MA!! Git mah gun.

[SolidusRaccoon]

Uh oh, now he's getting blasted by homeowners. Well. that's what you get for sneaking around like that.

[CasVeg]

And with that, Quentyn's cover gets blown into countless tiny bits.

[Kerry Skydancer]

If he's got the presence of mind to run, he'll get away - but you -know- he's going to lose his quarry. My guess is he's used to much better construction, so that you wouldn't be able to hear someone talking quietly outside through the roof.

[SolidusRaccoon]

And with that, Quentyn's cover gets blown into countless tiny bits.

He almost got blown to tiny bits.

[SolidusRaccoon]

If he's got the presence of mind to run, he'll get away - but you -know- he's going to lose his quarry. My guess is he's used to much better construction, so that you wouldn't be able to hear someone talking quietly outside through the roof.

Heh, and the citizens must be so sick of theives that they are willing to blow holes in their own roofs to nail the buggers. Yup, from the all mighty hailing hero Questor to jail bait and target practice in a few days.

[UncleMonty]

Yee-ha! thunder rollin', lightnin' flashin' - right through the middle of it I go dashin'....

Quentyn's having some good times now! I hope his underwear is lux-treated.

[Narnian]

Fast way to make a skylight.

[Sharuuk]

I think I may have just cracked a rib laughing at the expression on Quentyn's face in the last panel... ....or at the very least strained some muscles.....damn this hurts... ...damn that was FUNNY!!!!!

And I'll bet this headache is gonna hang in there for a couple of hours to boot.....

Shaaruuk

[Nikas_Zekeval]

If he's got the presence of mind to run, he'll get away - but you -know- he's going to lose his quarry. My guess is he's used to much better construction, so that you wouldn't be able to hear someone talking quietly outside through the roof.

The loud THUMP and the mad scramble to stay on the roof might have done more to attract serious attention from the occupants than the argument with Squidge

[BlasTech]

I doubt there are any possums to take the blame for noises like that in sanctury

[Squeaky Bunny]

Yee-ha! thunder rollin', lightnin' flashin' - right through the middle of it I go dashin'....

Quentyn's having some good times now! I hope his underwear is lux-treated.

"And that is why the french uniform is brown . . ."

[The JAM]

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.


Oh, blast.

And here I thought that he was anywhere BUT in a residential area.

[Shyal_malkes]

my question is how did that guy fit a gun that big through a doorway probably only big enough for a tall rac cona?

aka, big gun, little man.

i imagine solidus holding something like that, something completely disproportional to what he could normally use just because it's the biggest and the baddest. probably illeagal too...

[RHJunior]

1) The door isn't visible. You can see the window, and the bevy nest entrance, but that's it. They're essentially in an attic apartment, btw.

2)Boomslangs are generally that large, especially the older ones. Racconans are a little over two feet tall, so that gun IRL is about the size of a real-life blunderbuss or shotgun. Anything much smaller would be less effective than was worth the while, and would have a monstrous kick that a tiny racconan couldnt handle. (note that the "shoulder butt" is actually braced against the floor.)

3)Racconans don't have "gun control" laws. Outside of being unjust, immoral, and the tool of tyrants, despots and oppressors to keep the populace weak and helpless, in a population where a sizeable portion of the population can fling lightning bolts and fireballs from their fingers they'd be rather hard to enforce with any equitability.
Guns exist in their culture to fill the gaps in their firepower--- some situations and creatures that would shrug off a bolt of lux energy aren't so glib about 2-3 ounces of high-speed lead--- and to arm those rare few who are too magically weak to defend themselves in typical fashion.

A Racconan society with a disarmed populace would soon degrade into a thaumatocracy--- where the most powerful magicians ruled, and the strong exploited the weak. (though save for the magic, that's what happens in ANY society where the populace is disarmed.) Long ago, they decided that this was a Bad Thing, and the right to bear arms is soundly enshrined in their laws.

[Bigdude]

A gun's best possible barrel length is determined by the speed of burn of the powder. Powder burn speed is controlled by it's chemical composition and physical properties - smaller flakes burn faster, for example.

Chemically, it's very likely the Rac Conan are using "black powder" or something close to it - mixtures of charcoal, sulpher and potassium nitrate ("saltpeter" or "crystalized pig urine"). Charcoal is the fuel, sulpher provides the initial heat, saltpeter when heated gives off oxygen - the classic "trio of flame" (fuel/heat/O2).

In our world, we switched away from black powder between about 1895 and 1905, moving to "nitro based" (various "kins" of nitroglycerin in powder form). These burn much faster than black powder, which is why the standard US battle rifle barrel length today is 16", when in 1775 it was seldom less than five feet and six-foot-plus ("Kentucky Longrifle") wasn't unheard of. (We did sometimes use shorter for short-range situations, almost always smoothbore like the Brown Bess or shotguns.)

This is also why early handguns were a joke; dueling with handguns circa 1790ish wasn't all THAT dangerous . (By the 1870s or so they had developed faster-burn small-flake black powders that worked at least better in handguns...)

Anyways. Barrel lengths were determined by testing projectiles with a given known weight into chucks of a given type of wood, comparing penetration depth...a pretty decent test of raw power. Such tests produced the longrifle.

Rac Conan would be up against the same physics despite their smaller size, so I see nothing shocking at all in these "oversize" guns.

It also explains why they wouldn't be into handguns: to get enough power to do damage, they would be completely uncontrollable unless they figured out porting and/or compensators. Compensators blow part of the blast backwards to counter the recoil and are unbelievably loud. Porting forces gasses straight up from the end of the barrel and while it isn't as loud, it's somewhat complicated...the ports act as "rocket nozzles" and require a good understanding of gas flow from the aerospace biz...in our world neither tech made any impact at all until late WW2 and wasn't perfected until the late '60s to '80s.

(Sidenote: this powder-burn-to-barrel-length issue is the same no matter what ignition source. Ralph hasn't been clear on what lockwork they're using...might even be a "Luxlock". In our world we use "primers" (usually mercury) which when hit produce flame, a variant on the percussion lock. Before that we used flint on steel (flintlocks) to do the initial flame.)

[Dragoncry]

Wow. That's all I can say, even I as a chem major learn something new today. I knew what gunpowder was made of, I knew that it worked, but that little detail of chained reactions was something new. That, and the physics of a barrel.

Thank you for your insights!

Classic line: "Squdge?? I didn't know you could fly!" "Neither did Squdge--"

[SolidusRaccoon]

Heh, I would want a BFG 9000.

[Luna_Northcat]

A gun's best possible barrel length is determined by the speed of burn of the powder. Powder burn speed is controlled by it's chemical composition and physical properties - smaller flakes burn faster, for example.<snip>

It may be my ignorance speaking, here, but I thought barrel length also had to do with size of shot/desired accuracy -- i.e. before barrels were actually rifled to give standard shot the spin it needs to stay on a straight path, short barrels essentially didn't give you any accuracy, and anything over about 5 feet away was probably safe except if it got hit by accident. Long barrels gave enough guidance over the start of the trajectory to keep the shot on a relatively even path for longer.

[Jwrebholz]

That's also true. Even today, long-barrelled weapons are more accurate than short-barrelled weapons. (Your average pistol is only accurate to about 50 yards--however a good sniper with a bolt-action rifle can peg you from half a mile)

Outside of being unjust, immoral, and the tool of tyrants, despots and oppressors to keep the populace weak and helpless,

Gee Ralph, don't hold back or anything, tell us how you REALLY feel. (Actually I pretty much think the same thing. Didn't Mark Twain say "A well-armed society is a polite society"?

So now poor Qwentyn is not only being chased by guardsmen, but now he's got the citizenry firing blunderbusses at him. Not good. And now his cover's blown--AGAIN--and if he wants to stay alive it would be a good idea to rapidly relocate to a less-precarious position.

In other words, time to get his ass in gear and outta here!

[Bigdude]

Longer barrels are NOT necessarily more "mechanically accurate"!

I own a 2" barrel 38special "snubbie" revolver that was tuned to within an inch of it's life by somebody before I got it - mechanical alignment and "lockup" is absolutely perfect, and the barrel is a good one. Little sucker can outshoot much larger handguns at ranges of 50 yards or more. I am quite confident I can hit a man-sized target with it out past 75 yards more than 50% of the time and 100% of the time at 50 yards.

Many modern handguns are more accurate than a 1776-era rifle. The most accurate revolver I've ever heard of (worth just this side of two grand) can actually do "minute of angle" at 100 yards....which means five shots into a group less than 1" across, the basic standard of hunting rifle accuracy. See also:

http://gunblast.com/Freedom_97-22.htm

Hint: scroll down all the way, past the actual article. That's where the important stuff is on the right.

Longer barrels give you more of a "sight radius" - the distance between front and rear sights being longer, aligning an accurate shot is easier and faster. Lining up my snubbie for long range shots takes a couple of seconds of care!

Second point: all bullets fly in an arc, not a straight line. The faster the bullet, the "flatter" the arc. You thus can make less vertical adjustment for bullet drop with a faster load, making hits easier than with a slower (often shorter barreled) setup.

Elmer Kieth was an early master at long range handgunning. His front sights had a series of horizontal lines scribed on them. These showed him how far to raise his front sight over his rear for different planned ranges - 50, 100, 200, 400, 600 yards. Yeah, you read that right. He was demonstrating 600 yard shooting at man-sized targets as early as the 1940s, with souped-up big-bore revolvers and barrels in the 6" to 8" range. He's also known as "the father of the 44magnum" as that caliber was based on his ballistics research.

The other big revolution in long-range shooting (mainly rifles) happened when we combined nitro powders for higher power and more speed, copper jacketed bullets so at high speed they don't wipe lead all over the inside of the barrel and "pointy shapes" ("Spitzer bullets") for extreme aerodynamics. Many of these modern rifle bullets are "boat tailed" so that they're aerodynamic on both ends, basically little javelins flying around. BUT: there are handguns available (Thomson Center Contender, Encore, Remington XP100, etc) that can fire these modern rifle bullets in barrels as short as 8" to 10" - remember we're talking rounds that have a powder charge "tuned" for rifle barrels of 18" or so give or take a few - yet when shooting close enough that bullet drop isn't a big factor (100 - 150 or so yards) these mega-handguns can shoot as accurately as rifles. It's once you get out to longer ranges the rifles pick up an advantage in flatter trajectory due to higher starting bullet speed and less drop compensation by eye or by re-dialing a glass scope...but that's not due to mechanical accuracy.

If you have a handgun and rifle sitting next to each other that can both eat the same ammo and both can throw groups of it into 1" at 100yrds, both are equally accurate...but the rifle will be easier to shoot well and it's higher bullet speed will let it shoot well longer.