhare technology being limited not so much energy requirements but instead with heat dissipation their weapons generally focus more on lower rates of fire for their category, often even single fire or even bolt action, with accuracy and effect of each round being more focused upon. 

For the absolute basic, most primitive type of firearm, the Space Springhares can build and rely upon a bolt action rifle, similar superficially to gunpowder rifles. As with all Space Springhare standard munitions however, the ammunition is a block of Bonewood Clay, which the action of the bolt will scoop a ball of clay from to be fired in both the firearms meaning of word as well as the pottery meaning to produce a projectile of Bonewood China. Reliable, simple to make and almost impossible to overheat such rifles are as long lasting as their magazine count, able to fire more projectiles per reload then bullet firearms. This rifle is by far the most common firearm due to it's ease of manufacture, it's relative safety when used on ships and habitats, and it's general-use all-rounder nature.

When Space Springhares need a more traditional battle rifle, the Bullpup rifle is their go-to weapon. Accurate, reliable and able to fire as fast as one can pull the trigger, the Bullpup puts a good amount of practical firepower into a compact design. With its large magazine it can typically fire shots in the triple figure before needing reloading and the top loop of Bonewood China act as both a useful mounting position as well as a handy carrying handle. Considered an excellent weapon by experienced Springhare Stalkers and other aliens alike it's single drawback is the potential of overheating if fired too quickly for too long, cooking the Bonewood Clay block into a useless Bonewood China block within the magazine, a process known as "bricking" the rifle and requiring a reload and possible removal of trapped chippings.

For highly portable firepower, a revolver style firearm can be used. The design favoured by Space Springhares is a break-open design, with the chamber being a hollow roughly rectangle slot to insert entire blocks of Bonewood Clay. Able to fire shots in the double figures between reloads these portable firearms offer an excellent source of reliable and accurate firepower for their size as well as having a surprisingly hard hitting punch per shot. Despite this, they are usually considered a weapon only needed when things have gone rather wrong.

due to the workings of Bonewood technology, Space Springhares do not have too many weapons that involve any kind of chemical explosive. However, that isn't to say they are without heavy munitions. instead of creating a device specifically designed to launch explosive projectiles, their solution is a firearm that can be used as a platform to launch warheads able to serve as a technological solution to a problem. The most basic of these are larger shoulder mounted weapons as seen here, able to launch large 'warheads' which can contain more basic and crude designs of devices. More advanced forms are typically in a smaller carbine package, and are suppressed to prevent the warhead being damaged due to rapid acceleration.With the basic larger forms seen here the warhead is accelerated more slowly then other firearms, to the extent where it is possible in theory to see the warhead fly to it's target. such packages often contain charged Bonewood China platings, capable of providing equivalents to fragmentation explosives, but may also contain other more exotic devices such as rarer teleporter rounds or the justly feared FTL cluster-teleporter rounds that can literally turn one's enemy into a hundred pieces strewn neatly across a battlefield regardless of defences.

For more prolonged engagements, open warfare, or static defence positions, space Springhares can call upon firearms that actually do fire in an automatic mode, known as Repetition. While still not sporting rates of fire that some other species machine guns operate at, the Space Springhare Repetition guns are highly accurate even on burst or potentially fully automatic fire and pack a Bonewood China round powerful and large enough to stagger or disable many types of smaller protective combat mechs with a single hit. While the larger frame of the weapon, larger magazine (supporting hundreds of shots per reload) and somewhat lower fire rate can lower the problems of Bricking the gun, it is still considered advisable to not fire such a weapon for bursts longer then fifteen seconds when using the weapon like a battle rifle. That being said, it is possible to pipe the Bonewood Clay into the weapon from tanks directly as a slurry, removing heat akin to a coolant in the process, allowing for a mostly static emplacement that allows continuous fire as long as required. Larger versions of this type of weapon are known as 'Brick Launchers' due to the size of their hyper-speed projectile.

While these basic firearms put the Space Springhares on a similar firearm footing with any civilisation on the industrial or early-mid space tech species, it is worth noting that these weapons are intended as the bare bones basic form of Space Springhare weapons stripped even of protective coverings or accessories, and are built using nothing more then a specialized type of wood, and clay. In theory a neolithic Space Springhare settlement has all it needs to create any of these weapons with potentially the same accuracy and firepower.

Designs influenced by the Lee-Enfield Rifle, the EM-2 Rifle, the Webley Revolver, the PIAT, the DeLisle Carbine (referenced but not shown here), and the Bren Light Machine Gun.

Artwork by Timor.