[Dragaera] Speculation on weapons and sorcery

[John Dallman]

In article 
<e6adc2290706242228n2476f771l93078780c1517ee1 at mail.gmail.com>, 
davdisil at gmail.com (Davdi Silverrock) wrote:

> A perennial topic that comes up around here is the question of why the
> Dragaeran troops in /Dragon/ are only using javelins and swords; why
> even bows and arrows are absent, except as being used by mercenaries
> of the opposite side; why no-one has firearms or anything like them.

Firearms aren't part of the setting. The "flash-stones" that were 
popular in the _Phoenix Guards_ were modelled on seventeenth-century 
pistols, but were magical, not gunpowder-driven. SKZB has explained 
their absence from Vlad's period by saying something like "One day a 
sorcerer found out how to set them off at a distance. So then they were 
more dangerous than they were worth". 

It's perfectly reasonable that an infantry company wouldn't have any 
bowmen: archery was a highly skilled and specialised art, and there have 
been very few troops in Earth's pre-gunpowder history who were both 
bowmen and hand-to-hand fighters. However, the absence of missile units 
from the regular army is ... well, puzzling. Perhaps Dragons don't hold 
with them in this kind of semi-formal war? 

You might claim that Dragons want to be hand-to-hand combatants, and 
that conscripted Teckla don't have the skill to be good bowmen. That's 
reasonable. But you would expect some House to do it. 

-- 
John Dallman, jgd at cix.co.uk, HTML mail is treated as probable spam.