johnnye
Since: Jan, 2001
Jun 29th 2013 at 5:24:07 PM
•••
- Discworld novels, particularly the City Watch books, use this quite a bit. The Truth and The Fifth Elephant even feature a small spring-powered crossbow that's been so heavily modified that it's a gun in everything but the most technical sense. There's also Sergeant Detritus's "Piecemaker," a giant siege weapon that fires six foot long arrows, which he converted into biggest handheld weapon on the Disc. Although both are described, most emphatically, as being slow to reload.
- The issue with the Piecemaker is that it doesn't need to be fired more than once. Or even ever. In its latest incarnation/modification it's practically the equivalent of waving a rocket-launcher in somebody's face, in proportion to the technology level of the Disc.
- The Piecemaker is exemplary of Vimes' philosophy on weapon use, as no one would dare antagonise Detritus while he has the thing ready to go. Thus far, it's only been used to destroy non-living targets, like buildings. But it's not strictly automatic, less because of reload time than that it uses all of its ammo in one shot.
- Automatic or multi-shot crossbows are alluded in at least Men At Arms and The Last Continent. The Last Continent even used a crossbow to parody Army of Darkness' famous This Is My Boomstick scene.
- Crossbows in Night Watch carry a clip of several bolts, but the string still has to be pulled back.
- Lampshaded a bit in the end of Guards Guards!. The protagonists storm the palace to catch the villain, and when the gate is locked, Captain Vimes, drunk on authority and briefly forgetting he's only acting like Dirty Harry, orders Sergeant Colon to "shoot it open!" Colon is not sure how he's supposed to accomplish that with a bow and arrow.
- In Going Postal, Moist, on several occasions, finds himself staring down the barrel of Miss Dearheart's... automatic crossbow, taking the place of the shotgun that a shopkeeper would normally have.
- The issue with the Piecemaker is that it doesn't need to be fired more than once. Or even ever. In its latest incarnation/modification it's practically the equivalent of waving a rocket-launcher in somebody's face, in proportion to the technology level of the Disc.
None of these have to do with automatic crossbows, they're about crossbows-as-gun-analogues. Do we have a more appropriate trope for that? Fantasy Gun Control, perhaps?
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Trope Decay
, started by Ghilz on Sep 9th 2011 at 9:05:10 AM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman