Firearms have a weird place in the New World, owing to the ever present effect of magic on technology, especially weapons of war. While there was a high availability of Old World guns found in old ruins and caches, the danger of using them made them unpopular in most parts of the world. At worst, guns would explode, often maiming the person trying to use it. At best, they were plagued by misfires, malfunctions and frequent jams. Even when operating correctly, the latent magic would seemingly slow their trajectory. Their target's soul would slow it even more. While magic interference has lessened over the last hundred years, most places, with the exception of Simeria, don't have a gun culture.

Firearms in Most of the World

Firearms are an oddity in most of the world. While many places these days can easily support a robust bolt action rifle, it's simply hard to compete with compound crossbows and bows. They are not too uncommon as tools for various mercenaries and one-off troop units.

Gun Cultists (Found in Brave Earth: Prologue, actually) are one of those most common ways of achieving a functional firearm. Building, adoring, and worshipping your own firearm can create a magically imprinted gun which is protected by the user's soul when firing. The munitions still suffer from the same magical air resistance, but otherwise function normally. The nature of these cultists though means that most guns that they make are relatively crude muskets, or breach loaded weapons. Many get mangled in the process of trying to create a functional weapon.

Similarly, anyone using a firearm long enough has a chance of creating a slight bond that at least helps with reliability, though this is a hard thing to test for. Naturally this makes most gun users very superstitious.

The magically enhanced nature of a lot of New World fighters and the projectile slowing forces around them make firearms kinda reactable. Even in the Weiss, someone with a powerful enough soul can still slow a shot enough possibly dodge it on reaction. Wounds tend to be less serious too, though this, to some extent, applies to all weapons (the soul is good at trying to keep people alive).

As such, velocity is a thought after trait in firearms, though the equipment needed for extreme velocities mostly only exists in Simeria.

Firearms in Simeria

Most firearms are used in Simeria. Shiv, located in the Weiss Desert, the biggest magical deadzone in the world, had immediate use for them, even when magical interference was at its highest. Now, several hundred years in the future, Simeria is the only continent where firearms are produced at a "modern" level, at least at any type of scale, and the only place where wars are regularly fought with them. As the influence of technology spreads, so does Shiv's influence, as they can project their military further out into the world.

Since Simeria started off using recovered weapon stockpiles, most of the most common calibers are still in use today. Someone like Reese, trying to keep her old arsenal supplied, has no problem acquiring new 9mm, .45 ACP, or 5.56 Nato, she has a had time finding replacement 5.7x28 rounds. Rounds tend to be loaded heavier than their Old World counterparts, always looking for that little bit extra velocity.

So what kind of Guns does Shiv use?

Honestly most of the weapon choices in modern Shiv wouldn't be far out. Something not far out from a HK416, or something like a Steyr Scout as a simpler rifle to use in magically dense areas. Not exactly these guns, but if I was to design ones, I'd be looking in this direction. That's not that fun though. Instead, how would I design a more specialized gun to solve more specialized New World problems? Well I had fun trying to take a stab at this.

WF Zünd F408

The F408 is a "Frontier Rifle" (released in 408 ACE), a firearm designed explicitly to be used on the boundary zones ("frontiers") between highly magical and technologically tolerant spaces. It is a weapon used almost exclusively by Shivic Rangers, as the gun is known to quirky, and unpleasant to use and maintain... on top of being rather expensive. But it is reliable at what it does and is well regarded amongst Rangers.

The gun itself is a pump action bullpup underfire revolver with a gas sealed cylinder system designed to fire flechette rounds, which is very silly, but were designed to work around both magic and the gun's own self-induced problems.

• Ammunition becomes unreliable in higher magic zones, as chemical reactions become more unstable and inconsistent.
  • Automatic and Semi automatic weapons become less reliable, often jamming or failing to properly cycle. They can often still be used, but become more of a liability.
  • Optimally though, a weapon for frontier regions would be single action. The F408 opts for a pump action system.
• In extreme situations, stacked ammunition can cook off due to magic. A revolver cylinder helps here.
  • ... Actual revolvers have cook-off problems for actual real world reasons, which leads to the Back Pressure Plate on the cylinder.
  • This also helps with the Gas Seal system, where the cylinder slides forward enough to insert the neck of the cartridge into barrel, creating a gas seal and protecting the operator from gas spray from the cylinder gap.
  • This is doubly important because as a bullpup, the cylinder would be uncomfortably close to the shooter's face.
• This Gas Seal system is also important as to overcome the magical resistance in the air, the F408 is tuned to fire high velocity flechette ammunition.
  • Flechettes seem to behave extra well with magic, almost like they're treated like arrows or something.
  • The high velocity and damage of these rounds is why Rangers like them. Actually hitting something out in the boonies and killing it in one or two shots is HARD.
  • Can fire normal high speed rounds.
• The cylinder ejects up, allowing for... relatively less painful reloads than this configuration would otherwise entail.
  • It's PRETTY good at flinging out the brass, though sometimes you need to manually purge the cylinders.
  • Reloading is still awkward.
  • This pivot mechanism is the whole reason the gun is underfire.
• Comes in multiple barrel length configurations. The image used is of the carbine, the most common configuration.
• The Rangers just call these things 'nailguns'.

Other annoying traits.

• The gun is for right-hand shooters only, the insides being too stuffed for multi-sided controls.
  • The cylinder is also designed, in case of excess pressure, to eject gas from the right of the gun, away from the user.
  • The eject button on the pump action is on the left side of the gun only.
  • There is probably at least a left-venting cylinder replacement but lefties get hit with extra bad ergonomics.
• None of the design decisions benefit use outside of the frontier
  • You're better with a bolt action most of the time. Or god, just a crossbow.
• Maintenance sucks. They're durable, but when you do have to crack one open, it's complicated, interconnected and simply a mess.
  • Officially you're not supposed to really field strip them, though people do it anyways.
• Ammunition is expensive and a pain. While this gun is available to civilians, it's not something most want to shoot often because of the price.
  • Even the non-flechette rounds are annoying and expensive.
  • You can fire other stuff, often that bypasses the advantages of the gas seal, but that's dangerous with anything but low pressure ammo. At that point it's mostly just a toy.
• The trigger SUCKS, even by bullpup standards. The bend over the handhold causes the trigger rod to have even more mushiness.

Despite all this, the F408 is the most considered the most powerful, effective firearm that can be reliably used in high magic conditions. This is a narrow use case, but one that was important enough the fund the weapon's development. I imagine WF Zünd as a smaller arms manufacturer, and this contract and design a crazy engineering flex to show off what they can do. The end result of this might have been mixed though, as it's easy to see the F408 as an over-engineered novelty.

Either way, this gun is ridiculous, but my goal was to make something ridiculous in a semi-believable way. It's not supposed to be perfectly realistic but at least thought out enough as to not make it's design seem completely arbitrary. I had fun making it, and doing the pixel art for it, so I hope you enjoy reading about it!