Guns

[LoA]

So I'm sure there's been a million discussions about firearms and the Gunslinger class. My opinion on both? Guns were around in the medieval ages, so they can work, but like the Soulknife, you might as well just be a specialized fighter who uses guns as their primary weapons. My question is going to take sometime to set up.

So I'm back up on my American City gets stuck in a Fantasy World setting, and I have finally developed a solid history for my world. Kharlonia, the continent that this setting is set in was shattered in an apocalyptic disaster eons ago, and was once home to a mighty race of dragons who ruled over everything. No one knows exactly how the continent wound up falling into the ocean, but it did, and there were several races that wound up coming up from the ashes. The land now consists of several islands, and one of them is where the Americans wound up. Basically they've "Britian'ed Up", and created an industrial base, with railroads and a small but strong navy, but they aren't really into Imperialism (at least not yet). This was a modern American city, and while there are now fringe minorities who want to spread American Ideals across the isles, most are not really into the idea of conquering other islands. There's barely enough people to make the infrastructure work, but at the same time, the Twin City Commonwealth (name still in the air), can basically hold it's own in invasionary situations.

I gave them around twenty years to adjust and to develop. My question is, what level of advancement would their firearms be at. Technology in general has had to be downgraded to a steampunk-fallout esque level with modern technology being treated as if they were sacred relics. My question is would firearms resemble civil war era muskets, or could they achieve WW1 level guns and reloading pump action guns could be common? Military technology has steam-powered iron-clads, primitive gas-powered tanks, and the like, and there are a handful of airplanes (rarely used). Still with firearms, I dunno. Would the general population have musket loaders while more advanced guns are military productions, or would the population have access to more advanced guns but they would be more expensive? Or could lock'n'load rifles be a mass produced commodity? I'm mainly asking cause I'm working on fighter archetypes for each culture that exists in Kharlonia