Harkanian Volley Gun

Game Stats

• Range: 400 yds. (solid) or 100 yds. (grape)
• Solid shot damage: 10+2d20 (impaling)
• Grape shot damage: 2d30 (impaling)
• Rate of fire: up to 3/1 rounds
• Reload time: 3 rounds per barrel
• Skill: artillery
• Secondary skills: marksmanship (with Artillerist's Scale), focus

Quick Facts

Affiliation: Harkanian League

Type: Artillery

Primary Armament: Solid Shot

Secondary Armament: Grape Shot

Support Armament Options: ClockTech Blower, Artillerist's Scale, ClockTech CrankLock

Description

The volley gun is an artillery piece unique to the Harkanian League.  It consists of nine cannon barrels firing one pound balls arranged in a triangle turned by a central clockwork crank.  Each barrel has its own powder pan, cover, and steel, while three flints are mounted at the rear of the weapon.  The flints can be cocked and fired at once or independently, allowing the gunner to fire his barrels in sequence or three simultaneously.  When all three barrels have been discharged the gunner cranks the next three into position.  This allows the weapon to fire up to nine times before it must be reloaded.  The gunner stands on a platform behind the rotating assembly of gun tubes, allowing him to sight directly down the barrels at his target in close-range shooting.  The gunner's platform and the barrel assembly are elevated and traversed by means of clockwork crank mechanisms and the same hardy but sensitive screw system used on Harkanian cannon.  A volley gun can traverse to cover about a 45-degree arc ahead of it before the high wheels of the gun carriage prevent it traversing any further.

Volley gun barrels are quite small by cannon standards, firing a ball that weighs only one pound (still almost twenty times as heavy as an arquebus ball).  They therefore produce relatively little recoil, especially as the gun itself is quite heavy.  In addition to the weight of the gun tubes, the gun carriage of a volley gun is substantial.  The top "deck" of gun barrels is almost eight feet off the ground, to allow the gun safely to shoot over the heads of friendly infantry.  However, the recoil from three barrels discharging at once is still enough to move the gun backwards and potentially crush a crewman or cause the gunner to lose his balance.  To prevent this, the gun is spiked into the ground by the crew and the entire barrel assembly is mounted on a bed of rails with heavy duty springs to absorb the recoil.  The result, at least when the volley gun is well maintained, is an exceptionally stable firing platform.

Army Role

Unlike Harkanian cannon which break up the enemy with long-range fire and blundercogs devastate the enemy as they close, volley guns are essentially defensive.  Like cannon, they are immobile.  Unlike cannon, they do not have the range to attack an enemy as the army advances.  Moreover, although they can be quite deadly, a volley gun is actually less destructive than a six-pounder cannon in terms of the number of troops it can kill in a given period of time at a given range.  Finally, cannon are considerably easier to manufacture and maintain than the complicated mass of springs, gears, and cogs necessary to make a functional volley gun.

Volley guns do not function well on their own.  A continuous stream of fire from a volley gun does not have the same psychological air of invincibility as the meatgrinder of an arquebusier/pikemen formation or a blast of grape from a cannon that turns a dozen men into bloody hash.  However, a volley gun can make either of these units significantly deadlier.  Volley guns are tall eneough to be positioned right behind a line of infantry, firing over their heads into the ranks of the enemy.  At very short ranges this height can give the volley gun an extra advantage - it can threaten troops in the rear ranks, who are normally a bulwark of morale because they feel safer.  Cannon, with their smaller gun carriages, cannot fire over their own infantry in this way.

The second major use for a volley gun is to support a Harkanian cannon by providing close-range covering fire.  A blast of grape is often enough to stop even a concerted charge, but for a cannon that only fires a dozen balls to stop a hundred or more charging troops it must rely on the psychological effect created by the horrific wounds grape shot inflicts.  The front ranks, who are the ones who must lead the charge, are also brought face to face with the fact that the next blast might get them.  Sometimes, however, the cooler heads among the surviving troops prevail, and realize that once a cannon has fired it is helpless for about thirty seconds.  In this situation a volley gun can assist the cannon crew by keeping up a constant barrage of fire as the cannon reloads.  Although the volley gun's volleys are individually less devastating than a cannon's, they keep up the psychological pressure on enemy troops by inflicting continuous casualties until the cannon is readly to discharge another deadly load of grape.  Inventories of volley guns and other artillery permitting, Harkanian doctrine prefers for each battalion of infantry to be accompanied either by a volley gun or cannon, so that each regiment of 1,000 men is accompanied by a cannon, a volley gun, and a blundercog, the entire force forming a mutually supporting unit with a devastating blend of long-range, medium-range, and short-range firepower.

Harkanian volley guns are towed to the battlefield by teams of horses or mules (or rarely, oxen), usually with two animals to a gun.  Once they have reached their designated firing position the gun carriage is unhitched ("unlimbered") from the animals, and the gunners make final adjustments to its position by hand.  The gun is then anchored to the ground with iron spikes, and the crew unloads spare decks of barrels and ammunition from the accompanying ammunition wagon.  The chief gunner takes his position on the firing platform while the other five men stand by.  In combat, the gunner will fire a deck of barrels, then crank the tube assembly counter-clockwise so the expended deck rotates to the right.  Two gunners will detach the expended deck and carry it behind the gun to a slanted wooden rack, where a third gunner is standing by to act as a dedicated loader.  The rack contains powder bags, shot, and wadding, and allows each man to quickly search, sponge, and load one barrel.  Meanwhile, the final two gunners take up their place to the right of the gun to dismount the next expended deck of barrels.  Once the first deck has been properly loaded, it is carried by two gunners to the left of the gun and fitted to the waiting empty brackets.  The whole process demands great physical strength to keep up at a high rate, but a strong and well drilled Harkanian gun crew using this procedure can keep up an almost continuous barrage of fire as long as their ammunition holds.  Alternatively one or two of the gun crew may use its personal weapons to provide covering fire for the rest, accepting a slower rate of fire.  If the crew has been so depleted that it cannot effectively execute the dismount-and-load drill, the barrels may be reloaded in place, although the height of the tube assembly makes this a difficult process.

Equipment

Harkanian volley guns can fire solid shot and "grape shot," which less resembles the man-eating blast of a cannon and more resembles the discharge of an oversized blunderbuss.  Their cannon balls are too small to fire effective explosive shot.  Grape shot is the preferred load once the enemy is in range, but volley gun crews do not hesitate to use solid shot at longer ranges.  Volley guns are normally equipped with both types of ammunition in roughly equal measure even though solid shot has four times the range of grape, since the expectation is that the gun's rate of fire will increase once the enemy is in range of the deadlier grape shot.

Three other upgrades can be issued to a volley gun.  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 the volley gun.  It is physically a quite simple device, although a great deal of Harkanian ballistics science has gone into its creation.  Because of this, an Artillerist's Scale intended for use with a volley gun cannot be used with a cannon (which has a different ballistic profile) and vice versa.  Use of an Artillerist's Scale allows a gunner to use his marksmanship skill when firing a volley gun 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 Harkanian volley gun is the ClockTech blower.  A ClockTech blower is literally a powerful ClockTech fan that is set on the ground near the muzzles of the gun.  Like all black powder weapons, Harkanian volley guns produce great clouds of smoke when they fire.  The discharge of a single deck all at once can all but obscure the enemy entirely on a still day.  While volley guns can still function under such conditions (armies move slowly, so the point of aim changes slowly as well), their efficiency is greatly improved with a simple ClockTech blower to clear the smoke.

The third upgrade available to Harkanian volley guns is the ClockTech CrankLock.  The CrankLock is not a single piece of equipment but a handful of small ClockTech engines that can be added to a volley gun's clockwork mechanisms.  When the CrankLock is activated, it automatically fires and rotates the barrels of the gun at a set speed.  Levers allow the gunner to select a slow rotation (calculated to allow time for the gun crew to perform its reloading drill) or a fast rotation (for the maximum rate of fire), as well as discharging all three barrels in a deck at once or discharging each in sequence before rotating to a new deck.  The CrankLock leaves the gunner free to focus on aiming the gun, since he does not have to worry about cranking a new deck of barrels into position or triggering the firing mechanisms.  Use of a CrankLock adds +2 to a gunner's focus check.

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