Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-58.161.102.224-20130820083031/@comment-17732608-20130919051431

A Blank is a shell casing without an actual round in it. It does have gunpowder in it, however.

So far, it seems that Dust is taking the place of modern smokeless powder, but the shell and primer appear to be the same. Blanks are crimped at the end, but there's no reason why a Dust round couldn't use some sort of wadding.

As for what Dust is, right not it looks like it is (for lack of a better description) 'powdered magic'.