The Renfield Holy Water Ball Guns

Discovery is a fickle thing. It can come in the strangest places, or not at all. More important than discovery is the ability to seize the opportunity that discovery avails. It was this combination that led to one of the newest weapons in the war against the undead. While pilfering one of the many ruins that surrounds the former state of Texas, a prospector came across a cache of weapons the likes of which he had never seen. The bores of the barrels were nearly an inch across and they were as light as any Wilkes pistol. Enthralled by his discovery, the prospector rushed to the nearest town (Crossroads) with half a dozen cases of weapons ready to sell to the highest bidder.
Unfortunately the Prospector was a lot better miner than he was a weapons connoisseur. Despite the mint condition of the weapons, they were worthless. They had no power source or ammunition, they were constructed of SDC materials, and it appeared that with ammo and power, they weren't even weapons. He had discovered, or re-discovered, Paintballing.
It seems that in Pre-Rifts culture groups would form using these guns known as "markers", go out into the wilderness and hunt each other down until the last man had been painted. These guns used compressed air to fire small plastic spheres filled with water-soluble paint in bright colors. The markers were also used by the military to train they're soldiers in non-lethal combat situations. The best the prospector could do was making a few hundred credits for the lot of them to a collector.
The collector it turns out was a d-bee named Carter. He quickly put his mind to using these antiques for a better purpose, lining his pockets. The solution he came up with was almost revolutionary in its simplicity. Replace the paint with holy water, and the standard water pistol has become obsolete. The problem with regular water pistols was that they only fired water a little ways. Even the most powerful never shot past a hundred feet. With these new projectiles, range was almost tripled, as well as the force at which the water was delivered.
To replace the Compressed air tanks, Carter set about creating a simple Techno-Wizard alternative. Wind-Rush in a bottle never ran out and was more powerful than any conventional bottled air, and was easily refillable. After a little tinkering with the "holy ball" mixture for maximum damage, Carter set his first million (along with a matching contribution from his "partner") into creating a factory to mass-produce the little projectiles. After retrofitting the markers with MDC materials (the internal workings are still simple SDC) they set out to test the weapons.
They found that the markers could fire accurately to almost 350 feet (107m). They also discovered that the projectile's combination of impact and holy water did a lot of damage to the undead. After impact, the water continued to burn like acid for seconds afterward (1 melee round). It was this discovery that led to the founding of the Renfield. Since then, the duo has been very protective of this technology, only selling a few of them to select guests.
Holyballer Basic Statistics

Weight: Despite the use of MDC materials for the shell, holyballers are extremely light because they only use air as a propellant to fire tiny plastic projectiles. This means that the majority of the space within the weapon is hollow allowing for the channeling of the air down the barrel. The ammunition is also an important factor. To inflict comparable damage, a standard water pistol would need to carry around gallons of water. The holyballers ammunition fits 100 rounds easily into a pants pocket and still weighs less than 2 pounds (.9kg)
Damage: The use of the tiny plastic shells to deliver the holy water onto the undead means that the entirety of the water supply is deposited on the vampire not just sprayed in the general direction. The tiny capsules also allow other ingredients to be added to the mix as well meaning greater damage. As of yet Garlic essence and silver nitrate have both been added to the mix for increased damage. This allows a tiny amount of water (less than a few grams) to inflict as much damage as an 8 ounce glass of water thrown in the beasts face.
Rate of Fire: The .68 caliber projectile also allows for a more broad application to the battlefield. A trickle of water cannot be carried as easily nor shot as accurately as a solid projectile. Nor can it be shot in bursts, or in single rounds to snipe away at the enemy.
Range: The projectile has another advantage over the stream, aerodynamics. It takes a lot of pressure to get a stream of water to fly 300 feet away. It takes relatively little air pressure to push a sphere less than an inch across that far.
Payload: This is one of the greatest advantages a holyballer has over a water pistol. The Hopper, a plastic tank that holds and channels the holyballs into the weapons chamber, holds up to 250 rounds. The water pistol holds only a few ounces of water inside it's own fragile plastic body.
Payload Note*- Holyballers use simple plastic balls filled with a mixture of vampire killing substances. Since they are only plastic balls they don't have a built in method of propulsion. Original Paintball markers used compressed air, Carbon Dioxide, or Nitrogen as a propellants. The modern versions use the spell Wind Rush held in a Technowizard bottle that releases the spell, a little at a time, to force the balls down the barrel. A single "Wind Bottle" holds enough air to propel up to 1000 rounds (1D4x100 + 600). Afterwards, the user need only cast the spell wind rush, or expel its equivalent PPE cost, to refill the bottle completely.
Cost: No one has thought to put together this combination yet outside of the Renfield. As such, Carter has pretty much cornered the market. Unfortunately Rifts Earth doesn't have any copyright laws. Carter is aware of this and is just going to ride this horse into the ground until he finds someone to come along and purchase the ideas from him. It is now that Carter is seriously trying to get word back to Phaseworld, where he could patent the idea and become a monopoly in the vampire killing field. He has yet to send feelers out to any of Earth's weapons manufacturers.

The Hardware

Autococker Holyballer: An anti-vampire assualt weapon
AutomagRT Holyballer: The SMG of Holyball guns
Nova Holyballer: A workhorse of a pistol
Pro-Carbine Holyballer: For those hard to reach vampires


This page has been visited times.