General Liu

The General Liu rifle is named after its inventor and the first Superintendent of Hanyang Arsenal, General Liu Qing En (1869-1929), as the rifle never received any other designation. It holds the distinction of being one of China's earliest domestically designed firearms, meaning that it was an original design from within the country, and not a design purchased from another major power. The rifle used a muzzle "gas-trap" system similar to the Danish Bang rifle, the Gewehr 41, and early production models of the M1 Garand. The rifle could be switched from gas-operated semi-automatic to straight-pull bolt action by rotating the metal cylinder located on the muzzle counter-clockwise; to revert to gas-operation the cylinder simply had to be rotated back clockwise. Around 1914, General Liu contacted the Pratt & Whitney Tool Company of Hartford, Connecticut, in order to purchase machine tooling for the Hanyang Arsenal. General Liu hoped to use this new machinery to produce his new semi-automatic rifle domestically in China, and worked to secure a contract with Pratt and Whitney to this end. In September of that year, Liu traveled out to Hartford along with his entire family and several servants. Liu would remain there for almost a year, working to familiarize himself with the machining process. Two versions of the rifle were produced around 1916 and tested at the Nanyuan Proving Grounds; one of them being made by the Hanyang Arsenal and the other made by Pratt & Whitney. The Pratt & Whitney version proved to be superior, due to the hand-made springs in the Hanyang rifle being weaker than the machined ones in the American rifle. Two years later in 1918, two more Liu rifles were tested, this time at Springfield Armory in the US. Following these trials, and after a few delays thanks to WW1, a shipment of tooling from Pratt and Whitney was sent on its way to China in 1919. In the summer of 1919, General Liu suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed in one side of his body, and Liu ended up resigning from his position at Hanyang Arsenal. This resulted in the machinery that had been meant for the Arsenal to be stored in a warehouse in Shanghai for about two years, when it was then sent to a different arsenal in China. It wouldn't be until 1935 when the tooling finally made its way to its original destination, and arrived at Hanyang Arsenal. When it arrived at Hanyang, the tooling was repurposed to help manufacture other firearms, chiefly the Hanyang 88 and Type 24 rifles. Only a few rifles were produced, though it is unclear how many actually were produced. One known sample is known to survive in the Swedish Armémuseum, and another survives in the Springfield Armory Museum. Personality-wise, she's gentle and polite. She's also bad at communicating with others but this has unexpectedly led to her cultivating an air of mystery, making her one of the popular mentions on many online forums. She often looks at the sky by herself and has no battlefield experience, but she does her best to complete any missions she's given. Occasionally, she is known to hold complex emotions about the word "mass-produced". Money is no object to her and all the things she uses are extremely expensive.