League of Guns

Proliferating guns ruins the setting. Fucks up the power balance. Removes the need for the other weapons. I think swords and spears and knives and lances are FUCKING sweet, and I don’t want to lose them. But I also want them to make sense in the world. Right now, they do not make sense in the world.

Fact: Guns exist. 11 champs so far have guns. Caitlyn, corki, GP, graves, heimerdinger, jayce, jinx, Lucian, miss fortune, Tristana, urgot

Fact: Demacia, Noxus, everyone else do not use guns. Demacia and Noxus are (ostensibly) at war, and neither side exploits firearms to gain an advantage? Why aren’t guns more widespread on Runeterra when they are emperically more effective weapons than swords or whatever else people use. Why aren’t darius and garen using guns. It doesn't make sense. Do the gun countries not interact with the non-gun countries? Are we just in a time period situated between the invention of guns and the widespread adoption of guns? Let's look at the evidence and see if we can figure something out. Hopefully we find what I believe is the best explaination- guns are expensive and technically sophistocated. Really, only a handful of people can use one effectively, and even fewer know how to make them.

Caitlyn got her gun from her hextech researcher father. It's an heirloom, it probably requires special training to use. Both of Caitlin’s parents are inventors.

Corki got it from Heimerdinger. I know that in the game corki is fairly balanced, but you can’t “dial back the damage” on a gatling gun, carpet bombs, high velocity missiles, and phosphorous bombs in the “real” fictional world. I’m almost tempted to cut corki out of the evidence, because he’s and old champ and probably wasn’t designed to fit in the lore the way it is now.

Gangplank is a pirate… goddamnit. Gangplank isn’t familiar with hextech or techmaturgy. He’s a pirate. So that kills the “special knowledge” limiter on gun usage. Maybe he/ Bilgewater has guns because they interact with the gun-using cities more often. That begs the question: could it be that Noxus and Demacia haven’t been exposed to guns yet, for whatever reason? It’s unlikely, unless demacia and noxus are way more isolated than I think. Unresolvable.

Graves could have been another person with special knowledge of an expensive (not that Graves paid for it ;D), unique weapon. But at the end of the bilgewater event, says he’s going to piltover to get a new gun made. NOOOOOOOOOOO. So what’s stopping Swain or Jarvan from ordering a million Destinies and taking over the world? Well, maybe the gun shop can’t produce guns quickly enough to supply an army. But if that’s the case, whoever it is would just buy/steal the design and mass produce it. professional designed. Unresolved.

Heimerdinger has the most advanced weapon technology in the game/world, but suprisingly he doesn’t cause any problems for me: he’s too smart to be tricked, too dangerous to be controlled, and too earnest to use his powers for anything but his own enjoyment.

Jayce is more of a celebrity scientist. His hammer is advanced, but it's far too unweildy/expensive/fragile to be useful to anyone but jayce.

Jinx... Anomaly. The only explanations for jinx that I can think of are A) she stole some really advanced weaponry from someone in zaun, maybe the same person who built Urgot, or B) jinx and her guns are from the future. Perhaps a future where jinx blew up everything, killed everyone, was the last... or was that just a dream she had? How many times has she had that dream.... felt real, feels real, but...

Lucian gets a pass. Ancient relic weapons.

Mf is a pirate. See Gangplank

Rumble is a junkyard heimer, I think. Who knows what he could make in an actual r and d lab, but right now he’s only known to Bandle City. Could be an interesting problem later, but not now.

Trist is tough. Her gun appears to be part of her equipment as a Yordle Gunner operative. So yordles actually do have guns in their military… or at least carriable cannon. Short, smoothbore, fires cannonballs and not bullets.

Urgot. The last champ on the gun list, and the ugliest, and also the most difficult to explain. Noxian warrior reanimated by a Zaun professor. Most know Zaun by its dangerously powerful, nature-violating magic and technology. If zaun is going to give Urgot missiles and a powershield, why wouldn’t do it to more noxian soldiers? Is it prohibitively expensive? Does the firearm technology only work in conjunction with the “necromantic energies” used to reanimate his body? Urgot also fucks over the reasoning that Noxus and Demacia haven’t been exposed to firearm technology yet. Why wouldn't Noxus just give everyone a missile launcher loaded with acid hunters and win everything? Unresolvable.

The original question was “Why aren’t Demacia, Noxus, ect using guns when guns clearly exist in their world?" Counting out the gun sources that I don’t see as a threat to the sanctity of the sword, we’re left with the pirates, trist, graves, caitlyn, jinx, and urgot. Gangplank and Miss Fortune’s guns look similar to Tristana’s gun. Maybe Bilgewater citizens get their firearms from Bandle City? Or were at least exposed to the idea of guns from seeing yordle gunners? That assumes that yordles had the guns first, but i think that’s a pretty fair assumption considering how inventive and industrious yordles seem to be. These guns are smoothbore, fire low-velocity round shot. They are dangerous, unreliable, and inaccurate, at least in real life. I would understand if Demacia/Noxus don’t want to invest in such primitive technology. Rito pls. Then we have Graves’ gun, Destiny. She’s a shotgun, with a much longer, narrower barrel than the hand-cannon. A weapon like this would serve any soldier well, or at least better than a sword or axe. And we know that you can get one from the “really good gunsmith” in Piltover (end of the bilgewater story). Maybe no one with the power to motivate military adoption of the firearm knows about Destiny or the gunsmith. That’s flimsy. Anyone who wants to win a war would be looking for a potential technological advantage. I suggest the following as an alternative backstory for Destiny: Graves wins it from a mysterious stranger in a game of chance, maybe cards, or russian roulette with the shotgun itself. Who is the stranger? But as far as I can tell, this makes a legitimate inconsistency. Destiny is powerful and commercially available, but there’s no indication that anyone but Graves has one. Thats silly for such a powerful weapon. Rito pls. Cait’s gun is the only one with rifling, as evidenced by Riot calling it a rifle, and by how your piltover peacemaker turns when you shoot it. If someone’s invented rifling, why are pirates and yordles still using smoothbore hand-cannon? Caitlyn (and anyone else who might have a rifle) must be keeping her gun’s design a secret. Aaron Ehasz pls

Jinx and Urgot are too out there to usefully speculate on. As it stands, there is no explanation for can jinx and urgot can exist in a world that hasn’t broadly adopted firearms.

What do y’all think? Did I miss anything? Can you think of a solution?