Chemical weapons in Fantasy worlds

[Ivan]

I don't think anyone has mentioned things that could potentially taken from creatures that live in many fantasy worlds and as such they could be considered "naturally occuring"... imagine hiring a dragon that has toxic gas for a breath weapon and "bottling it" and then boiling it down for the extract... imagine arrows or jars of the chemical used in catapults. Extracting the venom from a chimera's throwable quills could work too, a paralytic agent that could be very effective as a biological weapon in battle or during a seige.

You could very well have someone cut open the "flame glands" of a dragon and extract the liquids within. Could be a good subplot, some guy is hired to kill a dragon not to save the villagers but to fuel some sorcerer's flamethrower...

 

[shangrila]

It could work. I'd imagine there would be a lot of self inflicted deaths though.

 

[Mindfire]

I have been wondering these days, have any of you ever included chemical weapons in the worlds of your Fantasy stories??

I do not mean incendiary substances similar to Greek Fire (I think they have something like that in the series A Song of Ice and Fire) what I am talking about is some sort of poison that would be used to inflict terror and death on enemy armies, like it happened in the real world back in the days of the Great War.

Maybe it would be quite original and interesting to include such elements in a Fantasy world, what do you think??

Chemical weapons in a fantasy setting could definitely work. It's very different I'm not sure it's been done before. But it also depends on what kind of world you have. If you're in a medieval setting, it might not quite fit. But if your world is more Renaissance-esque, it could work. A good idea would be to have chemical weapons develop as a response to magic users. Maybe the government feels uneasy about the mages having so much power and this triggers an arms race. Or maybe there's an arms race betweem two countries and once chooses magic while the other develops WMDs.

 

[Ivan]

It could work. I'd imagine there would be a lot of self inflicted deaths though.

Well it is fantasy after all! To be realistic, either the stuff combusts instantly with air (necessitating some kind of bigtime hypodermic syringe) or the dragon would have to have spark plugs in its nose.

 

[shangrila]

Well it is fantasy after all! To be realistic, either the stuff combusts instantly with air (necessitating some kind of bigtime hypodermic syringe) or the dragon would have to have spark plugs in its nose.

If we're talking specifically about dragons, then you could go the Reign of Fire route and have two seperately stored chemicals that ignite when mixed. That might be...safer.

 

[Sheilawisz]

I also love the concept from the Reign of Fire movie, about two different chemical substances that ignite when they are combined creating some sort of natural napalm... fascinating!! I have a species of dragon-like creatures in my Fantasy worlds that can attack by spitting a napalm-like liquid, but it ignites spontaneously in contact with the air =)

@Mindfire: You know, this idea of yours about a world where the common people develop chemical weapons and other WMDs to fight off the Mages is really good... I also agree that true chemical weapons like Chlorine and Phosgene would fit much better into a story with a world similar to 17th or 18th Century Europe, than they would do in a Medieval world.