Firearms
"It only takes a heartbeat to pull the trigger. And that’s one less heartbeat your enemy gets to use."
Firearms are not simply weapons in Everwealth, they are relics of rebellion, symbols of parity, and tragic reminders of what civilization once could mass-produce. First crafted during early periods of The Lost Ages, their exact origin lost to time, but comonly believed the periods' answer to the tyrannical reign of battlefield magi, the firearm gave mortals a tool to match their at-the-time oppressive spellcraft with steel and smoke. It is the weapon that made men equal, if only for a time. Though The Fall shattered much of the infrastructure that birthed them, many firearms still remain, kept alive through patchwork repairs, oil-prayers, and dwindling hoards of pre-Schism gunpowder. Revolvers, bolt-actions, and break-barrel rifles still serve in the hands of elite guards and lucky scavengers, each shot a miracle of engineering no longer understood. Yet even as their numbers decline, the shadow of what they once meant lingers: the first great equalizer, built to silence those who spoke in fire and lightning.Utility
Originally created to end the supremacy of mages on the battlefield, firearms quickly became the gold standard for anti-personnel warfare. Their ability to kill at range, without the need for strength or spells, revolutionized combat. In modern Everwealth, firearms are used sparingly but with brutal efficiency. An assassin’s revolver may fire once a year, but that shot is worth more than a dozen blades. Warlords stockpile functioning rifles like holy relics. Even commoners speak the word “gun” with the reverence of a church bell. Misuse is common: broken fingers from poorly gripped barrels, backfires from decayed powder, or “clicking ghosts”, a term for loaded weapons that simply… don’t fire. Some say the gods themselves have begun interfering with their use.
Manufacturing
True firearm manufacturing died with the Fall. The industrial forges required to produce rifled barrels and standardized ammunition were destroyed or buried. Even now, the remnants of these facilities are picked over like graves. Attempts to restart production result in crude imitations, muskets that misfire more than they function, blunderbusses that rupture after a single shot. Crossbows and repeating bolt-launchers have become the “new” gun, though they lack the visceral immediacy and magick-piercing quality of true firearms. Efforts by The Scholar's Guild and Merchant's Meet to recreate the process are ongoing but plagued by sabotage, political disputes, and the sheer absence of infrastructure.
Social Impact
The invention of the firearm changed the social order forever. No longer did birthright or magickal lineage guarantee survival. For a brief window of time, a stable-handed farmhand with a good shot could fell a court mage, or a king. This terrified those in power. During the height of their availability, firearms were regulated, taxed, and seized by ruling factions. Whole wars were fought over their stockpiles. After the Fall, many were lost, but the memory remained. Even now, nobles flinch at the sight of one drawn, and some city-states outlaw them entirely, not out of fear of death, but fear of the idea they represent.
Access & Availability
Today, firearms are rare but not extinct. Most belong to the highest echelons of royal guards, private collectors, or relic-hunters with more courage than caution. They are sometimes seen in the hands of caravan elites, noblehouse enforcers, and battle-proven mercenaries. Entire black market operations exist solely to salvage old guns or harvest parts from broken ones. Reproducing firearms is theoretically possible, but practically a nightmare. Industrial capacity is crippled, the alchemical recipe for gunpowder is near-forgotten, and ammunition stores from the Lost Ages are stale or unstable. What remains is scavenged, hoarded, and prayed over.
Complexity
Firearms are intricate devices. While simpler than some forms of spellcraft, their precise engineering demands tolerances and materials no longer widely available. To function properly, a firearm must balance metallurgical refinement, chemical reliability, and calibrated moving parts, none of which can be consistently guaranteed in Everwealth’s post-Schism economy. The knowledge required to repair or reload a firearm is restricted to aging engineers, ex-Guild tinkerers, or deviant alchemists. Entire working examples are often built from half a dozen cannibalized cousins. When one breaks, there may be no coming back.
Discovery
The firearm was not born from curiosity or innovation, but as many things in Everwealth are, desperation. As wars in the earliest eras of The Lost Ages dragged on, magick-users dominate battlefields, their power unmatched and unanswerable. No shield, no armor, no wall could survive a well-timed bolt of lightning. The common soldier was nothing more than fodder. In the ironworks beneath Mount Khareth, lost to the Schism, a coalition of Dwarfish engineers and Human tacticians devised a mechanical device capable of flinging metal faster than the eye could follow. The earliest prototypes were unreliable, but when they worked, they felled mages before they could finish a chant. Warfare would never be the same.
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