<Sapsan Rook Pistol>

Relatively modern-looking as most recent Sapsan adoptions are, the Rook is a fairly typical nine millemeter hammer-operated handgun. More at home with police than infantry, it's considered a bad sign to actually use the thing since it tends to indicate that you have nothing better left up your sleeves. If you are using a handgun, things have gotten very, very bad.




<Sapsan Taiga-12 Shotgun>

Sometimes milabeled as a rifle in popular media, the Taiga-12 is more a de facto member of the Sapsan Republican arsenal than official, and the majority of models seen in the field are privately owned pieces from the civilian market.

With increasingly chaotic mess that is the war with the Kingfishers, the Taiga has proven an invaluable tool if for morale more than anything. Civilian or not, a shotgun is a shotgun, and will kick things out of the sky be they birds, or high-explosive drones.


<Sapsan RKL-20 LMG>
Succeeding the BRAL in Sapsan service, the RKL-20 is a matter of coming full circle as it is essentially a modernized RKD, which itself was succeeded by the BRAL some decades ago.

Beltfed, heavy-barreled, reinforced - it's a machinegun, allegations of circular creative bankruptcy aside.


<Sapsan RKSh-12.7 Battle Rifle>
An up-chambered bullpup RK capable of delivering high impact at any velocity and across various ranges, the RKSh is more blatant brute force than the comparative reservation of the many 9x39 platforms.


<Sapsan 6P22 KATANYK Assault Rifle>
One of the more ambitious projects in service with Sapsan Special Forces, the 6P22 employs a balanced recoil system that ostensibly makes it more controllable, but in practice has restrained it to elite units, future-weapons expos, and high level videogame unlocks.


<Sapsan Osiris T-500 SSR>
A piece of precision hardware, like much within the Sapsan arsenal, the T-500 chose not to reinvent the wheel and is itself largely a copy of contemporary high-performance bolt action platforms. If it works, it works, and they can't sue you if you sue them.

The 'T' does not stand for 'Terminator', no matter how badly the Sapsans wish it did.


<Sapsan RV-18 Anti-Materiel Rifle>
Similar to the Osiris, the RV-18 is essentially a high-performance clone of another foreign platform, but is still very much capable of tearing a man in half with a single shot.


<Sapsan RpB.28 Rocket Launcher>
Essentially an upscale of the RpB.27, the RpB is your typical disposable rocket launcher, and needs little introduction. Point business end at target, ensure backblast is clear, and with steady aim and good wind it should introduce the target to their respective deity in a fairly sudden fashion.


<Sapsan PPD SMG>
Known to many as 'the Dwarf', the Sapsan PPD is short, stout, and innovative yet suffers the same curse as any that dare make a magazine complex enough to require a 'clutch assembly'.

Essentially a blowback-operated dwarven RK-74, the PPD was designed in a tumultuous time for the Sapsan Republic, having just been ejected from the Berkut Pact. Regimes were changing, alliances failing, and all on the tail of a faltering economy.

To put it mildly, it was a time of change - but in the firearms world, it was the time of lucrative firearms contracts and weapons trials. Moreover, among rival powers it was the time of the words 'high capacity', 'armor piercing', and 'ergonomic'.

Sapsan's Dwarf, then, was their shot at keeping pace with rivals, and they had to do it on a shoestring budget.

Shorn of the RK-74's traditional long-stroke symphony, the PPD simplified the already simple and made do with what already existed wherever possible. It is no mere happenstance that more than 60% of the Dwarf is compatible with other RKs, nor was the choice to feed it common cartridges such as 9x18 or 9x19.

Unwilling (and frankly unable) to invest the time and money required for a wholly new weapon or cartridge, Sapsan ironically enabled the PPD to be successful in ways that other niche PDWs never were. Namely, in adoption as a standard weapon among vehicle crews and police units, fulfilling the original goals laid out by the various PDW programs. Being a dwarven RK made the PPD familiar to many, and in hindsight the use of a common cartridge kept the weapon from being locked to overly-specialist niches - a common fate for rival PDWs.

Although the one 'new' piece of the PPD would end up being the magazine, this, too, was not truly new. Though the Dwarf was certainly impressive, bearing an underslung 64 round helical magazine, the concept had been proven a decade prior by the foreign Cheshire, which had modernized the helical mag and made it their core selling point.

The Sapsans, however, seemed to overlook the Cheshire's failure to garner military or police customers, perhaps instead impressed by it's immortalization in various action/sci-fi films. Perhaps this foreshadowed the fate of the Dwarf itself, for from the magazine, recognition and derision follows in equal measure.

On paper, the Dwarf's 64 rounds offer it more power in a smaller package than even the modern Vipera PDW, and ultimately makes it seem like an accessible answer to the PDW race. High capacity and ergonomics alike in a familiar form with common ammunition, and common parts.

What goes wrong, then, is that reality ensues - helical magazines are more complex and more prone to malfunction and user error than typical box magazines, and when operated by hastily-trained conscripts and given lax maintenance, they will fail, and sometimes in spectacular fashion.

Author's Example: I had my Cheshire's magazine clutch assembly explode off into the woods and spill all hundred rounds on the ground because I overcranked it. I never saw it again. Replacing the clutch will cost me $20, and replacing the magazine would cost $125.

Imagine how many PPD magazines must break in training and the field, and now imagine how much it costs to replace all of the ones broken by conscripts.

You now know why the Sapsans later built the Vipera.


<Sapsan Vipera PDW>
Conceived concurrent to the PPD, the Sapsan Vipera was a more conventional approach to the PDW craze than it's RK-derived counterpart. Initially proposed as a single-handed weapon for riot police, the design was overlooked until a decade of costly, clumsy upkeep drove interest for reasonable solutions to the Dwarf's complications.

Although a common workaround was to simply issue stick mags for the PPD, this undermined the whole point of the Dwarf. Had the Sapsans only wanted a shorter RK, the RK-74U already existed - turning around simply reintroduced the awkward complication of stuffing a carbine into crew compartments and cockpits.

Thus, the Vipera finally leapt from the prototype shelf. Semi-ambidextrous and only mildly larger than the standard-issue Rook, the Vipera is a common sight among the hips of vehicle crewmen and riot police.

Although less capable, less accurate, and less controllable than the PPD, it is generally regarded more favorably because 'simple' fares better in the hands of conscripts and the common soldiery than 'complicated'.

Calling it a PDW may be an overstatement compared to a more thoroughbred example like the Rapida M7, as both the Sapsan Dwarf and Vipera are chambered in humble nine millimeter. This has not stopped the Sapsan Republic from labeling it as such, nor has it stopped manufacturer claims that '9mm +P+ is just as good as 5.7 and 4.6'.