Rifle Infantry
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(Firelock Fantasy) Skirmisher
🕑 Added 2024-09-02 07:02:29 +0000 UTCAnother dogface. This fellow is a gunman: either a levied warrior bringing his hunting arquebus, or a mercenary hireling operating as a semi-professional scout and skirmisher in advance of his chieftain's army. Moving, shooting, and loading on his own time and initiative, his role is to pin down and fragment the enemy's ranks before the chieftain's host begins their baying, teeth-gnashing charge.
The arquebus is fired with what is known in real life as a "Baltic" lock. This is a predecessor to the flintlock that operates on similar principles: an arm or "cock", holding a piece of flint or pyrite, that falls against a hardened surface (a "frizzen" or "battery") to produce igniting sparks. A button trigger mounted on the right side is responsible for firing the weapon by lowering a sear (a protrusive piece of metal that retains the cock against spring tension).
Button triggers are a lupar gunsmithing quirk because trigger guards, especially small ones, are annoying to work with when one has large claws and padded fingers. Since a button trigger is obviously less safe, a rotating safety catch that prevents it from being depressed is present.
For an excellent primer on the evolution of the flintlock in visual format, as well as a demonstration of how these forms actually work under the plate, go see this excellent video on an excellent pirate history channel run by a friend of mine.
Technically the lock is a bit fucked up: the sear is holding it shut, not open. Rather than admit my mistake, I choose to call this a secondary safety mechanism. You may imagine that the heel of the cock can rotate between "up" and "down" positions and is shown in the "down" position. To arm the weapon you'd have to depress the button trigger and then rotate the heel into the "up" position before cocking it.
Most arquebuses in real life were matchlocks; by the time of the mass adoption of various flintlock mechanisms the full-length musket had already displaced its shorter predecessor. Lupar hang on to the arquebus because it's handier in dense forest fighting (where ranges will be short to begin with) and because it's the ideal length for a one-handed club (see below). The relative ungainliness of a gun compared to a dedicated melee weapon for this role is a non-issue owing to their racial strength.
Lastly, matchlocks rely on burning slow match, which makes a distinct stench and light: very bad things for stealthy skirmishing against other wolf-men with sharp noses and eyes.
The other distinctly luparic features of the weapon are its reinforced buttstock, "sleeve" forestock, and the usual minor decorations including a toothy muzzle. The buttstock is extended with metal reinforcement and a blunt hammerlike tip; it is, in this respect, a war-club that can be swung with great force. To provide a place to grip the hot barrel safely, the forestock has been wrapped around the entire barrel.
All of this means the gunner needn't also carry a sword, or rely solely on his natural weapons: he can simply club his arquebus and swing wildly. A little belt-carried buckler shield helps him fight as a light clubman if the need so arises.
This gunner, as a poor levy or hireling, does not wear armor. Like most warriors of his race he goes bare-chested, with only a pair of war pants and a hat for a little sun-shade. I've yet to fully establish their dress code in this era, but I feel like the lupar rigidly divide normal dress and clothing for war. While always self-conscious and ashamed of their beastly elements, they also want to celebrate and indulge in them in times of war; and there's a practical approach to making warrior's clothes simple and functional, if not necessarily drab.
Given their full pelts they could honestly get by fine in most weather without any clothes altogether; but they have enough propriety and shame to at least wear a set of pants. Everything else from their day-to-day dress falls by the wayside in favor of lightening their marching loads. Only a self-disrespecting and shameless lupar would go about "in pelt alone", especially for something as spiritually important as a war; the gutter cynics of the oppida cities being one such example.
