Contains Gun and gunner and 3 standing crew members for multiple ways to pose the gun.
AUM E4 HMG/RR55 Field Gun (This model is the HMG version only)
In the pre-Crusade years of the Long War, mobility and tactical flexibility were deemed less important than the ability to deliver a searing amount of firepower onto a target as quickly and loudly as possible. During the protracted sieges and trench warfare of that era, quar-portable heavy machine guns and field guns were the epitome of that ideal. Why wait for a pykpyk or heliograph to deliver target coordinates to an artillery battery hundreds of yards away, when individual officers could call upon a half-dozen dug-in field guns to hit the same target in a quarter of the time?
Dar Riilian engineers designed the Army Universal Mount early in the 1750s, creating a rolling, armored chassis capable of mounting either a heavy machine gun or a light field gun depending on the circumstances. For redeployment the gun is quickly detached and stowed inside the housing, the rear doors closed and the entire system is rolled by its crew to a new firing position. Royal Armament Assemblies, ltd produced thousands of these mounts, exporting them to many of their neighboring kingdoms, Tok among them. Though quite heavy, the mounts performed very well in the field, and catrawd commanders thought highly of them, especially the ability to change the weapon’s primary role relatively quickly. The same team of six quar that served the weapon could, given enough time and cover, change out the guns in only a few minutes.
In the early days of the Crusade, heavier tripod mounted guns were often left far behind, but as the unrelenting offensives bogged down in Coftyr and Fidwog, the AUM enjoyed a resurgence in its usefulness.
The E4 HMG variant fires a 16mm round, belt-fed, and unmounted, the gun itself weighs almost 20 kilograms. The RR55 Field Gun, in turn, fires a 55mm High Explosive shell. Properly sighted the gun is accurate to several hundred meters and with a well-trained crew and sufficient ammunition can provide a sustained rate of anti-tractor fire. One complication reported by caertens in the field is that the crew serving AUM is oftentimes more familiar with one variant than the other and can experience some wastage of ammunition while familiarizing themselves with the other variant.
