Firearms in a fantasy story could work. I would be interested in seeing how the magic users overcome such an odd. If both forces stand about equal, we might have a thrilling tale to tell.
I understand that. The issue that we "enthusiasts" cannot get past is that once you describe a specific piece of ordnance you are also defining the parameters. Let me explain. Here are some examples. "Fritz always stockpiled a lot of Alliant Blue Dot gunpowder. In tougher times, he could always eat it." "Fritz carefully metered out 2,800 grains of A/A2230. That would be enough to blow up three drawbridges and the fearsome dragon sitting upon it." "Fritz knew he didn't have enough alcohol to power his turbo-charged dirigible to save the damsel. In a pinch he could always use the Alcan AL-8 he used in his musket." In each case, you have a perfect right to use any of these sentences in your story. And in each case, you just made a gun entusiast put your book down laughing, and wondering if a little kid wrote the story. My wife doesn't know a lot about guns, but she owns a .44 SPL Charter Arms Bulldog. The climactic scene in the movie "Manhunter," an early Hannibal Lecter film by Michael Mann, the hero offfs the serial kill with the same revolver using Glaser Safety Slugs. All real stuff. Of course, the hero fires six shots. Even my wife smirked. Every idiot knows its a five shot revolver--it was made famous by the "Son of Sam." Instead of being on the edge of our seats, we chuckled.
Firstly please do not call me an idiot. Also I'd like to clarify that my WIP is set in a fantasy world a la middle earth. Real life gun models would not exist. Getting the technicalities of a .44 SPL Charter Arms Bulldog wrong would illicit a chuckle from gun enthusiasts in most fiction. Including one in a fantasy epic would have me laughing no matter how it was used because it just wouldn't fit. So never fear your precious guns will not be disrespected.
Then I suggest making a stark divide from "earthly" weapons. For example, why couldn't your propellant be a luminescent paste made from cave fungus? Bullets cystalline and lathe turned? In fact, that was fun writing a answer for you.
Because it doesn't fit with my story. It's a good idea, but it doesn't really work in my WIP. I'm going for a more realistic feel so aside from the explicitly magical most things would have some real world basis. And I don't see any reason to make them so different. It's not like I'm planning on making the guns entirely inaccurate, for the most part they'd work like your average renaissance musket. There's just not going to be any direct parallels to specific models of guns.
Sounds like a good story, and a good choice. Muskets are from about the 16th century and most people recognize the Renaissance as lasting into the 17th century. You do have lots of flexibility there. Firearms were not mass produced at that time. They were hand made. Many were decorative. In fact, ships left some matchlock guns on a trip to Japan. When traders returned some time later, the Japanese had not made any advances, they just refined the matchlocks to an art-form. You're on good historical footing with this approach.
However there was a lot of technical evolution to get to that point. Their where a lot more primitive forums of firearms leading up the average renaissance musket. it would make more sense if you had something like a fire-lance or hand cannon being used. I think you are jumping plausibility a little hears.
Design of the weapon aside one should also consider quality of materials. The refinement and elegance of many Japanese swords was a result of a LACK OF RESOURCES. The weapon took a long time to make because the metal had to be purified and folded numerous times to get rid of impurities. Resources in others areas were different. Higher-quality ores in one kingdom would permit the construction of stronger gun/cannon barrels. Stronger barrels means you can pack more powder in. More powder means more muzzle velocity, increasing both range and accuracy. I could easily imagine some enterprising smith looking at those 'crude' muskets then at the high-quality steel forged in dragon's fire and putting two and two together.
That's the problem with blackpowder. The only way to make a bigger bang is to just use more powder. You have to make sure that the bullet is seated down on the powder with a slight compression to make sure there are no surprises. Look at weapons like the Colt Walker and most single shot rifles. They went through numerous iterations of the 45-70-(500), which became the 50-90, a great buffalo rifle despite the big herds were all gone. I mention the Walker because of its power despite innovation. It was truly the most powerful handgun (other than a few 45-70 beasts and the LeMat) until 1935. This opens up the choices for the author. If the plot included a gunsmith with access to the period weapons of the day, a custom could easily be built. For example, Terry Tussey builds my 1911s, and lots of gunsmithing tools date back to the Civil War.
I suppose like anything it had to be justified in the tale your trying to tell and the world you are creating. If you want you're whole world to be steampunk (Cannons, Airships, Victorian Uniforms) then your set really. If I find guns in a general fantasy story I feel they require justification before I'm willing to accept them. For example if in the stories lore it's possible for ANYONE who is so inclined to wield magic then I would heavily question the existence of firearms as no-one would have much use for them if you could blow crap up yourself anyway. If magic is restricted however to a select few then not only can I see it's justification but it would become even more necessary than in real life, because it's your best chance of evening the odds against a Wizard or Mage. Even in fantasy I feel that everything needs to be bound to a strict set of rules that the creator is responsible for. Without this Fantasy can get so up in the air, that nobody gets it.
Well essentially my world's dwarfs invent guns and canons to take back their homeland from an invading insect race. There's some reverse engineering from older civilizations going on, and gunpowder of sorts already exists in eastern nations but isn't used as a weapon.
Those things you bring up can work in a fantasy setting. Obviously, it depends on what kind of fantasy setting you are trying to craft. For an example, most games in the Final Fantasy series manages to pull that off (sort of). Heck, there was that Fable 3 game that had the use of flintlock-based firearms and melee weapons in a “Age of Industry” setting. I am currently working on a fantasy setting that resembles the WW1-WW2 era a little bit. Blades and cavalries are still in use but the firearms are in a lever-action, break-action, or bolt-action stage. No cartridge based weapons yet. Plus the setting might resemble steam punk but it is not. There is a fictional energy source that powers the cities. The setting I am working on does draw inspiration from the Final Fantasy franchise but I want to do it with less flamboyance, more grit, and a little more consistency. Anyway that’s my take.
That's a problem. You'll need a cartridge design for lever actions. Lever action rifles function by use of a stacked magazine (the tube under the barrel of a Winchester or Henry repeater) or a rotary magazine (like in a Savage). In the tube fed design, the cartridges are stacked end to end, and working the lever down not only extracts the spent case, but lowers an elevator. The spring tension of the stacked tube forces a cartridge onto the elevator; pulling the lever up feeds the cartridge into the chamber and locks the breech. A rotary magazine is like a coiled sea-shell. Each loaded road is "uncoiled" by a spring, and the lever works in a similar manner. (BTW, if you google or YouTube a Ruger 10/22, some of there rotary magazines have a clear plastic housing. You can see how it works.) There is such a thing as a "paper cartridge." It has a lead bullet just like a brass cartridge. However, there is a paper tube--like a rolled cigarette--filled with powder and then affixed to the bullet. The closing of the action is sometimes used to shear off the back of the paper tube, a separate cap (like a primer in a brass cartridge) sets off the powder. The issue is that a paper cartridge cannot be compressed in a stack or easily fed from the breech. You might have some luck looking at Schutzen rifles. They are breech fed, used paper cartridges and were the sniper rifles of their era. They are single shots.
Unless you got a different way to work it then technological evolution, you have a bit more research to do. Those action typed use cartridges. Also remember that not all actions where created different, there is a reason bolt action preferred to the two other. When do you think cartridges evolved?
Thank you for correcting me and for the infomation, Tourist. What I meant to say is that I do not want to have any machine guns in this particular fantasy setting that I am working on. So yeah, lever action being one of the few repeating rifles in this world.
Still working out the world itself and I have already responded to Tourist's correction of my "cartridge" issue. I know what I am doing is a fantasy tale but I still want to have some level of realism in it. The character in my story has a military background and so it opens up some more questions. Thanks for the reply, Mr. Berkley.
