Being of the first of few jacketed round firearms utilized in Muan history, the West Scales Jacket Musket was a weapon in relatively low demand- yet the craft of maintaining, modifying, customizing, and even ripping off the design of the weapon became a pastime among wealthy royals and high ranking game hunters who took pride in leveling the playing field between themselves and the at times dangerous and volatile fauna of the alien world. The West Scales High-Smithery Guild build the first of these weapons at the behest of one Larkin Kathram, estranged member of the Kathram farming dynasty who rose to power and promptly faded into obscurity after the tainting of groundwater in their farmlands ruined their trade. The tainting was caused by way of high concentrations of organic arsenic releasing into the water table after a series of small earthquakes caused by unknown and seemingly unnatural means.
Each Jacket Musket is fixed with a plunge-loader system whereby an ivory knob would serve as the handle on a chamber which could be slide backwards out of the barrel of the gun, priming the firing mechanism and revealing an insertion point for the jacketed round to be loaded into. The plunger could be palmed back into place quickly with some force. In later iterations of the design, the plunger would be spring-loaded as a quality of life improvement on reload speed. Three or four fingers were meant to rest on the trigger, which was designed after contemporary crossbow triggers and would in later designs be trimmed down to a size better for use with just two fingers. A pin would fire off the round and the casing of the jacketed round would eject as the mechanism was primed again upon pulling the plunger loader to reload. On average, a Jacket Musket of the time could be loaded and fired in under 45 seconds. Because of this, Jacket Muskets were made as light as they could afford to be and their rounds were sized up to deal as much ballistic damage as could be reasonably fired from the weapon without harm to the operator. Most persons who could afford a Musket could afford multiple muskets, either two to three for a single operator to use in quick succession of each other or between five and twelve for a group of individuals to carry as part of an armed band.
Some individuals would soon after begin to manufacture their own weaponry, often with the help of pamphlet guides which could instruct a person on the construction of a makeshift musket or “Pipe Musket” made from common irrigation materials. It was known that at the height of their Dynasty, the Kathram family employed an entire workforce to build and arm their workers and guards at their farming outposts with such impromptu firearms. Though effective enough for temporary use, repeated use of a pipe musket was not ideal. A pipe musket would wear down rapidly if not built from sturdy materials and as such might explode in the user’s hands, potentially causing more harm to the operator of the musket rather than the recipient of a musket’s load.