Harkanian Great Cannon

Game Stats

• Range: 2200 yds. (solid/explosive) or 300 yds. (grape)
• Solid shot damage: 70+6d20 (impaling)
• Explosive shot damage: 35 (burn) + 5d20 (impaling)
• Grape shot damage: 15+4d20 (impaling)
• Primary blast radius (explosive only): 10 yds.
• Secondary blast radius (explosive only, impaling damage only): 30 yds.
• Grape shot frontage: 100 feet @ 300 yds., 66 feet @ 200 yds., 33 feet @ 100 yds.
• Rate of fire: 1/8 rounds (full crew), 1/6 rounds (full crew with clockwork sled)
• Skill: artillery
• Secondary skills: marksmanship (with Artillerist's Scale), focus

Quick Facts

Affiliation: Harkanian League

Type: Artillery

Primary Armament: Solid Shot

Secondary Armament: Explosive Shot, Grape Shot

Support Armament Options: ClockTech Blower, Artillerist's Scale, ClockTech Loader, Clockwork Sled

Description

The largest weapon in the Harkanian arsenal is the so-called "great cannon," the Pattern 1677 24-pound siege gun.  Firing a shot four times as heavy as the Pattern 1691 field gun, this awesome cannon is designed to batter down the walls of the strongest fortifications, opening the way for infantry assault.

Although other nations have occasionally produced larger guns, none have been able to match the destructive power or versatility of the Pattern 1677.  Great cannon are produced in ClockTech factories, their massive bronze barrels crafted according to tried-and-true specifications that maximize reliability, range, and power.  Unlike the siege guns of other nations, a smoothbore great cannon almost never bursts.  The use of factories means that each great cannon is identical, easing logistics and allowing the Harkanian army to field many more of these weapons than would otherwise be possible.  Their gunners know that the guns they use on campaign will behave just like the ones with which they trained.

At over two tons per gun, great cannon are usually towed to battle by teams of oxen.  Their gun carriages are sturdy wagon-like affairs with great iron-shod wheels to allow the crew to make adjustments to its aim, but these guns are essentially immobile once unlimbered.  Like their smaller cousins, great cannon are elevated and depressed by means of clockwork screws turned with cranks.

Army Role

Whereas siege mortars are used to fire over fortress walls to attack the defenders within, great cannon are used to assault the fortifications themselves.  They are ordinarily deployed in groups of four to keep up a steady barrage (such a group of cannon is called a "battery," so named for its battering effect on enemy fortifications).  A battery of great cannon can quickly reduce stone or brick-and-mortar fortifications to rubble using solid shot aimed at the base of a wall or tower.  Such is the destructive power of a great cannon that a battery of such weapons can cause entire garrisons to surrender when the guns are finally in a position to fire.  Conventional fortifications are simply targets to the Pattern 1677, and even walls that have been sloped to deflect cannon shot can brought down with time - which, given the great cannon's enormous range, is almost always on its side.

Defensively, the Pattern 1677 is a formidable weapon as well.  Most large Harkanian cities and all strategic military sites have at least one battery of great cannon to defend their walls.  Whether wheeled into position (also called "battery") on field carriages or mounted on great stone-and-clockwork turrets atop city walls, great cannon allow a defending Harkanian force to bring a besieging army under fire long before it can hope to reply with its own artillery.  In a defensive role, one of the great cannon's most important jobs is to smash the enemy's siege engines before they can be brought into play.

Field armies generally do not travel with great cannon, as the weapons are heavy and ponderous and their ammunition equally so.  Although the effect of a great cannon bombarding enemy troops over a mile away or mowing down whole companies from beyond bowshot is truly an awesome spectacle, an army that travels with great cannon is easily outmaneuvered.  Most generals prefer to use the smaller six-pounder cannon for their field artillery and retain the initiative, bringing up great cannon in a specialized siege train when a fixed position such as a city or castle must be assaulted.

Though over twice the weight of a standard Harkanian cannon, great cannon are loaded and fired in exactly the same way as their smaller cousins.  Nevertheless they generally have only about half the rate of fire.  This is not because the process of loading and firing is any more complicated, but simply because the pieces involved are heavier.  Gunners more slower weighed down with heavier powder bags and heavier shot.  Like all cannon, the great cannon recoils backwards when it fires and must be pushed forward back into battery by hand.  This process too is slower than with a standard six-pounder, simply because the great cannon is a much heavier object to move.

Equipment

Like standard Harkanian cannon, great cannon ordinarily fire three different types of shot.  Solid shot is a twenty four-pound cast iron sphere.  It is the most devastating shot against single targets, and the ammunition of choice for destroying large solid objects such as enemy catapults, walls, and gates.  Solid shot is, of course, more than powerful enough to obliterate even the most heavily armored knight, and even a bouncing or rolling twenty-four pound shot carries enough kinetic energy to kill a man.  Explosive shot is essentially a large fragmentation grenade with a timed fuse.  It does not strike a single target with the same awesome force as solid shot, but the explosion can kill multiple soldiers or set structures on fire.  Explosive shot is the ammunition of choice against troops at long range and flammable targets, such as enemy siege towers, although it is also the most expensive.

Grape shot for a great cannon consists of twenty iron balls stacked between two plates (somewhat resembling a cluster of grapes), which produces a blunderbuss-like scattergun effect when fired.  Grape shot is the ammunition of choice against troops at close range.  While explosive shot theoretically has a larger blast radius, the irregular fragmentation of the iron casing means that an explosive shell is only guaranteed to hit troops within about 10 yards, and a single body is usually enough to stop a fragment.  The length of front that constitutes a "guaranteed hit" for grape shot is as large or larger than an explosive shell's primary blast or "kill" radius, and a single "grape" may travel through one body to strike another before expending all of its energy.

Great cannon are normally equipped with a mix of all three types of ammunition, with a preponderance of solid and explosive shot for obvious reasons given these cannon's usual targets.  Four other upgrades are not issued with all great cannon.  The first of these is the Artillerist's Scale, a bronze scale with range markings and a slider.  An Artillerist's Scale is essentially a gunsight for a cannon.  It is physically a quite simple device, although a great deal of Harkanian ballistics science has gone into its creation.  Use of an Artillerist's Scale allows a gunner to use his marksmanship skill when firing a great cannon in addition to his artillery skill (subject to a focus check once combat has begun, as normal).

The second upgrade that may be issued with a great cannon is the ClockTech blower.  A ClockTech blower is literally a powerful ClockTech fan that is set on the ground near the muzzle of a cannon.  Like all black powder weapons, Harkanian great cannon produce great clouds of smoke when they fire.  After only two shots in quick succession it can be all but impossible to see the enemy on a still day.  While cannon can still function under such conditions (particularly when firing on stationary objects such as walls), their efficiency is greatly improved with a simple ClockTech blower to clear the smoke.  ClockTech blowers are valued most by great cannon crews assigned to defend an important site.  When bombarding a wall, the gunners can always wait for the smoke to clear naturally - the enemy's walls, after all, are not going anywhere.  When defending, however, rate of fire is a valuable asset.

The third upgrade that may be issued with a great cannon is the so-called "clockwork sled."  A clockwork sled replaces the bed of the gun carriage (the part on which the cannon tube actually rests) with a movable spring-loaded bed.  The powerful springs of a clockwork sled allow the gun tube to travel backwards against the pressure of the springs when fired, thus absorbing some of the recoil and reducing the distance the gun to rolls backwards with each shot.  Because the gun does not roll backwards as far when fired, it does not have to be rolled forward as far to fire again.  A clockwork sled thus decreases the minimum time between shots.  These upgrades can be somewhat finicky, so they are not issued with all great cannon attached to siege trains lest the sleds break.  A great cannon with a broken clockwork sled is dangerous to fire, as the recoil may send high-powered springs shooting through the air or collapse the modified gun carriage altogether.  Clockwork sleds are a regular feature on defensive great cannon, which are generally stationed near plenty of spare parts and technicians.

Rifled Great Cannon

The fourth upgrade available to great cannon is only useful on rifled models, a distinct subspecies rather than a simple upgrade to the familiar bronze smoothbore pattern.  A rifled bronze barrel quickly wears out, because bronze is soft enough that it is worn away by shot in tight contact with the barrel.  Instead, rifled Harkanian great cannon are rifled in the factory and made from iron, a difficult process that makes rifled cannon several times more expensive than ordinary bronze cannon.  Iron is strong enough to withstand the stresses of shot in tight contact with the barrel, and thus take advantage of the extra range and accuracy of rifling.

Of course, loading a rifled great cannon in the normal way would take forever - in fact, it would be impossible with only hand tools.  Harkanian ClockTech technology has overcome this limitation with the ClockTech loader.  A ClockTech loader is essentially a ClockTech ramrod that fits over the muzzle of the cannon.  When the shot is ready to be loaded the ClockTech loader is fitted over the muzzle and activated, ramming the shot down the rifled barrel with great force and a precise twist.  Once the shot has been loaded the loader is removed and wound again.  Use of a ClockTech loader not only allows Harkania to use rifled cannon, it allows them to be loaded as quickly as their smoothbore counterparts.

There are two downsides to using rifled cannon.  The first is that rifled cannon cannot fire grape shot (the small balls strip the rifling).  This makes rifled cannon a strictly long range weapon, which is usually a small sacrifice for a great cannon.  The second limitation is more serious.  Even Harkanian ClockTech factories cannot produce cannon barrels from a solid block of iron as they can with bronze.  This means that rifled cannon are prone to bursting.  Rifled great cannon are reinforced with great bands of wrought iron, but even such reinforcement does not totally guarantee that the gun will not explode from the stresses of repeated firings or heavy powder charges.  Needless to say, rifled great cannon produce a spectacular explosion when they burst.  The weapons are expensive enough that they are rarely rifled.  The increased range and accuracy is rarely worth the risk that a critical part of a city's defenses will destroy itself, or that the army will be forced to assault the enemy's walls and towers intact rather than striding over their rubble.

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