Sword

A Roman gladius (Pompeii Variant), one type of sword

Swords are probably the most commonly used weapon in Fantasy, especially by main characters. While certain fantasy races have certain specific weapons associated with them (Dwarves and Axes, Elves and Bows), all of them will make use of swords at least on the sidelines.

Real life shit: A sword is a melee weapon comprised of a long, sharp blade and a hilt to hold it with. In the real world, the blades of swords normally range between 50 to 150cm long and typically weigh between 1 to 4 kilograms, depending on the size and composition. Numerous variants of swords exist and have been employed since some ancient Mesopotamian metalworker decided to make the blade of a dagger much longer than usual.

Love and Hate

There are two types of sword related retards.

• Sword Wankers: Overly romantic morons who believe that the sword is the be all end all weapon until people got good with guns and tragically ended that. Buying into all that chivalry/Bushido nonsense.

• Anti-Sword Wankers: People who respond to the sword wankers by going too far the other way. Seeing swords as worthless weapons that were only carried by overly romantic morons. Sword blades would always shatter on impact with plate armor and ten swordsmen would easily die to one guy with a spear.

Both are stupid. Swords were not the be-all end-all of medieval warfare. Other weapons did have their advantages. Maces did concussive damage even if someone was wearing heavy armor and could break bones. Spears had a longer reach and were better against cavalry. Halberds could deliver a devastating chop. This did not mean that swords were worthless. They were versatile -- short swords were excellent as a fallback weapon. Double-handed Zweihanders could be devastating. Nevertheless, morons who think in bare basic binary believe that they are either the weapon of the gods or worthless rubbish. Ignoring that any civilization that developed metalworking (and a couple that didn't) eventually came up with swords.

So why are swords so popular?

So swords can be outclassed by nearly every other weapon in various areas, Spears are better at poking stuff (like cavalry), Axes were better at chopping, and maces and hammers are better for crushing people wearing heavy armour, so why use a sword? Because they're versatile, spears are long and clumsy once you got real close and easily get tangled in stuff (such as walls, forests, mountain battlefields, stuff inside castles...), axes were not good at deflecting other blows and took a bit of time and a fair bit of space to build up momentum (plus, they don't always cut as smoothly as sword, katana and sabres) and the same could be said for hammers and maces. If you got close up in a fight back then, a sword was your friend. Some swords are more pokey, some more choppy, some were balanced, but they could all do the job in a pinch. If you have a sword, you have more options available to you, though you generally need more training on how to use them.

Perhaps the biggest advantage most swords get is that they come with a sheath. This means you can go to war with a better specialized weapon, and when it's at a major disadvantage (say, you have a spear or a musket, and your enemy comes too close, or you have a poleaxe and the fight moves into a cramped space) you can just drop it and unsheath your a sword, which is while not great at anything is decent enough in every situation. Indeed very few warriors went to war with swords as their primary weapons, yet everyone who could afford it would definitely carry it to battle as a sidearm, often even choosing back up sword over a better armour. Also with a sheath sword could be comfortably carried in every day life, and indeed in most cultures carrying a sword in a peace time became a badge of warrior or nobility class (which were often the same).

A very important thing to note about them though, is that swords are weapons and weapons only. You cannot use them to cut firewood like battleaxes (though they can, it is not a bright idea, since it will chip the edge and you will spend more strength and energy doing so than with an axe; on another note, dedicated battleaxes have a very thin, almost sword-like blade, and are completely unsuitable for chopping trees — flesh is much softer than wood, after all), construct the camp or set field fortifications like warhammers, or use them as carving knives like daggers and have you ever heard of people going hunting with a sword ? Going against bear with a sword is generally a fucking stupid idea, even more so if you face things like battle elephants; you need either pole arms or ranged weapons against them unless you have a death wish. Considering all this, it's strange that swords are the go-to weapons of your average melee murderhobos in any fantasy setting where they are supposed to fight giants and dragons on a daily basis. Though this may partly be the fault of unimaginative game designers or GMs, as the majority of magic weapons tend to be swords, or else you need to specialize in order to train with another weapon even if said weapon would realistically require less training in real life.

Dissection of swords in battle

Because swords are so versatile, it's best to go over a few of their various benefits to the user and why they're so commonly used:

• Balance: To start off, most combat swords have their center of mass near the handle. This means you have much better control over their movement than with any other weapon, able to stop it or change the movement angle much faster. However this same balance has a double edge, thanks to their good balance a sword can't hit as hard as an unbalanced weapon since you have less weight and mass at the point of impact. It's why relatively untrained axemen and halberds are still a strong threat, the heavy weight of the head means that when you hit, you hit hard, even if it is hard to change your blow's speed or angle and it's why swordsmen need more training than with other weapons.

• Defense: Swords also offer more protection than most other weapons - most swords are one handed, so it's easy to use a shield with most types. You can also use them to parry other weapons if you're really desperate, however parrying anything but another sword is generally difficult and/or dangerous. Spears, pole-arms, and other weapons designed for thrusting (including some swords) are hard to parry, weapons that have gathered huge momentum, such as axes or maces, would have a high chance of damaging either your weapon or your hand (bending the fuck out of your sword and making it useless or breaking it), or throw you off your balance and Flails (at full speed) can't be parried at all, but that's to be expected given it's their main shtick. However those can still be parried, kinda, but attacking first before they build up the momentum which the sword superior agility can allow. Or, if you are skilled enough, you can try to redirect their momentum so their weapon misses you instead of parrying it head-on with your edge and then counter-attack while they are trying to recover. Most swords also usually include crossguards to protect the hands of anybody using them unlike... pretty much every other common weapon.

• Training Time: One of the worst things about swords, they require much, much more skill than any other close combat weapon save flails, and while untrained militiamen with spears, halberds, or axes still could be a threatening foes, untrained men with swords possess a danger mainly to themselves. Though, on the other hand, a sword is just a sharp metal stick with a handle, so if you manage to master it, most of the core swordsmanship skills and martial art basics in general transfer well to other long, shafted weapons like axes, spears and quarterstaves, if you decide to train in using them.

• Space: One-handed swords require much less space to build momentum, so you can effectively use them in a tight shoulder-to-shoulder formation (unlike axes, maces and hammers), even two-handed swords will usually have a Ricasso (an unsharpened part of the blade immediately above the crossguard) which can be used to allow them to fight better in close quarters and even if they don't, they still don't require nearly as much space as great axes or two-handed warhammers and even if you're really hard pressed (let's say somebody closes in on you with a dagger), a fighting technique of the time was to just use the pommel at the end of the grip and just clobber your opponent with it, after all, this is the origin for English word "pummel", or you could also hold the sword in the middle (even though it's sharp, it's okay if you use gloves; it's called half-swording) and use it like a makeshift short spear, doing quick jabs with its point or trying to wrestle your opponent to the ground by using your sword as a lever, all fairly good techniques for very close quarters combat.

• Availability and Reliability: Unfortunately swords require the services of specialized swordsmiths, good materials, and much, much more time to craft. It's because of this and the associated cost that swords are commonly associated with nobility, they're one of the few that could afford the good ones. Though this situation slowly improved from Early Middle ages onward, and during the High Middle ages even common soldiers carried okay-quality, maybe used, swords as sidearms. Unfortunately too it's harder to replace them for this same reason, and since swords aren't magically immune to damage, they need regular maintenance to keep the edge sharp and rust-free. Chips in the metal could cause the blade to break on impact, requiring a swordsmith to repair or even reforge if the damage is extensive.

• Lethality: How a sword kills is entirely dependent on the type of sword that it is (this will be covered more later). The main types of damage they inflict could be divided into three categories:

• Slashing deals huge, extremely painful and bleeding wounds. The pain alone would incapacitate most foes, leaving them to the finishing blow, and if you didn't finish them, they would just bleed to death in a matter of minutes. It's effective against opponents with partial armor, prevalent through most of the history, as limb hits are just as painful and lethal as body hits, and limbs are usually more exposed, and if your opponent happen to have no chest piece, disemboweling becomes a nice effective option. Two main issues with slashing is that mail and god-forbid full plate renders it completely useless, and that opponents with high enough pain tolerance (Berzerkers and Mameluks did it through painkiller drugs) can continue fighting for minutes even with their lethal wounds, taking their killers (an likely more people) with them.
• Stabs from a sword on the on the other hand can be instantly fatal since if you hit someone pretty much anywhere on the torso you are almost guaranteed to hit an organ that's full of blood like a liver or a kidney, and then have the blood pour out of the big hole you just made in them. The issue with stabs is if your opponent wears any kind of metal armor on his torso (like all soldiers worth their salt before the age of the musketeer), your stabs generally cannot do shit. One of the half-swording techniques goes around this by holding your sword with a main hand by the handle and by off-hand by the blade close to the tip kind of like a short spear or a dagger with a very long handle, but this comes with such a huge list of downsides it's most times better to use an actual dagger. Coincidentally, most knights carried one roughly since 14th century.
• And finally if you encounter an enemy in full plate or even chainmail, you'd better forget about hitting him with a blade, as it would only serve to damage your weapon, as swords generally don't cut through metal. Like at all. Yep, even the mighty Zweihander is not likely do anything. You'd be far better with bashing him with a pommel, or yet better use half-swording known as "deathblow", holding your sword by the blade, and bashing your enemy whin a pummel or a cross-guards like a makeshift mace or warhammer respectively. By the end of the Medieval, when plate became widespread, pummels and crossguards became arguably more important than he blade itself, especially if you want to End Him Rightly. Alternately you could hit him in the legs, try to knock him down and then quickly shove a dagger up his visor, a crack in his armor or groin.

Typically in pre-sword-and-shot warfare everywhere from Japan to England (save hot and arid lands where armor is more likely to kill you with a heatstroke than the enemy with his sword) most people killed by swords are first injured in the legs, and then finished off in either the neck or head once they're down on the ground as it lets you avoid most of that annoying armour your sword is probably not made to deal with.

Types of Swords

Unlike, say, the spear or the mace, which were pretty much the same all over, swords, being essentially jack-of-all-trades weapons, came in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes to fit the needs of the people using them. This is not a complete list (nor should it be, go to wikipedia), but it should give you a good introduction.

The Ancient Days

A fair number of early bronze age swords look like big knives, because that was basically what they were. Societies figured out bronze working or learned it from someone else, found out that they could make serviceable bronze knives like their older rock ones, then began enlarging the shape. They also were composed just a blade with a handle (or hilt) bolted on, rather than having a tang, Others were simply a single piece of bronze with maybe some leather or cloth tied around the handle to make it easier to hold.

An Egyptian Khopesh, a serviceable first draft that would be overshadowed by latter models

• Khopesh: One of the oldest varieties of sword with a distinct sickle shape. Originally of Egyptian design, this weapon's distinctive blade allowed it to cut, hook shields, and even thrust. It was fairly good for its day in the bronze age, but in that day armor better than leather or padded cloth was a rarity. Its time was done once chainmail and scale armor became common in the iron age. Despite most fantasy depictions of khopeshes having them as long as longswords, these blades were fairly small at 50-60 cm, since anything bigger made out of bronze tended to get bent easily.
• Kopis: An ancient Greek short sword from the age of Hoplites, about 50-70 centimeters long. It curved inward and was a single bladed weapon on the inward curve. This did limit flexibility in slashing attacks somewhat when compared with swords with blades on both sides, but meant that a sharper edge could be put on edged side, which was important since at this point the Greeks only had bronze to make weapons, which does not hold an edge very well. A similar sword, the Falcata, was used by the Spanish, which also featured a knuckle guard.
• Xiphos: Another Greek short sword, this one was double-edged and the blade resembled more of a leaf shape, giving it some extra heft toward the point. A secondary, cut-and-thrust weapon.
• Gladius: The standard sword of the Roman Legions, a short sword about 60 to 80 centimeters long. This sword was the main weapon for the average Roman legionary. As one of the smallest one handed swords of its time, the gladius was decent at chopping and slashing, but excelled at stabbing; combined with Roman shield formations and the bash-step-stab-block move, this gave it a deceptively large effective range surpassed only by polearms. The fact that Roman legionnaire maniples was able to crush Macedonian phalanxes in melee should tell you a lot about their effectiveness (though out flanking the formation helped). It was later phased out in favor of the longer spatha (a cavalry weapon adapted by the infantry, mainly as a reaction to increasingly mounted adversaries), which was itself a precursor to the viking sword, and by extension arming swords and longswords.

Medieval Times

As a rule, during the Middle Ages in Europe most peoples settled on straight double edged swords for the most part.

• Arming Sword: Also known as the side-sword, this was a one handed weapon about 70 to 90 centimeters pretty much carried by every decently equipped man-at-arms/archer/spearman/knight ever. Often carried with a shield of some sort, it can also be used if your main weapon breaks or happens to be too long to use in corridors. When most people think of the classic sword-and-shield combo, this sword is what most often comes to mind. Often incorrectly called a longsword in games and other fiction, during the beginning of medieval ages this was the knight's primary weapon, because you generally didn't need anything bigger than it until later.

• Viking Sword: Often considered the progenitor of the arming sword, the Viking swords featured ornamental hilts, and many had unusually high-quality steel for their time, particularly the Ulfberht swords.
• Messer A straight single-edged sword, this German weapon basically became the poor man's sword because, according to the law, its construction meant it counted as a knife. Besides its association with shady criminals and brutal gang violence, It also featured an early knuckleguard called a "Nagel", or nail, which became very useful for parrying blows.

• Longsword: A 90 to 120 cm long knightly sword, befit of any self-respecting knightly individual, it's your two-handed or hand and a half go-to knight killer with multiple functions such as sword(duh), crowbar, spear, and hammer. Though there are dozens of techniques to use the longsword, two of the most common and useful styles are the Italian and German styles. The Italian longsword technique allowed wielders to strike and parry quickly, greatly emphasizing on using the general physics of a longsword combined with well planned footwork. The German style of "half-swording" (gripping the sword with the right hand on the handle and the left on the percussion point of the sword) this technique allowed the wielder to use the sword like a crowbar and fight armored opponents more efficiently in close quarters, the objective being to use the sword to catch and topple opponents, leaving them vulnerable to follow-up attacks through gaps in their armor. It is also good to note that the longsword strikes faster and harder than the arming sword because two hands are used to wield it.
• Falchion: This single-edged sword almost resembles a great machete, designed to combine the advantages of a sword and an axe. The blade is much wider in order to increase its weight, giving it better chopping power at the expense of balance and thrusting ability.
• Cinquedea: Literally "five fingers", this Venetian blade straddled the line between a short sword and a long dagger (about 18-20 inches). One noteworthy feature was that the blade was obscenely wide, being as wide as five fingers, hence the name. It was a civilian weapon used in narrow streets, and frequently pimped out with etched blades. While the wide blade won't do much good against armor, it can give an unarmored opponent a pretty nasty wound.
• Estoc: When plate armor became more common, some men carried the Estoc, which was basically a longsword with no sharpened edges but a very sharp and narrow point. The edges were left unsharpened, partly because a slash does no good against plate, and partly because the actual blade wasn't flat and wide, but thick and narrow, reducing flex and making it more rigid for dealing with heavy armor. The blade could be triangular, square, or even hexagonal.
• Greatsword: Or Zweihander, is a mighty 120-150 centimeter blade that appeared somewhere around the 15th century which was mainly carried by fuckhuge men with fuckhuge biceps and fuckhuge balls whose jobs were to run forth as the vanguard and hack enemy pikes, pikemen, swordsmen, and occasionally cavalry to meaty chunks. Greatswords bear many of the same qualities as the longsword, though it was a bit slower and struck harder due to the weight, and also require even more training. One unique ability of the Greatsword was that it could be wielded like a short spear, featuring an extra handguard past the primary hilt. Good greatswords were some of the most expensive close combat weapons in medieval Europe, and good landsknechts were the most expensive foot soldiers, but for the good reason, as they combined the devastating killing blow and armor piercing capability of the axe, speed of the sword, and were also able do chop through tough spear or halberd formations (and mind you Swiss pikemen, and later halberdiers, were the deathstars of this era). This, however, comes at a great risk, as while a highly skilled landsknecht can swing the zweihander pretty fast, he cannot react fast enough to reliably block enemy strikes because of the fuckhuge momentum of his sword, leaving him vulnerable to counter-attack if something survives his swing - even while they usually wore heavy armor, landsknechts were known to die young.

• Claymore: Scottish variant of the Greatsword. The claymore is distinguished by its forward-sweeping hilt ending in quatrefoils. Not to be confused with later basket-hilted swords of the same name.

The Far East

Like in the West, the peoples of East Asia made use of a wide and diverse variety of swords which evolved on their own lines. Here are a few of these.

• Katana: The unstoppable God-weapons that can cleave through tanks, cut through time, and cure cancer. No wait, come back! That's all bull and no one who isn't stupid disputes this. But, they were perfectly functional swords for their place and time. Japanese blacksmiths didn't have access to the quality of iron that their European counterparts did, neither did they have proper smelting techniques to filter out most of the slag out of steel, so they had to develop techniques to get the most out of what they had, including folding the billet and laminating steel of different hardness together. Because of this, the katana was made using heavier steel with less carbon, using uneased hardened steel wrapped around a softer core to give the blade a strong edge while the core could absorb more force than a blade made of a single grade of hard steel. As a result, Katanas were harder and held the edge better then European swords, but were way more vulnerable, prone to chipping and bending (it was fairly common for BOTH opponents' swords to bend when parrying, hence why Japanese martial arts avoided parrying whenever possible), and being made of very inflexible steel types it was less prone to vibrate at wrong blade alignment, which actually lowered skill requirements a lot - in other words it trades reliability for the ease of use, which is, in all truth, a strange trade, considering that it was mostly used by very skilled swordsmen that usually don't require something of that nature (however it IS partially responsible for katana fanbiynsm, as it's actually an OK weapon in the hands of complete amateur, unlike most other swords). Contrary to popular belief, the standard katana is rather short at only 60 to 73 cm long (a longsword would be 89 to 109 cm long). Also, you don't swing it like a baseball bat, you pull inward as you swing so the blade cuts as it goes. Historically, it was often kept with a shorter sword called a wakizashi, which was commonly used as an alternative to the katana in situations where the longer blade would be a hindrance (e.g. indoor fights). While in most circumstances, only one of the pair was used at a time, at least one school of martial arts (the Niten Ichi-ryū) exists that teaches a swordsman to wield both swords at once (Note, however, the school commonly teaches one to use a SHORTER blade in the off-hand, as carrying two swords meant for carrying with both hands is kind of, well, stupid). Katanas and similar swords were used by the Koreans and the Chinese to some degree.

• Tachi - The katana's predecessor was between 68 to 79 cm long and had slightly more curvature, though direct visual comparison would be difficult. The real difference is how the blade was signed by the smith and the way it was worn (edge down) compared to a katana (edge up), even the word "Katana" means "Sword that is different from a tachi." The additional length and the extra curvature made the blade more suitable for cavalry, which was the primary role of the samurai at the time. The later katana was shorter and straighter which was more practical for a footman or a duelist.
• No-Dachi (or O-dachi) - Translates as "Fuck-Massive Tachi" which was the Japanese version of the greatsword. Made famous to the west by Sephiroth. They had a blade usually 120 to 150 cm length and was a weapon intended for infantry, though the shortest could also be used on horseback, though it then focused on downward cuts rather than side to side slashes which could rape hordes (Samurai prefered to use bows or Yari (Sengoku) and Naginata (prior Sengoku) when on horseback, since it did a better job than making one's Tachi longer). Some of the biggest Nodachi include Tarômaru (Nagasa 180cm, Zenchô 262cm, 7.2 kg, forged in Kamakura period, widely considered to be the golden age of Nihontô), Nenekirimaru (Zenchô 324cm, Nagasa 215cm, weight unknown, forged in Nanbokuchô period) or Tarôtachi (Nagasa 220cm, 4.5 kg, total lenght around 3m). The latter belonged to a Sengoku period General, Makara Jûrôzaemon Naotaka, who actually wielded it on horseback. Such swords are the longest, biggest and highest quality blades around. Generally got banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate when they legislated how long a samurai's swords could be, so most of them got cut down or relegated to ceremonial duties. A lower quality version of the Nodachi called Wodao (Japanese Sword) was used by the Chinese after a Kage-ryû manual got looted by the Chinese Imperial army, who then mass produced it to use against northern barbarians in specialized units, unlike in Japan where only specialists individual fighters used them (contrary to popular Shogun Total War induced beliefs).

• Legendary Blades: So you might have heard in RPG's of the the Masamune and Muramasa blades, but in real life these actually refer to specific swordsmiths (though Japanese swords are often called by the name of their swordsmith) of which Masamune is the most famous, being lauded as one of the greatest sword-smiths of all time and his swords are held as national treasures even today. Muramasa came 200 years later and produced swords during the Muromachi period. In modern fantasy fiction, Masamune's blades are far more elegant and the mark of a more refined warrior while Muramasa's blades were considered to be bloodthirsty and were even banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Though directly comparing them is unfair, as they were both the greatest masters limited only by the processes of their time. Masamune's era had less technical knowledge to process the impurities from iron creating brittle metals, but Masamune worked this disadvantage into his blades as an artistic expression, causing crystals of impurities to form making his swords appear to sparkle. By contrast Muramasa most likely had all the same technical knowledge of Masamune in addition to 200 years of engineering development and probably suffered a bad reputation because his blades were far more utilitarian.

• To: Korean sabers were 60 to 86cm in length and have a very similar appearance to Japanese katanas, though straighter and often with a shorter handle, making them primarily one-handed which is more suitable for its function as a cavalry saber. In fact, many katanas could have been converted into To by cutting down the length of the handle, but considering the shape of most surviving Korean swords, it is unlikely they did it a lot. Contrary to popular belief on both the Western and Eastern side of the Internet, caused by K-Pop propaganda, the Koreans DID NOT had traditional schools of swordsmanship, Muyedobotongji was published in 1790. This is because Korean had a mainly Confucianist society dispising violence under the Kingship of the Joseon dynasty, and as such had no martial culture. Before the Invasion of Korea by the Toyotomi clan's Hosts (1592 - 1598), they used mostly Chinese style Jian, which the Korean wore hung diagonaly from a waist or a shoulder in back to front. This is because the only traditional martial art of Korea was archery. Because of those reasons, the Imjin war was initialy a huge success for the Japanese Samurai armies ; on the land it failed in the end for logistic and strategic reason rather than tactical ones, and on the sea it failed due to very recently developped Korean warships (ironicaly, based on the Japanese warships), as it is often the case (for exemple, in the Satsuma rebellion during the Meiji era, the samurai rebels killed twice their numbers, but lost because they were outnumbered and lacked guns, artillery, munitions, comfort, support...). Even after the war, the Korean used mostly blades who were abandoned / forgotten during the Japanese retreat, or low quality replicas of Nihontô. All those swords were often rusted, because unlike the Japanese, Koreans didn't knew how to maintain them healthy. Some other exemples of the low quality of ancient Koreans replicas of Japanese swords include the absence of Kogai (kind of stylet) and thus the uselessness of holes in Korean Tsuba, the absence of Shinogi (or only 1 sided Shinogi) or the use of hardware to keep the blade inside the sheath (while the Japanese Sword do have a Habaki that will fit the Saya perfectly). Those latter Korean swords' sheath were not kept hung by the swordsman, but thrown away as to not be bothersome, and indeed, none of the many illustrations of Korean ancient martial arts books are shown wearing a sheath, and does not mention the sheating process (unlike Japanese Iaijutsu and Battôjutsu). One might hence wonder from where does come from Haidong Kumdo, Taekwondo, Hapkido and others. Those were in fact derived from Japanese Martial Arts taught to Koreans by the Japanese for purposes of cultural exchange and peaceful cohabitation through sportsmanship, mostly during the occupation in the Shôwa era, which is why they use Japanese inspired clothing, weapons and techniques, but also have controversial stories when trying to pass as older as they really are (mostly for Nationalistic purposes).
  • Of note, you might have heard of the ninja-to, a fictional weapon invented by Hollywood to be used as props for movie Ninjas and perpetuated by RPGs and video games (including D&D). Well the Korean to is probably the closest physical analogue to the ninja-to as there has never been any historical evidence of ninja-to's as a ninja would never be stupid enough to carry a weapon that would identify him as such. Save for the Japanese Historicaly acurate Shikomizue, which came in a variety of forms, some easier to hide than others (similar to the European cane sword).

The Chinese 29th Division all carrying dadao against katana-wielding IJA troops.

• Dadao: A Chinese sabre meaning "Big Knife" in English. It has a thick, long, curved blade, and often has a handle half-as big as the blade itself, much like a very thick falchion or großemesser two-handed sword. This made the blade extremely durable and tough. During World War II, the Chinese Nationalists used them for defending Chinese territory against Japanese invaders. To just about everyone's surprise, was actually fairly effective in deterring any Japanese troops from getting too close, which was very useful when your foe likes to bayonet charge when they run out of ammunition. One highly specialized division, the 29th, (Ershi jiu jun) specialized in the dadao and became infamous for their beheading cavalry raids.

Other places

The guys outside of east Asia and Europe did some swordsmithing of their own, here we acknowledge their contributions to the world of swords.

• Ida: A sword design native to Sub Saharan Africa (specifically Nigeria). There were a fair number of several types of swords used by sub-Saharan African peoples, some of which being similar to Middle Eastern scimitars, a few of which having a fairly common straight sword shape more commonly associated with European swords and others had rather exotic shapes. The ida is notable for having a straight blade which bulges towards the point.

• Macuahuitl: Some would dispute this weapon is a sword, but it still deserves a mention. The macuahuitl is from Central America and was used by the Aztecs and such civilization. Basically, imagine a paddle with grooves in the narrow faces that hold sharpened obsidian to make the cutting edge. Shards of obsidian can get really really damn sharp, sometimes having a monomolecular edge. As such a macuahuitl could cut through flesh and bone like nobody's business. But obsidian is volcanic glass, which means when a macuahuitl went up against metallic armor (such as, for example, the breastplate worn by a Spanish conquistador), said bits of glass would shatter, leaving its wielder helpless against the wearer of the aforementioned armor. The Spaniards though feared the Aztec warriors, who could almost behead their horses in but one swing.

• Scimitar: A family of swords of Middle Eastern design, including a number of offshoots such as the tulwar or shamshir, the scimitar was a curved single bladed sword, but could be one-handed or two-handed depending on its function or region of manufacture. Was made extremely popular by Drizzt, who was famous for fighting with two of them on foot, though historically they were far more suited for fighting from horseback as the curved blade allows for fly-by attacks without the blade getting caught in the victim's bodies and pulling the rider off his horse. These blades were lighter than European counterparts (such as the sabre and the falchion) and had limited flexibility (since they only had one edge), but they were remarkably quick and sharp. Scimitars are one of the few blade weapons still in actual use today, with some Middle Eastern nations using them for executions of criminals.

Sword and Shot

The age of the sword did not end the second someone worked out that a combination of a strong tube with one end sealed off, some black powder, and some pebbles could be used to shoot one's enemies. Swords and guns coexisted for nearly a thousand years. The following latter day swords arose and were used alongside (and sometimes by) arquebusier, msuketeers, dragoons, and riflemen

• Flamberge: Meaning "Flame Bladed Sword" which was a primarily decorative single handed blade usually used by officers who practiced rapier forms. While it could be said that the blades caused more damage due to the curves on the edge giving a saw-like motion with each swing; remember that rapier forms were practiced during the gunpowder-era where there were much easier ways to kill a man, and to properly utilise this in combat would require a very different form that required swinging rather than thrusting. Therefore the flamberge's REAL benefit was that anyone who attempted to parry a strike from a waved blade would catch their sword on the curves and unbalance their hold on their own weapon or make their arms ache.

• Flambard: Forget what you think you know from fantasy books and video games, flambards are the two handed versions of flamberges. Unfortunately the terminology has been confused mostly by fanboys and collectors in the same manner as katanas have been. Just like a zweihander blade, flambards were meant to be heavy and the blows inflicted by them were absolutely lethal, so you could easily chop lumps out of dudes stupid enough to get close to you. On the other hand, the waved blade served a different purpose than the flamberge, of focusing force in a smaller area, thus increasing cutting power in a similar way axes do. This allowed it to cut through shields and armour almost as good as great axes (and don't get stuck inside them unlike axes), while retaining the speed and versatility of the zweihander. Flambard got a really bad reputation, due to ragged wounds left by it's waved blade having a nasty tendency of catching a gangrene, so people assumed the blade itself was "wicked", "cursed", or even "demonic" - during the Reformation wars people carrying ones were often blamed as Devil-worshipers by Catholics (who banned it as unholy weapon) and subsequently BLAMmed, which naturally meant surrender was not an option for flambard-wielding protestant landsknechts. In a way this reputation had partially carried to modern days, where flambards are often carried by villains and outright demons in fantasy or even historical fiction.

• Kriegsmesser: A single-edged rigid top-heavy balanced longsword (sometimes slightly curved, sometimes not), favored by many German and Swedish mercenaries during the clusterfuck the 30-year war was. Basically what katana should have been if Japanese swordsmiths had all the technology Europeans stole from Arabs (who stole it from Indians) and all the juicy high-quality iron ore - it had the same benefit of easy cutting even without much training (very useful for a merc), but made with a spring steel it was quite resilient to bending and chipping, and of course it had cross-guards and a pommel, unlike it's eastern analogue. Despite the benefit of ease of use, however, the main reason mercenaries used kriegsmesser was because in some of the German states it was illegal for a commoner to own a "knightly" longsword. It was mostly used as a sidearm alongside some-pole-arm or a musket, and later fell out of use in favor of much cheaper arming swords.

• Cutlass: A European broadsword from the age of Enlightenment. Cutlasses had a point which went off to one side and were often slightly curved, but were usually double bladed. A very effective weapon for chopping and cutting. The stereotypical user of this sword is a pirate, which is not an exaggeration as it was commonly used by sailors and pirates during the age of sail, though it also saw use on the ground in the hands of infantry. Cutlasses were still used into the first world war, although they had largely been superseded by close-combat firearms.

• Rapier: As firearms became more prominent, swords became relegated to the purposes of self-defense and dueling rather than full-fledged military warfare. Unlike most swords, rapiers possess long, thin blades (commonly about a meter long and 2.5 centimeters wide) with a sharpened point- useless for cutting, but perfect for thrusting. They were frequently made with elaborate hilts meant to guard the wielder's hands more effectively, preventing them from being disarmed (both figuratively and literally). Over time, the rapier evolved into the small sword; as the name suggests, the blade was made shorter and the hilt was simplified. At this point, they served more as status symbols than weapons in their own right, as duels to the death (at least with swords) had become increasingly frowned upon.

• Pistol Sword: In the 1600s, someone got a bright idea that seemed ingenious at the time: what if you stuck a gun barrel onto the side of a sword so you wouldn't have to fumble around changing your weapons in the middle of a battle? Unfortunately they were born well before they could make this into a videogame weapon, and much like most things in real life, the answer was not as cool as it sounds - instead of getting a weapon that could be used both as a sword and a pistol, you got a sword that was unbalanced and a pistol that was too heavy to aim with (and was also too expensive to mass-produce). Needless to say, they weren't all that popular, and remained more of a curiosity than anything else.

• Saber: The last type of sword to see any type of major military use. After firearms became the dominant battlefield weapon, sabers were still primarily used by infantry officers and cavalry up until WWI, when cavalry was finally made obsolete by machineguns and trench warfare, and more portable short-range firearms such as revolvers and submachineguns were readily available. Some officers still carry sabers today, such as those of the US Marine Corps, though for purely ceremonial purposes. While both cutlasses and sabers are curved weapons, the saber is distinguished from a cutlass in that they were mostly derived from the Middle-eastern Mameluke sword, being longer and more slender than the thick and short cutlass. The extra reach was more useful for cavalry while the weight of a cutlass was unnecessary for attacking at a full gallop.

• Shashka: When Russians conquered Caucasian mountains, they banned locals from owning swords, because they tended to rebel all the time, and because it was a good excuse to prosecute undesirables. As you might know already from the Messer and Kriegsmesser entries, this shit never works, and predictably Caucasians made a sabre that by legal definition counted as a big knife and named it (you guess it) "A Big Knife", or Shashka on Adyghe language. It's heavier and straighter than a proper sabre and lack guard, so it's a bit worse at drive-bying people from a horseback, but better at slicing them open when fighting on foot, being a bit of an all-rounder well suited for a region that favors cavalry that can fight on foot (because of all that mountains and valleys). Naturally, Russian cossacks, that took the brunt of peacekeeping/oppressing (depending on your view) work in the region found out it was a damn fine weapon fine weapon for the task and adopted it to the point it quickly became their hallmark weapon to this day. Modern Russian Cossacks still wear them, but nowadays they're mostly ceremonial.

• Machete: Somewhere between a short sword and a long knife, the machete is, like the bayonet, still with us today. Essentially a short one-handed blade with a curved edge, it is mostly intended for cutting through undergrowth in tropical climates in the modern era. However in parts of Latin America and Western Africa "machete fencing" is still practiced.

Sword related stupidity

There is oh so much of it...

Carrying a sword

For some reason, everyone in fiction carries their sword on either the left hip or on the back, from the right shoulder to the left hip. The latter we will come to in a moment, first we will discuss the hip-holstered sword.

While it is certainly true that carrying a sword on the hip opposed to one's sword arm, one has plenty of room to dramatically unsheathe their sword. In the Middle Ages and earlier though, this was not done like that for a few practical reasons. First up is the shield: when one is in formation and wants to draw their swords having a raised shield in one hand means that one has to keep their shield hand out of the way when drawing their sword, compromising their defense. If one is mounted on a horse (like a knight) however, the sword is not carried on the opposing hip for a different reason: drawing one's sword form the opposing hip would mean either pulling the sword past the reins or the horse's neck, which might very well result in cutting the reins or the animal's neck. These two problems for both mounted and pedestrian soldiers was solved in a very simple way: the sword was carried on the same hip as one's sword arm. This limits one's drawing distance, but unless one is a deformed munchkin you should be perfectly fine drawing a one-handed sword from the same hip as the sword arm. The katana on the other hand were carried on the opposite hip, but this was because the Katana was a slashing weapon as such you could turn your draw motion into a cut.

The second point is back-mounted sheaths. Unless you are Dhalsim from Street Fighter or are armed with knives you are not going to be able to draw a single-handed sword from your back. Doing so would involve over-stretching, pulling the sheath down with your shield arm (giving up your defence, a big no-no) and a short sword. Go watch a movie featuring someone with back-mounted swords: you never see them draw their weapons on-screen. And two-handed weapons are right out. Though it is true that for transport purposes weapons were sometimes carried on the back, to and from the battlefield are NOT such situations. Soldiers armed with large two-handed swords carried them into battle much like their spear-wielding colleagues; held over the shoulders as the soldiers sung songs of war and victory.

Parrying all day long

If you have a sword and your enemy has a sword, one thing that you can do is use your sword to stop the enemy's blade. This is called Parrying and it is a valid thing to do in a sword fight. However, in fiction (especially visual fiction) sword fights will often involve each side constantly slashing each other for minutes at a time hitting nothing but the opponent's blade. In real life this did not happen. Usually a sword fight is over in a few swings, especially one on a battlefield. Even in a "pure" sword duel (No shields), opponents do not slash and parry continuously like how they're stereotypically portrayed in medias and instead, only attack on short intervals before retreating and attacking again or until one of you suffers a fatal wound, for three reasons: 1. Eventually, you will suffer from fatigue and make a mistake, costing you your head if you don't take a few seconds to catch your breath and your rational opponent will be thinking the same. 2. Dodging the attack completely is preferable to parrying as it leaves your sword intact and actually leaves your opponent open for an attack. 3. Unless both of you have Slaaneshi-tier reflexes and are telepathic, it is nearly impossible for any sword fighter to match their opponent's moves in that magnitude for minutes-on-end that doesn't involve the duel being choreographed like a play. (Even if you were trained by the same teacher). A real sword fight, is NOT parrying all day, as seen here

The first reason why this is the case is simple, the objective in a sword fight is to get your sword to hit the enemy, not his blade. The second reason is (if you have one) a shield is better suited to staving off an enemy blow than a sword. The third is that in a battle situation, you are vulnerable to another attacker if you are occupied in endless parrying. The fourth is that swords are not magically immune to other swords. If you parry a blow, your sword gets damaged, which is why the sort of "edge-to-edge" parry you always see in movies never happens. It would dig huge divots out of the softer sword, if not both of them at once. Actual sword-fighters parry with the flat of the blade unless they're using a specialized weapon with flanges or notches to catch and disarm or break the other weapon.

Cutting arrows and bullets

If hit straight-on, a sword will cut a bullet in half in mid-flight. The problem with this is that you are standing right behind where the bullet is going, meaning that unless your sword is shaped in such a way that it causes the bullet to split in a wide angle (This is usually done by shaping the sword's blade like long, flat diamond/parallelogram.), you are now shot twice. If you're not standing right behind where the bullet is going... why are you bothering cutting it in half? The same goes for arrows, but there is likely more batting aside involved (sort of like it goes in Star Wars with lightsabers and blaster bolts). The thing is, if you can move so fast that you can deflect incoming projectiles (the projectile from a decent bow can easily go faster than your car does at close range) you should be able to just dodge them instead of bothering with looking fancy. But no human being is capable of dodging a battlefield's worth of arrows/bullets because those thing are just too fast and you do not (or even cannot) see them coming. So unless you're precognitive or have some kind of Weeaboo Fightan Magic you're not going to do well stopping projectiles with your sword. Oh, and this damages your sword of course.

Pistol and Sword

40k is in love with combining a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other and as far as 40K weapon stupidity goes, Games Workshop actually gets it almost right this time. In ye olden times, pistols were slow to reload and inaccurate so it only made sense to have a melee weapon along with the pistol and pirates were partially famed for this combo. Rather than shoot at range, they would close to melee range, deflect the enemy's sword, then stick the pistol in the enemy's gut and pull the trigger. Afterward, they would either drop the gun and draw another or flip it round and hold it by the barrel to use it like a club.

The other and somewhat more relevant reason that 40K uses pistol and sword was because this was a common weapon combination of the assault troopers in World War I; if you look at the Imperium's other tech, they take a lot of "inspiration" from WWI (several tanks are blatant ripoffs of real world tanks of the era). As the war progressed, commanders realized that defending a trench from an oncoming wave of men was handled sufficiently with bolt action long rifles supported by static machine guns, but these were useless when assaulting a trench. Thus, after discussing with the men who had the most experience in taking enemy trenches, gave them the weapons they requested: small, handheld, easy to use weapons, especially pistols, trench knives, clubs, and sharpened shovels. These were much easier to handle in narrow, muddy trenches where the rifles of the defenders were much harder to maneuver. Officers in WWI were also equipped with a sword and pistol as standard, and they weren't just for show, they'd get used both to direct their own troops and to clear trenches, both theirs and the enemy's.

Also, there are several additional reasons why it makes perfect sense in the 40k or 19th century context:

• A sword can never jam or run out of ammunition. Handy when you are engaging a swarm of enemies. Though you still need to sharpen and repair it from time to time, and it can break or shatter, this isn't nearly as much of a problem as it is for earlier firearms.
• A sword can parry. If you are fighting in melee against an opponent who prefers hand weapons, and are armed with just a rifle or a pistol, you can only hope to hit your enemy and incapacitate him before he chops you down. Good luck doing that to an Ork. On the other hand, having a sword means you can at least try to defend yourself against other melee weapons. Makes sense now why a sword continued to be an officer's and nobleman's weapon well into the gunpowder age?
• A sword is not that noisy compared to firearms (or bolters, for that matter). Sure, a melee fight isn't silent, there are bound to be clangs and screams, but it's not nearly as overt as an unsuppressed firearm discharge which can easily reach ear-shattering 130 dB. There is a reason why people need to wear ear protection at gun ranges. Never mind it also produces flash and smoke, more so if you are using non-smokeless powder. So if you, say, managed to take an isolated enemy position within a wider front line with melee weapons only, there is a good chance the enemy won't know about it for a while. This, or you can snipe from afar using advanced suppressed rifles and scopes.
• 40k has Power Armour, which can only be reliably threatened either by melee Power Weapons, or goddamn anti-tank guns. And unless you are a Space Marine yourself, you can't just fasten a Lascannon onto your belt and call it a day, so if you don't want to end up facing a Space Marine or a similarly armored xeno monstrocity with just a lasgun, grab that power sword. Also, in fluff, power swords are remarkably good at breaking enemy non-power weapons while parrying, adding to their value in defence. Two reasons why they are very popular amongst officers and champions alike.
• This means there are gradations in weapon/armour interaction; flak armour defeats weaker firearms and lasguns, but falls to bigger and scarier advanced guns, which are nigh useless against power armour, which can't protect against power weapons or advanced anti-tank guns. So unless you happen to have the latter either on very fast elite melee units, on sufficiently mobile weapon platforms, or simply in abundance, when Adeptus Astartes come for you, you are beyond screwed, just as in fluff.

Unsheathing fun

Quick: what sound does a sword (or any blade weapon) make when you unsheathe it? If your answer is something along the lines of SHWING!, think about how a sword would make this sound upon being drawn. It has to be dragged against other metal, but this can causes a whole series of engineering nightmares: if your sword is dragged alongside its sharp edge it blunts, which is obviously not desirable. If you draw it against it flat (or its non-sharp edge if your sword is single-edged) the engineering involved would have to be so precise that the sound is produced, but this would create such a narrow fit for your blade that it would be very difficult and heavy to draw and sheathe, and when temperatures cause the metal to expand or contract your sword gets either stuck or dangles loose in its scabbard. This is obviously not desirable as well.

A more accurate reproduction of what sound a sword makes is to pull up the sleeves of whatever shirt you are wearing: a soft "ffffp"-esque sound. This is because sword sheathes were often made out of wood or leather, with sometimes some kind of fur inside of it. This held the blade snugly in place, would prevent it from falling out if held upside down and would not provide more wear on your sword than combat would.

And whatever dumbass thinks he's 2cool4sheathes will soon learn that cutting his furniture/legs is a very good reason to start wearing a sheathe for his sword.

How not to make swords

How to make a sword shaped ingot of pig iron which is of less value to you in a fight than a nice heavy stick

Making a sword from steel is a fairly complex and tricky process. Generally it was done by specialized Swordsmiths once societies got big enough to support them. Village blacksmiths could make a sword, though not good ones. Making a steel sword involves taking a form of ferrous metal (be it an ingot of iron, a hunk of scrap metal or a sandwich of different types of steels) and heating it until it got soft, gradually hammering it into a sword shape, re-heating periodically as it cools during forging and then getting reheating it again to temper it and quenching in oil to give it strength. A sword does take a fair bit of time to make. As it's a tricky job, swordsmiths did not live alone in isolated workshops but rather worked together in guilds to help train new swordsmiths, while whole families (male and female) were involved in the process of making swords one way or another. They were also not adverse to using mechanical assistance such as water powered trip hammers to help them get things done quickly and efficiently, though forging by hand did allow them to be more precise about things.

Trip Hammers, for when a smith does not want to use his muscle for all the hammering

In any case, as it gets the hell beaten out of it during forging what you start with does not look like what you get when your done. What a medieval swordsmith would not do is cast a sword shaped form of Pig Iron (the type of liquid iron which you can make with pre-industrial technology, which is full of impurities and carbon), wait for it to cool into a semi-solid form, hammer it on an anvil for a bit and dunk it into water. If you try that and it does not shatter on the anvil or shatter after being dunked into water due to cooling to rapidly, it will shatter after the first blow.

Also, nobody ever quenched a blade by thrusting it into a living guy's chest. That is an obvious bit of often repeated embellishment and rumor about Damascus Steel blades (which were made with the previously mentioned sandwiches of steels) which wormed its way into folklore and you're a moron if you think otherwise.

Swords in Fantasy

Swords are probably the most commonly used weapon in Fantasy, especially by main characters (the characteristic of the sword listed above makes it symbolic for a leader). While certain fantasy races have certain specific weapons associated with them (Dwarves and Axes, Elves and Bows), all of them will make use of swords at least on the sidelines.

Alongside the usual racial variants, many fantasy universes has some kinds of sword you wouldn't see in the real world.

Busters

Named after the "Buster Sword" from Final Fantasy VII: these "swords" are basically what happens when a human finds a giant's dropped dagger. In reality these weapons would be downright stupid to wield, as their heft and size would make them impossible to move properly, and, if you got to move it at all, your enemy would be done with your gut already.

You see, human muscle and bone ability to generate and carry physical force is limited, meaning if you have the sword twice the mass than the regular one you're going to swing it twice slower and with only half of the impact force behind it. This is a reason you'd never see a guy wielding a zveihander in one hand - it's completely possible (the thing is only 3kg at best), but without the two-handed grip no matter how strong you are you'd be better with a faster arming sword.

In fantasy, however, all bets are off and the lore can make up a proper explanation for why that particular universe need these fuckheug weapons; the previously mentioned Final Fantasy VII, for example, bullshits us that the sword is "not as heavy as it looks," and is an almost entirely ceremonial weapon that Cloud is fucking stupid enough to wield with regularity. (It does, in a brief flirtation with sanity, have some weight-saving cutouts... that are then stuffed with magic rocks.)

More examples of Busters could be the Iron Kingdoms, who have a type of sword called "Caspian Battleblades", very heavy, dull swords with a head that spikes out to either side broader than the blade, made crucial for warfare because of all the heavy armour walking about, and tend to have lots of cut-outs in the blade's center to reduce its weight. Berserk's Guts also wields an ordinary Buster Sword, though he's super-humanly strong, has a mechanical arm, and regularly battles giants and demons.

Gunblades/Pistol Swords

As mentioned before, they were an idea that started in Ye Olden Times of the 16th century, where a flintcock or revolver pistol was given a blade or bayonet attachment to so that the user could get the benefits of two weapons in one system. It evolved from the idea of mounting daggers on pistols, which had a bit more practical sense in comparison.

Final Fantasy VIII, however, took it a step further and made a sword with a fucking pistol-grip for a handle, a revolver's chamber built into the hilt, and a long, rifle-like barrel welded to the flat side of its one-edged blade. Though, this is offset by the fact that the weapon isn't meant to be fired in the traditional sense at all; all bullets fired by a gunblade are blanks, intended to set the blade oscillating such that it cuts through monsters and other opponents better, like a chainsaw.

lightsabers and their issues

Oh yes. These things. Specifically, their weightless blades. Because light weighs pretty much as low a mass as you can get not counting your dick (oh snap!), the center of balance of the blade is likely somewhere near the end of the blade (going by that's where the battery is, and that they likely weight more than the blade projector). The problem with this is that you are essentially wielding a lever which will, upon being hit, flop all over the place because your hands function as a hinge. This might be less the case when used in two hands but when used in one your sword will go all over the place when it is struck.

(There is some in-story stuff to justify this, mostly based around how the arc-waves that form the blade do have a kind of mass that balances it correctly, but this man is on a roll.)

Another point is the double lightsaber. Based on a variety of unbladed pole-arms like the Gun or the Bo, it has a double-sized handle with the laser parts coming out from both ends. The problem with this style is that it gives the wielder only a limited surface to work with without burning their hands off. Maybe this can be discredited as training in the Force and all that jazz (plus, Ray Park is REALLY good at what he does), but this would still involve swinging a large dangerous ravestick very close to your body, and a good number of these styles involve holding the weapon near the end to gain great striking power at the tip of the weapon (like with a pole-arm. With a lightsaber this is not possible, though not needed since it can just cut through anything, striking power is unneeded just contact and letting the plasma do all the work.

And the lightwhip and all other kinds of outlandish lightsabers can go right fuck themselves. The "lightcrossguard" on the lightsaber of Kylo Ren (the guy from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer) certainly looked silly, but for one: they gave him an edge in close combat letting him use them to burn his enemy's in a locked blade situation, and secondly expanded material say they are vents, his lightsaber is unstable.

Oscillating blades

Also known as: "vibraknives," "high-frequency blades," et cetera, these are blades made so that they vibrate at such extreme speeds that they weaken the molecular bonds of the material being slashed, translating into the blade being able to cut things that a normal sword would snap against and making them nearly indestructible in the process. Completely relegated to sci-fi stories and vidya. One of the most famous examples thus far is Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, featuring a psychopathic weeaboo cyborg with a high-frequency katana against the world. The HF blade is depicted as being capable of slicing through everything, except materials capable of withstanding HF weapons. Against these, they have to be weakened enough that the HF blade can chop it into mincemeat.

The science SEEMS sound, but they don't ever explain how the extreme vibration needed to electrically sever molecular bonds doesn't shake apart the human wielder's skeleton or the sword itself, which is why even if it was possible to make them, they'd likely never be used in real life. They also state that the power of an HF blade is determined on how the original blade was forged before being modified, meaning that higher-quality blades yield better HF blades, as the HF technology only augments the properties sword, though Jetstream Sam, a Brazilian samurai in the game, wields his own master forged high frequency blade, which is so good that it could slice pretty much anything. His blade is apparently made from a well-forged katana that has been passed down in Sam's family; they don't ever really elaborate on how the blade's quality affects the transition into an HF blade, especially when Raiden's modern-forged blade is somehow of lesser quality than a genuine Japanese katana made of low-quality steel folded in forging to work out the heavy impurities.

Mechanically-powered weapon

This basically means that the sword is powered by an external power source, like motors. The chainsword, for example, is common in sci-fi worlds that have close combat, as it's basically a chainsaw in sword form and the motor helps the sword do more then if it was just a sharp chunk of steel. Realistically speaking, power weapons would be bottom heavy, making them awkward to use, and if it goes the chainsaw route, then it would be hilariously impractical to use at all in combat situations; things softer than wood or ice tend to get caught in and gum up the teeth of a chainsaw, flesh being one such material. So, your custom chainsword would be rendered useless almost immediately, and in fact would be rendered less useful than an ordinary sword against whatever you were trying to RIP AND TEAR at the time.

One could argue that the chainswords in 40K are made differently from actual chainsaws in that they're designed for cutting people in mind; the teeth are mono-molecular and are shaped like knives rather than the thick, axe-like notched blades of real chainsaws (which are designed to chew away at thicker and harder materials, like wood); allowing them to nick through flesh more cleanly than your everyday chainsaw. The motor would have to be more powerful than a car's engine, yet light enough to be carried in one hand, allowing it to run the blade at speeds that it the teeth won't get caught, while still making it as maneuverable as a standard sword. But that's technology in the grim future, as trying to make a chainsword with today's technology and engineering would make for a very impractical weapon.

Magical materials

In folk lore you can make weapons, typically swords since they are the weapon most associated with nobles in most cultures, out of any of a number of different types of special materials that have properties that grant it magical properties. A few of the more common examples are:

• Thunderbolt Iron, which is a fancy term for weapons made from meteorites. In fantasy space iron swords tend to have magical properties or are treated as some kind of super steel: in D&D they are the source of adamantine. In real life, this was for many civilizations their first experience with iron and for some civilizations, a lump of iron-rich meteorite could be many times purer than what they could naturally forge and smith. That is if they could even make iron at all: the otherwise Bronze Age Egyptians managed to get a meteoric iron dagger into King Tutankhamun's tomb. The problem of course is the term "iron-rich" and many meteorites are either very small or made of rock or nickel that can't actually be forged; there is a good reason why Tutankhamun had a dagger and not a sword. Additionally, many meteorites have impurities that weaken the blade. Still, bad iron is better than no iron and we do get plenty of big meteors to make swords out of. The late Sir Terry Pratchett famously forged his own sword out of a meteorite when he was knighted.
• Cold Iron, On the other hand, just being made out of iron by itself was enough to grant magical properties, as Rudyard Kipling said, "But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all." Iron, and by extension steel, have strong folklore traditions perhaps because that blood smells and taste metallic due to its iron content, or perhaps the "mystical" attraction of a lodestone to iron. In folklore, you could use iron scissors to ward off changelings, nail an iron horseshoe to your door to give luck, while an iron knife buried under the entrance to your home would keep witches away. In perhaps the ultimate example of the mythology of iron, in the Book of Judges, (Book seven of the freaken Bible!) God could not give the men of Judah victory because the other side had "iron chariots." In the modern "sci-fi approach," fantasy iron weapon's "magical" abilities are sometimes explained by its magnetic properties that can disrupt "magical" being's senses and abilities based on electromagnetism, and in some instances can cause them great pain or even instant death just from a physical contact or even being near. "All well and good," I hear you say "but what does this mean for swords?", well honestly not much. It does mean your best weapon against things not weak to some other magical material like silver, such as fairies or demons, is a steel sword, but you were going to use that anyway since steel is better than any material not from the future. The importance of iron as an anti magic weapon only becomes important in settings where iron as a weapon is rare. The "cold" part is often a point of contention and it can mean that the iron has to be cold forged, i.e. never heated, or that it's just not hot now, or sometimes it's just a poetic term for any iron. (Room-temperature metals feel cool to the touch because, when held, they conduct heat out of the skin more readily than air does.)
• Silver, unlike iron and meteoric Iron, doesn't work as weapon material in real life. Cost aside, silver is softer, heavier, and dulls much easier than a steel blade, but silver's tradition of magic goes further back than iron and in settings with werewolves a silver sword may be your best friend. Silver's magical tradition goes back further then iron (at this rate may as well make a page for magical metals) thanks to a unique property of silver, water in silver pitcher takes a lot longer for it to get scummy. This led to it having reputation for healing and since healing is good (duh), for being holy. This trait of silver is also why we get the reputation for why vampires can't cast a reflection: old timey mirrors used a silver backing to get a clear reflection, and since vampires are unholy, they wouldn't cast a reflection in the holy silver. In fantasy settings, silver weapons often do less base damage but deal more damage against, or are the only thing that can hurt, unholy monsters like ghosts. It is also possible to coat your realistic steel blade with silver (or gold, for that matter) without dulling it too much, and keeping it dangerous for superantural creatures weak against silver. Although given silver and iron lie on the opposite sides of electro-activity scale you'd better keep your silver coated blade very clean all the time, least it rusts down in a matter of months or even weeks, effectively being a huge-ass chemical battery only waiting for electrolyte to work (this is even worse with gold coating BTW).

Super Sword

Super Swords are a broad category of fictional weapons includes weapons made with advanced technology (Lightsabers, Necron Phase swords), Magic (Shardblades from Words of Radiance), divine origins or just are the product of super duper swordsmithing abilities (your memetic Katana). What they have in common is the fact that they can cut through basically anything with minimal resistance. They'll cut through armor and steel like nothing. Generally another super sword can resist them and maybe a few special items, but they'll go through a boulder like nothing.

Medieval Weaponry
Melee Weapons:	Battleaxe - Dagger - Lance - Mace - Club Pole-arm - Spear - Sword - Warhammer
Ranged Weapons:	Blowgun - Bows and Arrows - Cannon Crossbow - Firearm - Rocket - Shuriken - Sling - Incendiary Weapons - Artillery
Armor:	Armor - Fantasy Armor - Helmet - Pauldron - Shield