Titanium Swords, or: If Guns No Longer Worked Today

I'm participating in Nano Wrimo, and also vaguely trying to get my ass back into gear with this website.

One of the things I've done is a modern setting without guns; magic works, and a bunch of people got together and spelled guns out of the way, removing them and their absurd killing potential from people's lives. Whether this was good or evil is a bit of a debate in-universe, but for our purposes it's irrelevant; guns don't exist, so how does mankind respond?

For example, what materials do we make the weapons out of? My knowledge of science is limited and strange; and now I'm wondering how we'd deal with this issue. It's primarily a military issue, for obvious reasons, but I'm pretty interested.

For those curious, the specific things banned are crossbows, guns, bombs, rockets, and missiles no longer work. Technology is no more ahead than our own time, so railguns and laser beams aren't the answer- and there is a substantial chance that the spell will affect them too.

(While magic exists, it is used as a supplement to their tech, and so humans are still at basically the same level.)

Why no crossbows? That seems to be an unreasonable, especially since if you can't have them, you can't have regular bow and arrows either since they work on the same principle.

And given modern metallurgy and technology, compressed air guns (B Bs and airsoft ramped up to lethal levels) would probably an effective substitute for chemically propelled firearms.

And given modern (aka no super-science materials), any swords would be made out of the same thing that modern knives are made of.

Crossbows don't work because the original spellcasters viewed crossbows as a "loophole" in the spell, fearing that people would basically re-invent guns by simply uptuning crossbows. (It should be pointed out that the original spellcasters were not particularly knowledgeable about science.)

The spell works by basically banning a "category" of item; it doesn't matter if a similar item works on similar principles, so long as it's a different item. Bows and arrows work because bow and arrows weren't one of the categories. This is the same reason a compressed air gun won't work- it's still a "gun", and the magic will prevent it from working. They didn't ban gunpowder- they banned "guns", and the magic takes the definition those people assigned it in their head as the definition. This is why there is a substantial chance that railguns and laser beams would be covered, though no one knows yet as they haven't been invented.

What makes me wonder, where it just "some" spellcasters or was the resident Sorcerer Supreme (etc) involved?

Because that seems like a huge reality altering spell...the implications o that being possible are pretty big.

If I were doing this I would probably be lazy and Hand Wave it with an explanation about them used some sort of powerful artifact as a power source for the spell. Could also be another ethical issue if it was doing something important. I.e containing / curtailing some dark force.

edited 4th Nov '14 4:39:53 AM by 32ndfreeze

I don't have specific answers at the moment, but would like to point out two alternate places in which it might be helpful for you to ask:

First, the World Building forum (found under "Real-ish" in the main forum view, I believe), which I feel can be a good place to get input on your setting.

Second, the Military Thread might be a useful place to ask after potential combat technology.

Finally, since firearms are out, you might find use in the Martial Arts and Troper Fencing Academy (i.e. Sword-fighting) threads.

Another thing, if the Concept that is banned is "Gun", what about missiles? Catapults (to jump to the other side of the spectrum)

If you want something that sounds plausible and cool that works with today's technology what about carbon fibre swords with a titanium-carbide blade? These are things that actually exist today so they are definitely plausible. Are they better than whatever modern steel alloys would be? I have no idea, but at least you could give your characters bad-ass looking black katanas. This site may help for research purposes http://www.wtknives.com/

Welp, I guess we'll have even more beheadings and such atrocities in warzones when combatants cannot use guns.

Or we could go back to slings that use lead or some-such and catapulting dead cows to spread disease. Lighting pigs on fire and excrement-smeared stick traps.

edited 4th Nov '14 12:49:37 PM by Mr.Didact

Or simply indiscriminate use of grenades?

@ 3 of 4: It was a massive effort by a great number of mages interested in limiting warfare's effects- the setting has had quite a number done on it already, and they were attempting to limit the damage. They were also concerned about nuclear missiles- the setting has no real faith in MAD doctrine, or anything else preventing the usage of atomic weaponry, so they felt they had to act.

It was a vast effort and nobody's really quite sure how they did it, since it killed nearly all the original spellcasters, who sacrificed themselves to help the spell work- and the twenty-five percent or so that survived, who were almost all basically the "goons" and not the masterminds, mostly got captured by military-industrial complex corporations or the military itself (for what difference there is) to make them fix it.

@ 32ndfreeze: The spell's specific workings are a plot point, but it's not artifact-based; it's just what happens when a shitload of people do something together and most of them die doing it. It's effectively a "normal" spell but with a waaaaay vaster scale and greater power behind it, due to the sheer number of people casting it- one million. (Many were tricked, performing ritualistic actions that they did not know were spells, but half or more of that was people who knew what was going on.) It was an international effort no one noticed because no one thought it could be done- a harmless political group, basically.

@ Ars Thaumaturgis: *slaps forehead* I"m a moron. Thank you for pointing out that this is the wrong place for the thread- I have been gone from the forums for so long, guys.

@ 3 of 4: A good question! I hadn't considered catapults. Missiles are included, but catapults are not. Ballista are included, because the spell considers them to be "really big crossbows", but a trebuchet or an onager do not count.

Grenades, sadly, are also counted, as "bombs" were one of the categories, though personal grenades weren't exactly one of the things the spellcasters thought of- they were worried about napalm and nukes, basically. Grenades got hit with the spell too by accident.

@ mrshine: THERE YA GO. That's what I was looking for :D

@ mr didact: Nah, see, I wanted a modernization of old school military fighting. We don't go back to cows- we toss canisters of nerve gas with the catapults. Or bio-engineered diseases.

As for atrocities... yeah. Beheadings make a huge comeback, and with the more personal, up-close nature of battle, things get a bit dicey- battlefield discipline is becoming a real problem.

ALL NEW DISCUSSION WILL BE IN THE WORLD-BUILDING THREAD I SHALL MAKE.

Edit: New thread here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=14151565620A91128700&page=1#1

edited 4th Nov '14 7:09:47 PM by Mr.Cales