Editing Cannon (section)

== Cannons in Fantasy ==
[[image:Emp great cannon 1434013374.jpg|thumb|300px|right|One of the [[Empire]]'s cannons, proving that you can mix fantasy with [[Gunpowder (Warhammer Fantasy)|gunpowder]] weapons]]
Fantasy writers are a bit more accommodating to cannons than firearms: in part because they became more practical earlier on. Also they were crew served devices ill suited to use of a single warrior (unless he/she had fantastic powers to begin with) and cannons are the go to solution when someone says "thrilling non modern naval action". Even so there is some reticence about their use as it implies that sooner or latter someone is going to figure "Hey, why don't we take these things and scale them down?".

Many cannons in fantasy settings have some fancypants adornment with bores made into the mouths of roaring lions, dragons and similar and they are rarely even primitive breech loaders. Fantasy authors also have dislike of making their guns out of Bronze since we like the idea of a big black iron gun. Cannons also tend to exist in isolation, you don't see mortars or howitzers for example . Cannons also tend to be somewhat underpowered (compared to their real life counterparts) in settings where they have to coexist with monsters. To put another way, if a cannon can knock a castle down from 490m away, then I don't care how big your dragon is, one direct hit and it will be down for the count. Mind you, getting that direct hit is going to be a bitch and a half and they are not the easier things to lug around.