Truth of Heart

The sniper rifle known as the  is the personal weapon of Nisha Dean. Made for the sharpshooter by her lover before the woman's untimely death; the Truth of Heart has become something of a legend among the forces of House Thunda.

Appearance
The Truth of Heart is a fairly simplistic looking sniper rifle; noticeably shorter in the barrel than many guns of a similar caliber. While mostly constructed from hardened gunmetal, the stock and foregrip are both made from 3D printed plastic in a blue-grey lighter than the metal components. The buttstock of this rifle has an engraving of a loveheart and the names of both Nisha and the woman that made the gun for her.

Design
As an extra incentive to get Nisha to join the military and use her skills normally seen hunting pests in defending the country the weapon-maker felt nationalistic about; the young woman set about designing a weapon to suit the feline sharpshooter. While the design was designed as a hybrid of a hunting rifle and a full-bore sniper; Nisha surprised her partner by suggesting micro-detonator rounds as an joke. While intended to be humorous, once a reliable supply of the experimental rounds was sourced on the black market, it quickly became the standard ammunition for the design.

The shorter barrel was chosen for Nisha's body type, and while it cost a few hundred meters of range, this loss was not deemed too severe by either woman as it was unlikely Nisha would be pushed for that range, especially with micro-detonator rounds. In order to allow for such long shots, the designer chose a multi-range thermal scope; with three different zoom ranges to allow the woman to see clearly for shots up to 800m, complete with a thermal focus channel. Again, this highly unusual scope was sourced from the black market.

Attributes
As mentioned, the fairly small caliber bolt-action rifle possesses a number of highly unusual features for such a weapon. First of these is the ammunition. While tooled to fire most conventional rounds, the primary ammunition type for this gun is the highly unusual micro-detonator rounds produced by a number of Technomage corporations. Each one of these rounds is fired as-per a conventional round, but explode on impact with anything with a greater density than flesh. While these explosives aren't quite enough to pierce bulletproof perspex on impact, a good shot from the Truth of Heart has been known to blast the head from an Egg Pawn with a single round. This is highly valued, as Nisha only uses three-round magazines with these unusual rounds, arguably because of their rarity and value.

With optics capable of clear shots at up to 800m, the thermal vision setting is more important during night operations or when dealing with obstructions of vision. This often causes issues with identifying targets, so a second ultra-violet spotting beam was incorporated into the rifle for Nisha's spotter to confirm target identity when using thermal optics, though this is useless in the case of a wall.

Known Users

 * Nisha Dean - The young woman that this gun was made for, Nisha Dean was a farm girl to begin with, living in the western valleys of House Thunda's territory. One of her key roles was monitoring and dealing with pests on the farm, with an old hunting rifle as her tool of choice. In the case of larger animals eating their crops, Nisha was known for picking off those targets from a long range.

Nisha was in love with a young woman from a military background, and while she wasn't completely certain, she was talked into joining the military as a sharpshooter to help cover her companion's back, with the Truth of Heart proving to be the key thing that tipped the scales. Nisha often has issues with the military quartermasters since her companion passed away as the weapon is unconventional, with the ammunition proving expensive. Her skill, however, keeps this gun as an investment by the military, and the memories of her old lover keep her wielding it even with her new crush around.

Trivia

 * As Nisha is up for adoption, the identity of the person that made the Truth of Heart for her is uncertain.