The entertainment droid's holoprojector started up, bathing the previously dark room in the blue light one normally associates with a cheap holoprojector. The three dimensional image it created showed a Zabrak male with his dark hair in a ponytail sitting at a table in front of a strange looking and time worn blaster rifle. The red geometric lines tattooed on the presenter's face identified him as a trained engineer, while the ones made up of black swirls marked him a historian. The holo was then joined by an audio recording of the cheerful man's lecture
>Hi guys. Thanks for watching another holo from Forgotten Blasters. I'm Ilit Mak-Cuth and I'm here today at the Hydians Auction House on Chandrila taking a look at some of the blasters they are going to be selling in their upcoming auction. What we have here is a standard Republic pattern PulseWave blaster. While at first you might be thinking "They made literally trillions of these things, how is that a forgotten blaster?", but it's actually very rare to find one in such good condition these days, thousands of years later, so I thought this would be a good example to make a holo on it and show you guys.
The camera focused in on the ancient blaster, hiding the Zabrak and the table from view. Now suspended on air, the floating, glowing, weapon slowly rotated around in the dark room, inviting the viewer to soak in every detail of the valuable antique. While out of view, the Zabrak's monologue continued to explain the history of Pulse-Wave blasters
>Pulse-Wave blasters are largely associated with the Mandalorian Wars and the "Old Sith Wars", the series conflicts between the Old Republic and various Sith Empires roughly 4000 years ago. A lot of people hear "The Old Sith Wars" and immediately think of soldiers with energy shields hopped up on stimulants running at each other with vibroblades trying to cut the other's face off. While yes, that is largely true, there was actually also a fantastic amount of experimentation going on with blasters during this time period. You had electric blasters, sonic blasters, early disruptors, plasma projectors, and even a few incendiary blasters, but by far the most common ranged weapon was something like this.
In emphasis, the Zabrak's disembodied hand appeared to point at the relic before once again disappearing from view
>"Pulse-Wave" technology is the ancestor of the current blaster. Instead of the compressed particle bolts we know today, a pulse-wave blaster fires energy in a way that creates spacial distortions that can separate molecules. This is roughly as powerful as a modern blaster but only within about 30 to 35 meters. After that the effectiveness quickly dissipates as the distance increases and past about 225 meters it can't even make holes in durasheet.
>A lot of people ask that at that point "Why not just use a slugthrower? They're lethal out to 500 meters or more." and that's because two major advantages to a pulse-wave system. The first is the energy shields mentioned earlier. The omni-present Old Republic era energy shields could cleanly stop any slug coming at them without difficulty, but a pulse-wave would batter them and eventually get through after many repeat hits so a squad can concentrate firepower and still has a good chance of taking down a shielded target. The second is, as we often see, one of logistics. You have to actually transport the slugs to the battlefield to supply the men and droids using those slugthrowers. You'd see less than 100 shots per kilogram, and once you were done with the cartridge packs holding that ammo they were useless without a whole industrial setup and mining operation to fuel it. By contrast, even early blasters like this you get about a thousand shots per kilogram of power packs, and when you're done you only need energy and a small amount of Tibana to refill them. That kind of thing may not seem like a lot when you're out hunting on your own, but it maters a lot when you're sending millions of troops to the other side of the Galaxy and they have to bring all the gear they'll need for up to a year with them. That's not to say you didn't see slugthrowers during these conflicts, but the units using them were definitely specialists.
The hologram returned to depicting Mak-Cuth and his table and he started to close out his lecture.
>The story of pulse-wave blasters mostly ends with the invention of and proliferation of the modern blaster rifle just after the Old Sith Wars. They're longer range and better in nearly every way compared to the pulse-wave system. Nobody made new ones after that except for a brief period during the post-Russan Dark Ages when some smaller manufacturers in isolated areas reverted to the technology after they were cut off from regular imports of materials and tooling needed to make proper blasters. Even then they were definitely a second-line weapon or civilian hold out blasters where the range didn't really mater since the user wasn't likely to be shooting at much past 30 yards anyways.
>Thanks for watching everybody. If you want to own this exquisite example of a Pulse-Wave Rifle, this is an auction house and it plus are few other examples are going to be up for sale in the upcoming auction. To place a bid on this example, you can send a holonet or subspace transmission to HAH at Cha. Full details in the attached datalog. If you want to see more details on how they work you can play the second part of this holo, where I take it apart and show you a full holo-scan of the internals and tell you how they all work. If you want to hear about the Pulse-Wave's even older predecessor, I also have a set of holos on the Core World Arms BR1-Z, which is just a really weird and fascinating design.
The Zabrak disappeared and the the closing credits played, thanking camera droid M1-14, the Hydians Auction House, and Mak-Cuth's many patrons that make the travel and research for the show possible, but the silence is interrupted by the return of the presenter's voice, clearly recorded on a different audio setup
>I realize I should add a quick word of caution while I'm editing this, and that's that before you get both your hearts set on owning one of these you should check your planet's laws. A lot of anti-disruptor laws are very poorly written and define "DIsruptor" so overly broadly they include Pulse-Waves. Nothing I can do about that.