Spirit energy cannon

"earth"

- This weapon is proof that the Earth Empire is the strongest nation in the world. And believe me, this is only the beginning!



The spirit energy cannon is a large weapon developed and used by the Earth Empire to conduct long-range artillery warfare. Firing spirit energy from harvested spirit vines, it is capable of blasting a hole through a hill and destroying buildings and ships in seconds. Due to its size and weight, the cannon is attached to the right arm of an enormous mecha suit that stands over more than twenty-five stories tall.

History
The technology used to create the cannon was developed by Varrick, though after he defected from Kuvira's army, Baatar Jr. continued the project and manufactured the cannon with the aid of Zhu Li, although she tried to slow down its production by systematically sabotaging it as well.

In 174 AG, the weapon was assembled at a factory not far from Zaofu. The day before its official test run in the presence of Kuvira, Baatar Jr. wanted to test the cannon's power core out in private to make sure everything would run smoothly. After Zhu Li initiated phase one, the condenser backed up and he ordered the weapon to be shut down. When the override failed, the cannon was at risk of blowing up, though Baatar Jr. prevented that from happening by manually dismantling part of its circuitry and discovered the malfunction had been caused by a cracked channeling ring. Not taking any chances, he ordered his crew to disassemble to machine in order to check everything for the official test the following day.



The next day, the cannon was presented to all the soldiers and crew present at the factory. When Baatar Jr. fired up the weapon on Kuvira's orders, the machine malfunctioned once more. As he opened up the smoking engine, he quickly deduced that the trouble was caused by a missing distributor pin. After Kuvira discovered Zhu Li had stolen it to sabotage the machine, hoping it would explode, Baatar Jr. put it in place again to resume the test. Just as the cannon was about to fire, Lin, Suyin, Wei, and Wing disrupted its aim by rattling its sides with their earthbending, causing it to blast a hole through a hill as opposed to blowing up an abandoned town as intended.

After its successful test, the cannon was attached to the right arm of an enormous mecha suit that stood over twenty-five stories tall, which allowed Kuvira to employ the weapon anywhere she desired. A week after the demonstration, Kuvira piloted the mecha suit and marched it and her army into United Republic of Nations territory and down to Republic City. When reaching a military outpost, she deployed the cannon to destroy the building and the stationed troops there with one shot, preventing them from alerting Republic City of their arrival, which was a week earlier than planned.

When Kuvira and her army were only hours away from Republic City, Team Avatar discovered them. Kuvira tried to take them down, though after two missed shots, she let the team escape, reasoning that with the power of the spirit cannon on her side, nothing and no one could stop them.



Reaching Republic City, Kuvira ignored President Raiko's order to retreat, lest the United Forces would open fire and used the spirit energy cannon to sink the United Forces' battleships. When Kuvira threatened to kill the infantry with the cannon as well, Raiko surrendered, realizing he could not defend the city against the destructive power of the weapon.

After Korra, Tenzin, Bumi, Jinora, and Kai kidnapped Baatar Jr. and successfully forced him to contact Kuvira and try to talk her out out of continuing her conquest of the United Republic, Kuvira traced the radio signal back to a Future Industries factory and used the cannon to blow it up, intending to kill all the people present.

Design


Due to its immense size and weight, the cannon is attached to the right arm of a mecha suit that stands over twenty-five stories high in order to allow for easy transportation; during the weapon's testing phase, however, it was transported via a rail system. The mecha suit, fashioned out of the metal taken from the domes that previously protected Zaofu, is operated with several levers and turning balls located in its cockpit. To fire the cannon, the heavy power core containing a spirit vine sample is mechanically loaded into the barrel and, by running electrical currents through the vines, a focused beam of energy is generated. Due to the immense power of the spirit energy cannon, the mecha suit carrying it stabilizes itself by holding its right arm with its left, avoiding throwing off its aim by the weapon's drawback. To avoid malfunctions, the cannon is equipped with a manual override that can shut it down.

Although the cannon can contain the immense power of the energy beams, it contains small vital components, like a condenser, channeling ring, and distributor pin, that can cause the entire weapon to overload and explode when they are missing or damaged.

Trivia

 * The spirit energy cannon resembles the Schwerer Gustav, a World War II Nazi Germany railway gun.