Tusk: Overview

The standard issue sidearm for SNCOs and officers, a revolver type handgun that fires PTT bullets with the cylinder holding six shots total. Being a much higher caliber than the Antler, most officers find they need extensive practice at the range before they're able to reliably use it.

Question 1: Why did I choose to issue senior noncommissioned officers, and officers, a sidearm that’s different than the one everyone else has?
Answer 1: Getting a Tusk is optional, they can keep using their Antler if they really want to. But the Tusk is still listed as the standard issue, so they’re automatically entitled to get one if they want it.

Question 2: Why the hell did you make a .50 caliber handgun standard issue?
Answer 2: Because I trust their expertise to use a weapon of that size without issue.

Lemme be upfront with you; the reason SNCOs and officers get such a high-powered handgun is because it’s like being given a sword when you become a knight or whatever. _{What gum wrapper did you learn that from? – Ye-Jun}
They have the position, they get the snazzy high caliber side piece to go along with it.

With that out of the way, the Tusk was one of the earliest semi-plasmatic weapons we created and it introduced us to an absolutely wonderful little problem in the form of recoil. With your usual powder-based munitions, recoil is a product of the bullet’s propellent igniting within the casing, which propels the bullet forward, and blows the bolt/action backwards to cycle the weapon.
Tiny explosion in confined space, physical force goes into shoulder or hands, easy math.

The recoil a charged shell produces from the energy discharge is similar, though we can severely cut back on it using recoil exhaust and recoil bleeder systems. This doesn’t negate the recoil, just dissipates it.
A semi plasmatic .357 caliber handgun produced recoil very similar to that of a powder-based weapon, which is fantastic because we can work with that.
So, we scaled up the charged shell tech of our handguns to a .50 caliber PTT round and someone (not me) didn’t double check their math. Or do any math at all.

A powder based .50 caliber handgun round will, usually, produce around 36,000 psi.
Those chucklefucks in R&D said “ Oh, .50 caliber? Like the riflecaliber? Gotcha, so the Tusk’s charged shell should be able to discharge enough energy to match 60,000+ psi right?”

Whenever you see me, ask me to flex my right wrist. Because when I do, you’re gonna hear what sounds like fucking wrapping paper and tin foil being crushed around inside of a hollowed-out watermelon.
That sound is courtesy of our first Tusk prototype snapping my wrist like a goddamn stick of celery.
_{You insisted on giving it a test run as soon as possible, final checks be damned. – Dr. Baddarick}

Once that little problem was solved, we still had to figure out how to make a .50 caliber handgun send extra harm downrange without simultaneously being unwieldy as hell due to the recoil. You can train as much as you want, but recoil is still recoil, so the less of it the operator has to deal with the better.
Thus we arrived at the question, is it possible to remove all recoil from a weapon?

Turns out yeah, we can do that by having the operator wear an exoskeletal frame that feeds the recoil into absorption systems, but that ain’t terribly practical. How’s about something built into the gun itself?
That’s where you get the start of recoil bleeder systems, but at the time they were called blowback buffers. Not as powerful as the recoil bleeders would be later down the line, but pretty aight for our purposes.

How’s it work? Dissipates the recoil by like 25% or something, I was told it worked on the principle of being a “physics sponge”. How’s it do that exactly? Fuck if I know, ask Acris.

Blowback buffers ended up making the Tusk as easy to use as an Antler, so there weren’t any significant transition pains for those that decided to move over to the high caliber side. That’s like, mostly literal, but also uh… that word that means the opposite of literal… because of y’know the marksmanship and other stuff. _{The word is “metaphorical” you creatine sweating bimbo. – Iza}
When these were mass issued, we didn’t exactly get a lot of field-testing data since SNCOs and officers getting into close range firefights isn’t something that happens every week. I wasn’t about to tack on “If at all possible, please let the enemy storm the TOC and get back to me on how your Tusks do” to the end of every deployment order, and while we do have SNCOs and officers on the frontlines I’m not exactly clamoring for them to go clear buildings with their sidearm.

Therefore, I had Arc Force and a few others throw Tusks on their hips for a few engagements to see how it went. From what I was told, they did pretty fantastic when shit got real ugly.
Apparently, .50 hollow point PTT bullets can blow a hole through an enemy’s body armor, ignite their internal organs, blow their spine into shrapnel, and then continue on to take off the arm of whoever is behind them. Fantastic, sounds good enough for me. But later on, we found Tusks to be invaluable during expeditions due to how damn good they are at shredding through armor and hides.

Sure, I gave Tusks to the big wig hoity toity senior legionnaires because they act as a symbol of their status. I trust their marksmanship, I trust their skill, and I trust their experience. That said, they also work as insurance for when things go bad during an expedition.
We send out newcomers with SNCOs and officers because we trust them to keep those legionnaires safe and alive, no matter what happens.
When their subordinates find their Antlers aren’t punching through a threat, our commanders have the tool necessary to step up and end the situation in one shot.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria