Thundersticks

Thundersticks are two-handed weapons, fired like a rifle except that the arm absorbs the recoil, not the shoulders, since the weapon does not rest on the latter. The thunderstick is a large, two-handed primitive gun with a smooth bore barrel as opposed to a rifled barrel. The thunderstick is loaded by pouring smoke powder from a flask or horn into the muzzle and firmly packing it with a piece of paper. The projectile, an iron slug, is rammed in after this. Once the barrel is ready, the pan is filled with smoke powder, the pan's cover is closed, and a burning slow-match (a piece of cloth or paper rolled into a fuse) is placed in the mechanism called the serpentine. Pressure on a metal plate releases the serpentine into the pan and a sound likened to thunder by some primitive cultures earns the thunderstick its namesake.