Gunlance

[The Guild]

The gunlance can best be described as a cannon with affixed bayonet in one hand, and a wall in the other. Like their sister weapon the lance, gunlances often make liberal use of the heavy-duty shield that they come paired with to face monster attacks head on. Similar to the lance superficially, the gunlance distinguishes itself through use of its shelling mechanism. With a pull of the trigger, the gunlance will fire off a specialized shell of one of three types. The addition of a shelling mechanism, however, makes the gunlance less wieldy of a weapon than the regular lance… But perhaps the added firepower can make up for it.

Gunlances come in three main varieties, Normal, Long, and Wide. Normal type shells are the lightest of the shells, being able to load an astounding five shells simultaneously, putting a focus on quantity over quality… But quantity has a quality all of its own! Long type shells are specialized to have a slightly longer effective range, and pack a slightly bigger punch than normal-type shells, three are capable of being loaded at a time. The final type of shells are the wide-type shells. Wide-type shells are densely packed rounds filled with energetically reactive material meant to fragment the shell upon firing. Due to their size, only two wide-type shells can be loaded in tandem. Quick loading mechanisms allow the gunlance to have an internal cache of extra ammunition that can be loaded entirely hands-free! Even still, empty shell casings must be ejected before further ammunition can be loaded, though. The gunlance can be opened with a simple flick and triggering of a handle-based switch to release an internal clasp. Once opened, the gunlance will automatically eject any spent casings, and reload in new shells when relocked.

Each type of gunlance brings its own strengths to the table through various techniques unique to the gunlance’s repetoir. The first of these techniques is known as the “full-burst”. The hunter triggers a special mechanism causing the gunlance to discharge all of its shells in tandem with one another. Normal type gunlances make the best use of this full burst, simply through sheer volume of shells being released. The second of these unique abilities comes in the charging of shots. All gunlance shells contain within them a special reagent that can hold large amounts of energy within it. Through the genius of Wyverian chemistry, a reaction was discovered allowing the explosive power of the propellant to be significantly increased, but at a large cost to the stability of the substance. When the reaction is allowed to take place, there is a brief delay before a quite spectacular explosion occurs... Wide-type shells, being the largest shells, and containing the largest amounts of the propellant, benefit the most from making use of this reaction.

The final technique is a special one indeed, known as the “Wyvernfire”. This technique does not actually use the regular shells of the gunlance, but instead has its own internal mechanism used for triggering it. Similar to a charged shot, the primary propellant is exposed to another compound and allowed to react, except this time in much larger quantities. With Wyvernfire, there is no shell, it uses the sheer heat and force between the two compounds reacting to do its damage. Due to the specifically designed barrel, long-type gunlances receive both a more focused explosion, but also a longer effective range on this technique compared to the other two variants of gunlances. So powerful is this technique that the barrel must be allowed time to cool, else one risks damaging or even destroying their weapon from the inside out!

True masters of the gunlance know how and when to utilize their hefty sheilds and harness the explosive power of their shells, full bursts, and wyvernfires to lay waste to anything in their path… Except for allies, of course! Gunlances are not a weapon for the faint of heart, but for those to love to feel the kick of recoil and the flash of explosions, they need look no further.[/blockquote