Darths & Droids VI: Thread title will appear here when received

[Aeson]

I believe it actually fires a quarrel. Not sure why, but it apparently does.

As for the idea that the bowcaster fires quarrels of some description, Chewie never seems to need to load prior to shooting or reload between shots, there doesn't appear to be room for a magazine - certainly not one large enough to fit something that I'd describe as a quarrel rather than as a bullet - and Chewie doesn't seem to have quarrels on his person (the items on his bandolier are more appropriately sized for magazines for rifle-caliber bullets, if anything, and, again, I can't recall ever seeing him (re)load the bowcaster, so it's not clear that his bandolier actually holds specialized ammunition for the bowcaster), and the audio-visual effects for the bowcaster are very similar to those used for blasters. The idea that bowcaster shots were meant to be fundamentally distinct from blaster shots seems to me more than a little suspect, regardless of what Disney or EU material has to say on the matter.

As to the idea that the bowcaster is a fancy high-tech crossbow, I would point out that the 'bow' and 'bowstring' of Chewie's bowcaster can be observed during firing in the scene where Han fails to sneak up on a scout trooper on the forest moon of Endor, and there is no indication that either so much as twitches during firing. If the bowcaster is a crossbow, then so is a rifle with a recurve bow tied to the barrel.

Pretty much the only reason to think that a bowcaster is anything other than a blaster stylized to look like a crossbow is that it looks something like a crossbow; prior to TFA, there wasn't even any real indication in the films that it was a notably more powerful weapon than for example a stormtrooper's blaster carbine.