Freeborn Plasma Bombard

Description

The Freeborn are a race apart, bound neither by the gravity of planets nor the rule of world-spanning machine intelligences. Each Freeborn House – or Vardos as they call themselves – is a proud and independent entity – owing no fixed allegiance but free to deal and trade with all equally. Their fleets ply the gateways of Antarean space, bringing peoples, goods, and knowledge from one end of the nexus to the other. The forces of the Freeborn are drawn from the people as required, and only a tiny fraction forms any kind of standing army. Aside from the personal troops of the Houses’ ruler, its Vard, there are some who specialise in maintaining and operating the more sophisticated weaponry to be found in every House’s arsenal. Such a weapon is the fearsome plasma bombard: the largest and most powerful mobile plasma weapon available to any troops in Antarean space. The plasma bombard is an accurate and extremely powerful weapon designed for taking out large targets such as combat drones and vehicles. Its multiple plasma coils are aligned to produce a single pulse of energy over a long range. Its highly concentrated energy bolt is so powerful that the weapon’s coils are set to shut down if it becomes dangerously overheated, a phenomenon known as ‘plasma fade’. Though second to none as a long range single-shot killer of heavily armoured targets, it is vulnerable to close assault, and most effectively employed where it can exploit its range and fire-power against distant targets.