Personal Shield Generator
A body-worn device generating a Holtzman field that stops fast strikes cold and lets slow ones through.
A personal shield generator throws up a Holtzman-effect field. It lets slow-moving objects pass and violently repels anything crossing a certain velocity. That single quirk rewired combat across the Imperium. High-speed projectiles and blows became close to useless against a shielded opponent overnight. Fighters adapted by returning to slow, deliberate knife work, precise enough to probe past a shield's threshold speed. Entire martial traditions grew out of that adaptation, the Swordmasters of Ginaz chief among them. Shields carry another weakness beyond their cost and fragility. The hum they give off drives sandworms into a killing frenzy on Arrakis. Wearing one openly in the open desert can get a person killed just as surely as any blade. Paul Atreides' Fremen forces turned that weakness against Sardaukar and Harkonnen troops during the Battle of Arrakeen. They threw shielded soldiers into a fight against an enemy that did not need speed to kill them.
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