Really just misc doodles on the same topic and its not the first time I've touched on said topic.

Airguns have existed in the later stages of the lore and timeline of the Realm of the Quiet Age for a long time. Of course the basic principle is an airgun that uses that intense mechanical energy to elementize mana into wind mana, dramatically improving the ballistics.

But I think in that I've bulldozed over the potential benefits of a basic airgun without the mana and so I wanted to talk about the bits of experimentation and research about them... And also get some hyperfixations out of my brain obviously.


Focusing a lot on spring piston air rifles of various sorts I should mention. I've been out shooting some with friends and, seeing as they are mechanically the simplest air rifles I think they're the most important to talk about.

Small calibre air rifles are far from perfect weapons, they aren't the most powerful with many being around 20 joules, are tricky to shoot with past 30 meters. All the modern ones are shooting roundballs, pellets, or darts between a .17-.30 calibre projectile. With the lead ones mostly ranging between 10-50 grains.

But even the smallest ones are used in small game hunts, squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, prairie dogs, raccoons, etc. So clearly they do work for practical purposes, just in close ranges.

However, they do have advantages that I think are very relevant

Especially for people who are usually capable of making pretty effective devices, but are working in subsistence economies before drekir, ormer or magic are taken into account.

First is of course ammo. There is no powder needed and with a piston based air rifle, no airtank either. As long as the piston works and is maintained, all you need are balls, darts, pellets, bullets, etc. Likewise since these guns tend to require smaller projectiles to be efficient, you can store a lot of projectiles.
Like, 250 small lead balls in a leather sack the size of your hand, store a lot. A den could feasibly leave a larger tribal meeting with thousands of various projectiles that would likely see them through a year of shooting, hunting, plinking, etc.
When things like darts are also taken into play ammo is not hard to make for these sorts of weapons. They're mechanical blowguns.

Secondly, while the guns need some exactness to make, they are very simple machines. Oil the piston and the leather/rubber seels, keep the spring (like rubber in Õndem) in good shape, replace some non moving o rings and the occasional spring and that's it. There are springer air rifles that are over 100 years old that are still working fine. So they aren't hard to keep running even with minimal infrastructure once they are made.

Thirdly they are relatively quiet! Now I've been hunting a good number of times at this point, I haven't seen animals react too much to gunfire which is weird. But I am sure if animals are skiddish a quieter spring piston gun is going to spook them less than a louder firearm. Additionally, seeing as preindustrial people didn't have much of a concept of hearing protection with firearms, with drekir likely also not understanding hearing protection, quieter airguns may present a nice option both for the shooters comfort and their arguably long term quality of life due to not blasting their ears out.

There are also aspects more specific to the éldimor and the magic of the setting that help out in justifying them

Fourthly drekir aren't that big. They're 24-40 inches tall, about 120-170lbs. They aren't super tiny though they aren't big either. So that lower power isn't quite as big a deal to them as a human. For hunting of course a rabbit to us is quite a bit bigger relative to them, so having a weapon that doesn't have enough kinetic energy for something deer sized isn't the end of the world. Just like it could hurt a human too it could also really ruin a dreks day, or a larger animals day when pointed or poisoned darts come into play.

Fifthly, aethergun logic could still apply to these sorts of early, simple airguns. A drop of mana could simply be added behind the projectile when loading. When the intense wind and heat of these pistons hits that mana it will likely elementize into wind mana. Thus increasing the pressure and velocity of the projectile. Such a method could make these rifles shoot more like a .22 firearms... with the noise though, and chances are with the potential of damage to the gun itself. risk and reward.

Sixthly, the potential of these can actually be quite insane, check out light gas guns. As you can achieve hyper velocities off this same principle as a wimpy spring piston airgun. Mostly due to a lot of complicated physics. Combined with the potential of elementizing mana with the mechanical force means you could in theory get some powerful weapons... Though thats probably not what you would see in practice.

Anywho, thats all, be well