More posting sci-fi weapon designs to a bunch of furry art sites for Worldbuilding Wednesday/Weaponry Wednesday, this time featuring an Alamakan Rail Rifle, a weapon manufactured and commonly used by both sapient races native to Alamak (the Almaki and the Kurakalak, as most prominently represented by Lord Domarion and the pirate Djamil, respectively).
----- Alamakan kinetic projectile weaponry tends to come in the form of railguns, rather than conventional firearms, as shown here. I know most sci-fi art seems to want to give railguns a strangely open "split rail" sort of barrel but that sort of thing seems quite impractical in practice (although I do recognize it is an aesthetic decision meant to communicate that the weapon is, in fact, exotic), but I decided to try something a bit more conventional with the appearance of the barrels of Alamakan weaponry while still giving them that "railgun" vibe--the barrel is clearly made up of two distinct rails, and I left several gaps that would likely include vents so air ahead of the projectile could be pushed aside rather than building up pressure and resistance against the projectile as it is launched, enabling it to reach much higher speeds--and providing a bit of ventilation to help keep the rails a bit cooler during sustained firing.
For a few years now, I've been envisioning the Alamakan railgun rifles in my mind, but haven't quite managed to get anything I liked visually until this point. One cool thing about having an entire galaxy to play with is that I can mess around with a bunch of different weapon types and aesthetics, based on a world/faction's technology and resources and likely use-cases. In the case of the Almaki and Kurakalak, two felinoid races from a desert planet, their weapons would need to be useful for both hunting and combat, and with long effective ranges for taking down prey (or enemies) at a fair distance, so the idea that their gun technology would evolve towards making railguns instead of the blasters one tends to expect to see in a sci-fi setting just made a lot of sense to me. Also, given just how hot some parts of the desert can get, it seems like the heat could cause problems for blaster-type weaponry, such as the heat destabilizing the power cells. Besides, it's just cool to have some variety!
