Hey folks! Was chatting with a friend and they recalled an older lore idea that was not currently in the canon, though might actually be more viable in the current canon thanks to alchemical rubber.

In short an Aethergun is a term from a future period that uses the same technology (though far more refined), an Aethergun in the context of the early awakening scavenging tribes and city states is a locally made Air Rifle, usually incorporating junk, pipe fittings, and sometimes prepulse airgun parts that could be recovered. While these airguns function normally enough on their own drekir could be able to "spike" their guns with a charge of mana. With how mana elementization works the sudden rush of mechanical force would elementize the mana added into the gun (usually poured down the barrel) would elementize the mana into Wind Mana which would rapidly expand, suddenly creating substantially more power and force that is then imparted onto the projectile(s).
Considering that when these guns were canon drekir would make these guns capable of holding a lot more pressure than what you would generally see in modern day air rifles means that they're already notably powerful, and when spiked with a bit of mana means these airguns can be quite crazy.

Of course the biggest downside is that these are rarely spring piston or PCP guns due to the desire for more power, while designs vary the majority of aetherguns rely on quickly opening a valve or pressurized canister that releases all the pressurized air at once for one big shot. So for each shot the gun has to be pumped back up manually which can sometimes take over a full minute. So this is possibly the slowest firing thing you might ever see.

Designs back when these were canonical designs and projectile varied, most primitive aetherguns relying on filling up a single canister and then releasing all that pressurized air in one big shot, often more complicated guns seen amongst the more organized City States often involving PCP technology that allows them more than just a single shot before having to laboriously pump back up.

They aren't canon at this point but it was a fun thing to doodle on, they're enjoyably junky and cobbled together and do play a bit on how mana and magic works in the setting in a more interesting way.