Ogbunabali War Derrick

**Key Features** | »Shoulder-Mounted Horns»Diamond-Tipped darts»Sand (coarse, rough, and everywhere)»Heavy duty dust filters»Sand-Encrusted hull (impossible to remove)

*"I mean, why wouldn't I consider sand proper munition? It's the perfect weapon. It's rough, it's coarse, and it gets everywhere..."*

-  Bekṍe Essien, during an after combat report
## Tactical Analysis

* **Dust in the Wind:** The Ogbunabali is the most compact and nimble of the African League's War Derricks, considered more of a support unit than a proper main battle vehicle, it's nominally geared towards fighting infantry. For this purpose, the Ogbunabali is armed with one of the simplest yet most brutal weapons the League has devised yet. Diamond darts, tiny, multiple diamond darts blasted at the speed of sound through two horns (repurposed flamethrowers) equipped onto the mech shoulders, pointed at infantry.

* **Got something in your eye:** When push comes to shove however, the Ogbunabali can demonstrate the versatility that gave its fame on the battlefield, with the proper calibrating, these horns switch to blasting out diamond dust at vehicles, the damage they do is rather negligible, however, it's really good at blinding them and thinning out armour, meaning that it can effectively lower the armor and sight of enemy units, making them easier prey to your multiple siege options.

* **Sand Castles:** This versatility comes at a price however, and that is that the Ogbunabali is a rather fragile unit and not particularly good at actually finishing units, it is best used as area denial for infantry or a "softener" for enemy armor, but in a fair fight they are as good as dead.

* **Sands of Time:** With further, expensive, configurations the Ogbunabali can raise their horns high enough to target at aircraft. Only a few thin-skinned planes and helicopters can survive a barrage of diamond darts while thicker planes and airships would have their plating thinned for the real anti-air.

## Background

With the creation of synthetic diamonds in the middle of the largest war humanity had seen up to that point it didn’t take long until the idea of weaponizing them would come forward to the Panafrican military R&D. The idea of using it for armor was pretty much a given and implemented rather fast through the forces and vehicles deployed by this nascent coalition, but the idea of using them as a weapon would take a few more attempts until it could reach a viable stage.

The idea of utilizing it as munition came quickly enough, but the logistics of it proved more than difficult. The long and short of it is that diamonds are simply hard, hard, and expensive, but of course the war machine and having a virtual monopoly on the material meant that the latter wasn’t as much of an issue.

Early tests demonstrated that diamonds would completely obliterate the bore of any firearms they were fired out of, unless the weapon was made of a material as hard as the diamonds themselves, aka… more diamonds. Such an option was considered not only unfeasibly costly even for the League’s military expenditure, but even at that point it’d still make a mess of the rifling of the weapon, rendering the advantage of a harder penetrating round rather pointless, as velocity would be lost, the fact that diamonds are lighter than regular bullets not helping much in solving this dilemma.

Of course, that’s not the only way to accelerate a bullet out of a rifle, gauss was of course instantly discarded since diamonds are by nature very much not a magnetic material, while experiments with gyrojets and other kinds of rocket propulsion were time and time again sabotaged by what could only be suspected as S.P.Y.D.E.R agents.

It was at this point that the engineers went to the drawing board to reconsider why they were trying to make this weapon work in the first place. After all, rifling wasn’t a feature of firearms throughout all of their histories, and other, more exotic means to accelerate a bullet were but recent inventions. Moreover, why were they needed in the first place? Diamonds are hard, that’s their main feature, they should at least be able to make dents on enemy armor even at subpar velocities.

It was then that experiments were carried on through cruder means, hand cannons worked relatively fine, even smoothbore muskets, though then the problem was that they were painfully inefficient at firing an accurate blast, not to mention having a painfully slow rate of fire. The League had many more, much more efficient means to deliver a blow with materials that were orders of magnitude cheaper.

It was under this conclusion that the idea of a diamond-firing weapon was shelved for the remainder of the war.

War led to peace, which led them to further wars as the multiple African Independence movements became violent under the unifying vision that is an empowered African League which felt wronged by a Peace Accord that saw them ignored, that a young engineer found inspiration during a particularly harsh Harmattan season.

Just as the dust, the sand, and the wind could blow and shatter trunks of trees, would the diamonds destroy the oft-thought indestructible armor of Soviets and Allies alike. No need for fancy systems, no need for exotic weapons, just diamond dust, air blowers, and much, much blasting power.

Such a weapon would be extremely short-ranged of course.

But diamonds are hard. And hard diamonds make for hard armor.

As almost every experimental and top-of-the-line weapon the African continent could offer, a War Derrick was designed for this purpose. Named after the god of death itself, the elegant design was a rather compact and swift War Derrick meant to swiftly and nimbly approach the enemy before it could be shot out of battle, ironically leading to the armor of the vehicle being relatively low for the Western Division standards, as it was finally deemed that harder plating would hamper such an elegant design.

Despite its origins in Igbolands, the pilots and doctrine utilized by Ogbunabali drivers approach more those utilized by Forest Peoples nearly a century prior, with Asante men being their more eager pilots, who quickly pioneered the distraction tactics this weapon became so famous for in the violent conflicts that intermittently occur against the West African Defense Pact. The Ogbunabali shines on the rougher the terrain is and the more obstructed their less mobile enemies are, as many anvil pilots have unfortunately witnessed, and battlefield tests have shown that, while the War Derrick is certainly not material for wider deployment, there is a niche for it on the battlefield, and it’s good at covering it.

Simply put, the Ogbunabali is excellent at providing covering fire and thinning down slower enemies while the hailfire from the harder-hitting weapons (read: Anything else in the League’s arsenal) can be brought into position. The Ogbunabali is an excellent distractor, acting as a kind of light cavalry and scouting unit for the League.

Swift and harsh. Just like the Harmattan Winds. Just as their pilots. Just as the judgment of the League onto their enemies.