Fabrique d'Armes d'Elfame

History

What would eventually become known as the Fabriques d'Armes d'Elfame began as a group of unrelated guilds and workshops in the ancestral Seelie capital city of Elfame, which provided arms and explosives for the military forces of the medieval proto-Seilurid. In ancient times, most Seilurid soldiers owned their own arms and armor and Elfame saw a thriving business where dozens of rival workshops competed to offer a variety of weapons in relatively small-scale, decentralized affairs. This remained a lucrative, highly competitive environment where smiths sought to out-do one another on matters of speed of manufacture, durability, and general beauty of the finished products for a few centuries.
This changed with the apparition of gunpowder. The Seelie were an early adopter of this new technology and made use of it to produce fire lances and ceramic bombs, soon to be supplemented by hand cannons. The danger inherent in manufacturing and handling gunpowder and its derived weapons caused many accidents in the early days and the Khans decided to intervene in establishing regulations and control. All aspiring weaponsmiths that sought to manufacture gunpowder devices needed acquire a special sanction by proving their knowledge and paying fees. Effectively, this ensured that no one could manufacture gunpowder weapons legally without the Seelie nobility's tacit approval.
This network of sanctioned weapon smiths constitute what historian outline as the very beginning of FAE, as it was a loose grouping of artisans all nominally controlled by the Khans as they needed to abide by central rules and regulations and were the exclusive manufacturers of gunpowder devices for the Seelie military. Profits made from sanctions and fees were used to enforce regulations, providing uniformity and some measure of safety, as well as to root out illegal workshops. This became more and more important as early hand cannons and crude devices were replaced by cannons and muskets.
As time passed, what was once a loose group of workshops slowly became more tightly unified and centralized. With the Seelie nobility's increasing need to purchase top-quality arms for their personal troops as well as siege equipment that was not owned by any individual soldier, more and more commissions for large numbers of high quality arms passed through the sanctioned association, allowing their business and capabilities to grow, eventually expanding to include many kinds of arms and armor and not just gunpowder devices.
In order to satisfy the demands of ever larger orders and up-scaling cannons, the originally disparate workshops and artisans joined more closely together, pooling the experience of centuries of former rivalries which caused an era of rapid advances. In modern days, while FAE has become a singular entity, there is still traces of this heritage within the design bureaus. Currently numbering eight, these design bureaus are the contemporary successors to the old coalitions, and they continue even to this day to compete with one another in order to have the honor - and financial benefits - to create the new weapons and mechanisms used by the Seilurid army.

Type:
Arms and ammunition manufacturer
Specialization:
Rifles, Light Artillery

Founding Date

1263

Location

Elfame

Manufactured Items

• 8x50 FAE
• Fusil Standardisé Modèle 1889