Comment on “Sage Today: siege weapon-making I”

I hadn't heard of any "mystical Chinese cannon." You prompted me to look up Wikipedia pages on the development of cannons in China.

By "mystical weapons," it seems you're referring to devices like "the 'orifice-penetrating flying sand magic mist tube' (鑽穴飛砂神霧筒) which spewed forth sand and poisonous chemicals into orifices," or the "divine flying fire crow" illustrated on this page, or perhaps the "fire lance."

I have no idea whether the the "mist tube" existed in any form, and the "fire crow," at least as depicted, seems ludicrous, so naturally none of that matters for amateur weapon-making. I do want to mention, for those unaware, that practically every historical Chinese invention has a similarly strange name, due to the Chinese penchant for metaphor. This includes machines/tools which are certainly known to exist, and which fulfilled the same function as European counterparts with more readily-understood names. For instance, the Chinese word for "movable type" is "living characters" or "living boards."

Imagine the satisfaction of an Expert or Sage siege-weapon maker building a mist tube or fire crow, then having someone with Artillery land its payload square on a bunch of infantry!