Sea of Legends
Unknown Location
While a good bit of the Sea of Legends was mostly charted, besides the area that was the Blood Sea, there were still plenty of places and remote locations that weren't on any charts because of a few different factors with sheer remoteness from the common routes being the primary reason. However, this could be used to one's benefit if they knew where even one of these places were, with one example being Ironclad's Rest; as being the Outcast's primary Base it's remote location made it the perfect place of a fall-back base despite the fact that everyone knew of the place, but not it's exact location.
The Outcast's also had a second, and just as important, location known as the "Cog Archipelago", named for it's four large islands resembling a cog when seen from above. Unlike Ironclad's Rest the Cog Archipelago was unknown to all but a select few, even in the Outcasts only a certain few knew of it. This was because the place served as the headquarters of the Outcasts of the Abyss' Research and Development, where the head of the whole thing; a Unicorn Stallion known as Power Gears, worked on the many prototypes of new technology that would give the Outcast's an edge over their enemies.
Hence why the Outcasts wanted the place to remain off the charts.
The lab had been set up inside an old fortress left behind by a past and now long forgotten kingdom that once ruled this archipelago, and walking through the halls was a Cave Thestral Mare with a dark blue coat, yellow eyes, bronze mane and tail, and a Cutie Mark of a pair of pipe wrenches in an "X" shape. She was wearing a red bandanna, blue googles, and a red and bronze vest. Sitting on her back was a sliver tray with a cover hiding what was inside from view. The Mare was walking with a skip in her step while whistling a tune as she walked towards a certain room, pausing at the door to put on a pair of industrial-grade earmuffs when the muffled sounds of gunfire reached her ears, telling her that a certain somepony was testing weapons.
The well-ventilated room beyond the door had at one time been none other than the Throne Room, now it served as the lab for Power Gears and where he planned and test many of his projects. At the moment he was standing at the lab's firing range holding a pistol that the Mare couldn't get a good look at as Gears continued to fire off rounds, the Mare set the tray on the table and sat down as she waited for Gears to finish.
She didn't have to wait long as after three more shots the pistol when click and Gears checked it, nodding with a smile seeing it was out of ammo. He set the weapon on the table in front of him while using his magic to take off his earmuffs and turn a crank to bring the target he was firing at towards him, his smile growing at the holes on or close to the center of the target.
"Gears."
Jumping slightly the Unicorn turned to look at the Mare who had taken her own earmuffs off, he gave her a happy smile.
"Sprocket, good to see you. I hope you weren't waiting long." Gears said as he stood up and walked over, giving Sprocket a deep kiss once he reached her, which she returned in full."
"Not long at all honey." Sprocket said after they finished. "Only three shots." She lifted up the tray lid to reveal some sandwiches and two soda cans. "It's lunch time and since you're clearly busy I'd thought I'd bring our lunch down here."
Gears picked up a sandwich with his magic as he gave Sprocket a nuzzle. "Thanks dear, working on these projects work up an appetite."
The two sat and ate in silence for a bit, enjoying both the food and drinks as well as each other's company. After they were done Sprocket looked over at the pistol Power Gears had been using when she entered. "So Gears; what's this weapon you've got here? "She asked. "I get that it's a pistol, but it's clearly not a revolver."
"Well Sprocket; to explain that let me show you this." Gears lead her over to a table which had a long metal object next to a rifle that she recognized as the prototype "self-loading" rifle set to the lab by the Fire Twins on the Dragon of the Depths, she looked at Gears as he sat down.
"Now as you can see; here we have the rifle the Fire Twins sent. As you know while it did work, the effects of black powder quickly cause it to stop working. How Razor was able to fire as many shots as he did is a mystery. But while it didn't as the twins had hoped, it did give me a few ideas. One of which is what this thing is here." He placed a hoof on the metal object, Sprocket raised her eyebrows at him, silently telling him to continue.
"As you already know; our G82 Bolt-Action Rifle produce a fair bit of recoil when they fire, so I though after testing the twin's system: Why can we use the recoil to chamber the next round?" He picked up the object with his magic. "I tried a few different methods and this one worked the best. I call it the "Long Recoil System"; here's how it works."
Sprocket watched with keen interest as Gears set it down again and started speaking.
"The way it works is that when the gun is fired the recoil energy that's generated by the projectile going forward causes the barrel here to recoil backwards, and it's locked into the bolt here." He pointed out the parts, which Sprocket noticed were in fact locked together. "Now the two of them travel together the entire length of the cartridge, hence "Long Recoil"."
Gears placed a hoof on the end of the barrel (which was part of a test model so it wasn't able to fire even if loaded with a live round) and pushed it back, causing both the barrel and the bolt to slide back as he had said. "As you can see; the barrel and the bolt travel together. At the end of travel the bolt locks in the rearward position," Sprocket heard a "click" as Gears pushed the barrel all the way in. "The barrel then comes forward on its own recoil spring." He slowly let the barrel travel forwards and sure enough the bolt stayed locked.
"This is where the ejection happens, as the empty cartridge case is locked into the face of the bolt and the barrel pulls forward off the front of it. When the barrels goes all the way forward, it triggers a release which allows the bolt to slam forward, chambering the next round." Gears show Sprocket this, the bolt slamming forward with a click.
"Based on my testing of this new system; it's extremely safe because both the bolt and the barrel have to travel backwards a relatively long distance, there's a relatively large amount of time available for pressure in the barrel to drop before the whole system unlocks. The two downsides I found... is the system is quite complex as it requires two return springs: One of the bolt and one for the barrel so I have my doubts we'll be retiring the G82 as a primary weapon anytime soon. The second is that since the barrel is moving backwards with the bolt, the recoil is stronger than the G82. Now one thing I have noticed is that the spent casings eject in a very short and slow arc from the ejection port, but this is because the cartridge case is kicked out by an extractor after the barrel pulls off the front."
Sprocket nodded her head, showing him she understood as Gears stood up and lead her over to the table he had set the pistol on. The first thing that caught her eye, now that she could get a better look at it, was the fact it had no cyclinder like the revolvers. The second was that the pistol seemed a little smaller and certainly more compact than the Cap and Ball revolvers Sprocket was used to; in appearance the pistol consisted of a grip, the trigger with guard, what she guessed was the magazine sticking out from under the grip and two tubes on top. The tubes were stacked on an over-under style with the top one being around half the size of the one under it, Sprocket could also see a rectangle-shaped hole on one side of the lower tube, which she guessed as an ejection port(1).
"This here Sprocket is the new pistol I've been working on, I don't have an official name for it yet so for now I'm just calling it the "MK II Pistol" as the MK I was for testing how well it would work and fit. As you can see this pistol uses the Long-Recoil System to chamber the shots automatically rather than having to pull back the hammer. It's also chambered in the same .44 Caliber rounds as the Caplock Revolvers." Gears explained, Sprocket nodding her head to show she was following him. "Now unlike the revolvers but like the G82 the MK II Pistol uses self-contained rounds," He picked up a spent casing to show her. "like this. This means reloading only takes a few seconds as the rounds are stored in magazines like this..." Gears showed her a like lever on the magazine which released it from the pistol's grip and allowing it to slide out with ease. "... and you simply pop in a full one... and pull on the back her to cock the weapon." He slid it into the grip and pulled the back before releasing it. "And it's ready to fire.
Now the only issues I've had are that fact that fouling builds up fairly quickly but I think I've at least partly fixed with with the same method used on the 100-Pounder cannon with the seed oil-soaked wads in between the shell and powder, just on much smaller scale. It's not perfect but it does allow the weapon to stay functional in combat for longer periods. The second it that when the spent cases eject you also get a shower of sparks coming out of the ejection port; now this isn't too much of a big deal but I've included a recommendation that those using this type of system should wear eye protection at the very least. As to protect the parts from black powder-induced corrosion, we've made the parts out of a new metal that is extremely resistant and hopefully in the near-future we'll get it to be totally immune to it."
After reapplying their goggles and earmuffs Sprocket watched as Gears fired the pistol down range again, noting how he was right about the shower of sparks from the spent casing ejecting though it wasn't that big. Once Gears had emptied the magazine he checked it again and brought the target over, which showed the same results as last time. He turned to Sprocket as they removed their eye and ear protection.
"Now these magazines only hold five rounds with a "default" magazine, so I'm using what I call an "extended magazines" which can hold up to ten rounds for now in a single stack, though they make the pistols a little harder to handle, but I don't think that'll be much of an issue. Now, like all our projects, I'll need the MK II actually field tested before I make any final judgment. I also have been thinking of trying double-stack magazines, even have a few prototypes, but I'm holding off on that for now."
Taking the pistol over to another table Sprocket watched as Gears took it apart and started cleaning the parts, something that had been drilled into their heads long ago: If you take care of your weapon, it takes care of you.
As he was doing that Sprocket decided to take a look at his other "Long-Recoil" projects; besides the pistol she also saw designs for a Blunderbuss(2), a rifle(3), something Gears called a "Light Gardner Gun(4)", a Sniper Rifle with a strange set-up of having the magazine behind the trigger(5), a heavier and larger variant of the Light Gardner Gun with a pan magazine on top(6), and finally a weapon she couldn't tell the type of that also had the magazine behind the trigger.
"Hey Gears... what's this weapon here?" Sprocket asked as the Stallion finished reassembling the pistol, he walked over and looked at the blueprints she was pointing at which turned out to be the last weapon Sprocket looked at.
"That Sprocket," He began, "Is a brand new weapon concept I got after designing the new long-recoil Sniper Rifle; It uses a smaller round, though not too small, than the 11mm the G82 uses. The idea behind it is to give our infantry forces more offensive firepower as admittedly most of out weapons are more defensive in their roles, if this new concept works it would allow our infantry to storm enemy positions like a tide in a form of shock-and-awe attack. I call this new weapon the "Storm Rifle(7)."
He adjusted his googles as Sprocket blinked at the possibilities of the Long-Recoil System, Gears then spoke up. "By the way Sprocket, speaking of prototypes, how's the "MK II Land Ironclad" project coming along?"
Sprocket smiled. "It's coming along nicely; right now the biggest block we've hit is the engine since we're not using steam like the MK I did, but I think we'll soon have that figured out. Size is also being a like bit of an issue since the requirements form Razor stated that it must be smaller than the MK I, must be able to hold, operate, and protect a crew of five, must be able to withstand repeated hits from cannon fire, and must be able to put out good firepower of its own. Overall we are making good progress and thankfully crew training isn't that much different from the MK I, we still haven't been able to figure out the slow speed but Razor did say that wasn't much of an issue and we might be able to get an idea once the right engine is developed."
Gears nodded. "My own major projects are also showing potential and I'm sure Razor will love them once he arrives to look, still it's going to take time for any of the projects here to become wide spread."
"At least the Outcasts don't suffer from the red tape crap that most of the nations do." Sprocket grunted, remembering the day she was exiled from her home, though she didn't like to talk about it and her clan had no choice in the matter. She was still in contact with them and her family had even expressed their wish to met Power Gears at some point, Sprocket's mom had even asked when she should expect some Grandfoals.
Power Gears meanwhile knew what she met; since red tape was part of the reason he joined the Outcasts. Gears had once been a student at none other than Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and in fact got excellent grades despite his... unusual interests. Power Gears at the time was actually making weapon and armor plans for the Equestrian Military, some of which was actually ahead of its time. Sadly... a combination of traditionalists, Noble arrogance, and jealous Foals (who were part of those families) had Gears expelled from the school. Now, this on it's own wouldn't have been that much of an issue... if these same fools had not take the steps to blacklist him from all of Equestria's engineering schools.
Needless to say... Power Gears held a serious grudge against the Equestrian Nobles because of that, if once been said to have roared in anger;
"I'M ADDING THIS TO THE BOOK OF GRUDGES!!!"
And yes; Power Gears did in fact have a book of grudges, most of it listing those that wronged him long ago.
As for how they ended up with the Outcasts; both shared a similar story in that soon after they had hit their lowest points they had been met by Outcast Cove Agents (who at the time were the faction was still small and new), eventually leading the two to met a-then-young Razor Tail in Kirin. The rest, as they say; is history. Power Gears had never looked back since.
'Suck it ya noble buckers' Power Gears thought bitterly to himself. 'I'll show you all one day, my creations will help the Outcasts rule the Seas. Mark my words, you will regret the day you wronged me.'
Power Gears shook his head, burying those memories deep in his mind again. While it had been years since then, it had scared him deep and he knew he would never fully heal, but Razor had given not just him but others as well a home and a purpose again... and each of them were willing to repay that with their creations to end slavery and make the Sea of Legends a place they were proud to call home.
He looked over at his projects laying across several tables. 'I might create weapons now, but one day I'll be able to make more than just weapons.'
Sprocket noticed he was lost in his thought and gently wrapped her long tail around his neck, the bigger Unicorn jumping slightly but almost immediately relaxing into it as she lead him out of the room, stopping only to make sure it was locked before continuing on. Sprocket knew Gears was a bit stressed abut his work despite Razor making it clear he was fine with Gears taking his time, she would readily admit she was also a bit stressed out.
But she knew a very effective means of stress relief, one that was also quite enjoyable for both of them and they both needed a break.
(1): Basically the Frommer Stop Pistol.
(2): Based on the Browning Automatic 5 Shotgun.
(3): There are a few long-recoil rifles, like the Remington Model 8, the French C6, and the Mauser 1902 Prototype. Couldn't really pick out just one so I included all three as reference.
(4): Based on the M1915 Chauchat LMG of WW1.
(5): Based in the GM6 Lynx, a Hungarian Long-Recoil .50-Caliber Bullpup Sniper Rifle. Video here.
(6): Essentially a larger and bulkier Chauchat with a pan magazine on top, based on the Lewis Gun LMG of WW1.
(7): If you know firearm history you'll know exactly what this is.