Blackwell Tools was geared around the development and manufacture of power tools for civilian sale, with highly efficient batteries being the main selling point.
As laser technology grew, and laser-based power tools became increasingly common, Blackwell rose to prominence as one of the few companies whose battery technology could handle the massive power requirements. When laser weapons became available for civilian use in both hunting and self-defense, Blackwell seized the opportunity to use their superior batteries in this new arena, and Blackwell Arms was created to handle the new market.
Blackwell Arms enjoyed a profitable rise to prominence in the arms industry as more and more people switched from old-fashioned cartridge weapons to new (but still SDC) laser, ion, and even eventually particle beam and plasma weapons.
The downfall of Blackwell came about as ever-evolving technology brought about the creation of new and unprecedented advances in power storage, including the devices that would eventually become known as "Energy Clips." Rather than retool all their existing designs away from relying on their patented battery technology, Blackwell clung to the designs that had previously let them dominate a large share of the market, and as E-Clips became increasingly popular and efficient, Blackwell saw their dominance slowly vanish out from under them.
While Blackwell ultimately went bankrupt, they were able to stave off this fate to some degree by taking advantage of a new innovation which allowed them to link multiple Blackwell batteries in tandem, achieving overall greater levels of power storage than even the massively powerful E-Clips of the day.
Even though each Blackwell Battery individually held only a fraction of the energy of a single E-Clip, the Blackwell Power Bandolier allowed for up to a dozen Blackwell Batteries to be linked together in special belt-like devices, for an overall greater net energy storage than an E-Clip. Furthermore, as long as one had more fully charged Blackwell batteries, the bandolier design allowed for the energy storage to be "topped off" much more easily than the current line of E-Clips, which needed to be mostly depleted before the lengthy recharging process could begin; individual Blackwell batteries could be removed from the bandolier, and replaced with freshly charged batteries.
In order to transfer energy from the bandolier to the tool/weapon in question, a (sometimes retractable) power cord ran from the belt to a battery-shaped device which could plug into the tool/weapon's standard battery port. This elegant design not only allowed for up to 12x the normal operating time, the battery-like plug of any Blackwell Power Bandolier could plug into another bandolier for further combined storage.
A standard 12-socket bandolier could plug into one of a second bandolier's sockets, for a total of 23 batteries worth of power to use!
And there was no limit to the number of bandoliers one could chain together in this manner, meaning that there was no upward limit to the amount of power storage one could achieve, other than the limitations of expense and physical bulk.
When I was creating this company, I came up with a whole arsenal of weaponry and power tools, and I [u]thought[/i] I posted all of it here in the forums at some point.
But I can find zero trace of it if I did!
Which means that any and/or all notes I made about Blackwell are likely buried somewhere in my stacks of old RPG notebooks and other papers, somewhere in my office or living room.
Rather than attempt to search through all my stuff to find these notes, I think it may well be easier for me to start over from memory.
When it came to stats for these weapons and tools, I used existing official SDC energy weapons and tools from various non-Mega-Damage Palladium settings. So a Blackwell laser rifle, for example, would be identical or nigh-identical to a generic laser rifle from HU, BtS, N&S, or some similar source.
I don't recall if I created any mega-damage weapons/tools for Blackwell, but if so, they'd likely be minimal; my head-canon is that mega-damage weapons were restricted almost entirely for military use, but I could go with some LOW-end MD weapons/tools as well.
If anybody would care to assist me in rebuilding this fictional company's catalog, I'd appreciate it!
Rather than pore over every book, it'd be nice if we could pool our resources to come up with a decent reference list of SDC energy weapons and/or power tools that would fit into the mostly-pre-MD niche I'm trying to fill.
Anything from posting specific weapon/tool stats that you'd think would fit, to simply posting books and page numbers where the kinds of things I'm looking for are listed (i.e, "HU2 pp 110-112 list Bionic Weapons, including a mini-laser and some other energy weapons").
I'd also like general feedback on this idea, and any ideas you might have about what kinds of weapons and technology might bridge the massive gaps from the SDC energy weapons from BtS 240-241 to the basic energy weapons of Rifts, which inflict 1d4-1d6 Mega-Damage.
I've always felt that there's a ton of fleshing-out that could be done when it comes to that kind of massive hole in Palladium's weapons and other devices.
I also plan to use this thread to post various statted-out Blackwell gear as I work on this little project, and feedback on that stuff is also more than welcome.
Design-wise, I picture Blackwell Batteries as 4.5" long cylinders, with a 1" diameter, and a weight of about 5 oz. While smaller power tools might use a single battery, the norm for most handheld tools is to have two battery ports, and for larger tools such as chainsaws, 3-4 battery ports would be more appropriate.
I do NOT recall what level of efficiency I wanted these batteries to have in comparison to a standard E-Clip, but I'm assuming that each battery was somewhere in the 1/5-1/10 range compared to E-Clips.
So if I wanted to build a Blackwell equivalent of a Wilk's 320 laser pistol (20 shots per standard E-Clip), the Blackwell version would only get 2-4 shots per battery, and would probably have two battery ports as standard, for a combined total of 4-8 shots before having to reload.
If this sounds too overpowered or too underpowered for the niche I've described, please let me know, so I can at least consider other points of view.
Thanks in advance for any help!
