Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Hey folks, thanks for stopping by Memorable Weapons. I’m Leilani Palakiko and this lovely little guest star here is my M-7 Lancer, Pepper. So, the premise of this series is to take a look at weapons that everyone thinks they know and give them a closer examination. Just really take a look under the grill and get a feel for where they sprung from, how they worked in service, and--if they didn’t do so hot--what went wrong for them. And I can think of no better place to start than the dumped ex-girlfriend of every armchair general, the M-7 Lancer, “the gun the Alliance should still be using.” We’ll… have a sit-down conversation about that, kay? It got really weird.

So to start off with, the Lancer is a fully-automatic assault rifle, though you’ll find ones that have been modified to be burst-fire like Pepper here. Right off the bat there’s a misconception to get rid of: That tube on the top isn’t a second barrel, that’s its optic. It’s intended to be used alongside a personal helmet, visor, etc. The Lancer is also, rather uniquely (for the modern era) a weapon that doesn’t require thermal clips, but I’m sure you already knew that. She’s pretty accurate, controllable thanks to some recoil dampeners, punchy with an oversized internal eezo core, and she’s light to boot. This here’s my go-to weapon in the Armax Arsenal Arena. In fact, Pepper has her own unique story, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Now, where did the Lancer come from? Well, skipping over some still-prickly politics, suffice to say the First Contact War was a wake-up call for the Alliance. Among the long, long, long list of things that the Alliance military wanted replacements for after the war was a new assault rifle. In fact, let’s not mince words, they had already ordered a replacement before the war was over. The general consensus I’ve found in reports was that the Alliance weaponry of the time was barely adequate, well-made but not really up to snuff against Turian shields or armor. They made it work, of course, but veterans of the campaign still came running up to R&D howling for more power. However, here’s where things get dodgy.

Luckily (from the Human perspective), Alliance R&D had managed to get some Turian rifles, mostly older-model Phaestons, and parceled them out to any defense contractor with more than three guys in a shed. However, either they didn’t recover enough thermal clips or did a bad job of explaining how few they had, because the defense contractors burned through all of them. (I know some of you are raising your hands about post-Geth-Invasion thermal clips, we’ll come back to that I promise.) Anywho, because of this, the Alliance competition that finally popped out was for a weapon that used the old static heatsink system, but they wanted something that was harder hitting than the Phaeston while also being lighter. You engineers in the audience can probably see where this was going.

Safe to say, everyone had a nightmare of a time. A Kassa Fabrication sales rep famously said, “If we knew the Alliance would want the impossible, we would’ve invented a genie lamp first.” When the one-year check-in came around, only Rosenkov and Hahne-Kadar showed up with anything. The Rosenkov rifle was a decent enough weapon according to the testers. It was a little slow-firing but punchy as all hell and seemed pretty resilient to punishment. However, it was also a bit heavy and, probably most-crippling, non-collapsible. Rosenkov swore up and down that the prototype’s bulk wouldn’t represent the finished product. Thing was, the soon-to-be M-7 was already finished.

See, Hahne Kadar had already been building the M-6 Vanguard of First Contact War fame… which was itself a modification of the M-5 Kittyhawk. Truth told, prototypes of the gun that would eventually become the M-7 Lancer were already in limited field trials at the time and saw a bit of service during the war. However, the Phaeston had the engineers scrambling to find places to bulk up the gun and provided a much higher benchmark to measure it against. So naturally, they carefully considered their options, chipped away at the problem, refined every piece as much as possible to… nah I’m just screwing with you. They crammed as much alien tech as they could fit on the gun, fired it until it broke, redesigned what broke, and did it again and again until the trial date. An engineer in the company called the Lancer, “The sloppiest masterpiece we ever made,” and I believe it. It weirdly brings to mind things like the 20th century fighter aircraft, the F-4 Phantom, in a weird way: something with all kinds of bizarre kinks and angles that make no sense, but somehow it just works.

Anyways, the Lancer popped out of the trials without any opposition and entered service almost immediately, basically out of fear that the Turians would come looking for another go. To say Hahne-Kadar went overboard was an understatement. They started pumping them out right away, shortcutting their tool-up process by converting old M-6s to the new M-7 spec. They tried to do the same with Kittyhawks, but those had a teensy little problem with the frames exploding if you fired more than twenty rounds at a time. This issue would prove… slightly prophetic.

Even once they burned through the old models, Hahne-Kadar kept scaling production like they didn’t just want to replace every assault rifle in the Alliance. They wanted to replace every gun in the Alliance. To be fair, I don’t think anyone wanted to complain. The Lancer was well-liked by the troops at the time. It was handy, effective, easy to store, and didn’t seem to care what sort of dirt you ran it through. Even once it started seeing combat, folks found that it could usually take direct impacts from other rifles and shrug it off. However, there was one design flaw that took its time rearing its ugly head: that darn heatsink.

So, let’s get back to the heatsink debate, the great elephant in the room and what the armchair generals looooove to criticize the Alliance for. See, the first big myth to put to bed is that the Geth didn’t invent thermal clips. The tech has been around forever; you see it in older designs like the Krogan Graal Spike Throwers or the pre-Geth Quarian “Widow” anti-material rifles. In days gone, if you stepped a single pinky toe out of Alliance space thermal clips would still be common, just not the universal answer. In short, clip-cooled weapons were actually more reliable, easier to maintain, and easier to repair in the field if they suffered a melt-down. Sure, you need to keep them fed, but I would argue that they actually simplified supply chains. The real downside is that they didn’t like it when field engineers tried to squeeze more juice out of the guns; more kinetic energy creates more heat, as does a greater rate of fire. Those old clips had a very hard ceiling on what they could handle, and if you overheated them they tended to blow up, which I think we can agree isn’t a happy thing, even if most gun designers try to held direct that energy. That’s where the static sink comes in. What the static sink brought to the table was a higher peak load, allowing the technically-inclined to put more load on the weapon and provided more wiggle-room for people to do what they wanted to the gun. Even when they melted down, they failed safe, almost* never harming the user (put a pin that “almost”). However, static sinks have the extended cooldown problem--especially in space--and if you push that sink too far it’s not an easy battlefield fix. Your static sink melts down, and that’s it. You are out of the fight until you find something else.

What the geth did was introduce a better type of sink. It’s just an overall refinement of the design that solves the peak heat load problem of older thermal clips, meaning they’d no longer explode in the gun if you went too far with modifications and, even better, they had superior performance to most static sinks. It was also easy to replicate and adapt, allowing for basically everyone to start making variants of the clips compatible with their weapons which used this newer standard. Overnight, the largest advantage to static sinks, their resilience to experimentation and tampering, was gone. The impact of Geth thermal clip technology is a biiiiiig discussion, but for our story about the Lancer here’s what needs to be understood. The Alliance was already an outlier in using static sinks in frontline guns, since every other major military mostly relegated them to spec ops and heavy guard roles where atmospheric combat was more likely. Truth be told, the process that would create the M-8 Avenger was already under way; however the M-8 wasn’t slated to replace everything until the Geth provided the better thermal clips. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves now.

Okay, all that said, back to the Lancer. Even from the beginning it was a known issue with the Lancer that it really didn’t like vacuum. As I mentioned, it’s a central problem of static sinks: you stick them somewhere with an atmosphere, where they can transfer that heat to air, and they’re pleased as punch. Thermal radiation in a vacuum, on the other hand, is a slow process and Lancers were known for being prone to getting deadlined after the briefest firefights. The practical solution here would’ve been to have an atmospheric rifle and a vacuum rifle, or some way to quickly switch something over--which would get suggested by Hahne-Kadar themselves. However, the Lancer’s entire reason for existing was to counter thick Turian defenses and the engineers at the time didn’t think they could get enough oomph out of thermal clips, so that was out of the question. So Hahne-Kadar found another solution: mod the guns’ nuts off.

They provided all kinds of aftermarket support, both for their own mods and other companies’. This allowed units to tailor their Lancers to whatever environment they were set up in, and generally let unit armorers fix any identified issues where the Lancer didn’t get along with the environment. Working on a ship? Better heatsink. Working around bad thunderstorms? Hardened electrical systems. Serving as the unit marksman and can’t get any marksman rifles? Here’s a recoil dampener and scope, godspeed you poor bastard. Which is great! However, not all of these mods were exactly… intended for static heatsinks. The big engineering challenge with static heatsinks is that they stay somewhat hot and transfer some of their energy to the rest of the gun. Safe to say, not everything likes being cooked like that. Aftermarket sights would get their electronics fried, modified barrels would start losing accuracy, recoil dampeners would start smoking or even catch fire, and so forth. What really made this a problem, however, is that the Lancer was almost too easy to modify. Before long it wasn’t just the armorers and small arms repairmen modifying them, it was the soldiers, and I don’t just mean the specialists. I mean good ol’ Bubba from the colonies who put this here scram rail on it; if it’s good enough for pa’s Varren huntin’ rifle, it’s good enough for the marines. Even worse, not all of these modifications are being documented, especially in the units out on the fringes. Suddenly, about ten to fifteen years after the gun was introduced they start having some pretty dramatic meltdowns. The most publicized ones are cases where the heatsinks exploded because some genius decided to put scram rails and explosive rounds on these poor things and then ripped out the safeties when the gun cried for mercy. As it turned out, static sinks were resistant to catastrophic meltdowns, but if you pushed them hard enough even they would have much more dramatic meltdowns than thermal clips would. Well, those detonations started to get some publicity, and while it might be forgotten now there was actually a really big outcry to fix the Lancer at the time.

So, that’s when we get the M-8 Avenger. We’ll talk about it more another day, but basically the Avenger is just a Lancer that was taken to Elkoss Combine and modified to take thermal clips to finally stop this nonsense in mainline units. Then modified some more to be cheaper. Then modified some more when they needed to switch to new production. You get the picture. Again, this was something of a rush job. From the first publicized heatsink detonation to the Avenger being accepted for service was only about two years; a few companies had already been fiddling with the idea for a while. However, by that time this concept of personalizing the gun let soldiers get really attached to their Lancers, even as more and more of them kept melting. It was just so much better than anything they’d had before, and it’s hard to articulate without getting hands-on time, but the Avenger just feels worse. It’s just less punchy, more cumbersome, clankier, mushier trigger, just an overall less pleasant gun to shoot. And these… what are these? Magazines? What is this, the twentieth century? Yeah, the frontliners really didn’t like these things coming from the (seemingly) low-maintenance Lancer.

Sooo… they didn’t change over. Or tried not to.

Suddenly this weird tug of war started as the Alliance procurement higher-ups wind up in a battle with smaller units’ own procurement officers that devolved into a game of parents trying to feed their kids vegetables. “Take your Avengers!” “I don’t wanna!” “Take it!” “NO!” It got extra bad when the entire spec ops N-branch--probably meaning well--said that they genuinely needed Lancers for their specialists and would just document their jury-rigged modifications better. That placated the procurement heads, but as Lancer parts dried up for the other vocations and Avengers filled their place, people started getting an insidious little thought that always comes up when spec ops gets its own toy. “If spec ops has it, it must be the best.” Soldiers clung to their Lancers even harder, to the point that MPs had to go from unit to unit confiscating them. And even then some people found aftermarket shells to make Lancers look like Avengers. A few even bought black market Lancers with their own money after the MPs had left.

Eventually that mess sorted itself out through a mixture of attrition, soldiers’ exhaustion with the whole mess, reality setting in that the Lancer really was a flawed weapon, and finally the Geth thermal clips. The Geth clips really were the death knell of the Lancer. The moment those appeared, even N-vocation soldiers started fishing for other things to replace the Lancer--things that weren’t the Avenger--and it abruptly dropped out of service. Not that it’s ever stopped having a niche. Again, commandos love the things. Famously, Turian Spectre Relkin Actus has been using one and has petitioned Hahne-Kadar to restart production, which is a twist of fate I imagine made for a fun board meeting. Unfortunately, most Lancers got changed to Avengers by Elkoss Combine during the transition, which is why there are so few of them surviving today. Most survivors are, frankly, stolen Lancers that have meandered their ways into the hands of mercenaries, explorers, wildcat miners, and other people living in far-off corners where thermal clips can be tricky to source. Custom gunsmiths love these things as showcases of their skills; nowadays every surviving Lancer is somebody’s custom baby.
While the Lancer had its bittersweet ending and the military has come to terms with it, the great kerfuffle around it has earned the Lancer an odd mystique in the eyes of casual gun enthusiasts. People seem to take a very surface level read on adding thermal clips to the supply chain. On a moment-to-moment basis they’re inconvenient, and at a glance they seem like an unnecessary complication. Then you start factoring in the trainwreck that led up to the Lancer’s departure from service. The mountain of replacement parts, the dead-lined guns, the soldiers blowing themselves up, the other soldiers getting hurt because their gun jammed on them again, and the utter mountain of bureaucratic nightmares trying to keep track of everything. Take all that on-board, and the pros of the Lancer start looking less shiny.

That said, it’s still beloved in my book. See, my sweet Pepper here was a rifle at the “N-school,” where Alliance spec ops go for supplemental training. My mother was an instructor there, basically from just after the First Contact War onward, and she used this cutey as a trainer for modifications, allowing the more promising candidates to turn Pepper into whatever they felt like. She’s kind of Theseus’s rifle; probably nothing on her is still original and there’s some pretty funny artifacts leftover here and there from old mods. A lot of people have done a lot of things to this gun. Back when he was famous, I drunkenly bragged that Pepper was Commander Shepard’s “first true love,” but honestly if the good Spectre ever touched her, it’s just because she was the training facility’s bicycle. Everyone got a ride. When she retired, my mom took her home and made her the first assault rifle I ever touched, and eventually she became my weapon of choice when I took my first steps into the black. I’ve gotten caught in a few pretty hairy crossfires, and she’s never failed to deliver. Her greatest moment of glory was probably when a certain Turian prick decided to paint Citadel Tower a particularly ugly shade of cuttlefish. I’m no C-Sec officer or anything, but in the frantic scramble for survival and trying to provide emergency aid to people, I wound up holed up in a hospital with nothing but my Armax arena armor and Pepper between the flashlights and a gruesome death. Not sure how many Geth I scrapped, probably not more than six or seven, but considering I held out basically from the big squid’s landing until Shepard came in with half the Alliance, I think Pepper and I held out pretty well.

So yeah, I love the Lancer, controversy and all. It’s not a perfect gun--nothing is--but it will always hold a special place in my heart, both for what it’s done for me personally and for just what a weird story it tells. Hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and I hope to see you around next time. Thanks for coming by.

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Hey folks, thanks for stopping by Memorable Weapons.  I’m Leilani Palakiko, and this cute little thing is my Elanus Risk Control Services M-3 Predator, Private Snuffy.  Don’t ask about the name, my mom named him when she gave him to me as a kid.  I’m hardly alone there either; if you’ve fired a gun there’s something like a 1-in-6 shot that a Predator was involved at some point, and if that was in a combat situation that chance goes up to something like 1-in-3.  These things are stupidly common basically everywhere, especially out in the Terminus Systems.  They’re a weapon that some of the more… elitist gun nerds like to sniff their noses at, though the meatier criticisms tend to come from people who’ve actually used them in heavy combat.  However, while I think the criticisms are fair, I think they’re also largely due to people pushing this weapon into duties it wasn’t intended for, with a splash of its reputation suffering from its own success.  That said, even with its flaws, I think it’s a perfectly acceptable weapon; otherwise, it wouldn’t be used by every merc, security guard, C-SEC officer, thug, ganger, housewife, and houseplant in the galaxy.  It’s more that a lot of its critics are trying to judge a fish by how well it can grapple a thresher maw.

So, to start, as with most things made by ERCS, the project that would create the Predator started from two things: a complaint and a survey.  The complaint came from one of their own, an ERC station armorer whose name hasn’t been revealed to the public, but whose report bears direct quotation.  Ahem.  “Listen here you REDACTED stuffed shirts!  I get you think it’s nice givin’ your guards freedom to choose their weapons.  Looks good on paper.  Lets them choose what they think is best and lets you sell weapons to your own employees.  REDACTED good racket, wish I thought of it.  But have you met the REDACTED people you hire?  These REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED idiots wouldn’t know a good weapon if it crawled up their REDACTED and slithered out their mouths!  I’ve spent ten REDACTED years fixing every half-finished gun in the galaxy, and maybe a third of the REDACTED your employees brought in were halfway serviceable.  Another third were completely REDACTED useless, and the other third were outright hazardous to the user’s health!  Do you know how many times I’ve seen people leave the pistol range clutching stumps?  BECAUSE I CAN’T COUNT THAT HIGH!”

Soooo yeah, suffice to say, the fringe members of Elanus were having some problems with sidearm quality control thanks to people buying shoddily-made gear from the interstellar equivalent of the Khyber Pass.  Things made by Vorcha sweatshops, deliberately sabotaged Batarian weapons, comically overtuned hand cannons picked off some overcompensating Krogan, et cetera.  ERCS did a quick survey of unit armorers to see if this was an actual issue or just a one-off, and what they found was that their main world members didn’t really have this problem.  However, the guys out in the Terminus had this problem in droves, maybe not as bad as the original ticket made it sound but still enough to be an issue.  After all, the fellas who are most likely to use their weapons are guards in the Terminus.  So, ERCS starts working on a pistol design to service the issue; there’s no clear picture of the internal chatter of the time, but we can get a better feel for what they wanted from the rules they laid out afterwards.

Quoting directly from the ERCS handbook here: “All ERCS security personnel must have a weapon on them, even if it is only a sidearm.  That weapon must be deemed equal to or better than the M-3 Predator by a superior, otherwise an M-3 Predator will be assigned to you.  You cannot use an uncleared weapon.  No exceptions.”  So, basically, the Predator is meant to be a baseline, a low bar for other weapons to clear--mostly pistols.  To that end, they made a weapon that was as cheap as possible for its intended role, something that they could make by the shipload, and something reasonably compact for transport and carry.  So, for the intended goal, I think they did an admirable job.  The Predator has enough punch to bring down the average thug, it’s got the accuracy to do so at a pretty good range, and it folds down into a neat little package.  All at a price point well under even bargain bin omnitools.  So, mission accomplished, right?

Well, here’s where things get a little squiffy.  See, the Predator was originally intended to be used in-house with some civilian sales on the side.  However, around the same time there was a big scandal in the Hegemony about their service pistol.  I can’t pronounce the darn thing’s name, but basically these weapons wound up wearing out way quicker than they had any right to.  In particular, the problem that never got fixed was that the barrels started ovaling out their mountings and developed wandering zeroes, meaning that aiming the gun was more of a suggestion.  So, the Hegemony looked at who could supply their armed forces with a lot of guns very quickly.  ERCS, probably meaning well, raised their hand and said that they could probably divert half their output of Predators to the Hegemony for a little bit.  So they did.  And then the age-old story starts.  People saw the Turians getting these pistols and went, “Well, if the birds are getting it, it must be good.”  Then others who might not have been so easily swayed by shiny new toys but who did pay attention to large movements of money perked up and went, “Well, if all these militaries are buying it, it must be good.”  By the time the first Turian military shipment arrived, ERCS had something like five million guns ordered.  Just… stop and picture that for a second.  This is a security guard’s sidearm and they were shipping these things by the millions to frontline militaries and paramilitary groups who hadn’t even tested the things.  And this is before we even start talking civilian and independent mercenary sales.

No big shocker then that the world’s most mediocre pistol got a little bit of a backlash.  Soldiers, especially frontline soldiers, hated this thing.  For a full-on firefight this thing is woefully inadequate.  A friend of mine calls it the “pecker,” because it’s about as much use as one.  Even the Turian military had some buyer’s remorse, eventually relegating it to personal defense weapon duties (artillerymen, pilots, etc.).  Thing is, it was never intended for that market.  This is a weapon intended to usally be “good enough.”  If you’re a pilot shot down over a Batarian compound, this is the weapon good enough to keep you breathing until help arrives.  When a Krogan pirate is charging you down, this thing might not make miracles, but it’s good enough to give you a fighting chance.  To this day the Alliance still shoves it in every hole it’ll fit; again they want everyone to have a weapon but not everyone needs a Typhoon.

If you consider its life in the civilian market, there’s nothing quite like it.  It’s well-behaved, accurate, and unbelievably cheap.  No joke, I’ve seen cheeseburgers at higher price points than this thing.  I think people forget that not everybody is using this thing in a military setting.  A store clerk doesn’t need a Claymore to make a would-be burglar regret drawing ceramic.  A teenage girl doesn’t need a Carnifex to add some safety to her night on the town.  If you’re out rabbit hunting, you don’t need a Mantis to catch dinner.  This is the icon of the armed sentient.  Sure, soldiers will find shinier toys and nobody’s dream gun will ever be a Predator.  But for the average person, a Predator is--say it with me kids--good enough.

And sometimes, good enough is just right.

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Hey bub, you lookin’ at my daughter?  ‘Cause I don’t think you wanted to look at mah girl.  [Racks shotgun menacingly]

Hey folks, thanks for stopping by Memorable Weapons.  I’m Leilani Palakiko, and this chonky little bundle of joy here is my Ariake Technologies M-23 Katana.  His name is Cletus.  Now, I’m sure you have a lot of questions.  Such as: how could the world’s most aggressively overnamed shotgun have anything interesting about it?  Or, what’s the point of a shotgun if it doesn’t weigh at least twenty pounds?  (That one’s for my Krogan friends.)  Rest easy, the Ariake Katana has plenty to talk about, even if the individual weapons aren’t much to look at (though I’m pretty fond of Cletus himself).

To start, some of the more electronically-minded people in the audience might’ve perked up when I mentioned that this was made by Ariake.  As in, yes, the maker of your high-end omni-tools, mining hardsuits, and telemetry computers also made this frankly medieval slab of shotgun.  Where’d that come from?  Well, there’s a lot of myths around this thing, many with a kernel of truth to them but all actually picking up the story later in its development.  The truth is, the Katana title actually started off as the internal name of a project for a really wacky idea for a rifle with variable caliber barrels and charges.  

See, you have to keep in mind that most guns just rip their slugs off of a slab of metal in the internal magazine and fire that.  Thing is, nothing says that the slugs need to always be the same consistency.  Well, except for things like mechanical reliability and not wanting to blow up your gun.  Anyways, different mixtures of velocity, bullet weight, bullet diameter, and so forth will have different effects on the target.  If you can figure out a way to change the diameter of the barrel and change the velocity it’s moving at you can, theoretically, alter how well your gun responds to armored or soft targets.  It could also theoretically allow you to optimize your weapon for long or short range engagements on the fly, or even adjust for changes in gravity or weather.  It’s a really cool idea, but I’m sure the engineers among you are about to have an aneurysm trying to figure out how to make that work, or how to zero it for that matter.  And that’s before you start getting into the interface, and that’s where the Katana shotgun’s story really starts.

See, Ariake never had a huge number of gun designers.  Most of their techs in this regard are really just mod experts who ensure that any of their sights or telemetry equipment are compatible with other weapons.  The type of tech that Ariake was fussing around with in our story wasn’t really compatible with anything.  So, they tapped one of their engineers, one Chisaka Miyuki, to lead a small team to throw something quick and dirty together that could test the new peripherals and, eventually, be mounted with some of the early prototypes of this variable power tech.  So, Miyuki started work on this shotgun, but I think there might have been some kind of office drama going on because here’s where things got weird.  Miyuki’s team started cycling through engineers basically constantly.  We’re talking two month stays at most, at which point someone else would cycle in, rinse, repeat.  Ariake’s been pretty tight-lipped, but from what I can piece together from the few testimonies that have slipped the net, I think people got kicked off the main Katana project to work on this unnamed shotgun as a punishment.  Sort of a Shrek situation, for my classic vid fans.  However, they actually wound up preferring that, so instead people put their better work into this shotgun and wound up treating the core Katana project as a massive chore.  Miyuki has had a delightfully pragmatic view of  the matter, famously saying, “What the rest of the company wasted their time with was their business.  I was asked to make a shotgun, so I made a shotgun.”

By the time the shotgun was ready, the main Katana project was essentially dead in the water.  Ariake never announced why, but considering the cost of such a project, the fact that it ran for ten years with no demonstrable success, and that the project lead got fired shortly after it ended, I think we can assume that the higher ups were none too pleased with the results.  Not that the Katana project was a complete waste of time; the interface being developed for it was repurposed with minimal changes for the Kuwashii Visor, and the prototype of the variable-charge weapon eventually found its home helping test their hardsuit armor.  As for the Katana name, in order to save face Ariake plastered that name onto the shotgun Chisaka Miyuki was working on.  The marketing push around the Katana was… weird to say the least.  I don’t think Ariake knew how to market firearms at the time, because the advertisements were… less Carnifex and more Illium high fashion.  I think they had some delusion that this thing was meant to compliment its “Mercenary” armor line.  Suffice to say, it flopped at launch.  Ariake struggled to even make half the money back they’d spent tooling up for this thing--even ignoring the variable weapon project.  I don’t think they were in danger of going bankrupt, but I think we were pretty close to seeing some stock broker suicides.

Then they caught a lucky break.  The Citadel Fauna Survey Bureau (FSB) had apparently been having serious problems with invasive wildlife.  Most relevant to our story, they were trying to track the impact of Varren on native wildlife and were losing researchers because… well… Varren are Varren.  In particular they were suffering in close quarters, places like jungles and scrapyards.  Thing is, this isn’t a high-end military organization and from what I hear the FSB has been perpetually starving for funds, so they didn’t really have the money to get high-end weapons or armor.  Ariake noticed this and, possibly a little desperate themselves, struck a really juicy deal with the FSB where they sold a bunch of Mercenary armor sets and packaged Katanas basically for free in exchange for being able to use footage from FSB safaris in their marketing.  The FSB isn’t known for being particularly marketing savvy, but they knew a good deal when they saw it.  Truth told, though, this was a miracle for both parties.  

As promised, the moment the Katana started bagging Varren, both parties started waving it around in their commercials.  For the FSB, it helped them show the danger of their work and indirectly led to nature documentaries like Lost on Landing, things which have generally led to a lot more funding for the struggling agency.  As for Ariake, however, the footage was an absolute godsend.  They pivoted hard on this new idea of the Katana being at the hard edge of the frontier.  The marketing line that cemented its reputation was an image of an explorer standing on a mountain of Varren with several more charging him with the phrase “If a Katana can’t save you, you weren’t going to survive anyways.”  This wound up getting pulled after outcry by animal rights groups, but I’m pretty sure that just served to make the marketing more successful.  Soon every two-cred explorer and would-be colonial was grabbing this thing to serve as their self-defense weapon, and it started seeing a pretty healthy mercenary following to boot.  There was even a little bit of military success; the Alliance grabbed several for some rough weather locations, like the Mars garrison where sand is a real issue.

So, what’s the Katana actually like to use?  Not half bad for a civilian shotgun.  It’s got this kinda clanky feel to it; if I didn’t know better I’d say Ariake was a Russian company going off of this thing.  It’s got a kinda stiff trigger, and it might be resistant to the elements but that also means it’s an absolute nightmare to field strip.  It’s also, sadly, hopelessly inaccurate past maybe fifteen meters.  Even after-market chokes can only do so much.  Honestly, I would never recommend this thing as a military or mercenary weapon except for maybe a ship defense weapon.  It’s got the oomph, but kinda lacks the precision to make the most of that firepower, which is a little weird considering what Ariake is mostly known for.  However, out on the frontiers where most of your problems are angry wildlife looking to eat your crops, your children, or you, I can definitely think of worse options.

Suffice to say the Katana’s lead a pretty happy life after its rough start, probably one better than the otherwise mediocre gun deserves.  It’s kind of synonymous with the colonial spirit and is constantly making movie appearances.  Cletus here was himself a movie star.  I was advising on-set for “Somewhere Over the Geiger Counter” and the director wanted some advice for which weapons to use as props.  To say I fought to get this thing on-screen was an understatement; it was just the objectively correct weapon for the story.  The prop director and I had a pretty good spat over it, and eventually she said that I needed to find a gun under 200 creds or she was going to use a Disciple.  So I found Cletus here in some ratty gun store alongside some Batarian mystery pistols.  To say that poor Cletus had been “Bubba’d” is an understatement; I probably spent four times the gun’s worth repairing it after the world’s worst gunsmith molested him with… I dunno… dremels?  Files?  A sand-tripping crocodile?  It was a pain in the rear, but it made for a distinctively battered-looking gun.  When I brought Cletus to the set, the director fell in love with him and made him the main character’s weapon of choice.  Even the prop director couldn’t deny that he had a certain rugged charm to him.

She also said something similar about me, but that’s our own story.

So yeah, I’d say that even if individual Katanas are so common nowadays they’re frankly boring, I personally think they’re a fun talking piece.  If for no other reason, I can thank this thing’s bizarre, twisting turn of events for getting me married.

Chapter Text

Hey folks, thanks for stopping by Memorable Weapons.  I’m Leilani Palakiko, and this here is my M-4 Shuriken machine pistol, Sakura.  Yes, I put sakura blossom stickers on her, don’t judge me.  Not like I know what else to do with this thing.  The Shuriken is… an odd topic.  It’s kind of got a version of the Predator’s reputation where it’s really successful but elitists like to snub their nose at it.  However, with the Shuriken, I think there’s some genuine criticisms of the gun to be had beyond it being a budget weapon.  I'll admit to having a small soft spot for it, solely because I love watching people try to shoot it and start squealing uncontrollably.

(Velici):“Eat my quad!”

You’re only half Krogan, hun.  As you all can hear, today my camera woman and lovely, lovely wife, Velici, might have some strong opinions.  Her dad convinced me to take her on a date to the range with this thing back when we first met and had neglected to tell me that she was afraid of guns.  And he recorded it.

(Vel):“Sadistic asshole… But it’s not like you’ve been shy about your opinion on this gun either, Leilei.  Drinking game of the day, kids: anytime someone says ‘machine pistol,’ take a shot!”

Please don’t kill my viewers.  Anyways, to start off, the Shuriken comes to us from the illustrious fellas over at Elkoss Combine.  You know, the guys who make the glitz-over-function Sapphire Skycar and own the only major makeup brand that can’t be legally sold in Council Space?  So… yeah, naturally those are the people you want making your snappy self-defense machine pistols.  At least, you’d think that that sarcasm was warranted, but honestly Elkoss Combine is a halfway decent company when it comes to firearms.  I think their biggest strength in this regard is that they’re based out in the Terminus, and so they have a lot of people who know a lot about weaponry in their company--or at least those that think they know a lot.  The Shuriken wouldn’t have made it through testing if they thought it was crap.  But here’s the rub: I don’t know why the Shuriken exists.  That’s not me being a facetious jerk, I mean I don’t think Elkoss’s explanation for its existence matches up with reality.  Let me explain.

On paper, Elkoss Combine claims that they made the Shuriken with an eye towards self defense in places where your chances of getting jumped by more than one person are pretty high.  Places like Korlus and Omega.  However, they’ve also since admitted to wanting it sleek and pretty enough that they could sell it on places like Illium or Bekenstein, where the odds of getting jumped are still high, but everyone looks like a fashion model.  They also wanted to keep it relatively cheap for a machine pistol, and make sure it collapsed into a nice, compact package.  Word has it that one of the Asari members of the team explicitly wanted to make sure it could fit into her favorite purse.  The Shuriken’s big party trick that made it popular in the Terminus was that it was also very safe, which is nice in a region well-known for shoddy knock-offs.  There’s a famous vid out there of a Turian and Batarian abusing one of these things for an hour trying to get it to misfire, but all they ever succeeded at was getting its thermal clip to short out.  And this thing can shift a lot of rounds downrange.  No joke, there are models that have an honest-to-god six-round burst.  So, it sounds like this ticks all the boxes.  And I can also hear those of you who’ve used these guns shaking your heads alongside my wife.  Calm down Vel, we’re getting there.

So, you may have noticed that I stubbornly refuse to call the Shuriken a submachine gun.  It is an SMG, but I draw a verbal distinction between those and machine pistols.  Submachine guns usually have… a stock, or a vertical grip, a magazine sticking out somewhere.  Ya know, somewhere to get a second point of contact so you can control this thing.  Machine pistols seem to think the best way to control a lever is from the vertex.  In other words, this thing is about as controllable as a Varren that just spotted the barbecue table.

(Vel):“It’s more like a greased up ferret that wants to squirm out of your grasp the moment you look at it!”

No need to bring up your previous love life, darling.  Point being, I think machine pistols are a terrible idea.  They just aren’t controllable enough to make the most of their weight of fire.  Also, and this is the part that really baffles me: it was marketed in the Terminus.  People tend to forget that most Terminus System worlds and stations don’t have much access to personal kinetic barriers.  Most of the time it’s armor or just good old fashioned meat.  The Shuriken doesn’t really have the punch to defeat most armor, so in a Terminus setting it’s basically only really good for taking on unarmored opponents and the occasional biotic.  Thing is… a lot of people like wearing their armor when out and about on Omega, because getting a bullet in the back is generally bad for your health.  If it was more accessible in Citadel Space this thing would be a nasty little gun, because it eats shields for breakfast and your assailant’s internal organs for brunch, but these things didn’t sell so hot due to Elkoss’s shoddy reputation.  So it’s a self defense pistol that was marketed mainly to the region that it would be least useful in, and flopped in the place where it should’ve thrived.  So, all that begs the question: why did Elkoss make this thing and market it the way they did?  After all, regardless of anything else, Elkoss Combine knows where the money is.

Weeeellllllllllllll you may have noticed I had neglected to talk about the gun’s development.  That’s because that’s all wrapped up in my suspected “why” of the Shuriken.  See, when you take apart the Shuriken and look at its guts, it’s just a Kassa Locust.  Ya know, “the gun that killed two presidents.”  It’s not free floating and a lot of the finer-machined parts have been made chunkier for ease of production, but mostly it’s just a Locust made on a budget.  I’ll talk more about the Locust later--when I can find one--but after the assassination fiasco, Kassa frantically tried to pawn the design off on anyone who was interested.  They just wanted nothing to do with the thing; it was political plutonium.  Problem was, nobody else wanted it either for pretty much the same reason.  However, Elkoss Combine, probably knowing that their reputation was already sketchy, decided to play along and snapped up the Locust patent once Kassa had dropped the price past a certain point.  Unfortunately, Elkoss being Elkoss, they actually didn’t have the production ability to recreate the Locust, at least as it was.  So, instead, they fiddled around with the design a little, stripped out anything that wasn’t necessary for the firing mechanism, shrunk it down, and fit it into a cute little package that you can tuck down your bra.

(Vel): “You… you don’t actually do that, do you?”

Babe, I had Sakura on me when we first met.

(Vel): “WHAT?”

Safety first.

(Vel): “No, I mean how’d you fit it into that corset?”

Trade secret.  Anywho, Elkoss isn’t particularly transparent, but I’m pretty sure the modifications were reasonably quick and easy from an engineering standpoint, because from the Locust patent purchase announcement to the first Shurikens making it to Illium gunstores was about four months.  Which is just… madness.

So, considering that they made this thing ostensibly just because they could, I think that the Shuriken is perfectly adequate at the role it was intended for: no not self defense, I mean printing Elkoss Combine money.  Lots and lots of money.  Because, well, these things cost almost nothing and regardless of actual effectiveness, owners of these things no doubt felt like they would put down any threat that came after them short of a hardened merc.  And in the right hands these guns can be very effective.  Some of the more clandestine sorts, Salarian STG, assassins, and other wetwork experts swear by the Shuriken because they can tuck it almost anywhere, close in on a target, and suddenly dump thirty-six rounds into whatever needs to die.  I don’t care who you are: someone fires thirty-six shots of anything into you, you’re not going to enjoy the experience.  Suffice to say, the Shuriken’s successful defenses are quite… visceral, so people tend to overestimate its actual effectiveness.   Elkoss also really likes promoting this thing as a wetwork pistol; the Blasto movies love using them for their femme fatales.  Which, again, that’s a very smart use of this weapon.

However, if I’m completely honest, I’ve never fired a Shuriken in anger outside of the Armax Arena.  I can’t get around it being an uncontrollable hot mess.  It’s got one party trick, and that trick is turning people into hamburger from around three meters away.  Yeah, it’s good at that trick, but honestly any situation I’d get into where a Shuriken would be halfway decent, I’d just rather have a Carnifex.  Or a Predator if I’m gonna be brutally honest.  Nobody needs a machine pistol.  Nobody needs a six round burst.  Nobody needs a machine pistol.  Nobody needs something this uncontrollable.  And nobody, I mean nobody, needs a machine pistol.

(Vel): “Who’s trying to kill your viewers now?”

You suggested the drinking game, not me.  Point being, I think that the Shuriken is… barely adequate even in an environment where it would make sense to choose, and prone to making you overconfident in places where it wouldn’t.  It was a weapon made with an attitude of “because we can,” and honestly its one saving grace is that it’s probably, credit for credit, the most firepower you can buy.  But that statement comes with so many asterisks it looks like a constellation.  I don’t like railing on guns.  I like trying to prop up the equipment I find, or at least find context for why it exists.  But the Shuriken is just a very well-marketed gimmick and not a lot else.

(Vel): “Glad you admit it.  Now can you please sell that terrifying piece of junk?”

No.  In fact, we’re going to the range after this.

(Vel): “nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

Chapter Text

Hey folks, thanks for stopping by Memorable Weapons.  I’m Leilani Palakiko, and this here is my dearly beloved Devlon Industries M-92 Mantis, Sherman.  Now, I won’t deny, I’m a little biased on today’s subject.  Sherman and I go way back.  In terms of time carried and targets dropped, Sherman is my number one weapon.  Hands down, case closed, end of story.  The Mantis is also another movie star weapon that everyone is overly familiar with to the point that they think they know everything about it.  The simple reality, though, is that this is a weapon that’s had one of the smartest marketing moves I’ve ever seen.  So, does all that mean that I think that he’s a good weapon today?  Nyeeeehhhhh

So to start, the Mantis first appears in ye olde history books in two different Turian Hegemony procurement requirements that just sort of happened around the same time, about twenty years before the First Contact War.  On the one hand, you have a request from the Palavan Police Corps for a sniper rifle, something that can knock out a perp with one well-aimed shot no matter their armor at basically any range.  On the other hand, there’s a peculiar request by the Hegemony Navy’s frontier divisions for a… there’s not a good translation for this, but the closest concept humans have is a scout rifle.  Something that can be carried by scouts and used infrequently but independent of supply lines basically indefinitely.  The Volus-originated Devlon Industries, never missing a chance to save a buck, realized that these could be the same order.  They came up with this really slick little idea to make two different heat sink systems which could be interchanged depending on the end-user’s preference.  One being a good old thermal clip system, the other being a less common static sink similar to those you could later find on Alliance equipment.  This decision would wind up saving the Mantis’s bacon in the long run.

In the short term, despite its later success, the police contract fell through pretty quickly.  The Mantis lacking quick follow-up potential made the officers testing the weapon at the time nervous, and it’s a lot heavier than most weapons in its class.  Also, it has this tiny fusion power plant based on Devlon’s hardsuits, and while it’s proven itself perfectly safe in hindsight, that thing scared the bejeezus out of civilian buyers at the time.  The scouts, however, absolutely adored the Mantis.  They liked to call it “The Long Arm of Palaven.”  At the time it came out, it was a heinous amount of firepower for a sniper, and at the sorts of ranges these scouts preferred to fight at, sniping was all they really needed it to do.  There are some truly heroic stories of Mantis-equipped soldiers outmaneuvering foes for days, and sometimes weeks on-end.  My favorite story, however, is the earliest demonstration of the Mantis’s abilities.  A group of scouts took some pre-production Mantises for field trials and they found a thresher maw dangerously close to a colony town.  Instead of doing the sensible thing, namely evacuating the colony, they decided to go hunting.  They laid a bunch of traps, set up some mines, and just harangued the creature with a dozen Mantises firing in volleys to keep the thing off-balance.  They brought the darn thing down in fifteen minutes with no losses.

As with all things from Devlon, it didn’t stay exclusive for long.  Despite their shaky start, Mantises became the worst kept secret of the firearms world.  It was a rugged and reliable rifle that could be adjusted depending on whether you were in an urban or rural environment, what wasn’t to like?  Police officers eventually warmed up to it (especially as veteran snipers blabbed about it), and its first few major actions, mostly against bank heists, proved that it was very good at neutralizing threats.  Mercenary snipers learned to love its authoritative report and its precision, despite its weight.  Its really funny break came when the First Contact War happened and the Alliance captured one of these intact.  Hahne-Kadar tried to manufacture a thinly-veiled reproduction, and had the prototype out the door something like six months after the war’s end.  Immediately, Devlon slapped them with a cease-and-desist, then turned around and started selling Mantises en masse to the Alliance.  There was a very serious two year period where people fully expected sniper duels between Human and Turian soldiers using the same weapons.  Actually, double-dealing like that got Devlon into some hot water with the Hegemony, but they just folded their arms and told the Turian generals, “Either we sell to whoever we like, or we won’t sell it to you.”

Some argue that that attitude eventually lost Devlon their Turian military contract, but I’m inclined to think that the Mantis was on its way out of military service anyways.  The Mantis has always had issues with shields, and it was one of the things that put a lot of pressure on suit manufacturers.  It’s a very serious example of something suffering from its own success, ostensibly becoming the measure by which military hardsuits were judged: “Can it survive a Mantis?”  Devlon was no different, actively harming its own weapon’s prospects by improving their hardsuits’ shields and propagating them into the frontier regions that the Mantis liked to prowl.  It gradually phased out of military service, largely becoming a police and mercenary weapon with occasional use by special forces who liked to mod it to hell and back.  Even then, shields were becoming common enough that it was looking like it might be curtains for the Mantis. 

Then the Geth attacked and brought their thermal clip technology with them.

Maaan, it was like all of Devlon’s birthdays had come at once.  Suddenly a lot of guns were having to be modified at once to be capable of handling the new Geth clips.  Not that anyone was particularly slow on the draw, but Devlon pulled a very sneaky move by working with Alliance R&D basically before Eden Prime had stopped smoking.  Saren hadn’t even hit the Citadel by the time the first updated clip conversions were being offered to their customers.  Again, that kind of pissed off the Alliance, “loose lips sink ships” and all that.  Devlon didn’t care.  People weren’t just buying the conversion kits; they were buying Mantises hand over fist, giving the aging rifle a much-needed second-wind.

Some like to think that Devlon’s haste bit them in the rear.  The Mantis isn’t really equipped to make the most out of the increased capacity that the Geth clips could offer, and it’s starting to lag behind again.  However, I don’t really think Devlon cares all that much.  I’ve seen what it takes to get Mantises up to modern spec, and a lot about the gun has some very… arcane design elements.  Remember, Devlon’s not known for being a weapons manufacturer.  They make hardsuits for the Hegemony, the Alliance, Asari commandos, and adventurous Volus.  They make portable power plants to give fledgling colonies a head start.  Devlon wasn’t looking to become a dedicated arms manufacturer; they just happened to see a good opportunity and snatched it up when nobody was looking.

I don’t think anyone really blames them for it either.  Sherman here is a fascinating example of an ex-Hegemony, ex-Alliance rifle.  That’s not me stuttering--this sucker has proof marks sporting both the Turian bird of prey and the Alliance boomerang on it, and the Asari tower for that matter.  Most of the trial run rifles that Devlon provided had been earmarked for the Hegemony, but rather than wait for exclusive guns for the Alliance, they just redirected what had already been made.  I’ve seen pictures of Mantises with acceptance marks from nine different nations on them.  Thing is, I just always found that to be part of the Mantis’s charm.  Most Mantises have a long, twisting story to them. This is a weapon that everyone who knows guns is familiar with and has a strong opinion on.  Some people swear by it, saying that Devlon got it perfect the first time.  Some people think it’s a fossil made by some money grubbing Volus who don’t care enough to maintain the design.  Me?  I think the Mantis has helped a lot of police officers save lives and a lot of military scouts slip out of tough situations.  On a more personal level, Sherman here has been my best friend longer than most people.  He’s been with me literally across the galaxy; he’s got dust on him from more worlds than there are settled systems.  There are a lot of situations I’ve gotten into that, if I had anything else at the time, I don’t think I could’ve wriggled out of.  More than that, he taught me how to really maintain something.  He’s my old muscle car.  I love him.

But I think it’s time he was put to bed.  He just can’t keep up with modern shields and, even if he could, there are just better weapons out there.  Even Devlon seems to think so, instead focusing on peripherals for other people’s guns and their old standby of hardsuits.  The Mantis is a good gun.  I wish it was still a great one.

Chapter Text

Hey folks, thanks for stopping by Memorable Weapons.  I’m Leilani Palakiko, I’m here with my mother, retired N7 instructor extraordinaire and general-purpose badass, Sergeant Major Alana Palakiko, and you all knew the gun we were looking at today the instant that you opened this video.  This is the big one, and I expect the comments to be a firestorm once this goes live.

(Alana): “Baby, you threw a damn grenade into the pit with your bad take on the Shuriken, and considering who makes the Avenger…”

I’m staying on that hill and you won’t be removing me with anything short of a Mako, ma.  Anywhosies, this here is my personal M-8 Avenger, Poppy, and let’s just say that the Avenger has a very, very, very lively debate surrounding it in gun nerd circles.  For many people, this is the conversation.  There are people out there who will declare this thing the worst weapon that has ever existed, that the Alliance outright murdered its soldiers to save a buck by transitioning from the Lancer to this.

(Alana): “Seriously?”

You’re not as terminally online as I am.  Anyways, then there are others who will declare this the finest piece of equipment ever designed, that John Moses Browning Himself, hallowed be His name--

(Alana): “--Hallowed be His name.”

--was reincarnated and helped Elkoss Combine reforge the Lancer into the perfect assault rifle.  Suffice to say, both of those takes are pretty… excessive.  The Avenger is… well… the perfectly mediocre gun.  For a long time that was the extent of my opinion on the Avenger: it was a slightly crap replacement to crash land into the smoking crater that was the Lancer.  But, my mother came out with a hot take of her own.

(Alana): “I think the Avenger is one of the best guns in the galaxy.  Not on an individual basis of course, but rather as an institution.  The thing to understand with procurement chains is that you are never just buying ten thousand guns.  You’re buying ten thousand guns, plus parts, plus training, plus peripherals, plus web gear, plus the containers the gun is shipped in, plus the support personnel and their training.  As an individual gun, the Avenger is mediocre.  As an institution, it is perfect.”

Now, all that said, I… definitely disagree with my mother, but I understand how she came to think that.  After all, she lived through Lancergeddon.

(Alana): “Still think I should’ve gotten a medal for it…”

So, let’s back up our story to where the Avenger first comes from, and to understand that, we have to consider the Lancer.  Even before the M-7 Lancer first hit the scene, there was consideration being given to thermal clips.  We’ve been over the debate before, but to quickly recap: static heatsinks are good on a moment-to-moment basis but suffer logistically thanks to the stress they put on parts and particularly suffer in a vacuum, whereas thermal clips allow for better reliability at the expense of raw power output.

(Alana): “Uh, sweetheart…”

That’s at the time, mom.

(Alana): “Right, right.  Continue.”

So, all that in mind, Hahne-Kadar was quick on the draw about working on something to run in parallel with the Lancer.  That weapon, called the Glaive, wasn’t really intended to compete with the Lancer, more to be its companion, reserved for boarding actions and other duties in-vacuum.  Mother even got some hands-on time with the Glaive, if I remember correctly.

(Alana): “Right, I was one of the people that put it through its first serious live-fire testing.  Took it to a training facility on a barren moon against some training drones alongside some other N-series operatives.  While it actually looked nothing like the Lancer or later Avenger, it handled remarkably similarly.  It chugged along reasonably accurately, but I always found that it didn’t have enough firepower to do what I wanted it to.  In one of the heavier exercises I actually got overwhelmed and was ‘killed’ in the simulation.  Suffice to say, I was profoundly underwhelmed.  And maybe a little salty.  In hindsight I regret my words, but at the time I’d called it ‘like pissing on your enemy without the pleasure that comes with it’.”

Ouch.

(Alana): “You have to understand, the First Contact War was pretty fresh in the rear view mirror.  I’d fired a proto-Lancer at Turian shields and saw it do nothing.  The drones we used in those training programs had maybe a third the strength of what I saw in the war, and the Glaive was still struggling.”

To be fair, you weren’t the only one saying that.  Suffice to say, between the disappointing feedback and the costs incurred by the rest of the upgrade programs, the Glaive got shelved for a few years.  Not that Hahne-Kadar ever completely forgot it, but that usually turned into them fiddling with it in their off-time for a bit, showing it off once a year to the Alliance brass, and having it whack-a-moled back down again.  It just… didn’t do the job.

(Alana): “Then Lancers started exploding.”

We’re not there yet.  I’m sure a few had already blown up, but first we need to talk about Elkoss Combine.  See, the whole time that Hahne-Kadar had been struggling, Elkoss had been casually flirting with the idea of selling conversion kits to thermal clips for the Lancer, calling it the “Revenger.”  The M-7 wasn’t officially available on the civilian market (and never would be), so anyone who bought these would basically be admitting that they had a stolen Lancer.  While Elkoss Combine didn’t particularly care about legality, it did mean that selling their conversion kits would be kind of tricky.  From what I can tell, they seemed to think that eventually the Lancers would get surplused once the Alliance got wise to thermal clips, but since that wasn’t a high priority, it was a project they finished on the backburner and promptly shelved.

Now we get to Lancers exploding.  The funny thing is that Elkoss seemed to know about this design flaw in the Lancer right away, or at least anticipated it.  That was the entire reason they started the Revenger project.  But they bided their time, waiting for the right moment to strike.

(Alana): “Let me guess, the day Commander Hawthorne blew his arm off?”

You got it!  Commander Hawthorne, N-7 officer and one of the first humans eyeballed as a Spectre candidate, grabbed the wrong Lancer during an exercise and blew off his arm in front of his would-be Spectre mentor.  The day that the news published an article on that, someone at Elkoss woke up, smelled money on the horizon, and promptly hopped on the first ship to Earth to sell Revenger kits.  Suffice to say, Hahne-Kadar was appropriately annoyed that Elkoss had figured out in their spare time something that they’d been struggling with for over a decade.  Apparently the Alliance was willing to buy Revenger kits on-sight, but Hahne-Kadar threatened legal action if they didn’t get their fair shot.  They demanded that the Alliance go through the proper bureaucratic measures of arranging a competition and setting up contracts and all that nonsense.  According to reports at the time, the Elkoss Combine rep at the meeting just casually lit up a cig, took a long drag, and said, “I suppose we’ve got the time to take you seriously.”

Now, about a dozen companies tried to get their fingers into this pie and started looking to produce a new thermal clip assault rifle for the Alliance, but when the competition parameters came out, most of the companies had a little bit of a brown trouser moment.  See, the Alliance didn’t really have the money to spare on that many completely new guns.  They just couldn’t afford it.

(Alana): “Well they could, but they didn’t want to bother with rifles when they could be spending their money on new capital ships.  COUGH Normandy, Isaac Newton COUGH.”

Good point.  So, that in mind, they demanded that the new gun needed to be capable of being mounted within the shell of an M-7 Lancer.  The shell could be modified, but it still needed to use the original mountings, favor given to designs that used original parts from the Lancer.  Suffice to say, basically all of the companies involved in this competition bowed out immediately.  By competition day, the only ones still in the running were Hahne-Kadar, Rosenkov, Kassa, and of course Elkoss.  Now, despite having already done most of the work, Elkoss actually took this assignment seriously, using the spare time to iron out everything they could and refine their plans for production to a mirror shine.

We’ll come back to the Rosenkov rifle, the Adder, another day because it had a… strange afterlife.  Suffice to say for this story’s purposes, it did too well in places that didn’t matter for the competition, and was too expensive for its purpose.  Hahne-Kadar unsurprisingly wheeled out a modification of their old Glaive again.  Kassa, however, pulled a pretty dirty and definitely illegal trick which lost them the competition, but I think would’ve made for a much better gun.  And juicier drama.  In short, they hired a Turian designer from the armory responsible for the Phaeston to basically cram the Phaeston’s guts into a Lancer shell.  It got thrown out the moment the tester disassembled the thing and recognized what it was.  So, realistically, this was a fight between the Glaive and the now-renamed Avenger.

(Alana): “Ah… that was a fun day.  Not because it was what I’d call a close competition, but because everyone was annoyed.”

You were there?

(Alana): “Nah, I was looking after a certain little girl.  But several friends who were testing the guns kept calling me back-to-back-to-back.  Mostly to complain.  Basically, the generals and senators running the competition kept going, ‘Which do you like more?  The Avenger or the Glaive?’  ‘The Adder.’  ‘Okay, but between the Glaive and the Avenger…’?  ‘The Adder’.  Yeah, they reeeeaaallllly liked the Adder.”

Sounds about right.  By all accounts, nobody really left the competition feeling satisfied.  The government officials wanted the Avenger to win because it would be the cheapest, the generals wanted the Glaive to win basically because Elkoss wasn’t a human company, and the soldiers wanted the Adder to win because it was an actually decent weapon.  However, in the end, money rules all and the government really wanted to save some face after the Lancer fiasco had made the Alliance look like idiots on the galactic stage, so the Avenger came in to try to salvage some dignity.

(Alana): “If dignity was the goal, they should’ve kept their dicks out of it.”

Hey mom, control your language please.

(Alana): “I am.”

Anyways, so at that point Elkoss grabbed every Lancer in storage and took them to a newly-built factory to start converting them into Avengers.  They’d actually already finished building the factory before the competition was even decided, proclaiming, “Either we were making Avengers or heatsink mods for when Hahne-Kadar bungled it again.  Either way, we win.”  And boy did they make out like bandits.  Not only did they convert three million Lancers into Avengers. Not only did they use the money from that to make the largest small arms production facility in the galaxy--yes larger than the Nica Armory on Palavan.  But once they’d ripped the heatsinks out of those three million Lancers, they turned around and sold them as aftermarket heatsinks for other guns.

(Alana): “Waste not, want not I suppose.  And there were a lot of soldiers happy to buy those after their babies were ripped from their arms.”

Pretty much.  Of course, while Elkoss Combine made an absolute killing , the soldiers who got the weapons were… less than pleased.  Even those early gen Avengers, which are generally the best examples of the type, were dismissed as cheap knock-offs unworthy of a proper frontline soldier.  They were less accurate, less comfortable to shoot, less punchy, less customizable, and even a little less ergonomic thanks to the weirdly small trigger guard.  It was just lesser in every way they cared about.  At least, if you asked the guys using the things.

(Alana): “And here’s where we get to my ‘bad take.’  Leilei’s already gone over the Lancerpocalypse and how soldiers were buying themselves Lancer body pillows to cope with the grief, but something she failed to mention was how unit armorers and small arms repairmen handled it.  Simply put, they hated the Lancer.  Not at first of course, but once Lancers got customized, armorers’ ability to maintain these mangled rifles worsened.  Small arms repairmen couldn’t salvage the parts from a Lancer which had just melted into slag.  In fact, when the Avenger was introduced, the biggest problem with integrating it was that there weren’t enough armorers and repairmen, because they kept quitting as they were constantly berated for not being able to fix a melted puddle which had at some point had been a gun.  Yeah, the average soldier may have mourned the loss of their Lancers with full-on memorial services--that isn’t a joke by the way--but the guys who actually took care of the guns broke into their officers’ liquor cabinets to celebrate its death.  Also not a joke.

(Alana:) “Meanwhile the Avenger is a repairman’s wet dream.”

Keep it PG mom.

(Alana): “No promises.  Yes, the Avenger is everything that somebody who never fires the gun but has to maintain it could ever want.  Reliable?  Check, the Avenger actually really doesn’t like to jam or overheat or really misbehave in any serious way.  Some early ones had technical glitches where they thought that they were using Lancer heatsinks and would fire until they fused themselves to death, but that was patched out once somebody actually fired it enough to find the problem.  Parts availability?  Check, Elkoss made spare parts by the megaton; in fact they haven’t made spares in years because they underestimated the reliability of their own gun and made way too many.  Easy to disassemble?  Checkaroo, one of the things I taught my trainees to do was disassemble an Avenger blindfolded.  Easily replaced?  Aaaaand check, if one got broken or damaged, there were probably five lost somewhere behind the couch.”

So yeah, while soldiers were collectively losing their minds, the people looking at the raw numbers were actually much happier with the Avenger.  It didn’t melt in non-atmospheric conditions, it didn’t require a degree in engineering to take apart, and once new production started up they were incredibly cheap to make.  And, if you look strictly at the numbers, the Avenger doesn’t look like… toooo bad a gun.  Contrary to the claims of certain nerds, death tolls went down with the Avenger around.  Soldiers weren’t getting caught out and cornered without a weapon.  Sure, they sometimes ran out of ammo, but they weren’t getting stuck with a completely seized up gun.  It also encouraged more caution in soldiers; people weren’t taking stupid risks anymore because they didn’t have their customized BFL 9000.

That said, I still think you’re crazy for calling this a good gun, mom.  This thing is the most mediocre, underpowered piece of junk.  I can barely call this thing adequate with the extra juice that came from Geth clips.  I cannot begin to imagine what it was like beforehand.

(Alana): “Here’s a statistic for you, baby.  At the time I left the service, the Alliance had purchased enough Avengers to equip every soldier in the Alliance three times over.  Probably four if you count spare parts.  Granted, some were lost to attrition or theft or just plain old missing, but that’s still a huge number of guns.  Yeah, I agree, one Avenger is kinda underwhelming.  When the entire crew of a carrier can grab one right down to the cooks, that’s a hailstorm.  And Elkoss has ensured that there will never, ever be a shortage of these things.  They will literally sell them to whoever asks and have only continued ramping up production.  You’d said that if you got into a firefight, there was a 1-in-6 chance a Predator was involved?  Well I can guarantee somebody had an Avenger.  This is a gun that will only disappear with the heat death of the universe.”

I still disagree.  The Blasto movies are popular, that doesn’t make them good.

(Alana): “You don’t like Blasto?  I’m sorry… I’ve failed as a mother.”

Yeah yeah.  Point being that at the end of the day, a weapon is meant to be used, not just be numbers on a spreadsheet.  Yes, the Avenger has been good for the Alliance’s bottom line and yes in numbers they can put a dent in most targets, but so can Predator pistols.  My sole experience with the Avenger was a single fight where Pepper had gotten stolen and I was forced to use this silly thing.  It was the most harrowing, painful day of my life, in no small part because I couldn’t rely on Poppy here to do much of anything.  It was the only time I’ve ever gotten seriously hurt.  This weapon was terrible for the morale of the average soldier, because now they couldn’t reliably face almost anyone out there one-on-one, and even when they could this weapon still puts them in danger by forcing them to expose themselves for longer periods of time than almost any assault rifle out there.  The sole reason that fatalities have decreased since the Avenger’s introduction is because it forces Alliance soldiers to fight so cautiously that it renders them into an almost strictly defensive unit, not an offensive one.

(Alana): “It isn’t that awful of a weapon.”

That’s because you know what you’re doing.  The average soldier doesn’t have anywhere near the same level of training.  They might know how to use the weapon, but we’re not talking N-series operatives who know how to make it dance.  I think the biggest indictment is to consider who used the Lancer but didn’t use the Avenger: your own N7 operatives.

(Alana): “Hmm… alright.  I accept that point.  There’s literally no excuse for someone with access to most assault rifles to use something this mediocre, and the Alliance could have afforded to do a little bit better.  Though, that brings up an odd point.  If you don’t trust it, why do you still have one?”

Because… she has matching serial numbers.