In Which Things Go Bang In the Night

And so from swords I move to guns in my research. Same piece as I’ve been working on, same world. It’s a Renaissance/veryveryververy* early Industrial Revolution setting. The Industrial Revolution-y-ness is mostly just thrown in to account for airships. Cos dammit, I’m having airships or I’m taking my ball and going home. Anydoctor – er, anywho – on account of this mash-up time period, I get to have badass magic swords AND guns. Guns are just starting to show up, and are thus only at the flintlock pistol stage, mostly. A few revolvers exist, but are rare. I went looking through history for revolving rifles and a ha! They did exist. The earliest production model I could find was the 1855 Colt revolving rifle, and most others are from that era, which works for me. While the world I’m building is not at large at the technological level of the 19th century, certain aspects can be. I’ve also expanded my search to look at early and rare hand revolvers, to get a style for the weapon of choice for the character who favours guns. (His revolver is named Lucy. I don’t yet know what to call the revolving rifle he’ll eventually wind up with though. But he’s also a bit of a slut, so he’s going to wind up with what’s called a pepperbox at some point and, well, pepperboxes are very much what you’d expect to be used by a man who’s compensating for something. This character isn’t, but, it will still be done hilariously.)

I find guns much less interesting than swords, but they can be quite beautiful, and some of the ideas tried in the early days of revolvers were quite interesting, both from engineering and stylistic standpoints. I don’t need to be so picky in my world, but having some sliver of knowledge of what one is talking about in the real world helps make the pretend version, well, better.

*I was told by a very bad writing teacher who’s style and lessons I very much disliked to never use the word very. Verily, I use it very much.

~ by Reston Weilde on June 17, 2011.