Toulmore D2-A Heavy Shotgun And Crew

D2-A Heavy Shotgun and Toulmore Crew!

D2-A Heavy Shotgun

The Tokish Model 6 heavy semi-automatic shotgun was a standard close-range infantry support gun used in many early Crusader brigades. Although particularly strong at breaking up local counter-attacks, it was in many ways ill-suited as a company support weapon. It was extremely heavy, slow-firing, hard to reload, and logistically complicated to support, especially compared to other support weapons in the Crusader arsenal. Consequently, by 1774 (CY13), most of these were relegated to second-line and garrison units in fixed defensive positions. Toulmorese infantry units were as reluctant to give up their heavy shotguns as their light mortars, and so the Toulmorese defense ministry looked for a weapon that could provide much the same role, but weighed less and put less of a strain on logistical support (as well as the poor rhyflers who would lug it around.)

Yawdryl Demshun Whal, an armorer in the 484th Toulmorese Supply Regiment submitted the winning proposal, a cunning and unexpected design. Demshun’s design cribbed the feed mechanism from the H-11a light machinegun and married it to a downsized version of the Crymuster’s own CH-99 “Uflaen” Support Gun’s trigger mechanism and frame. Demshun’s first design was hand-fabricated at the 484th’s machine shops, in between his work repairing Pyngos. The clever Yawdryl circulated instructions for how to cut down captured Uflaens and use burnt-out H-11a barrels, and the design quickly popped up and down along the lines on Toulmore’s borders. Now produced both as a kit to retrofit H-11as, and as a new weapon, the D2-A is quickly spreading through the Toulmorese support weapon companies. It uses the same rounds as both the Gryfkis and Gorga, fed on a cloth belt.
The weapon is also affectionately known as a “weepweep”, after the diminutive frogs whose piercing call heralds the onset of spring, in contrast to the throatier, toad-like burp of the Uflaen.