Drow Grenades

Hand Grenades are among the oldest explosive weapons and have been for centuries, if to a fairly limited extent. Grenades could do considerable damage to enemy formations but their utility was limited by the difficulties of lighting them in most combat situations as the fact that fuses would often be extinguished in combat scenarios. Useful enough so that many nations (among them being the Drow States) were familiar with them and employed them on occasion but seldom made them part of their regular arsenal. Even so, it came as something of a surprise to the Infrastructural military to find an usually high number of these weapons in the battle of Daagsgrad among captured supplies, on dead soldiers and as unexploded ordinance.

There is a considerable degree of variation among the grenades recovered with numerous makes being identified. Many of them were simple cast iron spheres or ceramic pots with basic fuses, fairly typical as far as grenade designs go. These remain the most common among those recovered, in part due to the previously mentioned high failure rate (and the fact that a quick soldier can disarm them with a knife or a boot heel) and come in a variety of sizes and rough shapes. Others are more sophisticated, most notably those produced by Houses Valcas and Noljas which include simple friction primers similar to those used in some Infrastructural mining explosives. They have a higher rate of successful detonation compared to the old fashioned fuse grenades but were still inferior. Those made by House Valcas have a set of longitudinal lines in them to better facilitate fragmentation. Among the most unusual are those made by House Delissan, which are bottles loaded with black powder and musket balls. These were among the least reliable, but also among the most damaging when they explode as desired. It has been estimated that at the battle of Daagsgrad hand grenades were responsible for killing some 250 infrastructural soldiers and wounding the same number.

Most of these grenades were issued to teams of specialized grenadier janissaries, though a few general Janissaries and Drow warriors (especially those from Valnothron and Galthirith) had taken one or two grenades along with them. In total about 18,000 grenades were issued during the battle, though less than a tenth of those were used in the battle. From what could be gathered part of the reason why the Drow have displayed an increased interest in hand grenades is in emulation of their use by the Infrastructural Army. It is the assesment of the Central Committee that such weapons will continue to appear in Drow armies, as will more refined variations there-of.