Shocklance in Knife of Dreams

[bsmnt23]

When Elayne goes after the Darkfriend lair towards the end of KoD she is struck by a (bear with me, again, I'm at work) type of energy emited by a curved metal rod held by one of the Black Ajah sisters they hadent accounted for. The weapon aparently ahd several settings, what we saw apparently was a "stun" setting, though I believe it was said the weapon had lethal capibility even up to extended ranges of several hundred meters. Sounds like a military weapon to me, I have to wonder if it was one of the rarely mentioned and never actualy described shocklances.

 

During the War of the Shadow the Light was able to mount armies of soldiers armed with shocklances and even had air support. Despite these advantages, which presumably the forces of the Shadow might even have shared, they were constantly overwhelemed and driven back by the sheer mass of an enemy who could field unlimited numbers of both vat-grown and voraciously reproducing trollocs until they could no longer even support a high-tech base to produce the weapons it needed.

 

I had always sort of saw a shocklance as similar a shoulder-fired weapon with an energy-based ranged attack that was used in similar function to the M-14 (the general issue main battle rifle used in the Korean conflict by US forces). The main weakness of the M-14 (and I had asssumed) the shocklance was that it had a slow rate of fire despite being quite powerful and had a limited number of rounds in the magazine (or charges if you will).

 

Any thoughts on this?

[Leyrann]

Maybe an electroshock weapon?

[rand4747]

i always thought of it like a gun that fires something from it, buit it may not have been a traditional gun shape, perhaps more like a pole with some sort of squeeze trigger along it, (hence the lance name) I always thought of it firing like a lightning bolt sort of thing.

[number13]

i always thought of it like a gun that fires something from it, buit it may not have been a traditional gun shape, perhaps more like a pole with some sort of squeeze trigger along it, (hence the lance name) I always thought of it firing like a lightning bolt sort of thing.

 

Yeah, I always pictured it as being like a projectile cattle-prod, so to speak.

[Majsju]

The shocklance was an energy-discharge weapon. This was a smaller version. If a shocklance is a rifle, this rod is a pistol. Same effect, but weaker and with shorter range.

[LeeM.Erickson]

Shocklance could be a general term encompassing many different types of weapon. Similar to the word gun, which could mean anything from a pistol, a shotgun, a rifle, or a machine gun.