Christmas Surprise: The Dwarven Blunderbuss

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year
The Fourth Age Department of Subversion
PRESENTS

The Dwarven Blunderbuss


https://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e..._blunder_2.jpghttps://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e..._blunder_1.jpg

A stand-alone fully modfoldered mod (RTW 1.5 required)

(Yes, it's true...conceived in a moment of torment caused by numerous fans asking for gunpowder over a three-year period)

CREDITS:

Unit model & texture: Balbor(FATW)
Weapon models & textures & unit cards: Burns(METW)
Animations/Model editing: Hokomoko(NTW2)
Effects/Coding/Audio/Text: Palantir(FATW)

Dwarven Miners armed with blunderbusses. Like all Dwarven military units, they are well armoured and tough melee fighters. Their aim is appalling but this has more to do with the nature of the blunderbuss than any short-sightedness or lack of skill on the part of the Dwarves. The weapon's real effectiveness is in creating fear and in causing mass damage at a wide angle at close range. The unit is armed with a pick axe on its back should more direct methods be called for.

For how long Black Powder (gunpowder) had been used in Middle-earth prior to the development of the Dwarven Blunderbuss in the Fourth Age is unknown. Certainly fireworks existed, though their origin is somewhat obscure. Of course, the Dwarves made claim to the discovery of Dwarf Powder (as they preferred to call it). Some time during the Third Age, or so the story goes, Fundinn Farflame, an explorer and architect of the Blue Mountains, had gone on an exploration to the Misty Mountains and become lost in some old Orkish maggot holes. Cold, he built a fire with the little wood he had. Soon the wood was but charcoal and so he scraped a lot of the old Orc filth out of the maggot hole and fed the fire with it. Then, by accident, Fundinn dropped into the flames some of the brimstone which the Dwarven architects used in their masonry work for engraving. Fundinn survived the explosion and went on to share his discovery with his people. Whatever the true story it seems the Dwarves kept the secret of the Black Powder to themselves and used it to blast through hard rock in their mining activities. The secret eventually crept out but the Dwarves to this day maintain that fireworks use stolen technology. Saruman, if he indeed did use some form of Black Powder in his devilries, may also have got this knowledge from the Dwarves.
The Dwarven Blunderbuss was developed during the Fourth Age, mainly as a means to repel Orkish bands but later a formal unit of Dwarven Blunderbusses was organized as part of the Army. The Dwarven Blunderbuss of course was later to give inspiration to the development of the flintlock long after Middle-earth had passed away and the Sixth Age of Man had begun...


This unit can be found in the Germania faction in custom battles and also as a mercenary in campaign mode assigned to the Germany pool of mercenaries.

Installation Instructions

The blunder mini-mod exists entirely within its own modfolder. It may not function correctly if your installation of Rome Total War is modded. It should be compatible with all other mods that are fully modfoldered.

1. Download and run the blunder.exe, making sure to insert the correct path to your RomeTW.exe
2. Click the Blunder icon to play the mod

Download Link: http://files.filefront.com/blunderex.../fileinfo.html (12.75 MB)

Terms

We offer no support for porting this unit into other mods, including The Fourth Age: Total War. Further, please do not distribute outside of the "blunder" modfolder. All models, textures, animations and audio remain the property of their creators and should not be publicly used outside of this package without the express consent of the relevant creator.