The Earliest Shoulder Fired Firearm to Exist.

The Earliest Shoulder-Fired Firearm in Human History.

The truest form of invisible death - firearms. From a distance of hundreds of meters, a ball of lead could end a man’s life in less than seconds. The Arquebus; the first of it’s kind, the beginning of evolution for the most powerful weapons system known to the modern world. Unrefined and newly born, this weapons system would birth an age of war much, much scarier than anything anyone had ever known.

These first prototypes used a matchlock style system, where a piece of burning rope, soaked in horse or human urine, allowing to to burn for incredibly long periods. This piece of rope was placed into a mechanism connected to a flat spring, when tension was released, it would strike the pan. Beneath this burning rope, there was a small pan full of gunpowder, which had a flash-hole leading into the barrel. The barrel was packed with gunpowder, a small paper/wooden/cardboard spacer, and then a lead ball. The caliber was dependent entirely on the maker of the firearm, as there was no form of standardization at this time.

These ‘guns’ (Dare I even call them that) were incredibly unreliable. If your powder was even slightly wet, the gun would fizzle out and not fire. If the powder wasn’t packed tightly enough, you would have fowling to the point of not being able to load the rifle again until the barrel was cleaned. The black-powder already made fowling a significant problem; after about thirty rounds, the barrel had to be thoroughly cleaned with a harsh solvent, like alcohol. This design of Arquebus was also pretty hefty, and to be fired accurately, many historical armies propped them up on battle-axes or wooden tripods. This meant that a group of soldiers with an Arquebus had to first set their tripods up, load their weapons, place the Arquebus onto the tripod. The ‘hammer’ was then pulled back, the trigger pulled, releasing tension on the flat-spring, and striking the burning rope against the gun powder. Detonation took about a quarter of a second.

There was no rifling in these early firearms, literally meaning that, if the barrel was not properly made or not properly bored, bullets would fly off inches (or feet) away from their target. Overall, they were meant for volley-fire - this was the only way that Arquebi were effective weapons on the field of battle, and thus they are more common on field-battles than for hunters, or otherwise.

However, due to the incredibly effective nature of this invisible death - capable of literally striking men down with more power than bows, and going through most armor of the era meant that almost everyone sought to improve this system. Improvements to the Arquebus included a newer, more efficient lighting mechanism, better and better powders, a standardized caliber, and others.

These guns are rare, and should only be seen in the hands of Arquebusiers on the field of battle, or as defense weapons for a large city or castle. They're incredibly expensive, ranging anywhere from 5,000 gold pieces (absolute shit quality/copied from a captured weapon) to 25,000 gold pieces (well-tuned, well-made master-crafted Arquebus, made by a master gunsmith, with the best quality materials available.), and ammunition can cost anywhere from 50-200 gold pieces PER ROUND, depending on the quality of the gunpowder and the balls.

There is a significant threat to skimping on the money department when buying ammunition and the weapon itself. Due to bootlegged copies on both sides, poorly made ammo (with substituted propellants and improper bullet weights), these guns can LITERALLY blow up in your face - and if they do, it WILL NOT be nice. Due to the weapon's metal and wood construction, it is likely to blind you, blow your hands off, kill you, etc.

Good ammunition is imported from an eastern country, known as Bosozu - a massive marsh. This land has been fucked over in a war, though, so don't expect any serious imports for the next fifteen years. Despite attempts by the western world, this proprietary propellant has not been reverse engineered. The Bosozu nation is the only one with the natural resources necessary to make legitimate propellants that have no chance to blow your gun up, and this ammunition goes for crackhead prices (easily 250 gold pieces for a single round's worth of powder).

Master-crafted firearms come from Bosozu as well, though many decent designs exist in the western world; only two of these people exist at one time, and it has been passed down for generations. These two are currently Bao Fang Tai and Dong Gang Huang.

Don't be a fucking cheapskate. If you go really bootleg on the gun itself, and buy an iron rifle, it can also blow up. So seriously. Please.

(( TL;DR, if I see any of you motherfuckers wielding an Arquebus like an accurate, modern day rifle, without any proper backstory and/or development of the weapons system in the server or without proper use, I will personally take the rifle and shove it the fuck up your ass, before taking the weapon from you. Prices are placeholders. ))