Has anyone here ever read J.R.R. Tolkien's "Farmer Giles of Ham"? But anyways, here's my idea. In the game, Musketry would be a seperate, unique skill, you would have to find a Dwemer book in a Dwemer ruin, and a key, the book would have some fluff in it on construction of such weapons, perhaps rifling and the likes. The only area you could create such weapons would be inside that very fortress, after clearing it out. There would be a special ore added to the game just for this, resembling warpstone from the Warhammer Fantasy universe, it would be used as powder and shot, when carefully crushed up, it would be easily ignitable and conflagrate rapidly, and when solid, it would be soft, and perhaps explode or somewhat upon striking a metal surface or a dragonscale, resulting in a puff of sickly green smoke and a scorching wound, in flesh, it would ram through soft tissue and scorch on impact with bone. Early craftable weapons would be crude iron tubes with a wooden crossbow style stock/tiller, your character would carry a lit match on a stick and insert it in the hole in the tube, there'd be a puff of smoke and a soft green tracer, shots would be inaccurate and aiming would consist of a slight zoom and looking down the top or side of the weapon, with the consequence of being temporarily blinded while the smoke drifted away. As your skills improved, etc, you could craft more complicated weaponry, but you'd need Dwemer Gyros and metal to make them, as well as your preferred metal and stock material, the finest stock material being ebony, which would result in a smooth glossy stock with light engravings, and the finest barrel material would be steel. Rifling would be an improvement, and perhaps increase shot velocity and accuracy. Also, in order of progression from least to most advanced. 1. Fire-lance, essentially a crude tube that you'd stick a match in, bang. Mentioned previously. 2. Matchlock, A more advanced version of the firelance, you'd rest the heavy, unwieldy affair on a shooting stick which would be forked, squeeze the lever, and it'd fire a large projectile, would do a lot of raw damage, take an eternity to reload, relight the match (By blowing on it to bring it back to a glow) and fire a second shot. The first gun to feature proper sighting, with a small bead at the end 3. Clockwork-lock, The equivalent of the underappreciated wheel-lock, The large serrated wheel would spin against a piece of "warpstone", spraying little greenish white sparks into an open pan of "warpstone" powder, takes about a second less to fire than a matchlock, depending on quality, still takes a while to reload, reprime the pan, close the pan to prevent the powder from falling out, then wind the mechanism twice, and squeeze the trigger but less so than a matchlock. Features a bead sight, features the first pistols. 4 Snapping-lock, a flat piece of warpstone is held between two lips on a snaphaunce style mechanism, you pull the hammer back, and squeeze the trigger, it fires in a blink of an eye. Pistols feature a bead sight, shoulder-guns have back and front sight. Also, types of weaponry, smallest to largest. 1. Pistol, one handed, quick to reload, can be dual wielded with another pistol, or a sword, sacrificing proper aiming. 2. Musketoon, two handed, very fast to reload, flared muzzle, lacks a sight, instead zooms down the centerline of the gun. 3. Light Musket, Shorter than a heavy musket, slightly faster reload, features proper sights and a shooting stick isn't necessary past clockwork lock weaponry. Less accurate an powerful. 4. Heavy musket, requires a shooting stick, and features sights, slow reload, and with rifling (Can be done at any grindstone on any weapon but the musketoon and fire-lance weapons to varying levels depending on skill.) is extremely accurate and can punch through a dragonscale, requires time to aim. More ideas to come, namely skills.
