SR-9

The SR-9, officially known as the '''Standard Rifle Mk. 9''' is a bolt action rifle firing cartridges from a 5-round internal clip-loaded magazine. It was the primary infantry weapon of the Royal Army until its replacement by the SR-9C, a shorter weapon using the same basic design. The SR-9 action, using a stripper clip loaded with the .324 Royal cartridge, successfully combined and improved several bolt action engineering concepts which were soon adopted by many other countries. Although it was replaced in 1929, the large reserve of SR-9 lead its adoption as a sniper rifle for the Royal Army until the end of the Great War. Early production versions are highly sought after by collectors and hunting variants are commercially available and remain popular.

History
During the last years of the reign of King Aedanicus VIII in the 1880s, Urcea began to search for a standard rifle design for all uses, replacing a myriad of weapons from earlier generations and failed experiments in revolving rifles and other repeaters. Though bolt-action rifles had been viable since the late 1860s, Urcea was slow to adopt it. In 1880, Urcea adopted its standard rifle classification system. Following several rifles deemed unsatisfactory, the Regal Army finally hit upon the SR-8, a licensed design from Veltorina, in 1894. Despite its smooth action and unique cartridge loading system, the rifle was not popular within the army, and it became evident that the SR-8 was unsuited for further use in the Red Interregnum, when the armies of smaller states from the Kingdom of Dericania outclassed and out-fired the much larger Regal Army. Legitimist forces largely used weapons designed in Burgundie and other parts of the Holy Levantine Empire, and found them far superior to the SR-8. Upon the restoration of King Patrick III, integrated Legitimist forces found the SR-8 completely unsatisfactory. As with the rest of the restoration, the newly reformed Armed Forces of the Apostolic Kingdom of Urcea began to investigate how to improve the military hardware employed at every level.

After a year of trying various rifles from throughout the Holy Levantine Empire and Caphiria, the Royal Army decided to launch a domestic arms competition based on a few specifications learned from the foreign rifles. Among these specifications were the replacement of the .308 Regal with the .324 Royal based on some of the other rifles throughout the Holy Levantine Empire. The Royal Hunting and Munitions Company, up until then a minor producer of rifles, won the competition and won the contract to build Urcea's new rifles - the SR-9. The Royal Hunting and Munitions Company had previously produced the SR-2, which was not popular or reliable but was the design basis for the new weapon designed in the late 1880s, which would become the SR-9. The rifle became immediately popular in the Royal Army for its reliability, ease of use relative to the SR-8, and powerful round. Its reputation was enhanced by reports coming from the Burgoignesc Grand Crona Trading Company, which purchased 2,500 rifles for colonial use, receiving glowing appraisals from its users. The SR-9's considerable length and weight was considered a drawback by the mid-1920s, leading to the design of the shortened SR-9C, which didn't enter service until 1929. The SR-9 was nonetheless popular with the Royal and Imperial Army during its use in the first two years of the Great War. That popularity lead to the adaptation of most of the existing stock of rifles into sniper rifles upon the adoption of the SR-9C, and the SR-9 sniper variant would serve as the standard Urcean sniper rifle until the end of the war. After the war, SR-9's were distributed during the Occidental Cold War to many nations in Punth and Crona, and they can still often be found in reserve armories or in the hands of local militias.