Schematic of a T'au Pulse Driver Cannon.
The Pulse Driver Cannon is one of the largest Pulse Weapons at the T'au's disposal, employing superheated plasma on a scale that leaves only glowing craters to mark where its targets once stood.
Pioneered by the finest of T'au's Earth Caste weapons scientists, the Pulse Driver Cannon is a weapon so massive in size and power that it can only be borne into battle by a dedicated artillery Ballistic Suit such as the KV128 Stormsurge.
A Pulse Driver Cannon uses pulse induction fields to propel its huge bursts of plasma over great distances, and is designed for cross-battlefield destruction of enemy main battle tanks. Emitting a deep bass thrum that rises in pitch as its particle accelerator relays spool up, the cannon can build up enough force to level a building before a volley is released.
The phenomenal amount of heat generated in this process is emitted through huge heat sinks built into the weapon. Once the pent-up energies are let fly, an incandescent beam of blinding intensity stabs out with a buzzing roar. Anything in the Pulse Drive Cannon's path is obliterated in a column of super-heated plasma, cast into its component atoms as if a solar flare had lashed forth from the heart of a sun to scour its target from history in one terrifying second.
The Pulse Driver Cannon was originally developed in response to the gargantuan war engines of the Orks. In the latter stages of the Arkunasha War, a stationary prototype mounted on the Argap Plateau sent searing columns of deadly white force through the guts and torsos of Ork war effigies time and time again.
In recent solar decades the weapon's deadly power has been matched instead against the Titans of the Imperium; though the Imperial god-engines boast far more sophisticated technologies than the combat walkers used by the Ork race, the result of a sustained barrage from a Pulse Driver Cannon on the war machines of humanity has proven to be much the same.
Sources[]
- Codex: Tau Empire (7th Edition), pp. 32, 118
- War Zone Damocles: Kauyon (7th Edition), pp. 93-94
- White Dwarf Weekly 88 (AUS), pp. 4-5