Needed to practice my Savage Worlds crunchy bit writeup skills a bit.
Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista – Google Docs
Forjas Taurus “Arpão” Deck-Mounted Mechanical-Action Ballista
The Brazilian firearms company Forjas Taurus has been working on these monster-killers since just after 1945, thanks to a series of what turned out be prescient dreams suffered by the board of directors. The Arpão is a fairly ingenious weapon: it’s basically a ship-mounted ballista that uses a small diesel motor to cock the swing arm that fires its forearm-thick bolts. Interestingly, the Arpão is also designed to be cocked by hand – well, by using a hydraulic jack. It’s obviously much slower to reload that way, but an experienced crew can still put out a decent rate of fire.
The first run is ready for field testing; all Taurus lacks is a boat full of crazy people who are willing to mount the Arpão on the prow of their ship and then go look for kraken. The company will provide both solid and (very experimental) explosive bolts: they’d like full reports on both, please. And, naturally, any biological samples that the research team might generate. There’s always a market for those.
Arpão Ballista: Range 25/50/100, Damage 3d10 (4d10 if explosive bolts are being used), ROF 1, Cost (Special), Weight (Ship-Mounted), Shots 6. If there is no power to the Arpão, Shots become 1 and it takes 3 rounds to reload.