The Skoul is a powerful, albeit unorthodox, weapon operated by the Elysian infantry – a pseudo-intelligent subterranean high-explosive device. It is stored within a silver metallic orb, which is equipped with a basic targeting computer – the operator designates a location or opponent and sets it to the ground.

At this point the orb opens and a silver metallic insect/reptile like creature (around five inches long, one and a half inches wide) emerges and burrows into the ground at some speed using a series of specialised limbs. This speed is around seven miles per hour. The Skoul uses vibrations to traces down its target, or failing that relies upon either its preset guidance or sensor feed communicated by secure radio feed. As such it has considerable redundancy once engaged.

The Skoul looks much like a Scarab insect with an elongated, smooth body coming to a sharp point – the back is covered with rather angular scales. Underneath the body there are twelve legs, independent from another six legs at the front which serve the purpose of digging through earth. The ‘head’ of the insect is composed of large (comparatively) bug style eyes which house the infrared and visual sensors, with large digging/biting mandibles. It is around five inches long and an inch and a half wide. The appearance is somewhat deceiving given that the Skoul is made primarily from ceramics which makes it comparatively hard to detect.

Once approaching its target it either remains under the soil and explodes, emerges and explodes, emerges and climbs or emerges and burrows through its target – depending on how it is set (if set to make its own decision it has enough programming to largely decide what will be the most effective for a given circumstance). To this end it has a infrared, visual and audio sensor system.

The explosive core of the Skoul is a few micrograms of anti-matter, however given the several different possible targets and the massively different payloads which would be useful in each situation the Skoul comes with a variety of yields. The smallest of these is the anti-personal (more of an anti-unit weapon) variety which contains 0.001266 grams, equivalent to 52 tons of TNT. The largest, on the other hand, is the anti-armour variant which contains 0.0152 grams of anti-matter, equivalent to 625 tons of TNT. The payload of the Skoul is on the outside of the deployment orb.

The top range of the Skoul is five kilometres.

The explosive power and range of these weapons means that they are only used at a fairly considerable range, or if the Elysian infantry is behind rather heavy cover.

Zakalwe created this article on 2008/01/20 14:14; Wes approved it on 2008/01/22 07:26.