Ammunition

This is the page for ammunition of all kinds used by ranged weapons such as firearms.

## Propellants and Explosives

### Black Powder

The oldest known chemical explosive, the black powder is a low explosive made with saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur and used as the only explosive until the 19th century by most nations. Flawed by its smoke, tendency to foul the weapon's barrel, and low efficiency, it was replaced by White Powder.

### White Powder

Existing first as Guncotton in 1847, the White Powder was officially invented by Paul Veille by mixing insoluble nitrocellulose with ether gelatinized soluble nitrocellulose and paraffin. With numerous researches and improvements, the White Powder knows much variety and serves as the contemporary propellant replacing Black Powder by being thrice as effective as it.

### Grey Powder

Invented by the Kurokuin Clan in the 18th century, the Grey Powder is a low explosive propellant inspired by Black Powder. With Arts and the research of making Black Powder better since it was discovered, the Kurokuin have invented an aberrant yet extremely useful and powerful gunpowder. Thanks to Arts, it is endlessly produced and used by the Kurokuin members.

Its extremely low brisance, inferior to even smokeless powder, thus totally ineffective at shattering but extremely effective at moving, while directing its energy towards weak surfaces rather than harder ones. Causing little recoil, no fouling and being multiple times more powerful and effective than the best White Powder, it can fulfills most of its purposes at the expense of emitting as much smoke as black powder. Its strict role of low explosive with nearly no brisance makes it unsuitable for bombs and grenades.

#### Steel Grey Powder

Created by the Kurokuin' Teihō branch, it is the opposite of the standard Grey powder, being a high explosive with adjustable brisance. It serves most explosive purposes usual grey powder can't by being highly destructive but unsuitable for weapons, while emitting as much smoke. Instead of a propellant, it serves as a blaster.

#### Silver Grey Powder

The Silver Grey powder is a refinement of standard grey powder by Ryōki Gatoringu Kurokuin based on her fighting spirit ammo, producing slightly more smoke which last less long, and thrice as powerful and efficient. It has the purpose of a better propellant than standard grey powder with lessened, though harder to make.

## Small Arms

### Standard

#### Star Brass Ammo

Made of Star Brass and existing in multiple calibers, these bullets are used by the weapons of the Sapphire Grande Armée. They are inspired by regular ammunition, they have an excellent penetration that even bulletproof things can't block them, and their light weight and profile make them suitable for long ranges.

However, they are made of a "safe" metal, they don't fragment and split inside the target nor poison it.

They exist also as round pellets for the Armée's blunderbuss and for the grapeshot shells, and are stored in magazines for the Hokkaido Windbüchse.

## Artillery

#### Star Brass Shells

Similar to the small arm version, these are the Shells used by the Grande Armée's Artillery pieces. They exist in two kinds each divided in 3 common types.

The kinds include the regular shells with conical ends, the cylindrical grapeshot shells, and the spherical howitzer-mortal shells. The three types are fullmetal shells, full shells which damage just by their impact; explosive shells filled with grey powder and a fuse to explode on impact; and finally the grapeshot shell, which Howitzer-Mortar version is called Shrapnel, filled with some grey powder and amounts of round bullets that are shot in all directions when shot (Cannon) or on impact (Howitzer-Mortar).

There also is the chained balls shell exclusive for the Navy's cannons, made to break the enemy ships' masts.

#### Yamanashi Congreve Rocket

The Yamanashi Congreve Rocket is a primitive-looking rocket made of a sheet metal case with a long wooden stick stuck to its side. Working like a firework rocket, the Congreve Rocket is put on a launcher, a launching frame, and ignited with a match to fly in the sky for a certain distance before falling back to the ground and explode nearby the opponents.

Even if it seems primitive as a military rocket, it's curved trajectory in the sky and explosion in the air near the ground as well as the possibility to fire several rockets at once makes it an alternative for the howitzer to shell a whole place, possibly scaring enemy troops and causing their retreat with impressive explosions . Different diameters and lengths of rocket casing exist depending on the flying distance desired, however the larger and longer the casing is the longer the launching frame and the stick stuck to the casing have to be.

Usually, to make the rocket an effective dangerous weapon as a well as an effective psychological weapon, the Congreve Rockets were given longer casings and Star Brass bullets put inside the casing to make the head a shrapnel charge that will propel bullets everywhere around it when exploding, effectively devastating the enemy ranks and their morale alike.

## Anti-Material projectiles

Firearm bullets and ammunition are considered Anti-material projectiles when their caliber is between 12 and 40mm, and they possess pointy and hard penetrators. Made to penetrate armors and possibly structures, mostly with the largest calibers, they use mostly hard steel rather than lead, thus serving as heavy duty ammunition causing unblockable but "safe" wounds.

The guns required to shoot them are often larger and thus heavier than ordinary weapons, and from 20mm the gun is considered a cannon. They usually cannot really be considered precision weapons due to the violence of the recoil.

#### .50 BMG (12.7\*99mm)

Classic anti-materiel bullet with fairly high penetration, used in Heavy Machine Guns and adapted precision rifles.

#### 20mm

Last and largest small arm caliber for bullets with high penetration, the only portable weapon using it is a large adapted rifle, other weapons being fixed light artillery.

#### HEAT

High Explosive Anti-Tank, or Shaped Charge, are a projectile design using a hopper-shaped charge with the aim to focus the explosive's energy to a point of the impact area, eventually piercing it though blocked by reactive armor. They exist in a Tandem version where two warheads are aligned one after the other to counter reactive armor with the use of a small first warhead triggering and weakening the armor while the larger second finishes it.

They can exist as shells or rockets and tend to be countered invariably by cage armor.

#### HESH

High Explosive Squash Head, or High Explosive Plastic, are another projectile design using plastic explosives which conform on a target's surface before exploding, transferring explosive energy to the target and causing damage through spalling. In this process, the opposite side of the surface is turned into projectiles without the armor being pierced.

#### APDS / SLAP

Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot are kinetic energy penetrating projectiles using tungsten sub-caliber rounds with sabots to propel them with the weapon caliber's worth of propellant, giving the round a higher velocity and allowing it to be twice as effective in piercing armors. Tthe Saboted Light Armor Penetrator are its small arm version, while fin-stabilized version (APFSDS) serve as the more contemporary version for smoothbore artillery.

## Special

### Fighting Spirit

Ryōki's exclusive ammunition, replacing her Grey Powder generation Art after her death and revival. It is customized ammunition or explosives directly properly created and loaded into her weapons, permitted by the Art which became part of her. Their propellant is similar to Silver Grey powder yet more powerful, and explosives can be adjusted between standard Grey powder-like or Steel Grey powder-like explosive behaviors.

Unlike standard ammunition, they are created by and linked to Ryōki's soul and E.G.O, hence how she can customize their properties and have them created and loaded when wanted. This is how she always has the ammo she needs and can play with her weapons' fire rates.