Hi! In my books, the reason that guns and explosives and such aren't used is, the evil emperor has put protection over his armies so that they can only be harmed by a weapon with actual human strength behind it. Guns take skill to aim, but it's not your strength making the bullet fly, and the same with explosives-they take skill to create and work but it's not your physical strength making them explode. So I have weapons like swords, bows & arrows, spears, etc. I need suggestions for more weapons? Here's a list of the ones I've used:
Sword
Bow & arrows
Battle axe
Flail
Crossbow & bolts
Dagger
Knife
I think that's all I've actually used so far, although more were mentioned.

Here are a few...

Hand operated trebuchet,basically a long pole with a pocket at the other end that you can use to fling stuff, including flammables.
throwing knives,
ninja star(type things)?

I hope that helps/gives you ideas.

By the way, that's a neat way to render explosives/guns useless.

Why thank you!
Trebuchet... Like a catapult? Not a bad idea!
I've got throwing knives, I think. At least a knife is thrown at one point, lol. And they're kind of implied since I have throwing spears and arrows and stuff.
I don't know about the ninja stars... They're kinda... What's the word? I can't use them without people thinking of ninjas spouting Japanese and doing kung-fu. They're too popular for too different a genre, if that makes any sense. Good suggestion, though.

You're welcome! I'm glad to help!



Yeah, that's why I added the (type thing) part, you could probably change them up somehow, and call them something else, I'm using a version of chakram and calling them something else (I think I'm calling them Sicarri circles or something, but I want to think up something better!), so you could maybe do that with ninja stars (make a different version of them, I mean) or chakram.

That's a fascinating spell. Does that mean, though, that the emperor's armies can use guns, since the good guys aren't protected by this magic?

Good point, I never thought of that... Well both races are a secret and so if guns and bombs were used it would draw too much attention. Imagine what would happen if a bomb went off in the middle of nowhere-there'd be all kinds of people, the army, maybe, or newscasters even, swarming the place to find out the details.

Bombs, sure. But guns don't need to draw a lot of attention. People shoot each other up all the time. Bows, arrows, catapults, and swords are all more likely to draw attention to fantasy races disguised as humans, the way I see it, than are guns.

This is in a remote part of a mountain range, and elsewhere in a desert. Not many people around! haha

Oh. Well, I still think guns would be only slightly more likely, if at all, to draw attention than swords, then.

Maces.

Blowguns and slingshots could also work well.

Well, if you wanted, you could maybe make a side-effect of the spell be that the people affected by it can't harm other people with those weapons, either. Then you'd have to figure out why they'd use a spell like that, though, but maybe the people they were fighting had more and/or better guns and such?

Or the spell backfired a little and affected everyone?

Those are good ideas, guys. I guess I'll have to figure out a way to work that in. I'm writing a prequel type thingy (but putting it after book 3 since it would give everything away if people read it first, and there needs to be more separation between books 3 and 4, since 3 ends on a cliffhanger that's almost immediately resolved in 4) telling how everything came to be, so I'll probably put it in there somewhere.

Atalatals may be a possibility for your world. I don't know how to spell them, but they were used as a spear throwing device to increase the range and power of the throw.

Oh yes! They are spelled Atlatl if I remember correctly *types into google...* Yesh, that's how you shpell it!
Those things are awesome, you can learn more about them here.

I don't get how they work... Lol

Well, I don't have time to watch and see which video you should watch but you could do a youtube search and find one that shows you how they work I think.

You're gonna hear this from me again and again, hehe... My computer is a piece of junk. 10 minutes to open the Internet browser sometimes! Actually, a lot of the time! I actually tried doing the youtube search a few minutes ago, and all it gave me was a blank page, no matter how many times I refreshed it -_-

Oh...sorry about that! Okay, well, it's hard to explain...

Ok so that little thingy stays in your hand, and you put the spear in it? How does that help? lol

And, do you know how to pronounce it?

Here's a site that talks about it: http://www.atlatl.com/how-atlatls-work.php

"Atlatl" rhymes with "rattle-rattle". As I understand it, it extends your reach, thus increasing your throwing power. It kind of flings the lance, I think.

Ah, okay. (almost typed pokay by accident *thinks we should all start spelling okay "pokay"*)

Yes, that's right, well put!

Hmm... That might be too complicated, but I'll think about it-it'd be hard to explain in a non-picture book hahaha

Does it need explained?

Well, yes, readers don't always want to have to look things up that are in a book. And, I don't know if it would even need mentioning... I'm not sure. Haha
Can anyone think of something else?

Well, since you're using crossbows, you could also have other weapons that store energy:

Trebuchets,
Catapults,
Ballistae.

Ok I feel kind of dumb, but what are trebuchets and ballistae? XD

No need to feel dumb.

Here's a picture of a trebuchet:

Even though it says "gravity powered" it is wound up by people, which is like storing energy just like when someone puts tension on the crossbow string.

Here's a ballista (ballistae is plural):



Hope these ideas are helpful.

Oh okay, okay, I seeses. *rubs hands together* Think of all the damage I could do with these!!!
I already knew about them, but I didn't know what they were called.
On a side note, I like to play guitar.
Anyway... I was looking more for actual handheld weapons. I think I thought of them all already (even invented one for a person with a missing hand, I'll tell y'all about that if you want), but if you know of any lesser-known ones, I'd be glad to hear them!

Ah, well I'm glad I could help with that part at least.



*raises eyebrow*



Okay, did I tell you about Chakram? I'm using them in my world (will use them in stories), they are pretty fascinating to me.

I don't get it. Again. haha

They're basically frisbee shaped knives, or frisbees with sharp edges.

That's kinda cool! But... How would you throw them without slicing your fingers off?

I know what you mean (if I threw one the way I throw a frisbee, I'd hurt myself). You just pinch them and don't touch the edge I guess.

I think there's too much potential for injury there. Also, you wouldn't be able to control its direction too well, if the wind blew hard enough it could slice off your friend's head!

You decide, but they worked well for the Sikhs...

Who are the Sikhs?

Slings... I have one, Pretty accurate with it too. Can fling a stone across our field which we measured to be 300 yards. Will make a stone buzz like an angry hornet...

One question, if he can protect his armies from non manual kinetic damage why is he not able t protect them from melee weapons?

That would expend too much energy, leaving him vulnerable

Something that Wolf's mention of trebuchets et al made me think of: If the spell (or whatever) protects the evil emperor's troops from personal harm from non-human-powered weapons, but only from personal harm, then siege engines (it's my understanding that ballistae, catapults, and such often used animal power when it was available) would still be useful for the tasks they're designed for, namely damaging enemy fortifications. And early on gunpowder's main benefit was as an intimidation factor.

Anyway, for melee weapons, what leaps to my mind are various kinds of polearms, such as pikes, bills, glaives, and halberds.

I don't know what any of those are except maybe the pike... I invented a weapon like I said for a person who lost their hand in battle... I was going to call it a pike since I read a book once with a similar weapon, except it was permanently attached to the limb.

The people that (I think) invented the chakram, and the ones that used it, and for whom it worked well. Other than that, I don't know much about them.

That wouldn't work; one of the points (no pun intended) of a pike, as usually used, was that the shock of impact of anything on it went into the ground, not the body. But anyway, here are links to the Wikipedia articles on the ones I mentioned: pike, bill, glaive, halberd.

And there are always clubs .

Ah, clubs. So easy, a caveman could do it. And my computer is painfully slow, as one of my signatures says. It takes forever to load Wikipedia, if it loads at all...

How ... odd. My own browser tends to hang for several seonds every so often (such as while I'm writing this sentence, for example), but that's because I have Facebook and Google Docs and my blog open as well as HW, and a couple of dozen plugins, and (more to the point) a bunch of other resource-intensive programs running in the background---so I prefer to use text-mode or otherwise lightweight browsers for casual usage like reading Wikipedia articles. If you don't want to go that far, I suggest using plugins like NoScript and RequestPolicy (which are only available for Firefox, though) to reduce the load websites put on your browser. You could also try the "mobile" site---change the "en.wikipedia" in the URL to "en.m.wikipedia".

My computer's just crappy, haha. I don't think any of that would help. But thanks for the suggestions

A computer would make a nice blunt weapon, if you had the strength to throw it.

Then there's always the fist. Have we mentioned fists yet?