Imperial Armory report on [Gunpowder] Weapons, 4E173

SECRET//NOFORN
2 Rain’s Hand, 4E199

High King,

As part of the continuing investigation into the attempted assassination of Ambassador Elenwen, we have established that the explosion intended to destroy her caravan was engineered through entirely alchemical arts. No magic was involved. The specific reagents involved, while non-magical, may have been generated from ordinary natural materials through magical means of thus far unclear etiology.

Pursuant to your question about the utility of non-magical explosives for our own military purposes, please find enclosed an earlier report on this subject prepared during the Great War.

Sincerely, [REDACTED], Imperial Intelligence Liaison

SECRET//NOFORN 28 Sun’s Height, 4E173

Imperial Armory, Special Projects Division

Fajijo Weaponization Project — Executive Narrative Summary

As ordered, we have completed our feasibility study on weaponizing the Khajiit holiday curiosity they call fajijo (lit. “spark lights”). Fajijo is a granular black powder which is made by combining the powders of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. When ignited in loose form, it erupts into bright white flames. When ignited in compressed form, it explodes with a bright flash and an extremely loud bang. After acquiring basic information on how to make the substance, we set out to manufacture a sample of our own. Charcoal is of course easy to obtain. Sulfur is more expensive, but can be purchased on the open market. Saltpeter is another story. Small crystals of saltpeter can be found growing in old barns, in certain caverns, and generally where animal excreta decays in large quantities. In a few locations it can even be mined in substantial quantities.

But if there are any good sources of mined saltpeter in unoccupied Cyrodiil, we haven’t found them. There are barns and caves, but these don’t produce in large quantities and require substantial processing facilities. The Khajiit were rumored to have an alternate source. Some enterprising members of our group happened to encounter a trio of shady looking Khajiit traders in a tavern, and recognizing the opportunity, plied them with friendly conversation, free-flowing alcohol, and a bagful our our petty cash fund. We learned that the Khajiit saltpeter-creation process involves dumping enormous quantities of boiled urine into a sand pit, letting it sit for a while, and filtering the result through the ashes of plants. Fortunately we work in a military camp with no shortage of men who’re happy to obey dumb-sounding orders that don’t involve combat, and soon enough we had urine and duly processed it. The resulting fajijo was functional but of very poor quality, unusable for our study. Regrouping, we learned that Khajiit urine specifically produces the best quality fajijo. The Khajiit are nothing if not eager for a new thing to trade, and the first caravan we asked didn’t even look surprised at our request for 200 gallons of their urine. They left and returned less than two weeks later with more than the required quantity. Whether they produced it all themselves, I don’t know. Sane people would pay to get rid of the stuff, but the traders still managed to extract almost eighty thousand septims for their… product.

In terms of area-denial weapons, you could do worse than the smell of two hundred gallons of boiling cat piss. My god, there were hardened and scarred warriors fleeing like rabbits from a rabid dog. Despite the fact that we have already been reprimanded for forcing the evacuation of the entire camp, I have ordered that the men responsible be given extra hazard pay, and damn the regulations.

Pressing bravely on, eventually we produced around a hundred pounds of high-quality fajijo. The results of the testing by our alchemists and engineers are extensively recounted in the technical sections of the report. The summary of the results is as follows, by category.

Our team was unanimous in concluding that fajijo is inadequate as an explosive weapon, sometimes termed “mines” or “grenades”. It is true that in this context, fajijo performs well if conditions are ideal. A few pounds of the stuff is more than adequate to kill armored troops within a few yards’ radius. However, the same can be said of any number of other easily mass-produced magical weapons such as scrolls. Fajijo also suffers from very rapid degradation when exposed to the elements. Water destroys it instantly. Its cost is very high compared to its effects. We conclude that this avenue is not worth pursuing.
The majority of our team concludes that fajijo is unworkable as a propellant for hand-held projectile weapons, the so-called “fire-arms”. We tested a number of iron tubes, open at one end, which could be filled with fajijo and used to propel a metal ball toward the enemy. The concept is not dissimilar to archery. While the fire-arm concept works, the result is a wildly inaccurate projectile weapon with an atrociously slow rate of fire. In simulated combat using fake weapons, the fire-arm squad was easily wiped out by an ordinary squad of Imperial archers. A minority of our team believes that improved metallurgy and the use of clockwork mechanisms could overcome these deficits, but even if the staggering resources required for such a project were available in these difficult times, the majority believes it would probably not succeed.
Our team was unanimous in concluding that fajijo may have some use as a propellant for large-scale siege weapons. Currently this class of weapons consists of catapults and trebuchets, but in testing very large-scale fire-arms which we term “mortars” and “cannons” depending on configuration, we achieved superior range with larger projectiles. Though this concept is looked upon very positively by the alchemists and engineers, Imperial logistics officers have strongly opposed pursuing these weapons on the basis of the tremendous cost in iron and the current impossibility of obtaining militarily meaningful quantities of fajijo. Unfortunately this is a reasonable set of concerns. We note that the six shots fired by our experimental siege weapons consumed more than two-thirds of our entire stock of fajijo, which, counting only labor and materials, cost well over half a million septims.

In conclusion, I and a majority of my team believe that fajijo weapons are a worthwhile concept, but also that they are neither currently feasible nor likely to become so in the foreseeable future.

Victory and honor,

Septimus Varuus, Section Chief, Research and Development