*-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**