Cannon fly

Cannons? Are you kidding? This area has been salted with flys. Bring those suckers in and we'll be shredded in seconds.

A cannon fly is a small construct that was invented to oppose the use of cannons. It has one job; to find metal cylinders and destroy them.

The principle is simple really. Spell casters have long been able to cast Shatter. The main problem is range. Firerms have a ridiculasly long range; the spell is limited to 60 feet. Sourcery can exten that range, but only to 120 feet. A delivery system was needed. Bring in the Artificiers!

The first prototype was named cannonhopper. Like its living name sake, it moved by hopping. In a relativly flat terrane, it could move about 300 feet before running out of power. So it could be more or less aimed at an enemy camp. After 15 minutes of inaction, runes triggered Shatter, and boom - no more metal objects + lots of flying shrapnel. The destruction was horrifying, and much too indiscriminant.

The second generation focused the construct to look for cylanders. just cast the spell on reaching a certain distance.

Then they figured out how to target gun powder residue. where it is programmed to seek out cylindrical holes that have significant amounts of cordite residue.

The final step was developing a long term passive cannon fly (nicknamed, grubs). Salt the area with them, and it becomes a no shoot zone.

A note about the use of gunpowder in Exandria

There is presedence in cannon - Percy de'Rollo had a gun, and was able to purchase black powder. The thing is, if firearms are commonly used, magic quickly comes up with a devestating counter. So the innovations become unsuccessful and abandoned. Percival deRolo sucessfully used a firearm because it was so unique, no one had a ready-to-hand counter.

Perhaps one of the Pre Divergence cultures had more extensive use of gunpowder (IRL: like the Chinese), and the Ki'Nau ran with navel/martial applications, (IRL: as did the Javanese). So the Ki'Nau have a tendency to either use more warlock type magic , using Uka'Toa as the patron, or druid related magics focused on environmental control and harmony with the wild things. The light weight swivel guns are perfect for the costal ships they favor. It does enough damage to dissade big hungry beasties.