Sword

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

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.

Pros and cons of being armed with a sword

• Versatility

+ Spears are good at poking stuff, but were long and clumsy once you got real close, only had a sharp edge at the very end and easily get tangled in stuff, however they are very very easy to learn how to use (point end goes that way). Axes were good at chopping, but were not good at deflecting other blows and took a bit of time and a fair bit of space to build up momentum. Swords were good at both chopping and poking. 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.

– Swords are weapons and weapons only. You cannot use them to cut firewood like battleaxes, construct the camp or set field fortifications like warhammers, or use them as carving knives like daggers.

• Balance

+:– 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 edged, thanks to there 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 relative 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. It's why swordsmen need more training than with other weapons: the sword inherently imparts less force, blow per blow, than an axe, but thanks to to their balance, swords can be used to strike faster than most other weapons of their size, are much less exhausting to use, which adds up to mean that technique is much more important for a sword than other weapons, and that it's easier to use a sword for defense. Speaking of which...

• Defense

+ Swords also offer more protection than most other weapons - you can use them to parry other weapons if you're really desperate. Plus, as most swords are one handed, it's easy to use a shield with most types.

– Parrying anything but other sword is generally difficult and/or dangerous. Spears, pole-arms, and other weapons designed for thrusting (including some swords) are hard to parry, however spears and pikes tend to have wooden shafts you can just hack though if you can catch them out of a dense formation. Weapons with huge momentum, such as axes or maces, would have a high chance of damaging either your weapon or your hand, or being thrown off your balance, so to parry an axe you have to counter attack and stop the weapon before it can get momentum up. Flails can't be parried at all, but that's to be expected given it's their main shtick. That being, said its better to try to parry and suffer the consequences that have a face full of axe.

• Reach

+ Swords generally have higher effective range than any other weapon of their size and weight, especially if they are designed for thrusting.

– Spears and pole-arms still outreach them.

• Space

+ One-handed swords require much less space to build momentum, so you can use them in a tight shoulder-to-shoulder formation, which means in a real battle you're going to locally (because slow training time means fewer swordsmen but you can pack the swordsmen closer together in a battlefield) outnumber anyone but spearmen. Two-handed and one-and-a-half-handed swords would of course require more space, but not nearly as much as great axes or two-handed warhammers, which means you wouldn't be outnumbered as badly.

– Slashing swords need more space to get momentum going for a strong swing, while spears can be packed together even tighter then swordsmen since they just have to stab forward and can do so over each other's shoulders, so you're fighting the guys in front of you and the guys behind them.

• Training time

– Swords requires 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.

• Price

– If you look at any weapon size category price list, swords would be on the top, since they require the services of specialized swordsmiths, good materials, and much, much more time to craft. It's the reason why swords are commonly associated with nobility.

• Reliability

– 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.

+ Since swords are mostly made out of metal, unlike spears or axes which have wooden shafts, a sword is harder to break than either of them.

• Armor piercing

– Swords are not the best weapons for cutting through metallic armor, where they're outdone by pretty much any other weapon.

+ This does not mean you're entirely boned against armored opponents if you're armed with a sword, as you still can thrust though the gaps of their armor, if you're skilled enough and your sword isn't heavily curved or otherwise not designed for poking stuff. Late medieval swords often had crossguards shaped like warhammers to be used as such against full plate opponents, though this require using the blade as a handle (aka "half-swording"), quite a dangerous move if you didn't train to use this technique. With the right grip, it's perfectly safe (albeit fairly uncomfortable) to half-sword even without gloves. To sum it up, you can deal with plate but it requires even more skill. And no, you cannot bash your armored opponent to death with a two-handed sword without half-swording, because even zveihenders can't get that much momentum, being balanced towards the hilt.

• Lethality

– Slashing wounds dealt by swords are very painful, and can eventually be lethal through via blood loss, but they lack concussive force and shock effect. If your opponent has the balls of steel to tolerate that much pain, is drugged with painkillers, or simply high enough on adrenaline, he would have few seconds to few minutes to fight even with his lethal wounds.

+ Chopping off limbs or heads is a fine way around this, as it renders your opponent unable to fight back while he's dying. Just remember it would require a much more powerful swing than usual. This powerful swing is easier to dodge and leads to overswing, which opens you to counter-attack.

+ 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. It's why the gladius-armed Roman legions were so deadly.

– Оf course, 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. Well, unless you use another half-swording technique, with 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. And even then you are only halfway screwed, as this technique relies on you finding a gap in the enemy armor or punching said gap with the brute force of a two-handed stab, AND it drastically lowers your effective range.

• Fighting non-humans

– Swords aren't good for fighting giant non-humanoid monsters. 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.

+ On the other hand, given the sheer number of different types of swords, you could likely find something that will help. Don't expect it to be as effective as a weapon designed to kill big things rather than humans, though as bullfighters and the Roman legions (when fighting elephants) prove, it can be done. As long as you're facing something that can eventually just bleed out then a sword can work by creating big gashes or puncturing internal organs if it has no or little blubber or fat and a thin hide. The issue is you have to get uncomfortably close to do that to little effect compared to if you did the same with an axe or something. If it does have a lot of fat or blubber, then you need something to penetrate that Kevlard, else you have to do enough wounds to it for it to bleed out (likely after it stampedes you to death).

Anatomy of a Sword

• Blade: The business end of the sword (duh).
• Edge: The choppy part of the blade (dur).
• Point: The pokey part of the blade (derp).
• Fuller*: A groove down the length of the blade in the middle, reducing its weight without significantly reducing its integrity. There is a bit of misinformation about this part of the blade, usually 'that it makes drawing the sword out of the flesh of someone you just stabbed easier' or 'it makes the victim bleed out quicker'. This part of the sword is also known as a "blood groove", which encourages the dispersion of this misinformation.
• Point of percussion : the part of your sword that if you hit someone with it, the sword will vibrate the least.
• Ricasso*: An unsharpened part of the blade immediately above the crossguard typically found on two-handed swords. This is a secondary grip to allow the wielder more control over the blade in close quarters.
• Length: The main metal form of the sword. It is composed of the blade and the tang.
• Tang: The smaller, unsharpened end of the length, opposite the blade. The hilt is built around this.
• Hilt: The part of the sword which you hold and as such is not sharp.
• Grip: The length of the sword you grip in your hands built around the tang. Usually with wood and leather to make it comfortable.
• Crossguard*: A flat bit of metal or wood at the base of the blade which separates the grip from the blade so that your hand doesn't slip onto the blade, and/or protect your hand from an opponent's weapon.
• Pommel*: A mass of metal or wood (usually circular, often decorated) at the end of the grip to keep the sword from slipping out of your hands when in use. Can be weighted to alter the balance of the sword and serve as a skull-cracker, a fighting technique of the time was that you grip your sword by the blade and straight up clobber your opponent with the Pommel as if it was a mace, hence why this is the origin for English word "pummel"

(*) These bits are not necessary and thus are not present in every style of sword.

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, but 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 bade 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.
• 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.
  • Harpe: No one's sure if this sword existed, but Greek myths make reference to this sword. It's sort of a combination sword and scythe, Greek images show the blade as being straight but with a hook along the back side bending down toward the handle. But again we don't know if anyone actually made this thing.
• 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 pole-arms. 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 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.
• 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 allows you 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 your sword with right hand on the handle and the left on the percussion point of the sword) this technique allows you 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 your opponent so you can shove the pointy end into his visor or other less armored spot. It is also good to note that the longsword strikes faster and harder than the arming sword because you're using two hands to operate it.
• 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. 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.
• Falchion: The European equivalent of the scimitar and dadao, the falchion is a slightly curved single-edged sword vaguely similar to a machete. It was heavier than most swords of its size, giving it increased power at the expense of speed, much like an axe, and much like an axe it can go though chain mail like paper.

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: No wait, come back! Look, katanas get a lot of hate because weeaboos believe they are unstoppable God-weapons that can cleave through tanks, cut through time, and cure cancer. And that's bull, no one who isn't stupid disputes this. But, they were perfectly functional swords for their place and time. Sort of a hybrid between the scimitar, with its curved cutting blade, and the thicker, less-flexible blade of a longsword (though the longsword is a very flexible blade that allowed for more cutting power in the swing). Japanese blacksmiths didn't have access to the quality of iron that their European counterparts did, 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 hard 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. 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 used 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). Such a pairing was referred to as a daisho and was considered a symbol of the samurai; as it served as a badge of their power, their ownership was forbidden to anyone other than them during the Tokugawa Shogunate until the late 19th century. 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. Katanas and similar swords were used by the Koreans and the Chinese to some degree.
  • Gunto: After the Meiji Restoration, officers in the Japanese Army were issued mass-produced swords modeled after American cavalry sabres. They were replaced in 1935 with shin gunto, made to resemble tachi of the Kamakura period, to suit the rising nationalism in the Army. They had stamped blades with machine-ground edges and cast furniture made to resemble that of a traditional katana. Even in World War II, American soldiers targeted the men with the katanas first because their killing power was feared and respected- I mean, because that meant they were officers and thus prime targets.
  • 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 120 to 150 cm length and was a weapon intended for horseback, but there were fighting styles that worked for swordsmen on foot, though focusing on downward cuts rather than side to side slashes which could rape hordes. Generally got banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate when they legislated how long a samurai's swords could be, so they got cut down or relegated to ceremonial duties.
  • Legendary Blades such as the Masamune and Muramasa actually refer to specific swordsmiths, 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. The blades produced by the two smiths are often compared as Good vs Evil in folk-legends and in modern fantasy fiction, with Masamune's blades being 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: Though Korea did have excellent schools of swordsmanship, it was far less focused on the tradition of dueling and one-on-one fighting so it's sword techniques were far more effective in large battle situations and much less on being artful or philosophical. 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 be converted into To by cutting down the length of the handle.
  • The Korean to is probably the closest physical analogue to the ninja-to, a fictional weapon invented by Hollywood to be used as props for movie Ninjas and perpetuated by RPGs and video games. There has never been any historical evidence of ninja-tos as a ninja would never be stupid enough to carry a weapon that would identify him as such. Though modern ninja-to are manufactured for collectors and ninja fanatics, you could get away with using one in modern-day Korean martial arts without having to adjust your sword-form.
• Jian: A Chinese variety of sword with a long, straight, narrow blade. More-or-less equivalent to the European arming sword, though the blade was often more flexible, like a sabre. Usually seen being used one-handed by priests, sorcerers, and badasses doing tai chi in kung fu movies.

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

• Dadao: A Chinese sabre meaning "Big Knife" in English that gained prominence towards the end of the Ming Dynasty, only to flourish and become a symbol of authority and tool of execution towards the end of the Qing Dynasty and the early Republican era. 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 it runs 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.
• 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.
• Urumi: Also known as the aara, this is the most badass impractical mess of a weapon ever created. Born in southern India during the Maurya dynasty, it consists of a long, thin blade that is (theoretically) one arm-span long and purposefully made to be extremely flexible, enough to be worn like a belt in lieu of a sheathe. That's right, some poor bastard decided to hybridize the sword and the flail, because when combining two already-training-intensive weapons, what's the worst that could possibly go wrong? It cannot be denied that urumis look positively awesome when being showed off in martial arts exhibitions, but there's never been firm consensus that they're actually useful as a weapon, and even their advocates frequently concede that swinging your wicked sword-whip around isn't necessarily offering you too many advantages over a normal weapon. Special mention goes out to the Sri Lankan urumi, which is supposed to be double-wielded and has multiple blades (up to thirty-two of the fucking things). Because sometimes, if you want to be awesome more than you want to be practical, there's no better way to say "fuck it" than making your stupidly dangerous-to-use weapon impossibly dangerous to use.
• Damascus steel: A material that is so noteworthy we have to talk about it somewhere. Damascus steel was invented in southern India before the time calenders swap BC to AD and it was something special. Damascus steel swords are identified by the patterns of banding and mottling along the surface that are often compared to flowing water. Damascus swords are very flexible, able to bend farther then other metals without breaking, while also being very hard. Further, when making Damascus steel you use wood or other plant life as a additive which is believed to be the reason why these swords have fucking carbon nanotubes in their structure. While modern materials can outperform Damascus steel, it was for its time the BEST thing to make a sword out of, period.

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 similar way axes do. This allowed it to cut through shields and armour almost as god as great axes (and don't stuck inside them unlike axes), while retaining the speed and versatility of the zveihander. It also had some side effects, such as almost impossible to heal (with current medicine level) wounds, which weren't a big deal during the fight itself (it only mattered if the opponent survives the fight), but caused a bad reputation to the blade of being "cursed", "poisoned" or even "demonic". At some point Pope even banned it, causing much rejoice amongst the protestants, who continued to use it. Other major side effect was that waved blade was less safe to be used as a handle, which rendered half-swording (which is your main way of dealing with full plate) almost unusable with a flambard. But the heaviest handicap that kept Flambard from being a common weapon was it's price, since forging a waved blade was a pain in the ass to do, requiring a shitton of time (and thus fuel), so swordsmiths charged an outrageous amount of money for them, meaneing only nobility and mercenary officers could afford one. Some landsknechts found a way around it, though, by sharpening the blades of their regular zveihanders into waves - such "fake flamberges" were not near as good in a fight as a proper ones as they would have to interrupt the cutting edge of their sword to do this, but at least they where cheap enough to be used by someone without his own manor.
• 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.
• 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. (The foil and épée used in modern fencing are also derivatives of the rapier, much like fencing itself is a distant relative of sword duels.)
• 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? 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 towards its hilt (making it difficult to wield properly) 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.
• Sword Bayonet: There were other attempts at uniting sword and gun after the pistol sword, and many met with with more success. One of the better ideas was to make the hilt of a short sword into a socket for a gun-barrel. Thus you had a soldier who was armed with not only a sword and a gun, but also could combine the two into an effective halberd. And the rest, as they say, is history.
• 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.
• Sabre: The sabre has a long, slightly curved blade and a prominent handguard which covers the knuckles as well as the thumb and forefinger which can be described as a cross between a scimitar and a one-handed longsword (although straight and double-edged versions of the sabre also existed). The curve allows it to better reach around the horse to stab someone right in front and the same curve also made it good for slashing "drive by" attacks as you rode past some. The saber was first used in Poland who themselves were inspired by the swords Ottoman Empire Janissarys and the Mongols they were often fighting at the time. It used to be the favored weapon of cavalry forces, but when the use of cavalry fell out of favor during World War I the saber fell out of service as a weapon; however, it has been retained as a ceremonial weapon among many modern military forces. (The fencing sabre is a distant relative to the military sabre, as the only similarity between the two weapons is the shape of the handguard.)
• Broadsword: Also referred to as the basket-hilted sword, it's distinguishable by the basket-like shape of the hilt and broad blade (compared to the then-contemporary rapier). While the rapier was used mainly for duelling, the broadsword remained in use as a military weapon.

Sword related stupidity

There is oh so much of it...

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.

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.

Double wielding

Double wielding (also known as "dual" wielding, if anyone uses the phrase "duel wielding" in this context please kick them in the nuts) is a martial art meant for showing one's mastery of the blade. On the battlefield running around with two swords instead of a sword and a shield (or a really big sword) was a surefire way to getting yourself killed. Wielding two weapons does not make your attacks deadlier: it makes them less so. You don't need to be a Genius to figure out that if you swing stuff from a bigger distance (striking with a wind-up, sort of like tennis, baseball and other sports /tg/ does not care about because they are sports) you're going to hit harder than if you hit with two things at the same time (and you'd get send off the field/court/whatever if you tried that with real sports). While speed certainly is a factor in the theory of power generation: swinging two swords about does not grant you Weeaboo Fightan Magic but instead makes you hit at about the same speed if you tried that with a single weapon, maybe even slower because you're now encumbered with something else you have to be careful not to hit yourself with. Furthermore you are now striking with less mass since you cannot impart as much bodyweight into a one-handed swing, therefore you would need to somehow generate even more speed just to make up for the loss.

While there are certainly styles of martial arts involving two weapons (Rapier/Main Gauche in the West, Katana/Wakizashi in the East) these styles primarily arose during the gunpowder era of warfare, where if you really needed to kill a person, you'd just shoot them. This caused melee combat to become much more gentrified and so began being taught in fencing schools (where protective armour was never even considered) instead of military barracks. Using two weapons (even more so with two of the same kind) required the student to be of excellent skill way above the average soldier and was more about fencing masters and students bragging about skill rather than killing a fully-armored man in a few seconds. If anything, the styles' greatest detractors were often those who taught them because they knew this perfectly well, but taught them to the rich anyway to make a big buck.

In short,the degree of skill, and by extension practice, necessary to competently wield two weapons simultaneously is far beyond that of the majority of combatants. Thus when compared in terms of effectiveness, dual weapon wielding falls far short of the more common practices of shields, armored gauntlets, or dexterity-intense empty hand fencing combinations with hand weapons.

It should be noted, that double-wielding sword and dagger or sword and axe is completely reasonable, although you'd never see anyone using this style striking with both hands simultaneously. With this style you'd most likely to use a sword-and-empty hand technique, with the off-hand weapon used for parrying, counter-attacks and grappling (in case of an axe). Generally this was a fallback style, in case your shield get damaged or knocked off your hand - and this happened often enough to justify training specifically to this situation.

Examples

In terms of "actual" battlefield application, dual wielding sword & dagger and small-shield (called a Targe, used for knocking away an opponent's weapon) while carrying a pistol was a common practice amongst Scottish Jacobean gentlemen, but this serves the point that dual wielding soldiers is an absolutely epic way to Fail at battle. This was during the gunpowder era and no contemporary shield or armour was going to protect you against bullets. The British forces completely trounced them at Culloden with a 40:1 kill ratio after their gun-lines were charged by screaming scottish blade wielders. That said, the Jacobites were not so stupid as to all go dual wielders (just the gentlemen) and there were exponentially more muskets in the jacobite army than there were swords; the common soldier who ended up in melee often resorted to a Lochaber Axe if their musket did not already have a bayonet.

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMqlFY7T64] 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 forth 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.

As for why officers in 40K tend to use pistols and swords, as knightly cavalry charges gave way to pike formations, the knights swapped to using pistols, but the gun was always seen as secondary to the blade. This tradition would grow into almost all officers all the way to the near modern era being issued pistols for their left hand and cavalry sabers for their right. For an example, watch the movie Glory about the American Civil War.

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.

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.

The issue with lightsabers

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.

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. Some models could also be split into two at the center so that you can dual wield (as described above why this is a Bad Idea but since lightsabers cut anything anyway, it's not quite as dumb.). 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.

And the lightwhip, lighttantos and all other kinds of outlandish lightsabers can go right fuck themselves. The "lightcrossguard" on the lightsaber of that Sith guy in the trailer to Star Wars: The Force Awakens certainly looks silly, but we'll reserve judgement on its effectiveness until the movie comes out.

Swords in Fantasy

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.

Going by the conventions your basic fantasy setting, the following races in general make use of specific types of swords.

• Humans will make use of whatever sword their society is supposed to be an analog to. Medieval European analogs will make use of longswords and arming swords, with rapiers and suchlike for bandits and rogues (especially if they have a Spanish Streak to them). If it is a middle eastern analog, expect Scimitars and variations on that theme. Are you on the high seas with pirates, its cutlasses all round. If it's an East Asian analog, you will definately see some Katanas as other Japanese blades, with Dao and Jian coming up as well. If your setting is cosmopolitan, a mix is going to be the norm.
• Dwarves will make use of a variety of heavy broadswords to accompany their more traditional axes. More reasonable Tolkienian dwarves would arm their main troops with an arming sword and shield combo, like Roman style as the gladius is built to stab so you don't need to swing it, since it is really the only reasonable way to fight in a caves and dungeons, while only nobles and highly trained elite warriors carrying axes (since without that training you'd have higher chances of hurting your allies rather than enemies as you swinging the axe in a tight formation).
• Elvish Swords for the most part come in two flavors: Leaf shaped swords and curved swords to the effect of katanas and scimitars. Either way they usually come with a lot of fancy pants ornamentaiton, usually calligraphy and natural patterns.
• Orcish swords vary a bit. Tolkien sometimes said that his orcs carried "scimitars", though what that means is up for debate. As a rule heavy single edged weapons of fairly crude construction and ornamentation are the most common type of orc made swords. Orcs (along with evil individuals in general) also have a tendency to use black swords. Black indicates a very high carbon content, it is in fact possible to blacken normal steel with motor oil which is just carbon. High carbon steels are strong but brittle, and can be more easily broken, though more resistant to corrosion.
  • That said, any race will also use a lot of stolen weapons from other races as well.

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. 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. Examples could be the Iron Kingdoms, who have a type of sword called "Caspian Battleblades", very heavy, dull and spiked swords with a broader head 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

As mentioned before, were a concept toyed with in Ye Olden Timese, but ultimately went nowhere due to the sheer stupidity of the idea of a sword with a heavy, one-shot gun in the hilt. 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.

Oscillating blades

Also known as: "vibraknives," "high-frequency blades," et cetera 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. We could simply chalk the wielder part down to cyborgs being cyborgs, since as far as we've seen in the game, only cyborgs who replaced their entire bodies with a mechanical one use HF weapons (and even then, this argument gets falls flat on its face the moment you realize Raiden was able to wield an HF blade as an unaugmented human in MGS2) and as for the sword part, we can pretty much assume that HF blades are made of the same material put into cyborgs, which prevent them from breaking down. 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. The game however, never really elaborates how this works in the first place.

Notably, 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 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 a common in sci-fi worlds that have close combat, as it's basically a chain saw 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 improbable 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 today, 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 property's that grant it magical property's. 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 property 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 then what they could naturally forge and smith. That is if they could even make iron at all: the otherwise Bronze age Egyptians manged 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 nickle that can't actually be forged, there is a good reason why Tutankhamun had a dagger not a sword. Additionally many meteorites have impurity that weaken the blade. Still, bad iron is better then no iron and we do get plenty of big meteors to make swords out of. The late 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 self was enough to grant magical property's, 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 it's iron content or perhaps the "Mystical" attraction of a lodestone to iron. In folk lore 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." "All well in 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 fairy's or Demons is a steel sword, but you were going to use that anyway since steel is better then any material not from the future, the importance of Iron as a anti magic weapon only become 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, AKA never heated, or that it's just not hot now, or sometimes it just poetically means any iron.
  • Silver, unlike Iron and Meteoric Iron, Silver weapons don't work in real life. Cost aside silver is softer, heavier, and dulls much easier then a Steel blade, but silver's tradition of magic goes farther back then iron and in settings with werewolfs a silver sword may be your best friend. Silver 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 lead 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, since vampires are unholy: no reflection in the holy Silver. In fantasy settings silver weapons often do less damage a whole but deal more damage, or are the only thing that can hurt, unholy monsters like ghosts.