Black Powder Cannons

Country Founder Age : 25 Joined : 05 Oct 2007 Posts : 14

All Aer airships and naval vessels come equipped with black powder cannons of all sizes. The Aer themselves will even carry ones small enough to be used by a single person. The cannons are slow when compared to most other weapons (namely arrows), but the damage they can cause far outweighs the lack of speed in most Aer’s eyes.

The secret to the black powder cannon is the black powder. One of the most heavily guarded secrets in the Confederation, very few know how to make it, and all are agents of the Council of Chieftains. Anyone who wishes to carry the powder for their use must purchase it. Black powder is of course black in color, and is a grainy powder. It looks innocuous, but when fire or lightning touches it, the powder explodes with tremendous force.

For the cannons used on vessels, a sac of power is stuffed inside the cannon with a metal ball resting on top of it (all loading is done through the rear of the cannon which opens). A fuse is inserted through the back of the cannon and lit. The exploding powder sack propels the ball at tremendous force out of the cannon and the ball will carry death to a target as far as a mile away. The cannon is then opened, scrubbed, and reloaded, a process that takes around two to three minutes. A few crews have boasted to have reloaded a cannon in less than a minute and a half, but this has not been verified.

Hand cannons work in the exact same manner, except that instead of a fuse a striking cap is used to produce a spark that sets off the powder sack, and they are loaded from the front, not the rear.