Rafflesia

The Rafflesia (ラフレシア) is a type of thermobaric anti-aircraft gun used by the Crown of the Northern Lights.

Design
The Rafflesia are mid-sized trucks with no canopy over the back. Instead, pedestals covered in four meter long and twelve centimeter wide metal tubes are half-forcibly welded or bolted to the beds of the trucks, a gun turret. They have a wooden frame built around them with countless plastic containers attached for buoyancy.

Principles
The Rafflesia are anti-aircraft guns. While they have no targeting assistance whatsoever, resulting in poor aim, they fire thermobaric rounds, creating an eight hundred meter explosion of flames in a concept similar to the ABM rounds of an older age. Thus the Rafflesia don't need to aim; they create a giant wall in the air using tons of thermobaric rounds for the enemy aircraft to run into. The gun turret has a limited angle of fire. The lowest they can aim is thirty-five degrees, so they can’t fire horizontally. In case the enemy gets close, the Rafflesias can self-destruct as a final attack.

All of the Rafflesias are normally controlled by electronic commands coming from a command vehicle. The Rafflesias only need enough crew to load up the ammunition, but they can be aimed manually if the situation requires it.

The Outer Gods
The Crown of the Northern Lights noticed the 37th approaching their factory, so they used helicopters to spread Rafflesias all over the nearby swamp, preventing an aerial assault and the use of a surface-to-surface missile packed with coagulant to harden up the swamp and allow the Baby Magnum get close to the factory. Thus, the 37th sent a group of soldiers through the swamp in hovercrafts with the mission of destroying the Rafflesia's command vehicle, rendering the anti-aircraft guns useless.

After the enemy unveiled its secret weapon, Quenser, Heivia and the other soldiers managed to reach the weapon factory. There they used one of the abandoned Rafflesias to shoot an Elefish at the enemy leader, creating an electromagnetic pulse that fried the enemy's hovercrafts and finished the battle.