Musket and Magecraft Fantsay-Help Wanted

[Heir of the Void he/him]

So, I'm starting on prep work for a story for NaNoWriMo. I want to go with something post-apolyptic, where a Mysterious Magical Force^TM abruptly stops modern technology from working. After this event, I want to limit the setting to, at the very most, muzzle-loading rifles with Minie Balls, though limiting them to muskets or something would be OK.

What I need help with is deciding a way that the Mysterious Magical Force^TM interacts with the world to make automatic weapons, bolt action weapons, and pump action weapons impossible or impractical. Any ideas?

 

I'm also desigin the magic system for this world, which only comes into effect after the Mysterious Magical Force^TM starts jamming modern technolgy, I'm currently thinking about an Elemental system that would look a lot like Furycrafting from Codex Alera, minus the furies themselves (the power either comes from the magic user, or the magic user manuplates the Mysterious Magical Force^TM around them). Does anyone have any ideas for elemental powers beyond those described in the link, or something.

Thanks in advance.

[Kurkistan he/him]

I haven't read them myself, but so far as I know the Emberverse gets away with a "not arbitrary or downright contradictory" implementation of anti-technology by making it so that "high-energy-density" technology doesn't work. So the electricity flowing through your body is fine, but anything that releases/uses more than X/second units of energy isn't going to work. Like an internal combustion engine or an explosion, say.

 

You could possibly finagle that and raise the limit a tad so that low-energy (read: iffy-quality black powder) explosions just barely sneak under the limit.

 

Also, in my (not very knowledgeable) opinion, if you can mass-produce muskets you can mass-produce rifles (especially with modern knowledge of forging and production techniques), and there's no reason not to use a Minie ball if you know the trick to make it.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Heir of the Void he/him]

I haven't read them myself, but so far as I know the Emberverse gets away with a "not arbitrary or downright contradictory" implementation of anti-technology by making it so that "high-energy-density" technology doesn't work. So the electricity flowing through your body is fine, but anything that releases/uses more than X/second units of energy isn't going to work. Like an internal combustion engine or an explosion, say.

 

You could possibly finagle that and raise the limit a tad so that low-energy (read: iffy-quality black powder) explosions just barely sneak under the limit.

 

Also, in my (not very knowledgeable) opinion, if you can mass-produce muskets you can mass-produce rifles (especially with modern knowledge of forging and production techniques), and there's no reason not to use a Minie ball if you know the trick to make it.

 

The problem is, I want muzzle-loading weapons (the emberverse bans all firearms), so black powder will sneak under the energy density limit.

 

As for your opinion on manufacturing, you are correct, though making a rifle adds at least one extra step to the production process, and increases cost and manufacturing complexity accordingly. As for Minie balls, I guess there's no reason not to not use them.

 

The problem is, none of that limits pump-action or bolt-action weapons, though I think I might need a gun guru to help me out there.

 

Any thoughts on the magic? I'm trying to think of a way not to just rip Codex Alera.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Well (and once again I'm not a guru, so perhaps I'd be best to just stay quiet and wait, but...) it's my understanding that black powder, aside from being low-energy, is actually quite messy, and fouls just about everything something fierce. Sure you can manufacture some pump-action or bolt-action stuff (or even automatic if you're feeling daring), but it's going to start jamming a handful of shots later.

[BreathTaker he/him]

I'm pretty sure a shotgun would work. It's all mechanical workings. It wouldn't be beyond belief that someone would pack a light enough load to stay under the limit but keep themselves safe. Also, shooting a subsonic round (.45ACP for example) through a suppressor would drastically lower the velocity thereby possibly lowering the velocity enough to sneak under the limit.

[Aonar he/him]

A way you could sort of merge the two (magic+setting element) together: Have mages in this world be able to draw in and use energy from the things around them; the more energy, the easier. This would work well with heat and force, I'm not sure about other stuff, although depending on how much you allow them to manipulate the energy they absorb, you could probably get some neat stuff going.

 

This would make high energy weapons impractical when used against or around mages specifically. Not sure if that's exactly what you're going for, but it could be interesting. 

[Heir of the Void he/him]

Well (and once again I'm not a guru, so perhaps I'd be best to just stay quiet and wait, but...) it's my understanding that black powder, aside from being low-energy, is actually quite messy, and fouls just about everything something fierce. Sure you can manufacture some pump-action or bolt-action stuff (or even automatic if you're feeling daring), but it's going to start jamming a handful of shots later.

 

That's a good point. It would foul up mutli-shot bolt-actions, at the very least. Opening the action after each shot might be nessary, if for no other reason than to clean the firing chamber.

 

I'm pretty sure a shotgun would work. It's all mechanical workings. It wouldn't be beyond belief that someone would pack a light enough load to stay under the limit but keep themselves safe. Also, shooting a subsonic round (.45ACP for example) through a suppressor would drastically lower the velocity thereby possibly lowering the velocity enough to sneak under the limit.

 

I think a shotgun would work, though I'm trying to limit it to single-shot weapons, which I think with the compression rule (no more than one compression per 2 seconds in the vicinity of the same componets) would greatly limit the shooting speed of weapons. Do you have any idea of the fire rate of a break-action shotgun, or something like that?

The point is, I'm trying to force an artifical balace bettwen melee weapons and firearms. For example, with metal magic, metal plate armor can be made an buffed strong enough to resist at least black powder weapons, at least for a few shots, depending on the skill of the magic user. Any other ideas for how this could be enacted?

[Jivvy]

You could replace black powder with a simple manipulation of the Mysterious Magical ForceTM that anyone can do.  Then firearms would be restricted by the speed at which the user can preform the magic, so it wouldn't matter if the weapons are automatic or not, because the use of magic would be the rate determining step.  It isn't perfect, but you wouldn't need complex explanations for why a breech loading rifle wouldn't work.  You would, however, need to explain how why the magic would need to propel a lead ball out of the barrel of a gun, instead of some other, simpler way of causing death and destruction.  (Of course I know nothing of how this Mysterious Magical ForceTM works, so this idea may not work at all for you.  But, I just thought I would suggest an alternative.)

Edited September 17, 2014 by Jivvy

[Heir of the Void he/him]

Posted the first chaper on this site on another thread here.