[Hierarchy] Twilight of the Organ Grinder

Twilight of the Organ Grinder

Hiral Calgomis, Safety Off Weekly

It's the end of an era. Just ten years ago it would have been unthinkable, but after months of deliberation, representatives of the Turian Hierarchy have announced that they would not be ordering a new version of a legend. Known to generations of turian recruits as the Bruja, and to much of the rest of the galaxy as the Organ Grinder, the Armax LHM-17 and its predecessors have been the Hierarchy’s go-to squad automatic weapon for centuries.

The Organ Grinder’s nickname spread through the Terminus Systems like wildfire after being coined by human Relay 314 veterans, due to the unmistakable sound of its pre-fire wind-up. It will be fondly remembered for its reliability, as countless jokes immortalize its capacity for firing even when jammed and out of ammo. Every time new designs threatened to unseat the king of suppressive fire, a new, better version would be produced, maintaining its supremacy.

However, nothing lasts forever. Bruja’s design, proven and reliable, would ultimately be its downfall, as the limiting factor in weapon power became heat capacity. Successors increased the power of each shot to deal with advancements in kinetic barrier and armor technology, and heat management simply could not keep up. The LHM-17’s once-immense capacity diminished, making it less and less suited for its intended purpose. Modifications have been attempted, but the time-tested design proved as resistant to innovation as it was to wear and tear.

The final nail in the coffin was the introduction of the current Phaeston standard assault rifle, which, thanks to the use of heat clips, was capable of firing more and stronger shots than the designated squad automatic weapon. This became more evident during the Reaper War, with the Phaeston used throughout the galaxy by anybody able to get their hands on one, while the Organ Grinder lacked firepower to deal with Cerberus or Reaper creations.

Thus, after decades of faithful service, the king will finally retire. But fret not! Hierarchy officials have announced an invitation to tender its replacement in the standard assault weapon role. Notable companies have already announced joining the race for the Bruja’s legacy, with an Armax Arsenal spokesman going so far as to call it “holding onto the Primarch’s seat.”

Even Haliat Armory has dared to compete alongside the big boys, but it's not the only unusual contender. For the first time, as a gesture of goodwill, the Hierarchy will be accepting offers from client- and allied-race companies. Volus-based Elkoss Combine and the human Rosenkov Materials corporations have already declared joining the race, though it’s not known what they’ll be putting forward.

With weeks to go until the final offer date, one has to wonder: who, if anybody, can match the Old King of squad-level firepower?

I've got to be real honest, a lot of weapons got proven ineffective by the Reapers and Cerberus. They all died in absolute droves (fun fact, being brain panned into not caring about your life makes suicidal tactics much more common place), but their armor was pretty damn tough, if they had put some kinetic or biotic barriers on their men, they would have walked through everybody, even those spec ops teams with the monstrous kill counts.

I've only come across a few Phaestons in my job, and while having excellent accuracy, I was unimpressed by their hitting power, hell, those cheap SMGs the Cerberus troops were so fond of have a hell of a lot more bang for their buck than those rifles. I don't want to imagine how little hitting power these things had if it was weaker than that, well, innovation would be a very good idea.

You're taking SA standards an applying it to the Hierarchy in specifics; that kind of thing really only works in broad strokes like with LMGs overall. Just speaking from what I know, don't want to assume too much so any fringies here feel free to correct me, but turian units/squads go in for size and overwhelming firepower. They're all about dishing out and taking heavy shocks (though that's not to say that they can't do a damn good guerrilla campaign when they need to) so something reliable that can put a lot of rounds downwind works just fine. Especially when there's a dozen plus shooting them at you at once.

So they've got their stuff and it works for them; but something like the Hornet, which was made by Cerberus for Cerberus (which means that its very good and very pricey), functions best in small-squad commando type operations versus what the turians normally do. You can't just go "oh this works well here" and then take it and apply it to everywhere is what I'm trying to say.

(And, uh, on the subject of the deadheads pretty sure that they had some nasty KB's going on there.)

But yeah, main thing to keep in mind with all that is the fact that it's kinda "training to fight the last war" if that makes any sense, and really that's a great way to lose.

I read you Allsaints, I suppose I'm a little jaded from my work with the Hell Hounds. For us, the usual gear was a Mattock/Harrier or Eviscerators with a Hornet or Talon as your sidearm, if command was just giving you Hornets, then you had landed on command's bad side. When all the glowies started showing up with only those, I knew Cerberus was having some serious problems.

I think the problem that we all have right now is trying to decide how much the arms tech jump is going to be once the galaxy gets back to business as usual. When the Geth hit the Citadel in 2183 it changed weapon and shield technology dramatically, I don't want to think about what it's going to look like with all the tech that we got from and developed to fight the Reapers. Question is, how much of it will be useful in operations that don't involve fending off hordes of cyborg zombies, hope to hell we don't have to deal with that again.

I would prefer you wouldn't boil us down to 'overwhelming firepower' or 'size' - like we can't understand anything more and just shoot things with lots of guns until the problem is solved. Yeah, those dumb turians can't understand anything that's not attrition. Like, talk about reductive. I realize you qualified that statement with "oh, but they can do guerilla warfare" but then you immediately proceed to act on a presumption that we aren't. It's lip-service. If a turian unit is confronted with a problem, they'll review the most pragmatic solution to that problem. If that means "size and overwhelming firepower", okay. But it also means "attaching a parachute to a fuel air bomb to avoid triggering kinetic barrier sensors". People just assumed we'd bombard the place until something gave.

By the way, I dunno what the fuck you guys are on about with the Phaeston, either. It's the perfect standard firearm - regardless of where your unit stands on 'firepower'. Just to sum everything up - since people act like it fires fucking sandbags at people (and use it to support random assertions about turian military doctrine) - it passes pretty much every single test you could possibly throw at it. It's ridiculously light, incredibly accurate, incredibly reliable, easy to use and handle, and has miniscule heat emissions. Y'know, that's why it can fire so fast for so long without dumping a heat clip. Y'know, efficiency. These qualities make it effective in pretty much any imaginable open combat scenario. As was the implication regarding the rifle in the article itself, the Phaeston can lay down a suppressive screen of fire effectively and transition between the two roles of assault rifle and light machine gun gracefully.

And, yes, it will fucking kill people when you fire it at people. Go ahead and ask someone to shoot one at you if you're just not sure.

I don't miss the Organ Grinder, either. It was in an overspecialized role and outpaced by an underspecialized weapon. That's called eliminating redundancy.

Apologies ma'am it wasn't my intent to offend. I meant it in the context of, like-

hrm

yes you can do all those things but a lot of the time any turian military force can bring so much raw power to bear with such discipline that the enemy's strategy means precisely jack shit. But I'm not trying to say that you all are dumb thugs either (kinda my schtick there) and yeah I did mean the comment about guerrilla war as kinda a compliment because normally you don't have to do things like that, and the fact that the Hierarchy was able to transition from one to the other entirely within the span of, like, a couple weeks is pretty impressive.

Basically what I'm trying to say is sorry and I didn't think I meant what you thought I did.

Hey different strokes for different folks Turian, no need to get your armored panties in a bunch over it. Always preferred my weapons having punch, and making sure the SOB is dead before I have to test my armor's resilience. Harrier was my favorite, that bitch was the perfect mix of firepower, weight and accuracy. You had to be pretty damn incompetent to lose in a firefight with one. Too bad they're so damned hard to find.

For a mass production, standard issue weapon for the Turian army, it is probably a reliable weapon for most situations you'll run into. Plus with the prevalence of mods for every weapon in existence following the Reaper War, it can probably fill most of the specialized roles you would need it for. I don't care for it, but if you're good at making things dead with it, by all means.

On the subject of Turian weaponry, I'd pay a months salary for a chance to take one of those Krysae Rifles out for some range time.