Grenades

Intended to be thrown, or shot from a boom tube, grenades are short range weapons. Development of these types of weapons has been on the rise as many combat encounters in the Cosmic Era are at close range, not the dozens of miles that many magnetic and energy weapons can reach.

1. Thunderclap Grenade

The big brother of the flashbang, the Thunderclap is basically just a bigger version. The grenade is not used for crowd or riot control as it is large enough to be lethal at short range, and can cause permanent deafness and blindness. When facing a cosmic horror, this is considered a bonus. When facing a geofront uprising, it is a drawback. Thunderclap grenades are more than just flash of bright light and sound, they emit energy across the spectrum, including UV, infrared, and other bands. These devices will trigger kinetoreflexive materials like that found in encounter suits, momentarily freezing such wearers in place, throwing them off balance, or even sending them falling into hazards.

2. Ifrit Grenade

The Ifrit is a sophisticated thermoclastic weapon used to ignite fires, injure creatures vulnerable to flame and heat, or area denial. The grenade doesn't explode so much as it spews out a cloud of flame around it. Near the device the fire has a soupy liquid texture and behavior and takes on a more gaseous pattern as it expands outwards. An Ifrit can fill a medium sized room with flame for 10 seconds, a small one for three times that amount of time, and in open spaces will create an expanding shell of fire up to fifty feet around it. In urban areas and forests this creates rapidly spreading fires. In non flammable areas, it causes hostiles to flinch, fall back, and risk their clothing and gear catching fire.

3. Shiva Grenade

The Shiva is a cryoclastic explosive device that generates a thermal sink so potent that it causes the moisture in the air to instantly freeze into ice on explosed surfaces. This can cause frostbite, lost of extremities, even eyesight, but little in the way of actual damage. These are popular weapons in seacology and other aquatic environments as they can cause large amounts of water to freeze solid, creating barriers, trapping and often instantly killing foes (since water conducts energy better than air). These weapons are also highly effective against plasmid lifeforms.

4. Ramuh Grenade

Also known as a thunderstone, arc grenade, or a paralyzer, the Ramuh is an electrostatic discharge device. When detonated, it explodes into a cloud of conductive dust and generates a massive burst of electric power. The energy chases leads to ground itself out in the cloud, striking almost anything in the splash zone. These are good for damaging droids, electrocuting organics, damaging computers and other unshielded electronics, and making a lot of noise. Ramuh grenades double as extra strength flash bangs, with a distinctive thunder crackle sound.

5. Ultra Grenade

The ultra grenade is a tightly controlled weapon. The Petroleum era saw the creation of briefcase nuclear devices, the Cosmic Era saw them shrink to palm size. The glaring flaw is that no one has an arm strong enough to throw a micro nuke device and not be caught in the blast. The Ultra has a 1 kiloton payload and the grenade itself is incredibly dense, just over 9 kg in mass. It can be used to drop buildings, severely damage tanks and mecha, and to give cosmic horrors one hell of a headache. They are heavily regulated as they are not arcanotech, and most arcologies do not had radiologic detectors to prevent nuclear weapons from being brought in, and nuclear hand grenade, that is reason enough. They do create fallout, but given the small yield, they do not generate a mushroom cloud or strong gamma flash.

6. Static Grenade

The Static grenade is a smoke bomb with signal jamming materials suspended in it, These severely disrupt Cognitive network, and other similar bandwidth signals and can shut down drones and other systems reliant on them. Systems using radio frequencies or hard lines are not affected by static grenades. These devices are used against cybernetic forces, to disrupt drone users, and to cut forces off from remote support. Smart weapons are also highly disrupted by static grenades and the smoke they generate.

7. Implosion Grenade

The literal opposite of an explosive device, an implosive device draws everything into it. These grenades are temperamental and dont work half of the time. When they do work, they create a sort of 'cabin breech' in reality, and for a few seconds everything in their vicinity is subject to being pulped and sucked into where the grenade used to be. After the power cell is depleted, everything is thrown back away from the device. There is a loud bang and things are generally broken and thrown around like a child having a tantrum, but with grenade force.

8. Austerhagen Grenade

Still in prototype/theoretical phase, the austerhagen grenade is a hand sized version of the austerhagen device, and is increasing known as a black hole grenade. Test firings of the weapon demonstrate it generating a singularity micrometers wide, and an event horizon around eight to nine feet across. Everything inside this field is completely devoured by the singularity, and things near it can be drawn in and also destroyed. Tests have shown that there are time dilation effects near the device, sometimes even when it is passive. This, along with the extreme amount of damage the device can cause has seen it's development slowed.

9. Psi-Screamer Grenade

the Psi-Screamer is a 7797psychotronic weapon. When it 'explodes' the device generates a psychic 'scream' that induces fear and panic. Like tear gas, exposure to screamers can lessen their effect, but even veteran soldiers can turn and run when one is set off. In terms of crowd control, breaking up riots, and the like, a handful of screamers can be more effective than a battalion of wojeks. They are used with caution, as the panic they induce can lead to fatalities from trampling, or people panicking. These weapons are less effective on inhuman foes, and are useless against machines.

10. Sick Grenade

The Sick Grenade is a chemical weapon that when 'popped' creates a cloud of nauseating smoke that causes vomiting, disorientation, and skin irritation. People, and animals are much less threatening when they are hunched over dry heaving. The downside is that there is generally an unpleasant clean up afterwards, as even exposure to sick grenades doesn't develop a tolerance to their effect.

11. Brown Alert Grenade

The Brown Alert Grenade is a harmonic weapon that generates a specific sound frequency that triggers peristaltic muscle reaction in victims that experience it. The short version, brown alert grenades make people lose bowel control and defecate on themselves. This is inconvenient, disgusting, and humilitating. It was developed near the same time period as the sick grenade, and for the same purpose, crowd and riot control. Unlike the sick grenade, people who crap themselves generally retreat and clean themselves rather than leaving puddles of vomit in their wake. The Brown Alert grenade is a pranksters wet dream, the Cosmic Era's stink bomb.

12. Squeaker

The Squeaker typically looks like a mundane animal like a rat, squirrel, or insidiously, a kitten. It is actually an auxon with an explosive payload. They can be used as a patrol deterrent, exploding if anyone picks them up, or if an intruder matches their seek and destroy profile. These are considered borderline criminal to use as there are very few children who won't immediately run to catch one and pick it up. The IFF systems of squeakers is also sometimes questionable. They can be fitted with most smaller explosives.

Mines

Mines are explosive devices that are put in place and detonated either by being triggered, or by being accidentally activated. This includes satchel versions, improvised weapons, and any other explosive that is passive by nature, and non-mobile. Rather than repeating mines that share the properties of the grenades listed above, that majority exist in mine form as well, just with much larger blast radii. Thus, a Shiva mine could freeze a submarine in the water, the buoyancy of the ice dragging it to the surface, or an ultra mine exploding with a 1 megaton yield.

13. Scorpion Mine

The Scorpion Mine is a strange weapon. Weighing close to a ton, it is buried and waits for something sufficiently large and metallic to approach it before it goes off. When it goes off, the 'sarcophagus' bursts open and sprays out dozens of fist sized drones that go tearing after the nearest metal object with the intent of burrowing into it and exploding. These can find their way into mecha joints, exhaust ports, access panels, and other small spaces that are impossible to target, and then explode. This includes attacking power armor troops or even swarming into an infantry transport and shredding through basic armor to get inside a soldier's pauldron or breastplate and then exploding. The 'scorpions' are relatively dumb droids, and seek a dark place before exploding, so they can be deterred by a flashlight. They are also less effective at night, and most Scorpion mines are set to not go off if it is dark.

The bioreactive mine contains a non-sentient slime and an explosive device. When triggered, it explodes and sprays the goo over a large area. Any that comes in contact with organic matter animates and starts consuming it and turning it into more bioreactive goo. This material can remain inert for a long time, such as being spattered on armor or a vehicle, and reanimate days or even weeks later when a crew cleans it off. It can devour a host from the inside out, mirroring the effect of gangrene or a serious infection. If it gets into the bloodstream, there is no real way to stop it from consuming the host from a million different internal points. These weapons are considered a crime against humanity.

15. EMP Mine

The EMP Mine is a powerful weapon designed to disable large military vehicles like mecha or carry-all craft that get too close. The explosive component is relatively small, but the main weapon component is a powerful electromagnetic pulse. This overloads and shuts down droids, and can force system shutdowns in even shielded components. This can completely disable a large vehicle, leave critical systems offline, or even cause a catastrophic failure in plasma containment weapons.

16. Sky Mine

The sky mine is a floating mine intended to take out flying ships and aerospace craft. It is relatively large, but has an optical shroud and stealth designing giving it a small cross section. Many are shaped like natural objects that might be found in the air such as large birds. When a ship or aerospace craft gets too close, the mine explodes. These are very similar to EMP mines, as the pulse knocking out vital systems is the main attack. They have a larger frangible shell that is intended to turn into a flak cloud the intruding ship has to pass through, damaging delicate systems, sensors, scoring viewers and such. Against aerospace craft this can deal serious damage.

17. MASER mine

Also available as a grenade, a MASER is a microwave version of a laser. MASER mines generate an intense microwave field and then burn out. This melts materials with low melting points, can cause serious or lethal radiation burns to people or animals, and can damage electronic components unless they are specifically shielded against microwaves. The telltale sign of a MASER mine is a high pitched wine, a burst of heat and then either bodies falling or people running and screaming. MASER grenades lack the power to kill, but can very quickly irritate the skin, causing crowds to scatter and disperse. At short range, they can also disrupt handheld tech, droids, and such.

18. Mobile Mine

Built from the chassis of a commercially available droid, the mobile mine is a self guided weapon that is given a target and then wanders off looking for it. The majority of mobile mines are scratch build with improvised explosives, but almost any of the smaller types of explosives listed could be mounted inside a mobile mine chassis. There is a 'scorpion' pattern for the mobile mine where a larger delivery vehicle, aka an escape pod or lifeboat style vehicle is loaded with as many mobile mines as can fit in it, is launched at a foe. Delivered to contested areas, these mobile mines go looking for help or shelter before exploding and killing and maiming as many victims as possible. The Dagger system places them in a sarcophagus to be remotely released.

19. Horror Mine

The Horror Mine is closely related to a Downington Sphere. In it'spassive state it functions as a trap for transphasic lifeforms,accumulating them over time. When it is activated, typically EM detection or proximity, it bursts and releases the creatures it's captured. This forces the creatures into a material state, and exposes them to a ready food source, IE the victims who set off the horror mine. The space planktonoids go Blob on the victims and start eating and reproducing until either they run out of food and turn on each other or are killed off by the survivors. These weapons are considered a crime against humanity, and rumors of them are chased down with serious intent.

20. Gauss Mine

Also known as a magnetic mine, the Gauss mine combines a powerful electromagnet and a powerful explosive device. When activated, the metal around it is pulled to the mine, or the mine is pulled out of it's hiding place to stick to the target, depending on which is larger. In some instances both can happen, with the mine pulling a light vehicle over while itself jumping out of the ground. When the metal objects touch, the explosive inside detonates, typically at point blank range. It isn't uncommon for the electromagnet to be liquefied by the heat of the explosive and then used as fuel for a plasmajet. This allows for a relatively small mine to attach to a large mecha and deal significant hard to repair damage to the machine. Gauss Grenades drop the explosive for just the magnetic generator, and can be used to immobilize droids, or to disarm opponents with metal weapons. This is best done by affixing the grenade to a larger metal surface before activating it, such as a girder, tank, or other large vehicle.

Exotic Weapons

Exotic weapons plumb the depths of arcanotech to produce wondrous and terrifying results. The devices listed below are bloody edge prototypes and are not 100% reliable, and some might represent dead ends in tech, or tech that man is not yet meant to know, and that scared the engineers enough that they shelved the project.

21. Kafkon Radiation Bomb

A Kafkon is the whimsical name given to the rho arcanowave, and exposure to the energy can very rapidly cause unnatural and unnerving mutation of those affected. When detonated, the Kafkon bomb generates a pulse like an EMP, but it is a bio-etheric energy, and it kickstarts mutations in the area. Mutation is rapid and widespread with people afflicted turning into abomination animal human hybrids, or horrific mongrel-men, or simple turning into semi-sentient tumor like creatures. The one time the bomb was used it turned most of the research staff into two meter long 55 kg cockroaches. The retained their intelligence, but were driven mad, and most were killed by security forces, suicide, or were taken for study.

22. Blink Bomb

The Blink bomb is the end result of a failed teleportation project. The system works, it teleports, but the problem is that it cannot be aimed, so there is no telling where the teleportee will reappear. Given the vagaries of teleportation this makes it a stunning weapon. Everything within the blast radius of the blink bomb vanishes and reappears anywhere from a few feet to the side, to miles above, or below the surface of the Earth, out into space, another planet, another dimension. Very few probes that were blinked managed to return information about where they were, or the blinked so far away that the signal hasn't arrived yet.

23. Phase Grenade

The phase grenade generates a strange radiation field when it detonates. Organic material caught in the explosion is knocked out of phase, typically into the protozone or metazone where they can barely perceive and cannot interact with normal phasic material. They can be detected with Kirlian sensors or other transphasic detectors, but then they are nothing more than color ghosts. These weapons come with the drawback that sometimes they can knock something into analog space, leaving the grenade thrower in close proximity to a bug, 4 dimensional horror, or worse.

24. Zombie Generator

The Zombie generator is a dangerous weapon because any dead bodies, as in still warm freshly dead bodies, can be temporarily reanimated by the strange energy field the bomb creates. These restless dead rise and are drawn to sentient beings thoughts, mad and hungr. Bites are highly infectious (normal for human bites) but there is no meta-zombie virus, and as the charge dissipates, they will slow and eventually deanimate after a few hours. The device itself is the size of an average fire extinguisher, and burns out it's power core in a few seconds.

25. Gluon Bomb

The gluon bomb generates a localized cloud of highly excited gluons, the subatomic particle behind the strong atomic force. This excited state causes bound gluons to become liberated, causing a local breakdown of the strong atomic force. There is no explosion or heat, just the very rapid atomic decoupling of matter into subatomic particles, in a hiss cloud of hydrogen vapor and free electrons. Everything inside the blast radius is reduced to hydrogen, helium, and lithium dust, and a plume or arcane radiation.

26. Glue Bomb

A less exotic weapon, the glue bomb explodes and covers an area with a sticky foam that quickly hardens into a high tensile strength nano-material case. This can immobilize machinery, smother infantry, block passages, and otherwise cause havoc. Before fully setting, it can stretch into a web like material, which increases it's oxygen surface area, making the webbed material stronger than the non-elastized foamy material. Glue bombs can be made as small as grenade size for immobilizing people, or up to several hundred pounds, allowing them to foul the moving parts of mecha or armored vehicles.

Ultra Weapons

Deployed by ships, Ultra-weapons are the most powerful devices ever conceived, and put the Doomsday weapons of the Petroleum Era to shame.

27. Neutron Detonator

The Neutron Detonator is an atomic particle accelerator compacted down into a 20 ton warhead. When fired, the warhead generates a large number of free neutrons in it's core where they begin to coalesce into an unstable mass of Neutronium. This material has the strange property of agitating other neutrons near it, and after it explodes, producing a shell of neutronium expanding as a fraction of the speed of light, this can trigger a cascading fission reaction. The bomb creates a 'daisy cutter' pattern of expanding fissile atomic blasts as the stampeding neutrons smash through everything in their path. This type of blast can alter the face of a moon, smash asteroids to dust, or turn a major urban center into a fire eroded badlands with no sign of human habitation.

28. Phantom Beacon

The Phantom Beacon is an arcanowave generator that fires for .03 seconds before burning out. During that time, it generates a residual energy field that is highly attractive to aphasic lifeforms like the larvae of the outer gods, star whales, and even the outer gods themselves. In addition to drawing their attention, the arcanowave generated causes them to drop out of their phase and into analog space. This results in the area affected by the 'explosion' being overrun by cosmic horrors, teratomorphs, and even alien gods. Nasty way to go.

29. Anti-Matter Device

The Anti-matter device is a gamma ray burster weapon, detonated well above it's intended target. The conversion of matter and anti-matter into pure energy releases a tremendous amount of gamma radiation, and the AMD focuses that blast into a cone. This irradiation can sterilize half of a planet, killing even microbial life and anything not under a foot of lead or two miles of water. These hypothetical weapons are intended to be used against solar systems, and planets that are intended to be colonized without destroying the entire atmosphere/hydrosphere.

30. Caldera Device

The Imbrian's planet killer, the Caldera device is a Cosmic Resonance Amplification Device, matching the natural cosmic frequency of whatever it is detonated on. This turns all the potential energy in a body into explosive force, capable of blasting entire planets into rubble, such as the ruin laid on the nameless world that once orbited between Mars and Jupiter. These devices are very likely the cause of Mercury lacking a mantle, Venus; altered rotation, Uranus' axial tilt, and Saturn's rings.