http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Wind_and_Sand

Gunpowder is flubbin' boring, we can do better than that. The ole sand-cannons of the Redguards is the only good proposition I've heard, and I've delved into the subject a bit.

If anybody says Dwemer cannons, that's boring too.

Real-life gunpowder was invented by Chinese alchemists trying to make an elixir of immortality. They probably had no idea they'd made a chemical explosive until it blew up in front of them.

EDIT: Sandmagic = win. But now I'm imagining fireworks over Stros M'Kai, too this image is not letting me go.

Okay then. Sand/wind magic it is.

Fit's in well with Cyrus' cutting of atomos, the way they describe the sand.

Wasn't saying to you specifically that gunpowder is boring, incidentally, 'twas for the whole audience.

Really? That's brilliant.

haha.. so much for an immortality attempt. they seek a potion of preservation but got a potion of explosion..

anyway, why you need guns if you can hurl fireballs anytime?

Yes.

But no.

Don't be so kleinegedanken. In Tamriel, Magicka is tech, it's astrophysics that can be wielded to burn armies. If anything is going to advance, it'd be in the field of Destruction and Alteration, so that more mundane weapons and armor are abandoned totally in favor of from-the-blue battles of pew-pews and gorgeous color.

If nothing else, then Tamrielic ballistics should be nothing we're familiar with. Like say, Altmeri mirror-mortars or Dwemeri zero-gradient bombs. I mean, just imagine a heavy bevy of Battlespires descending a skirmish and dropping a payload of 50-megaton Weapons of Rapture that sequester the landscape in red diamond and idyll.

Yeah. It would be disgusting.

that's why it's not present in game..

Now me too! But we could probably arrange it with magic...

I still say a firearm-like mechanism can be fashioned in the Mundus without the need of blackpowder. Think Oblivion/Skyrim staves, only hollowed out, the magicks provided by the staff are on a much smaller scale and, of course, you would need plenty of tiny corundum balls.

And though there is no evidence to suggest this is possible, I just had a crazy thought of a thu'umanic powered Blunderbuss. Pull the trigger, give the firearm enough time to shout FUS! RO! DAH!, then watch the ebony buckshot lance your opponents into soul fragments.

I could do this all day.

MK already came up with Th'um Booms

Wow. People are rather quick to jump down someone's throat. How about a bit of creative thinking? Out side the boxy type stuff.

Exactly. Canons have already been in TES.

Yes and yes. This is what we need.

Guns that aren't guns.

Sticky thoom launchers.

What about a Dwemer-tech zero-sum gun? Disintegration ray if you want to be pedestrian. You blast them with it and it either:

1) Disrupts the person's internal wave form causing instability in their metaphysical structure and a dissolution of their atomos.

2) Inundates them with knowledge about the true form of the Universe. (Side effect is, if your opponent is a total bad-ass, they get CHIM instead.)

i would much enjoy this post if it was like this : jasjkdalkdmklasldma,sda?os?dbhaiosdnhajksduakndklbh?gnbmWIO?JRL,ks?f

I′m serious TES CANT! have GUNS! that will probably ruin the franchise for ALOT of people! and Bethesda already has Fallout so yeah...

...and then there's this:

"There were nice plans for Sul that never made it in the game, like the "Thousand Ringlets of Alandro Sul," where his mind was blasted into his chainmail headpiece by either A) madness or __Tribunal-Gun__."
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/forum-archives-michael-kirkbride