Antler: Overview

The standard issue sidearm for legionnaires everywhere, a revolver type handgun that fires PTT bullets from a charged shell cylinder that holds six shots total. While not recommended, it is possible to rapidly fire an Antler using the classic "fanning" method on the hammer.

Starting the handgun section off with the Antler seems right, cause I get to immediately tackle the incoming barrage of messages about the Colton Arms N1922.

Oh yes, that handgun, the choice hip jewelry of 50yr old gun shop owners the world over. Now why on earth did I not choose the most renowned handgun ever, the subject of that classic phrase “Back to back global war champion!” that’s used as some kind of argument anytime a debate happens. Was the N1922 used in two global wars, including the Gargoth War? Ayup.
Does that mean it’s what I’m gonna issue to our legionnaires? Absolutely not.

That’s because I think the N1922 just flat out sucks. _{Preach it sister. – Azan}
First of all I hate the slide, that shit has to travel the length of an airport runway to reach the back. If you get an underpowered round, or the battleship sized slide doesn’t feel like cooperating that day, you get stuck manually racking it.
Second, the magazine overfeeds if you put a little too much force behind it. You know what happens when you’re in a combat situation? You dump adrenaline into your body, and you put way too much force behind everything. One magazine recklessly jammed in later, and your handgun stops shooting.
Third, I hate safeties that hinge on holding the gun “correctly”, meaning if you gotta hold the gun at an awkward angle to take out a threat, you’re shit out of luck. A safety should be a toggle that’s either distinctly enabled, or distinctly disabled.

So no, fuck a N1922.

When I was first joining GDS in the early kill teams, we got handed a good ol’ KN 209 chambered in 10mm. Came with double stack mags, toggle safety like any sane weapon, rails for IR lasers or whatever, held a consistent zero, could punch through armor with the right ammo, and CONSISTENTLY STOVEPIPED ON EVERY GODDAMN MISSION. I have spent hundreds of hours taking KN 209s apart, modifying the slide, modifying the springs, testing lubricant, testing out different rounds with higher or lower grain counts, did jack shit all. Acris took a stab at it and said it was unsalvageable due to defects in the gun’s entire construction.
Somehow, KN had managed to flawlessly engineer the gun to consistently stovepipe after three shots. We scrapped up the cash for them to send one of their smiths over to our first office in Rivicksdale to check them out and sure as shit, every single one of them were part of a bad batch. Iza said fine, take them back and we’ll take company credit to order new ones with.
KN corporate said nah, no credit, send them back and we’ll give you a 10% discount on your order of new ones.

Iza is always angry.
But that day, Iza was fucking livid. _{The cost of your original handguns was already obscene. If we’d made that additional purchase like they wanted, it would have required everyone to forfeit their pay for two months and would have forced us to lapse on our office space rent. So yes, I was particularly torqued that day. – Iza}
I had the feeling my commander was gonna get orders for our team to go kill KN’s executives with their own product, but it never happened.

A few of us said fuck it and dropped cash on our own replacements. For myself, I went with a Yahanda Arms Viper in .357, or 9mm if you wanna be pedantic. Got a lot of jabs for rocking a six-shot revolver over an 18 round mag semi-auto, but y’know what a revolver doesn’t do?
It doesn’t misfeed, it doesn’t have some stupid grip safety, it doesn’t have a stupidly long slide, and that shit doesn’t stovepipe.
I know what a revolver is gonna do: it’s gonna rotate the cylinder into position, it’s going to drop the hammer, and the round is gonna fire. It will do that consistently, reliably, six times in a row without issue unless the trigger snaps, the bullet is a dud, or someone blocks the hammer with their finger.

Once I failed my way into my current position I immediately set on the war path towards ensuring every single legionnaire was given a standard issue revolver, to be kept on their hip at all times.
The Frostpick was my first demand of Acris, and the Antler was my second.

I said we needed a six-shot revolver style handgun, double action, PTT ammo, chambered in .357 and kept as obscenely simplistic as possible. End result was Acris creating a charged shell shaped like a revolver’s cylinder, modifying it to fire upon being struck by the gun’s hammer, then shoving all of that into a wood and metal frame that Fabrication spat out in like three days.
Seconds after picking up the first Antler prototype I said the trigger sucked ass and needed to be redone, and that nearly earned me a bullet between the eyes, but I do so love putting my life on the line for all y’all’s benefit.

Once we had a workable prototype, I took over testing from there and ran out into the woods for a week or so to see how it fared. PTT rounds can obviously take out small woodland animals, so I had food the entire time (sometimes pre-cooked before I could put the flames out), but I wanted to see how it’d do after a few days of seriously rough land nav. _{“Rough land nav” is an interesting interpretation of how you treat equipment. – Ye-Jun}
Held up pretty well, minus a few points:

· The gun would misfire/not fire whatsoever if water, mist, dirt, or goddamn anythinggot between the hammer and the plate it struck to discharge a shot from the charged shell.

· The hammer would do this fun thing where it’d hit the midpoint during firing and come to a complete stop. Like halfway to striking the plate it’d shit out, nada, nothing.

· If you dropped the gun down a cliff face the impacts would jam the hammer open and you’d have to take the whole gun apart to reseat a few pins

Altogether easy enough issues to fix I think.
After the weapons lab (Acris and like four other people at the time) got it all sorted, we had our first and so far, only version of the Antler.
_{Every single issue is with the hammer and it’s a plasmatic weapon, why the fuck does it need a hammer? There’s no primer to strike. – Azan
Because she would have a shitfit every time I pointed that out and insisted it was absolutely necessary to have it as an essential part of the gun’s operation. – Dr. Baddarick}

Then I pushed for severe training on it to make full use of it, since a lot of people aren’t used to six shooters, much less handguns in general. If every legionnaire was gonna be an expert marksman with the Frostpick, then every legionnaire was gonna be an expert with the Antler too. To that end we had everyone active go through a training course with instructors to get them up to speed, and then any new recruits in conditioning training would be going through Antler training on top of their Frostpick training.
This is where I found that my decision to institute that training was validated as we found 70% of GDS at the time couldn’t hit diddly dick with a handgun if it was more than two meters away.

Yet somehow Hansuke immediately qualified as expert before going right back to his desk, which confused the hell out of me as to why our principle paper pusher was outdoing former spec ops guys. Did it one handed too, don’t know what the fuck is going on there. _{Go ask him, he wasn’t always an administrator. – Ye-Jun}

When we got the training down pat, I then pushed my luck and made it mandatory for every single legionnaire to have a sidearm on them at all times. I see absolutely zero reason to have a person train their ass off with a tool, then lock that tool up 99% of the time.
If a legionnaire needs a gun to respond to a situation, then they should be able to immediately respond to that situation on the spot instead of running away, heading across the base, going to the armory and filling out paperwork to get their piece.

Everyone carries, and when shit hits the fan, everyone starts blasting.

Since those first few days we’ve developed new handguns for our more specialized situations, but the Antler is still the standard issue sidearm due to the reliability, lethality, and ease of field repair.
What’s even more fun is that simplicity makes it capable of using normal PTT rounds, hollow points, explosive rounds, damn near any .357 plasmatic ammo variant we’ve got.
Downsides of course are the limited ammo count, and you gotta carry your PTT rounds in speed loaders which adds more weight, but eh, I’d say that’s worthwhile.

Over all the years of service, not once have I heard of an Antler failing in the middle of a combat situation and that’s exactly why I’m such a massive bitch about getting it on everyone’s hip.

-FrW Nahli Lok-Riveria