Setting Info - Personal Combat Gear
- Location
- London, England
This is an important question, and one that I figured deserves a more detailed post. I'll also thread-mark this as a reference that everyone can use. As an explanation, I'm going to give you a list and some details on the basic equipment possessed by an 'average' warrior of one of the Great Clans.
Personal Military Equipment
In the Empire of the Emerald Stars, warfare is understood to consist primarily of ranged combat, with melee playing an important but undeniably supporting role. There are of course exceptions - the Tsuruchi continue to favour ranged combat nigh-exclusively, while the Matsu have developed entire tactical doctrines based around a rapid charge into close quarters with one's foes - but the basic paradigm holds across the length and breadth of space with surprisingly little variation.
All samurai wield weapons and technology based around what the Phoenix know as 'radiant energy'. This refers to a carefully developed process wherein the elemental spirits slumbering in every piece of metal and every thread of cloth are ritually awakened, much in the manner of the nemurani of old. In addition to the spiritual significance of this act, the process of awakening a material's spirit also imbues it with vastly greatly physical capabilities, which can in turn be manipulated and customized by skilled craftsmen. Awakened steel is harder, sharper and lighter than the base metal, for example, and can acquire mystical resonance and additional capabilities with much greater ease than before.
(Awakening an already-extant artifact is a dangerous but extremely effective technique. The Ancestral Swords of the Great Clans have all undergone this process, and are possessed of legendary capabilities in their own right. Ofushikai, the Phoenix Clan sword, is not only capable of stilling an entire battlefield to peace, it also makes the wielder nigh-invulnerable so long as he or she makes no aggressive moves.)
Awakened items are the sole purview of the samurai caste, and peasants caught using them are generally executed on sight with only a very few exceptions.
The Daisho
Every samurai still carries the paired swords of their station, although many consider them more ceremonial items than practical weapons of war. Infused with radiant energy, these blades never lose their edge, and are sharp and hard enough to slice through steel plate with relative ease (assuming the wielder would even be so crude as to use their heirloom items for such a base cause).
Akodo Arms 'Indomitable' X32 Energy Rifle
The favored weapon of the frontline bushi, energy rifles such as this exploit advances in ritual spell casting to produce a fearsome offensive weapon. Ritual prayers have been inscribed into the awakened steel and ceramic frame of the weapon, and when the trigger is pulled the movement of the internal mechanisms brings the prayer-fragments together in a specialized invocation to the kami. This causes the spirits to generate a sharpened sliver of metal within the barrel, after which powerful magnets launch the projectile toward's ones enemies with great speed and accuracy.
The primary advantage of this kind of weapon is the effectively-infinite ammunition - so long as the internal mechanisms are in good condition, the weapon will fire without any need for pause or reload. For an empire that wages war across star systems, such a logistical advantage is of nigh-critical importance.
There are however two major drawbacks - if the internal mechanisms become damaged or dirty, the prayers will not be completed and the weapon will not fire, and it is much more difficult to design a weapon capable of firing more than once per trigger pull. Since this encourages a samurai to take good care of their equipment and perfect their skill with the weapon (rather than just spraying fire wildly), traditional thought in Rokugan holds such flaws as virtues and generally refuses to address them.
There are of course multiple patterns and designs, each intended to fulfil a different role or offer a unique advantage. The Crab often rely on a larger, more rugged version capable of generating shards of jade with which to smite their enemies, for example, while the Tsuruchi possess sniper-rifles capable of striking foes from many miles away.
'Yoroi' pattern armour
Forged primarily from incredibly thin pieces of ceramic plate and awakened metal, this armour is light, flexible and highly resilient to physical trauma. Most suits weigh about as much as a silk kimono and are capable of turning aside a shot from all but the heaviest of ranged weapons, which goes some way towards explaining why melee combat is still possible in Rokugani warfare.
(Of course, getting shot with a rifle will still leave you heavily bruised and potentially suffering from a broken bone or two if you're unlucky, so don't feel too confident).
More advanced armour tends towards utility rather than superior protection, and there is some stigma surrounding anything which might increase survival at the cost of battlefield effectiveness. The Unicorn, for example, clad their elite infantry in speed-boosting armour that allows them to keep up with vehicular transports for short distances and allows them to run up walls, while the Phoenix Clan's Inferno Legion favors armour enchanted to allow survival in the heart of a raging firestorm.
