Topic: We Want Guns! Guns Are Power!*

[Implementor]

*-General Aldo, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

Q: Is there any actual substantive reason Gunpowder CAN'T be developed on SW?

"The power of magic has stagnated any desire for a chemical explosive and the fluctuating effects of the Essaence have a transmuting effect on chemical reactions."- Shadow World Master Atlas


   The first makes sense and I can totally roll with that. It also allows everyone to tailor their world as they see fit. I've had a blast conceptualizing societal/military/economic changes and developments based on a more common (magic) useage over the long term SW history.

   The second I can't buy into as written. Everything is a chemical reaction: Photosynthesis, cell metabolism, enzymes, acids and bases, alloys, digestion etc. One could just as well replace chemical explosive with alcohol- it's flammable and can blow-up-real-good as well.  How about internal combustion or nuclear fusion/fission?

   Pre-Essaence discovery Althan civilization, The empires in The East (tech 6-8), the Taranians and other now gone civilizations, even Namar-Tol barrel bombs would indicate to me, that such advances would all be possible.

   As to the thread title, I'm not really interested in 'gunning-up' the setting hehe; I pretty much like it as is. But I'm the type that likes to know how it's all supposed to work canon-conceptualization style and I have a couple nascent ideas in the works that are relevant.




**Metallion's idea of the Essaence/Unlife as distributed AI vast nanitic fields is really nifty and solves a number of Shadow World/RM conundrums. His posts on such, and the threads they are in, are well worth a look-up in the SW forums here**

[Malim]

There is laser pistols and blaster rifles, isnt that enough?

[Terry K. Amthor]

I don't remember the full history, but for some reason gunpowder is very rare and not as effective on Shadow World (It's not like you are Captain Kirk and can just dig it up on some alien world with diamonds and wound a lumbering lizard man!). Perhaps potassium nitrate is harder to find or impure, or chemists have yet to perfect it. Reference LOTR where only Saruman—not even Sauron—mastered gunpowder to blast Helm's Deep. And the Amber series, where gunpowder did not work in some parallel worlds.

For whatever reason, it is extremely rare on canon SW, but of course you can introduce it. For the record the Namari Elves use  incendiary bombs, not gunpowder (from Emer III):

After the Lankani ignore warnings, the airbarges drop incendiary canisters—“bombs”—on Lankan ships. This marks the first known use of chemical explosives since the Interregnum. (These are not true ‘explosives’ like gunpowder, but containers of a flammable sticky substance that burns even on water.)

[Implementor]

 "There is laser pistols and blaster rifles, isn't that enough?"         Hah!




    Wow, thanks for answering. Falls in line with how I was thinking and conceptualizing it all for all these years: Magic, Technological-stagnation, and resource-rarity. I just thought there may be a 'physics' (magics? heh) reason why it could never be possible. (Looks like electromagnetic systems are the way to go =p)   

    I actually thought about the Amber series but sort of dismissed it in the end because I see those parallel worlds as having slightly different physics to one another, whereas I see Kulthea as in our universe's physics. However I didn't even consider the being-less-effective angle at all (shame.) I was thinking completely binary: it worked or it didn't. It's funny you mention Captain Kirk too (hah), because I was recently reading a rather extensive write-up on all the metallurgical, chemical and other developments, expertise, and processes that needed to occur over a rather long period of time to get to even early gun powders. See if I can find those mayhaps.

   Thanks sooooo much. Now to continue my ideas surrounding a tome of terrible evil: The Theory and Practice of the Scientific Method (Inscribed in Althan) hehe