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Industrial Revolution

2019-08-16T20:47:36Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A547:5B60:F4A9:5E79: /* Notes */

[[File:Steam engine in action.gif|300px|thumb|left|Knights clash, Nobles Plot, Kings Proclaim and Priests Preach. But for all their ambition, passion, glory, drive and zeal it's a few modestly well off men trying to figure out how to better drain flooded mines that change the world]]
{{topquote|The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our father's lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.|Arthur Conan Doyle}}
The '''Industrial Revolution''' was a period from about 1776 to 1914 which was a major game changer for humanity. Many periods of history are laid out arbitrarily by Historians for book-keeping purposes. A peasant born at the transition at the tail end of the [[High Middle Ages]] in 1340 and lived to see the [[Renaissance]] over some 80 years would not think the world he was born in to be too different to the one he died, even if he was glad that the whole "everybody's dropping dead of plague" spell did not come back. But the same could not be said if said fellow was born in England in 1780. In that time the majority of people had moved from the countryside to cities, factories were making everything, you could cross the country in a train in a day and send a message to Canada at the speed of light.

The big thing of note here is Energy. For most of the history of Civilization if humans wanted to get something done like move thing from point A to Point B, dig a hole, grind grain, work iron or whatever they had to do it with muscle power, either their own, other peoples' or by those of some cows or horses. Latter they worked out how to put wind and flowing water to use with sails, watermills and windmills. Both of which were useful in their own right and by the 1700s they were used in a wide variety of operations but both had serious limitations. There are only so many rivers where you can build watermills and even in windy places there are calm days, so they primarilly supplemented wind and water power. A human can produce about 100 watts (joules per second) of motive power continuously, a horse can provide about 750 watts. In contrast a kilogram of wood has about 16-21 megajoules of energy if burned and coal has about 30 megajoules, though this comes in heat. Steam engines use boiling water to turn that heat into motive force which can operate factory machines, propel ships and locomotives to carry cargo, dig ditches and more. Once they had been refined to a level of comparative efficiency they changed the nature of how work got done. First this was done by belts, gears and rods and latter by electrical power generated by steam (or other sources) turning generators to power electric motors and lights.

One of the key advances of the industrial revolution was the assembly line which allowed rapid construction of goods by giving each worker a single task to be repeated instead of requiring they have specialized knowledge of the whole process. While this idea goes back to at least the Venetian Arsenal in 1320, it became the standard during this era thanks to breakthroughs in milling, grinding and lathing metal powered by steam. One side effect of making things on an assembly line is that items were broken into interchangable parts that were replaceable if they broke, where before repairs were specialized work if they could be accomplished at all. It would not be till World War II however that quality control was tight enough that parts were interchangeable between factories. The assembly line lead to widespread and cheap automobiles. The most prominent example was the Ford Model T. These early cars all had unique controls and the modern, standardized control layout would not be invented till 1916, and would not achieve popularity till after 1922.

Education also improved and became more universal during this era. By 1800 literacy was near universal in the United States, though this figure may not be counting slaves. Indeed, high literacy was critical to the American revolution, which made extensive use of mass printed propaganda like ''[[Wikipedia:Common Sense (pamphlet)|Common Sense]]'' Public Education further improved this. Democracy would gradually rise in prominance during this period thanks to increased literacy. The abolition of Slavery and Women's emancipation would also make serious progress during this era AS extension of this.

Communications would advance rapidly, with radio quickly becoming a standard possession. The telegraph and later telephone would also be invented during this era. The earliest traces of film recording came here. Photography has matured enough by this time that photographs of most important figures from ~1840 onward exist.

Weapons technology advanced by leaps and bounds. At the start of the Industrial Revolution the average soldier had a flintlock musket that could be shot maybe four times a minute and was accurate up to maybe 100 meters. Breach loading rifles came around very shortly into the period, though complexity of the mechanism made large scale manufacture impossible. Guns became mass produced (and were among the first complex machines with metal mechanisms to be so), but over the early 19th century they gradually became rifled as standard and switched over to percussion locks and were complemented with the first mass produced revolvers. Starting in 1848, muskets began being phased out for breech loading rifles. Metallic cartridge and smokeless powder would arrive towards the end of this era. Since black powder would rapidly foul any repeating action, smokeless powder was critical to the function of any self-loading firearm. Machine guns became common during this era with Sir Hiram Maxim's invention of his famous gun in 1886. Self loading pistols emerged as well. Artillery advanced from simple iron tubes firing iron balls straight ahead to breach loading steel guns which fired explosive shells on predictable ballistic trajectories.

Of course, there was a downside. Industrialization did generate a lot of wealth, but not everyone profited from it. Rural landlords found that their fields were full of surplus farmhands which were not needed which they promptly kicked off their land to go into dirty overcrowded cities full of cheaply made apartments in which people were crammed in like sardines. To get enough to survive people everyone in a poor family older than six would have to work in unsafe conditions for 12 hours or more, often operating dangerous machines that could take the hand off the unwary in the dark, stink and noise of it all while [[Wikipedia:Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire|forcibly locked into the building]]. There were various responses to these conditions, some of which were more extreme than others. The best-known of these is the concept of the Labor Union, which allowed for workers in the same industry to group together and demand better working conditions from their employers, as did regulations against child labor, safety standards and so forth.

== Napoleonic Wars ==

== The US Civil War ==

Shortly after achieving independence a split in the new US States became more a more pressing distinction. The Southern Colonies were settled by men who wanted to make a lot of money in the new world and who set up plantations manned by [[slave]]s growing tobacco and cotton. The Northern Colonies were settled by groups which wanted to recreate England (or their ideal version there-of) where the cash crops grown on plantations where not profitable and to whom slavery increasingly became unpalatable. Stunts like counting slaves in population censuses to towards legislative representation while they did not vote inflamed issues. There was some hope that it was on it's way out at first, then Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin which made the Slave Owners very wealthy. There was also a growing sense of Abolitionism with the Brits shutting down the Slave Trade in 1807 and Abolishing Slavery in 1833 with France following in 1845. While the number of hardline Abolitionists in the North was comparatively small, there were making some headway and there were various groups opposed to slavery to various degrees. This led to plays to create slave states as fast as possible and other ploys which spiraled things out until the election of Abraham Lincoln on a generalized anti-slavery plan. Fearing that "The Peculiar Institution" would be contained, constrained and eventually brought to inevitable extinction the powers that be in the South pushed for a violent breakaway.

This war is notable for being the most destructive conflict for the United States (700,000 people dead as well as a lot of buildings and infrastructure destroyed) and one of the biggest wars that was fought between industrial powers. One reason for this is the North simultaneously held that South never left the US but total war with intentional targeting of the civilian population and infrastructure was OK. Another was a fear among the North that if the war was not won quickly (regardless of cost in lives) public opinion on it would sour, Lincoln would lose reelection and the war might end without the South's defeat.

== The American Frontier ==
{{topquote|You have died of dysentery.|''The Oregon Trail''}}
Throughout the mid 1800s Americans spread rapidly westward. This was aided by several large land purchases, Texas joining the union and Mexico giving up a bunch of land after getting its ass kicked. This led the United States to stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Fueling this was several gold rushes and a series of Homestead Acts, which gave ownership of land for free if you lived on it and maintained it. Canada also had a western frontier at the same time, but that part isn't nearly as well remembered (Did you play Yukon Trail? Did you even know it existed?).

This era has long been dramatized to the point it has become its own genre, the Western. This goes so far back ''[[Wikipedia:The Great Train Robbery|The Great Train Robbery]]'', one of the first films with a narrative '''ever''', was a western. Westerns dramatized the "Wild" West as a chaotic wasteland full of bandits and savages where a man would be killed for any or no reason, but historically this was not the case. Statistically the west was actually very peaceful outside of the wars, especially compared to cities out east. The big outlaws, shootouts and murders were simply very publicized '''because''' they were unusual.

== The British Empire ==
{{topquote|On her dominions the sun never sets; before his evening rays leave the spires of Quebec, his morning beams have shone three hours on Port Jackson, and while sinking from the waters of Lake Superior, his eye opens upon the Mouth of the Ganges.|The Caledonian Mercury}}

== The Boer Wars ==
After the Napoleonic Wars the British gained control of the former Dutch colony that is now South Africa. A long series of disputes arising from this rose to war between inhabitants and the British Empire. Both wars were disasters for the British (even though they eventually won the second) thanks to trying Napoleonic tactics in an era of rifled repeating firearms. This was even worse in the first war since the British had not yet ditched their bright red uniforms.

These wars are largely forgotten except by military historians due to its [[The World Wars|premonitions of things to come]]. One thing that survives the wars however is the term Commando, which originally referred to the organization of the Boer forces during the wars and acquired its modern usage due to their unorthodox (for the time) tactics it enabled.

== Notes ==
*The agricultural revolution, where machines and other modern technology were applied to farming, accompanied the industrial revolution. Indeed, this fed it by allowing enough food to be produced that the majority of workers could take factory jobs instead of agricultural work.
* Several technologies supported the process of industrialization. Steam Power helped kick things off by revolutionizing manufacturing and transportation, but two others were also important. Large machinery and tall buildings required steel to become cheap enough that it could be made on a massive scale. Historically, making good-quality steel was a time-consuming process that needed the careful attention of expert craftsmen. But with the Bessemer process, bellows would be used to blast hot air directly into the molten iron to get it hot enough to melt impurities. Electricity also helped tremendously, allowing for much longer working cycles through lightbulbs and improved communications through telegraph and radio.
*The invention of air conditioning was also a major innovation of this era. This allowed for much denser and heavily mechanized industrial centers, as well greater population in warmer areas. The flush toilet and toilet paper also originated at this time.
*Vulcanized rubber arose during this era. While important for sealing and tires, one major change this facilitated was in clothing. The elastic waistband brought about modern undergarments among other things. The first plastics also arose during this era, but these early plastics were brittle and had few practical uses, so the true rise of plastics would not be till the era of [[The World Wars]] and [[The Cold War|and beyond]].
*Food preservation made large advances. In most of history methods were limited to drying (though methods including salt, smoke and/or sugar), pickling and (in climates that allowed it) freezing food, all of which originated in the [[Bronze Age]] at the latest. Now methods like jarring and canning (though early sealing methods turned out to be toxic themselves) food emerged and serious improvements to old methods like like quick freezing, the electric icemaker/freezer/refrigerator (domestic versions won't appear till the interwar though), freeze drying, and spray drying led to food that took less and less space while having lifespans measured in ''years''. These methods continue to be refined in [[Post-Cold War|the current era]], largely through new materials and understanding of microscopic organisms.
*[[Japan]] would emerge from the sakoku during the later part of this era and rapidly consume all the technological advancement of the era. One area they focused on was military advancement, ostensibly to avoid becoming a colony of an existing world power but largely to fuel their own desire of imperialism. They didn't get much attention till they [[Wikipedia:Russo-Japanese War|kicked Russia's ass in 1905]], which put a great number of eyes on them.
*The Scramble for Africa begins in 1881 and ends in 1914. Almost all modern "explorer" cliches and imagery began here, Theodore Roosevelt's midadventures, or the Indiana Jones movies.
*Human flight was first achieved in this era. In 1783 the first air balloon flight took place, and was used for military use in 1794. The Wright Flyer took flight in late 1903, marking the first heavier than air flying machine. Zeppelins became practical just before World War I.

== The appeal of the Industrial Revolution ==
This era produced many things modern people take for granted and have difficulty considering life without. The rise of film and audio recording during this era and mass printing of advertisement and newspapers during this era mean there is no shortage of records of daily life, so this era is fairly well understood. Before this period, Historians were mostly concerned with Big Things: wars, generals, kings, nobles, priests and the occasional artist, merchant, architect, engineer or inventor thrown in. In the Industrial Revolution historians became actively interested in the way people lived their lives day to day, from well-to-do merchants and skilled tradesmen to factory workers to scavengers picking through garbage for bones, rages, scraps of metal and dog turds to sell.

The industrial revolution allowed for inventors to not only create meaningful new creations, but see them become common overnight. Before the Industrial Revolution changes generally happened slowly with various small tweaks on things and methods, the compilation of said tweeks rolling over and the occasional breakthrough like the water wheel or gunpowder every once and a while which would take centuries to come into it's own. A peasant would assume that his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren would till the soil just as he did with what changes that did happen in his lifetime being largely minor stuff that tweaked the board but did not change the game. Industrialization changed all that, lives were changed for better or worse by mechanization suddenly and totally. Progress became an idea that would drive the world, even if problems were also mounting. People came to understand that the past was not just the present which happened beforehand and the future could be more than just more of the same. It's not surprising that science fiction started up in the 19th century.

This time was also one of upheaval socially and politically. Before the Industrial Revolution people generally operated on the idea that one should "Know One's Station", that society was divided into classes that were (with various degrees of legal formality enforcing this) hereditary, static and instead of trying to get out of them they should stay in them, stay out of the affairs of people of other classes and obey their betters. If you were a peasant you'd work for your lord, obey his orders, treat him with reverence as a higher form of human, be jolly grateful you'd have such a man as your master and avoid thinking about all that politics stuff which is none of your business. While this had not died out in the Industrial Revolution, it was on the decline.

The source of wealth shifted from farms and fields to factories and companies which the merchant classes now owned. To be a noble you needed a peerage at least and preferably a dozen generations of pedigree which your fellow nobs would respect even if you were broke, to be a captain of industry you just needed a lot of money invested in the right companies. It was possible for a poor man to rise to the highest echelons of society in the Industrial Revolution. The down side of it was that these rich buggers tended to view the poor which could not rise from rags as being lazy incompetents that were only fit for ruthless exploitation and that attempting to help them (beyond providing them with education) out was not only useless, but an active evil in the long term since it means only more of them in the long run. To quote a Christmas Carol...

''"Many cannot go there [Workhouses and Prisons] and many would rather die."''

''“If they'd rather die, they'd better do it and decrease the surplus population...."''

The industrial revolution people had oppressive rigid order and stability swapped out for opportunities to excel and thrive or crash and burn. You could be born dirt poor and rise to riches, or you might start out as a skilled tradesmen who ends up as just another disposable factory worker.

That attitude about the poor went doubly so for the Colonial Subjects and non white people in general. In 1876 there was a Drought which led to crop failure in much of India, instead of importing food to feed the effected masses (which they'd done not long before successfully) the Raj Government allowed merchants to stockpile grain and sell it abroad to drive the price up. The result was famine and starvation which killed 6-10 million people. The Belgians in the Congo made this look nice.

The Industrial Revolution is the start of the Modern World and many of it's issues still persist to this day. People can relate more to an Industrial Revolution era person more easily than that of a peasant in the middle ages or a scribe at a pharoh's court. The downside of this is that these issues are still politically charged to this day.

== Industrial Revolution inspired Games, Factions and Settings ==
* [[Steampunk]]
* Much of Discworld
* [[Eberron]] before the Last War. After it Eberron is a cross between Industrial Revolution and interwar.
* [[Iron Kingdoms]]'s whole schtick is that it's a typical fantasy setting that developed into this.

fill me
{{Skub}}
{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Vikings

2019-08-16T19:35:42Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A547:5B60:F4A9:5E79: /* Norse Mythology */

{{Topquote|It was not as if we'd stayed home and wasted our lives drinking wine with pretty girls.|A recurring motif in the Lay of Kraka}}
[[Image:VikingShip.jpg|500px|thumb|right|A Viking Longship, A thirty meter long can o' [[rape]] (literally) back in the day.]]
'''Vikings''' were Scandinavian people from the 8th to 11th century, a period in which societies based in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, making use of their long-ships set forth to trade and colonize areas including Northern France, the British Isles, Russia, Iceland, Greenland and even reached North America (though the settlements they set up there did not last). They also made a habit of bathing and washing their hands frequently, which at the time was unheard of among the peoples of Europe. Probably because they had to have about two dozen dudes on a small boat for a long time, so you would regularly bathe if you didn't want to be [[That Guy]]. They only stopped when France, of all countries, rolled a nat 20 on Diplomacy by offering Normandy to duke Rollo. One of his descendents by the name of William ended up with a claim to the throne of a place populated with Anglo-Saxons named Anglo-land (later known as England), and ultimately became its king.

Unlike popular belief, they did not wear horned helmets. This is for the practical reason that a big horned helmet might catch a sword unintentionally, which is all sorts of bad for the wearer; horned helmets were used on occasion, but only for ceremony. The ol' "horn-headed people eater" image was popularized during the 1800s.

==Culture==
Vikings believed that when they died in battle (preferably in a totally fuck-awesome way) they would go to a place called Valhalla to become one of the Einherjar (Chosen Slain) or to Fólkvangr (the realm controlled by Freyja, the Nordic goddess of love, prosperity, spring and being foxy as hell; also a death goddess and war goddess, which is why she gets half the chosen warriors in the first place), where they would chug booze, [[List of /tg/ Cuisine|eat all the meat and cheese they wanted]], and (if that actually managed to get dull) participate in massive murderfests only to be fully healed the next day and ready to do it all over again. On the other hand, if they died in bed or in a totally lame way (such as AIDs or cancer or... actually anywhere but battle is lame) they would instead go to a totally boring place called Hel where NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED! '''EVER!''' (As you might imagine, this became problematic for many of their folk heroes who were just that fucking hard to kill). And if ''that'' weren't bad enough, people who committed what the vikings saw as the unforgivable sins, like oathbreaking, went to a prison overseen by the goddess of the dead. The ceiling is made from the bones of serpents, which drip burning venom, the halls are waist-deep in cold, slimy blood, and there is nothing to drink but goats piss and nothing to eat but rotten food (basically a Minnesota Vikings game). The exception is if you died while giving birth, then you got go to Valhalla; the vikings were surprisingly egalitarian in their attitudes towards the sexes.

That said, there was the ''third'' way to die. Dying at sea was totally cool for the Vikings, for while the Battle-junkies went to Valhalla and Freya, and the lame ones went to Hel,
the Sea-Bears went to the Halls of Aegir, god of the sea, where they got their own Watery Valhalla.

Vikings aren't known for being nice, [http://www.badassoftheweek.com/turgeis.html for a good reason]. During their raiding parties, after killing, enslaving and/or raping the non-Viking people they encountered, the Vikings would [[Blood_Ravens#Bloody_Magpies|they would steal ''anything'' that wasn't nailed down.]] If it was nailed down, they'd try and steal the nails and if that didn't work, they'd eat it. If they couldn't eat it, they'd ''burn'' it, and if they couldn't burn it they'd ''''SMASH'''' it!

Later some of the smarter Viking warlords started to conquer shit rather than rape, pillage and kill everything in their sight. For quite a long time a large chunk of France and Italy, and the entirety of England and Russia where ruled by Vikings or their descendants, although they all got quickly assimilated into the nations they've conquered, to the point when they started to think of themselves as French/Russians in just a two or three generations after settling in. The Vikings also had a level of prestige in the Byzantine Empire, as they were the preferred recruits for the Emperor's bodyguard, the Varangian Guard.

=== Norse Mythology ===
Like Greek mythology, the Norse have their own version of creation, different sets of gods, and heroic stories of manly feats. Here are some of them:

'''Odin''' - The All-Father, the One-Eyed Wanderer, King of the Wild Hunt and Patron of Shamans and Berserkers. He wasn't actually the first of the gods, but rather he is named "All-Father" for slaying his tyrannical grandfather and creating Midgard (Earth) from his body and bones. His stories are full of sacrifice in the pursuit of higher wisdom, such as hanging himself on the World Tree, Yggdrasil, in order to be granted the knowledge of runes. He has two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, which deliver him news of the nine realms every day, as well as two fucking huge wolves, Freki and Geri, which he uses as guard dogs/hunting hounds. His major schtick is trying to prevent Ragnarok. He also has a sick-ass spear called Gungnir, which will never miss it's mark. Known for being wise, but also manipulative. Not a god you should underestimate, by any means.

'''Thor''' - The God of Thunder, the Protector of Mankind, and arguably the most popular god, even in the Viking Age. (No, his popularity isn't really due to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, that came much later) He wields a mighty warhammer named Mjolnir, and uses it to great effect. Out of all the Norse gods, he's probably one of the most bro-tier, although it's ill advised to piss him off (as several giants and dwarves could attest, were their heads not smashed in). He's so unbelievably OP that even when he thought he'd lost against Utgard-Loki (no relation to Loki, btw), Utgard-Loki had to admit defeat because Thor almost destroyed the world ''by accident.'' Prophesied to die fighting the world serpent Jormungandr.

'''Loki'''- the Trickster God, the Deceiver. Unfortunately, the Norse had a rather dim view of tricksters and deceivers, so he's usually a villain in the myths. Probably doesn't help that he and his children are responsible for killing several gods. Responsible for many shenanigans, including [[Wat|turning himself into a mare and fucking a stallion]] (part of a crazy scheme to defraud a contractor, no less), killing the near-invincible god Baldr as a prank, and being Odin's adopted brother. Yes, you read that right, ''Odin's'' brother, not Thor's.

'''Freya''' - Goddess of Fertility, Erotic Love, Magic, and War (In case you haven't noticed, the Norse really loved to fight). She claims half of all warriors slain in glorious battle, bringing them to her meadow of Folkvangr. (The other half are chosen by Odin and become Einherjar, the Chosen Slain, where they will feast and fight in Valhalla until Ragnarok, where they will all charge the wolf Fenrir and die.)

'''Tyr''' - The One-Handed God of Justice and Government. How does he have only one hand, you may ask? Well, let's just say...when a giant wolf demands your hand as payment for the gods binding him in unbreakable teathers, and you're known for keeping your word...well...

'''Heimdall''' - The Guardsman of the Bifrost and [[/pol/|the whitest of the gods, seriously, compare and contrast the Marvel Thor movies for a laugh.]] There's...very little to be said about him, other than that he's watching everyone, everywhere, at all times, and he and Loki are going to kill each other come Ragnarok.

'''Baldr''' - The God of light and joy. Or, at least he was. But now he's dead, thanks to some Loki-involved trickery involving a blind brother and his invulnerability to everything except mistletoe.

'''Yggdrasil''' - The World Tree. Now, this is not a literal tree, mind you, but rather a sort of metaphysical highway linking nine universes, or realms, together. Those realms are: Asgard (Home of the Aesir). Vanaheim (Home of the Vanir), Alfheim (Home of the Elves), Niflheim (Land of ice and fog), Musphelheim, (Land of ash and fire), Midgard (realm of mortals/Earth), Jotunheim (Home of the giants), Svartalfheim (realm of dwarves), and Helheim (realm of the dead). Encasing Yggdrasil is the Ginnungagap, the chaotic abyss from which all life sprung from.

'''Norns''' - These are the three sisters who preside over the fate and destiny of gods and men, much like their Greco-Roman counterparts. They reside near Yggdrasil's roots at a great well of knowledge, and their names are Urd (What Once Was), Verdandi (What Is Now), and Skuld (What Shall Be).

'''Sleipnir'''- As noted above, Loki got fucked by a stallion while disguised as a mare. Well, in truly horrifying mythological fashion, he gave birth to an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir, who later became Odin's favorite warhorse. Family reunions must've been ''awkward'' in Asgard.

'''Fenrir''' - Another one of Loki's animal children, and the aforementioned giant wolf whom bit off Tyr's hand due to Odin and the rest of the Aesir-Vanir binding him out of fear. He's prophesied to kill Odin during Ragnarok, only to be slain by his son, Vidar.

'''Jormumgandr''' - Yet another Loki spawn, the World Serpent. Basically, a snek so fucking huge that he can encircle all of Midgard when he bites his tail. Prophesised to annihilate Midgard and then fight Thor to the death during...yep...Ragnarok.

'''Surtr''' - King of the fire giants. His goal in life is to slay as many of those haughty gods as possible before he fucking dies in the end, and he'll do it with a huge flaming greatsword.

'''Ragnarok''' - Now, you might be wondering right now, just what in the fuck is Ragnarok? Well, my friend...it is [[Rhana Dandra|the end. Of Everything. Gods included.]] Basically, the world ends in ice and fire, there's a fucking huge battle where the gods, giants, humans all die, and the world is eventually reborn without all the bad shit, with two surviving humans and a few gods repopulating the place.

'''Ragnar Lodbrok'''- A legendary figure in Norse Sagas, comparable to King Arthur or Aeneas. Basically, his feats involve invading the seven kingdoms of England, sacking Paris, being the father of every king who'd come to rule a piece of Scandinavia, and dying by being thrown in a pit of snakes by King Aelle of Northumbria, which sets in motion the Great Heathen Army, which was lead by his sons, and when the Vikings shifted focus from pillaging to flat out conquering.

==In Modern Fiction==
Vikings and the honorable Neanderthals are some of the closest that the real world has ever had to [[dwarves]], but they should not be confused as such. While they had a penchant for [[axe]]s and could use anything, [[Dwarf Fortress|including body parts and broken furniture]], as a weapon, Vikings were just unspeakably awesome humans (they couldn't handle as much booze as a dwarf, though only just). Vikings that [[Toothless Dragon|rode Dragons]] even more so. Vikings are not to be confused with [[barbarian]]s either, despite any combination with the former resulting in awesome. [[Warriors of Chaos|Vikings are also notable for pledging themselves to Chaos]] and becoming [[Space Wolves|werewolf supersoldiers]].

The Vikings have also finally gotten their own TV show starring Vladimir Kullich. It is about the saga of Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons; Bjorn Ironside, Ivar the Boneless, Sigurd Snake-eye, Halfdan, Hvitserk, and Ubbe, as well as the tales of Duke Rollo of Normandy, King Harald Fairhair, and Alfred the Great of Wessex.

==Viking Longships==

The thing that put the Vikings on the map were their Longships (or LongBOAT if you're not [[skub|American]]). Basically these were large canoes made from planks with a mast to catch the wind. They could, however handle rough northern seas very well, and allowed some Vikings to reach such exotic locales as Newfoundland centuries before other Europeans. One thing that helped made the Longships such a gamechanger was that the vikings worked out that properly curing and drying out timbers it made it stronger and more resistant to being eaten at sea by nematodes and similar grody things.

Sometimes to save travel time, the Vikings would pull their Longships overland for kilometers. No joking, no hyperbole. A few tricks (like log rollers) helped, though. One of them (Oleg, the prince of Kievan Russ) even mounted his longships on wheels to quickly move them into Constantinople harbor, bypassing the defensive chain pulled across the path (which possibly inspired the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II when he used a similar trick to help him capture Constantinople).

Their Longships also had an [[derp|early warning system]] so that people could tell wether they were going to fuck them up or not. It's to do with the shields:
If the Shields were on the outside of their Longships, then they were coming to trade goods.
If the Shields were not on the outside of their Longships, then they were going to use them in battle, and you should run for the hills (if you get that far...)

==Viking Berserkers==
There's lot of bullshit about this guys on the internet and in general beliefs. Hell, the word itself had became the synonym of uncontrollable rage in many languages. The truth, however, is quite boring - berserkers (which comes from the Old Norse for "bear hide", as it was their signature piece of clothes they wore above armor, or sometimes instead of it) were equivalents of champions in the Norse culture with a pitch of warrior-priest flavor added - i.e. the guys who fought in duels on behalf of the tribe or some wealthy noble. And Norse culture had a fuckton of things settled with duels. As best of the best professional warriors among already brutally strong vikings they kicked all kinds of asses, and were rightfully feared for their skill and bravery. As you may guess, they where quite rare, so no "hordes" or even "squads" of berserkers for you - at best you'd have two or three per raid, and most often only one. As for uncontrollable rage... well, sagas mention a total of ZERO berserkers going into what we now call "[[Khorne|berserker]] rage" - there are mentions of jarls and ordinary warriors going to battle biting shields, foaming with mad anger and killing friend and foe alike, but never berserkers. WRONG:

{{topquote|-And as the foemen's ships drew near,<br>The dreadful din you well might hear<br>Savage berserks roaring mad,<br>And champions fierce in wolf-skins clad,<br>Howling like wolves; and clanking jar.|Harald Fairhair Saga ch 19.}}
Mushroom brew painkiller that allow to fight despite heavy or even fatal wounds likewise weren't their exclusive, although proper brew (that wouldn't ruin your liver, therefore sentencing you to a lame death in your bed if you survive the battle) was quite expensive, and berserkers, as pretty much second-in-command of jarls were among those wealthy enough to afford it.

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
Image:Elspeth_and_Vikings.png|When [[Elspeth Tirel]] needs backup, these are the people she calls.
Image:WarbandViking.jpg| JEG SKALL DRIKKE FRA HODESKALLEN DIN!!!.
Image:Lego_Viking_ship.jpg|Pillaging colorful brick villages since 576 A.D.
</gallery></center>

==See Also==
* [[Pirate]]
*[[The Poetic Edda]]
[[Category:History]]

Dark Age

2019-08-16T18:40:44Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A547:5B60:F4A9:5E79: /* Notes */

[[File:Dark age port.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Brick and Concrete have given way to Waddle and Daub]]
The Western [[Roman Empire]] is generally said to have fallen in 476 CE, which was in of itself part of a long gradual decline as the Empire fell for a wide variety of internal and external reasons which are beyond the scope of this article and indeed are still extensively debated by historians. The central Government broke down, barbarians tribes such as the Saxons and the Franks and the Goths invaded and took over and many urban centers that grew under Roman rule withered on the vine as their people fled to the countryside and a fair bit of higher learning was lost in Western Europe. For the sake of curating this marked the end of the [[Classical Period]] period which lasted until about 1000 or so called '''The Dark Ages'''.

During this time warlords carved out new kingdoms, handing conquered lands out to their favored warriors as they went who'd tax peasants and used that money to buy [[Mail]] and [[helmet]]s and [[Horse]]s, gradually morphing into the first [[Knight]]s. They also made alliances with the Catholic Church, which arose from the ashes of Rome offering it's services in placating the peasants and doing things that required book learning in exchange for their aide in spreading the faith, a say in the way things were run and various privileges. Around 793 the [[Viking]]s began to show up and would remain an active element for centuries to come. Eventually things gradually stabilized and Europe moved into the [[High Middle Ages]].

==Notes==
* This is an western European thing. Byzantium, [[China]], India, Persia and the eventually the Islamic Caliphates were on the whole doing pretty well at this time. Japan was coming into it's own as a well developed civilization with the Nara and Heian Periods following China's model.
* Long story short term "Dark Age" has become rather contentious in recent decades among historians and at the very least it has been judged that people from the Renaissance onward overestimated in how severe the fall was. Many prefer the far less loaded '''Early Medieval Period''' to describe this period of history.
* The real reason we call this period the “Dark Age” is due to the relative lack of writings we have in comparison to the ages coming before and after. Between the high political instability and drop in literacy, the only people making books at this time were monks. That’s not to say it was a total intellectual vacuum; the University was invented in this time period, and would build a network of schools that would really come into prominence once the Renaissance hits.
* There are other periods of time labeled "Dark Ages" such as the Greek Dark Ages between the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the [[Classical Period]]. Basically whenever an advanced civilization regresses a decent bit due to general decline or some catastrophe. And like the previous point, we know almost nothing about what happened during these periods, especially so for the Bronze Age.

==The appeal of the Dark Age==
How do you like your medieval fantasy? Do you like it to be harsher, grittier and cruder side? Then the Dark Ages are a good place to mine for ideas. People in shattered isolated settlements where buildings are rough while a king theoretically reigns but the power lies in the hands of local nobles and knights. Viking raiders on longships searching for gold and thralls raiding who do battle with scruffy knights in dirty scale and maile who are but marginally more civilized than the pagan barbarians that they do battle. Both of which are more likely to preserve their deeds in song than with words written down in books. A few monks copying down a few ancient texts that they can not read for future generations. You can even work in a bit of a post apocalyptic vibe with a Dark Age setting, where people build crude wooden fortresses and barn like halls exist alongside the remains of more impressive structures of stone from a now fallen empire. Civilization once stood here and it might do so again, but now is an age of turmoil and the sword.

Not to say that these guys did not have a creative side, this period is tied in with celtic spiral patterns and tapistries.

==Dark inspired Games, Factions and Settings==
This is one of the most used settings in all fantasy. While usually taking a fair degree of artistic liberties, most fantasy authors use the aesthetics of feudalism in one way or another: poor peasants, luxurious (for the time) and corrupt nobility courts stabbing each other in the back, dirty and decrepit cities, barbarians pillaging the remnants of the old empires, a nebulous fight in the frontiers (usually based of the muslim or mongol invasions during the Middle Ages)... The Kingdom of Bretonnia in Warhammer FB is clearly inspired in a late version of the Middle Ages' Kingdom of France and/or England, whereas the Empire is closer to Early Modern Age's Holy Roman Empire. The human kingdoms in The Lord of The Rings also follow a similar aesthetic, although much less grounded in reality and more in fantasy.

{{Skub}}
{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Post-Cold War

2019-08-16T18:38:56Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A547:5B60:F4A9:5E79:

{{Topquote|What we may be witnessing is not just the end of [[the Cold War]], or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such … That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.|Francis Fukuyama, ''The End of History and the Last Man''. Unsurprisingly, he has since admitted that in retrospect he was being too optimistic.}}

After the end of the communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of [[The Cold War|Cold War]]. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had finally ended with the prevalence of capitalism as the dominant economic model and with western-type democracies as the most favoured political models (at least in the West and the ex-Soviet States). The End of the World through nuclear means, [[grimdark|while almost seen as a certainty during many periods of crisis]], had not come to pass, and [[noblebright|a feeling of peace and relief spreaded through the world]]. While the old fear of a world war pretty much dissapeared, the problems of the Cold War were replaced by many other and smaller conundrums all around the globe. This aspect is important, since due to technological advancements and the development of computers and the Internet, the world is more interconnected than ever before, and events that decades ago would've been isolated to a small region could have massive reverberations throughout the globe.

This period of history is being studied and analyzed by historians as we speak, considering most of the relevant events of this period happened less than 30 years ago and are continuing into the present day (2019, as of this article's writing). There's a reason why historians usually don't touch anything that's happened in the last twenty or so years, so we'll do our best to avoid any [[skub]] and just retell events as they happened and how they relate to one another; which is no easy feat since the world has become more interconnected than ever, with events happening halfway around the world being felt everywhere.

==New World Order: The 1990s==
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall or transformation of communist regimes worldwide, the United States found itself catapulted into a position of undisputed supremacy over the globe. Following a short, brutal war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq (which ended in a rather hilarious roflstomp victory for the U.S-led Coalition, which took casualties in the low hundreds compared to Iraq having 85% of it's pre-war armed forces completely wiped out), the U.S began perhaps one of it's greatest decades of economic and cultural prosperity under leaders like President Bill Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich. With it's military might guarding the vital sea and air routes of the world, the 1990s began a period of interconnectivity and increased trade that would be later known as "globalization" (Though for some, the term "Westernization" would be better suited, as much of the world has adopted, at least in part, American cultural, military, and economic doctrines).

This isn't to say that things were all peaches and sunshine for the U.S, however. In many cities across the U.S, many African and Hispanic Americans became utterly fed up with the way the police forces often treated them (in the case of many metropolitan areas like L.A., it was little better than dirt). A boiling point was reached when Rodney King, an African American man (who, admittedly, had a history of armed robbery and beating his wife), was brutally assaulted by two white police officers on camera after leading a high speed chase through a residential area, resisting arrest and attempting to charge an officer. This action triggered the Los Angeles race riots, which would leave a scar on the collective consciousness of Americans everywhere. Another dark side to this otherwise happy time was the military debacles in Somalia and the war crime filled Yugoslav Wars <s>at least it got us Tactics Ogre</s>. The domestic side of the Federal Government lost a lot of trust during the Clinton administration between Bill Clinton's sex scandals and the heavy-handed and openly corrupt response of the FBI and ATF took to dealing with the Young Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. The agencies repeatedly claiming concern for supposed hostages they didn't know the location but totally existed before ''running over the compound with a tank'', which could have killed the hostages if they existed, then planting their own equipment as evidence remains a popular example of the ATF's naked corruption to this day.

Meanwhile, in the newly reformed state of Russia, things were looking a bit... well, let's just say that the immediate post-Heresy Imperium had it much better than what happened to Russia. Problems ranging from a severe economic collapse, the rise of oligarchs and criminal mobs, a major rebellion in the majority Islamic province of Chechnya, and the government is about as morally pure as your average Tzeentchian cultist all contributed to the post-Soviet Russians generally feeling pretty damned hopeless and betrayed by the West. Boris Yeltsin, the first President of Russia, tried his damndest to fix things, but turning the country around proved to be beyond his skills, and left the office in relative disgrace. Enter one Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer and someone with a more [[God-Emperor of Mankind|authoritarian and straightforward way of doing things]]. He technically stabilized Russia, but has since been continually stirring shit up in the rest of the world ever since.

In Europe, the European Union was officially ratified by the Maaschirt Treaty in 1992, marking for the first time since Rome that a singular power has held complete sway over all of the continent. The EU's goal, amongst many things, was to promote economic and military cooperation amongst its member states. To that end, most nations in the EU abandoned their national currencies for the euro, with <s> only </s> UK, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Sweeden retaining their own. This group has rapidly moved past the mere economic partnership and into an overstate that curtails the freedoms of its member countries who are "represented" by unelected bureaucrats with no method of removing them.

In the Middle East, however, tensions were steadily rising. Due to events like the discovery of oil in large parts of the region, the disaster that was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the formation of the Jewish state of Israel in was formerly Arab land, the various Muslim tribes and nations of the Middle East began to look at the Christian and secular nations of the West and Russia with barely restrained hatred, feeling that they had been cheated, stomped on, and oppressed by the ungodly European and American powers. Many began to long for the glory days of the Golden Age of Islam in the Early Middle Ages, and so started to turn to increasingly radical sects of Islam that promised such a return to power and prestige, such as the Wahhabist sect of Sunni Islam. A few began to carry out acts of terror against their Israeli and American foes, such as in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the attack on the USS Cole. But the worst was yet to come, as a new, much more disciplined and organized group of Sunni radicals known as Al-Quaeda (in Arabic, literally "The Base") came into being, led by wealthy Saudi billionaire and former muhajedeen commander Osama bin Laden. Their strike against the heart of their perceived enemies would forever shatter the ideal of Western triumph and total American supremacy, and usher in a new, long, bloody period of conflict. Of course, the fact that many of these groups were originally trained and armed by the CIA to fight the Soviets and their proxies in Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war is often swept under the carpet.

==9/11 and the War on Terror==
{{topquote|We have slain a large dragon. But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. And in many ways, the dragon was easier to keep track of.|CIA Director James Woolsey, 1993}}

9/11 can be seen as the catalyst for what would fuel today's paranoia against "terrorism". On September 11, 2001, a couple of Al-Qaeda terrorists hi-jacked 4 commercial flights and crashed them to several locales, although the most significant of this was the World Trade Center, causing it to collapse and be labeled as the worst terrorist attack on American soil, as it killed nearly 3,000 people. This attack was led by a man named Osama Bin Laden. If you want to subscribe to the tin-foil hat crew, there's been several conspiracy theories related to this, most popular of which is that the American government planned for 9/11 and the entirety of the tragedy, but whether you want to believe those or not is up to you.

Anyway, with the world shocked, a worldwide manhunt for Bin Laden occurred, taking the US-led coalition forces to Afghanistan, Iraq, and eventually Pakistan. During their hunt, this resulted in warlords and dictators in the Middle East getting the knife, most notably Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Long story short, after a bunch of wacky misadventures and more conflicts than anyone can count: SEAL Team Six, a special operations unit of the US Navy, eventually killed Bin Laden during a raid ten years later.

Despite this, the War on Terror never really "ended" and it jump-started the global arms industry into overdrive. It created a demand for more guns, more militarization, more equipment, and more troops, in order to stem the tide of terrorists and rogue elements threatening everyone's safety (if you want to believe the rhetoric, anyway). It's also being seen as pseudo-Imperialism, as while the occupied Middle Eastern territories visited by the coalition are technically held by local governments, its not that easy to miss that the US-led coalition are basically bumping off heads that they don't like and installing people that are more open to their policies into government positions and occupying them with either US troops and/or PMCs as "observers" to help stabilize the region and train their troops, essentially turning them into a nation unofficially governed by the US. While it can be argued that said heads were in dire need of a thumping for the sake of the people, this is creating an increasingly common way for the US to expand it's sphere of influence, while being able to dodge the bad label associated with imperialism. Needless to say, this created even more of the resentment and hatred that allowed al-Quaeda to gain power in the first place, which combined with the crumbling state of Syria's government ended up setting the stage for ISIS, a more powerful and widespread organization intent on recreating the Islamic Caliphate of old.

This also created a glamorization of the military by the media that contributed to the war being somewhat normalized in the eyes of the public and painting the coalition forces as heroes (I.E: vidya games like Call of Duty or movies like American Sniper). Call it entertainment or call it propaganda, either way, it contributed to the public being more accepting of what's essentially a world-wide conflict comprised of proxy wars and skirmishes with no clear beginning or end. It also had the effect of massively expanding national governments worldwide in order to "protect and secure" the lives of the citizenry, whereas most libertarians and anarchists viewed it as nothing more than a blatant power grab using security as an excuse.

The US and remaining coalition forces are still technically fighting the War on Terror despite the original aggressors responsible for 9/11 being neutralized. As of writing this article: they're only three years shy of officially beating the Vietnam War in terms of duration.

==The Great Recession==
{{topquote|The borrower is a slave to the lender|Proverbs 22:7}}

In 1987, Alan Greenspan became chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, and would hold that office until 2006, leaving behind a legacy of [[just as planned|fuckheug asset bubbles]]. Under the presidencies of Bush, Clinton, and Bush Jr, lending standards became increasingly lax to the point where a well dressed [[Lictor]] could qualify for a mortgage. Prices for homes, stocks, and college educations skyrocketed, but because the dollar menu remained a dollar the talking heads insisted it wasn't inflation.

Stocks first plummeted in 2000 when everyone decided the likes of yahoo! and pets.com weren't worth a trillion dollars. Then in 2008 the market shit itself again when bankers realized that Lictor was never going to pay off his home loan. But he can still get a bank to pay for his hormagaunts to go to Princeton, so the shoes aren't done falling yet.

At the height of the bubble, it was possible for a person to obtain a home loan with no declared income, no declared assets, no down payment, and on negative amortization terms which means the borrower is only aiming to pay the interest on the loan (and maybe not even all of that) in the hope of selling the house later for more than the loan. The sheer quantities of '''[[just as planned]]''' flavor kool-aid everyone was drinking would turn [[Magnus the Red]] several more colors.

The overwhelming majority of these loans were variable interest because the Fed had dropped rates so low that for a brief time they were actually paying banks to borrow money. The result was the economic equivalent of Chernobyl; as soon as rates started to come back up everyone who couldn't pay was wiped out and declared bankruptcy. The banks and investors had been divvying up the anticipated profits from the loans and selling them as securities, and suddenly nobody knew what those securities were actually worth. As banks and insurance companies started imploding, the US government was obliged to intervene to stave off a complete collapse of the economy, but this was incredibly unpopular.

==The Rise of Extremes, and the Tide of Populism==
The year 2016 was a shitshow in many, many ways.

The policies of Barrack Obama had become unpopular in many rural and conservative places, such as the Midwest and the Deep South, on top of an increasing racial divide that hadn't been seen since the late 1960s. Fed up with these policies, and with the apparent inaction of many moderate to center-right Republican politicians, a good deal of right-leaning voters turned to more hardcore conservative, right-wing populist candidates... candidates such as Donald Trump, who preached a hardline stance against immigration, negotiations for fairer trade deals and increasing domestic manufacturing, and a return to the Reagan-era "Peace through Strength" mentality, now intensified to a degree that many observers thought to border on authoritarianism. And despite all the odds, Trump won the presidential election through a handy margin in the electoral college - due primarily to appealing to the working-class voters in the Rust Belt - against Hillary Clinton (though Hillary won more of the popular vote thanks to the large urban bases in California and New York). This was accompanied by the rise of the so-called "Alternative-Right", a hardcore right-wing ideology that espouses ethnonationalism and nativism as its primary goals.

Almost immediately, the left accused Trump of colluding with Vladimir Putin in stealing the election from Clinton, and a two-year long investigation was launched (that ultimately found evidence Russian interference but nothing that could confirm Trump had actually worked with Putin), with both sides accusing one another of rigging the election. Reacting in anger to what they perceived as Trump's violent racism and bigotry, a collection of left-wing anarchist paramilitary groups formed, naming themselves "Anti-Fascist Action", or Antifa, for short. Antifa would disrupt conservative and right-wing rallies, assault people they ''believed'' to be fascists or Nazis, and destroy anything they thought of that went against their ideology, claiming that said fascists and Nazis could not be dealt with through non-violent means. In response to this, hardcore right-wing groups like the Proud Boys formed and began to clash on the streets with Antifa, turning the streets of cities like Portland into scenes eerily reminiscent of early-1920s Weimar Germany.

In 2018, a surge of left-wing populism enabled the Democrats to take back the House of Representatives, and hardcore left-wing candidates such as "Democratic Socialist" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez soon saw themselves propelled to the heights of political power. A political divide in the United States had formed; moderates and centrists soon found themselves on the back burner, and the American people polarized into ideologically incompatible camps who began to view each other as traitors to the Republic and wannabe-genocidal dictators, aided by the echo chambers created by social media, with some commentators and scholars predicting that the U.S might see another civil war within a generation.

In Europe, populist movements arose as a result of the perceived overbearing rules and regulations coming from the EU, the migration crisis as a result of the Syrian Civil War, and backlash against native governments trampling on people's rights. The most notable of these movements was the '16 British Exit movement (Brexit, for short), and soon, centrist governments in Europe soon found themselves out of power or greatly diminished, replaced by populist right-wing or populist left-wing governments, as the dream of the European Union looked more and more like a fantasy. Brexit itself has so far proven to be much simpler on paper than it has been in practice, and there is now a real chance it may lead to the UK fragmenting.

In Russia, Putin's imperialistic ambitions, and a paranoid fear of NATO expansion propelled the large nation into invading its neighbor, Ukraine, in order to "protect Russian minorities in the Donbass and Crimea". Ukraine, having just recently undergone a political revolution that ousted the pro-Russian administration, wasn't having it and fought the Russians and their separatist allies to a virtual standstill in the still-ongoing Donbass War. The Putin regime has also been implicated in several other acts of interfering with other world governments, perhaps as a way to exact revenge for how the West abandoned Russia to its fate after the Soviet Union fell. That said, Putin's stranglehold over Russian politics has set the stage for a major power vacuum to arise after his death, and there's no telling if the Russian government could survive in his absence.

Meanwhile, populist leaders and old-school authoritarians rose up in Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, Thailand, India and Pakistan, which has put a nail in the coffin for liberalism in those various democratic institutions. In China, President Xi Jinping removed the term limits and became China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping; this coincides with China reverting back to the foreign policy of the Ming Dynasty on steroids and trying to bring back the Sinocentric world order of old. Beijing's initialization of the Belt and Road Initiative throughout Eurasia and the String of Pearls geostrategic security bases around the Indian Ocean is a multinational project that dwarfs the Marshall Plan, and has spooked Washington into trying ways to at least counter some of China's ambitions to various results. The rise of China, combined with the political stagnation of the US and the decline of Western institutions, has bifurcated the Post-Cold War World Order. Unipolarity has ended.

The future of the world is in flux, as it always has been. Only time will tell whether or not the moderates will again take the reigns of power, or if the hardcore politicians maintain power for the foreseeable future. Or if the worst-case scenario predictions about the effects of global climate change come to pass and make that whole question a moot point.

==The World Powers nowadays==
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the massive economical crisis Russia suffered while adapting to the new capitalist system, the United States appeared as a global power with no real competition. For a while at least. The United States had to focus their attention in the War against Terror, a massive campaign against terrorism around the globe, in particular after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, which ended up with the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings through kidnapped planes. Since then, the United States has been present in the Middle East in one way or another. The world in general has had to adapt their military systems, being prepared to deal with another massive world war, and now have to fight small skirmishes against global terrorism, usually with a heavier weight of intelligence and counter-intelligence over actual military power. At the same time, they also have to deal with the ethical snarl of determining where the lines between "civilian" and "combatant" can be drawn.

Outside of the US, Europe continued the process of developing an unified political entity, which ended in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 with the birth of the European Union. With the fall of the Soviet Union, many ex-republics and other european countries under soviet control joined the EU, event that caused certain frictions with Russia. Also in this period we saw the fracture of Yugoslavia, with the conflicts that followed being some of the most bloody and brutal in Europe since the end of World War II.

[[Japan]], after the economic boom they enjoyed during most of the 80s, suffered one of the biggest asset price crashes in history, sinking their economy. Badly. This was a catastrophic event for many Japanese, and this crisis lasted for over a decade (technically they haven't recovered from it yet). While they are still one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the effects of the 90s crash has had a massive impact on their financial, business and general culture, to the point of being very difficult to find any Japanese work set in modern day that doesn't reference the crisis in any way.

Many of the old communist countries quickly changed into capitalist economies during the 80s and 90s. Nowadays, there are only a handful of countries that would title themselves as communists, with none of them following a purely pre-91 planned economy (China, Laos and Vietnam changed their economy into a capitalist-like system, North Korea is basically an absolute monarchy, and Cuba is steadily changing and opening their economy to the world).

After the massive humanitarian, agricultural and economical crisis that Mao's "Great Leap Forward" caused, [[Pretend|China adapted their communist system into an capitalist one hidden under a communist name,]] and became the ''de facto'' factory of the world, developing a massive industry and becoming a world power from the first time since more than a century. It's economic and political influence in the world is extremely
important in world politics. The relationship between China and the US after the Cold War is....how do we put it...shall we say complicated? The US-China relationship is akin to a marriage still hanging on because both partners are so much in debt with one another that divorcing would be too much trouble for its worth. However, China has had plenty of problems during the last decades, and things such as the failed "one child" policy and increasing industrial and environmental pollution. Still for all its inconvenience, China is the second most powerful geopolitical entity and has grown to dominate international relations whether detractors like it or not. [[Skub|Now the question on China's superpower status is nothing more than political skub amongst academics and political scientists, due to how....skubby the ''actual'' credentials to '''''be''''' a superpower is in the first place.]]

On the other hand of Eurasia, Russia as well tried to recover its influence in world politics, [[Skub|with different degrees of success]]; as mentioned before it now seems to have shifted focus to undermining the influence of other countries instead, particularly that of the US. After somewhat recovering from the massive economic crisis of the 90s, Russia is still one of the most powerful and influential countries worldwide, due to its military weight and nuclear arsenal. Whilst US-China relationship is an overcomplicated trainwreck of interdependence, espionage and trade/IP disputes, Russia-China relations seem to have patched up the divorce from the Sino-Soviet Split. This was due to the fact that both the Russian and Chinese government realized how pointless and petty the split was, and that teaming up was a far more better choice than being divided. Although fears and suspicions still exist, the 2014 Ukraine crisis forced Russia to ignore these old-time fears of China as the relationship towards the West nosedived back to the good old days of the Cold War. The drop in oil prices along with sanctions crippled Russia's already vulnerable economy to the point that, economically speaking, Russia became an economic dwarf. As you can imagine, you can't have another arms race if you don't even have the money to spend them. Fortunately for Russia, this is where China comes in. Although the EU still remains the largest trading partner for Russia, in the long term, trade with China would increase due to China's obviously ''large'' middle class. The Chinese are hungry and in ever present need for oil, gas and foodstuff, Russia is a giant oil and gas reserve with plenty of fertile ground to farm. Factor in the fact that a friendly China would safeguard Russia's underpopulated and vulnerable Far East and you will see a Russia even more against current Western institutions than the old Soviet days. Nevertheless, as mentioned before, they still have more nukes than anyone, but they have reduced that number considerably due to it's not necessary to have so many nukes anymore, and they are reeeealy expensive to build and maintain.

==Technology, science and culture==
After the world stopped fearing the nuclear holocaust that a MAD would've been, there were many shifts in technological interest. In particular, computer science grew and developed exponentially, with computers becoming a part of everyday life. Modern communications have been affected as well. It is difficult to grasp how big of an impact has the Internet had in shaping modern life but suffice to say it affects every aspect of our lives. Readers of this article are well aware of this since they are using the internet to read it. In particular, the world of entertainment has become really big thanks to this technological level. Videogames replaced movies as the biggest and most profitable entertainment media (thanks in part to the growth of mobile gaming).

Many of the concerns of the Cold War era still persist, and in many cases, they've only grown with time. Without a nuclear war to worry about, things as environmentalism has changed focus on global warming and the waste of polluting elements into the ocean as their effects grow increasingly noticeable. Another issue relating to culture would be the rise of populist movements in various regions around the globe, from every bend of the ideological spectrum, mostly as a result of the increasing globalization and the presumed decline of what was once the nation-state.

==The appeal of Post-Cold War world==
Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on in their fight against the new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West - the radical Islamist "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, whose goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country, to establishing a global caliphate.

Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years if one doesn't count the Korean War, which the US never officially declared war during and has spent most of its existence cold.), pitting the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting.

[[Urban Fantasy]] and Superheroes are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different.

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Samurai

2019-08-16T17:59:59Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A547:5B60:F4A9:5E79: /* Samurai Weapons and equipment */

[[image:Samurai_guy.jpg|thumb|150px|right|Fig. 1.1: A samurai]]
The '''Samurai''' were a warrior class which existed in premodern [[Japan]]. Generally heavy cavalrymen in their most prominent phase of development, the class was largely hereditary and eventually became the main holders of power, Samurai could be thought of as rough analogues to western knights. When referring specifically to a samurai who is in a militant rather than courtly or administrative role, the Japanese preferred to use the term '''bushi'''.

==History==
In the Heian Period (794 to 1185) the Imperial government in Kyoto slowly turned to rely on a type of militarized peasants given special offices by the land holding court nobility to serve as cavalry soldiers in wars of conquest against the people of Northern Honshu and as enforcers against rebels and people late with their taxes (who were often one and the same). As they were full-time fighters, they were generally more reliable than the forced peasant levies which they had been using before. As time went on, these offices became more and more hereditary, with families of Samurai emerging. That said, it would remain possible for a commoner to become a Samurai up until 1600. Indeed, Japan's defacto unifier Oda Nobunaga was quite fond of these promotions and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nobunaga's successor, rose from nothing to eventually reach the highest positions.

After the end of the Heian Period, central power broke down and local leaders took power. In this time of division, the Samurai became the main fighters in war as well as leaders of soldiers (both Samurai and Ashigaru [peasant infantry]) on the battlefield and eventually as political leaders as well, founding powerful clans whose lords (Daimyo) ruled over fiefdoms and vied for power with each other. Several clans would attain the position of Shogun (the hereditary supreme military commander and defacto monarch of Japan) for the next few centuries, but their rule was generally weak and broke down into more infighting, especially in the 15th and 16th century.

Eventually, order was restored under the Tokugawa Shogunate, in which the land was divided among various prominent samurai clans and lower ranking samurai served as policemen, bureaucrats, and public officials. The Tokugawa also imposed a formalized hereditary class system and made it basically impossible for a non-samurai to become a samurai. After the Boshin War (1868-1869) and the subsequent Meiji Restoration, the Samurai class was formally abolished with the rest of the Japanese feudal system. In government, samurai were replaced by non-hereditary civil servants and in military affairs they were replaced by a new conscript army. While some samurai resented the loss of their power and attempted to rebel, the majority of them were able to exploit their superior education and connections and found new positions as teachers, gun makers, industrialists, military officers, and government officials. (Related historical factoid; with the abolition of the Samurai class, many of the swordsmiths who served them had to find new careers, [[wikipedia:Japanese_kitchen_knife#Production|with many turning to knife-making]]. Remember that next time you buy a quality Japanese knife, [[Awesome|you literally own something descended from Japan's finest swordsmiths]])

== Samurai Weapons and equipment ==
[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Samurai were very fond of these]]
*''Yumi'': Composite bows made of bamboo. The first Samurai were mainly archers and archery would remain a very big part of samurai fighting. both as mounted archers and on foot. Yumi are notably asymmetrical in shape, with the user holding the bow about one third down the shaft's length.
*''Yari'': [[Spear]]s, usually used to fend off cavalry and as lances. Some had pronged heads, some did not.
*''Kama'': Originally a farming tool, like scythe-shaped sickle, it get the same role [[warhammer]]s did in European warfare, or more accurately an eastern-European chekan, since it had no hammer side for bashing skulls, and it's beak was bladed. While it was mostly associated with ninja, Samurai were also fond of it, and even get the two-handed version - ''Nagikama'' when metallic armour become widespread even amongst ashigaru, and rich samurai clad themselves in bullet-proof imported Spanish plate.
*''Naginata'': [[Pole-arm]]s with a sword blade at the end. In general, it was better against infantry than a spear and better against cavalry than a sword. It also had a more powerful slash, even if it did have more of a risk of being decapitated. Female samurai in particular favored this weapon, as its long reach allowed them to compensate for any disadvantage they might have had in raw strength. In Samurai weddings the appropriate wedding gift for the family of the bride to give the happy couple was a Naginata.
*''Kanabo'': A two-handed war club shaped like a baseball bat and covered in metal spikes. Either made from a wooden base or solid iron, this weapon was relatively rare as it required a lot of strength and skill to use effectively. Needless to say, you wouldn't want to get hit by one as it could smash bones on a warhorse and crush armor. This weapon is also heavily associated with [[Oni]], due to the aforementioned strength requirement and altogether brutal nature of the kanabo.
*''[[Firearm|Tanegashima]]'': in 1543, some Portuguese ships got to Japan in search of business opportunities (specifically the Island of Tanegashima). When they got to Japan, they sold a few of their matchlocks muskets to a Daimyo in the south of Japan, who promptly had his smiths take them apart and soon had them replicated, which inspired others to do the same. The Samurai quickly became very keen on these new weapons and made heavy use of them. By the end of the 16th century Japan had the highest number of guns per capita of any place in the world, had good line fire tactics and had worked out sights and boxes to keep rain from putting out the matches. Matchlock pistols (''bajōzutsu'') were used by cavalry. During the Tokugawa period, the manufacturing Japan declined (though it did not completely die away) as there was no pressing internal or external threats, so they stuck with what designs they had until the 19th century when they began buying and replicating western guns. A major reason for Imperial Victory in the Boshin War was that that the Samurai had control the key gun making regions sided with the Imperialists.
*''[[Sword]]'': <s>[[Katanas are Underpowered in d20| Their katanas of destruction]]</s> Several varieties, including no-dachi (huge blades intended for anti-cavalry work with a blade up to 180cm long to cut through rider and horse), wakizashi (a short sword with a 30-60cm long blade often used either as a last ditch weapon or ritual suicide, but could also be wielded alongside a katana) and katana (the general purpose sword between 60 and 90 cm long). Originally their blades were straight, but eventually became single edged and curved. The iron ore in Japan has a high level of impurities, as such Japanese swordsmiths worked out a method of folding and refolding steel during forging to work out impurities. This made them rather sharp and fairly strong, though they were also fairly brittle and not the best weapons for use against heavier armor like metal plates. Additionally, samurai swords were more a symbol of their position and authority than the super death weapon romantics would insist (soft armor like silk and leather held no real resistance though). This is because after the unification of Japan the array of swords samurais carry were reserved to their class alone, no other class may carry the arrangement of swords samurais carry. This is why samurai normally carry out their popularized duels using their swords than their full arsenal; it is a matter of their class' honor than it being the ultimate weapon. In actual combat, however, the swords were normally reserved as backup weapons or were used against lightly armored targets, since they have long learned that poking their opponents to death with pointy sticks and/or shooting them with guns were more pragmatic options against other Samurai. It was also the go to weapon to execute people.
[[image:Samurai armor.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Samurai Armor, those dents were made by musket bullets]]
*''Armor'': Several varieties existed, including chainmail, scale armor, lamellar (Small plates of metal held together by wire), laminated high quality wood, leather and eventually metal plate. Often suits of samurai armor would incorporate several types of armor, having laminar leg and shoulder guards with plate torso armor. Generally this would be backed up with leather and padded silk (silk having a high tensile strength, which meant that it offered above average protection against arrows) and would often be laminated to keep off rust. Towards the end of the 16th century, western elements (such as western style breastplates and morion style helmets) were incorporated into this, either being bought from European merchants or made locally. In general it was fairly good for its time period, sometimes even being proofed against musket fire, though it did not offer the same degree of coverage as contemporary European counterparts and often sacrificed protection for speed and agility.
* [[Shuriken]]: Yes, samurai used these too.
* [[War Fan]]: One of the quirkier weapons in a Samurai's arsenal. They would sometimes carry normal fans for cooling themselves off or to use for signaling to allied troops. However, all-metal fans were also made, which could double as a blunt sidearm or small shield for civilian wear, especially if they were worried about assassination attempts in otherwise unarmed meetings.

== Female Samurai ==
As the Samurai gradually became a formalized hereditary class the term came to apply to both men and women from samurai families. The daughters of Samurai clans were like their brothers trained to fight so they could literally hold the fort while the men were off on campaign, to help train up the next generation and to protect themselves and their kids in an era of warring clans. The general term for a Female Samurai under arms is Onna Bushi (woman warrior).

== Ashigaru ==
[[image:Ashigaru.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Ashigaru: Because even a Honorable Samurai Warrior needs a helping hand now and again]]
As previously mentioned the Samurai were not alone during their day, backing them up would be Ashigaru. The practice began with Samurai bringing along a few peasants (either volunteers or conscripted levies) with some basic weapons (usually Yari) to help them out on and off the battlefield as infantry and offering them a cut of the loot and the prospects of promotion in society as incentives. As time went on and wars became more common, this practice continued and was gradually refined. Since the various clans of japan were in close proximity to each other some degree of military training became the norm for many peasants while organization improved, while samurai began investing in armor and better weapons for their Ashigaru, as well as better organization and training. By the 1500s, Ashigaru generally had some metal torso armor and a helmet and had been refined into professional soldiers that could be employed as pikemen and musketeers that, while not as good at fighting as Samurai were still capable of holding the line pretty damn well. Many Samurai clans had their start with a Ashigaru who managed to impress his superiors on the battlefield and eventually there was a hazy grey area between well armed ashigaru and poor samurai. When the Tokugawa Shogunate was established the Ashigaru military class was abolished with the remaining Ashigaru either being integrated into the samurai class or demobilized and sent back to the fields to be farmers.

== Bushido ==

In general samurai (or at least those who got somewhere besides an early grave) were an opportunistic, pragmatic and practical lot. Doing what was needed to be done to win and go forward and often quite innovative in how they did it. Even so, they did not want their subordinates to be a bunch of unruly armed drunken louts, a hazard to themselves and others. As such they were generally instructed to follow Buddhist and Confucian teachings and (especially for the latter) loyalty to one's superiors was a key part in this. Eventually you got rough codes of conduct emerging for samurai called Bushido (Way of the Samurai), which stressed (along with loyalty) frugality, honesty, duty and the importance of conducting their tasks and affairs in a proper manner. As is the case with other people elsewhere some Samurai were more pious than normal and some of these spent time as Buddhist Monks.

During the 1920s through the end of World War II, this rough philosophy would be blown out of proportion and mixed with a heaping dose of nationalism, at which point it became a big part of the standard school curriculum. This was done because the generals who controlled Japan at that time sought a militarized society to crank out fanatical conscripts to conquer China and East Asia with. This manifested in fanatical loyalty, a willingness to die for their cause, and utter contempt for anyone who ever surrendered. When modern people think of Bushido in the west, they are usually thinking of this, or at least a cleaned up version of it [[Grimdark|as the Imperial Japanese Army could be a rather nasty lot to say the least]].

== Fictional Treatments ==

Like other "real world" things, the samurai has had a rich fictional history grow up around it in modern times that is only marginally connected to the historical realities of feudal Japan. Like the [[knight|knight-errant]] of Medieval romances or the [[gunslinger]] of American westerns, the fictional samurai of the ''jidai-geki'' period drama is often a ronin or "wave man," an old derogatory term for a masterless samurai, who wanders the Earth bringing peace and order to a chaotic world by cutting down evil in a series of sword-battles as sensational as they are unrealistic. Bonus points if he gets tragically shot down by a wuss with a [[firearm]], tearfully marking the end of an era as he heroically perishes while saving the day. Sure, it might not be 100% historically accurate, but do you really give a shit? Or do you want to see a badass hero solo an army with his super-sword skills?

== Tabletop RPGs ==

Samurai are a prominent fixture in just about any fantasy setting with an "ancient Japan" derivative somewhere in the world, which is to say that they're a prominent fixture in just about any fantasy setting.

In [[Dungeons and Dragons]], the samurai was introduced as a class in the ''[[Oriental Adventures]]'' supplement of [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 1st edition. It never really caught on. Then, it was re-introduced in third edition. To make a long story short, it sucked. Later, under the quasi-D&D system of [[Pathfinder]], the samurai class became a tweaked variant of the [[Cavalier]] class, which, in addition to making sense (the cavalier class is basically a mounted [[knight]], and samurai were basically the Japanese equivalent) also makes them mechanically playable. One archetype, the sword saint, is more in line with the traditional fantasy samurai, who forgoes his mounted class features for lightning-quick draw-fighting and other melee powers that let him [[awesome|cause a sonic boom every time he quick-draws someone to death]].

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] gave D&D its most competent samurai ever in the form of a [[Fighter]] subclass in November 2016. It's essentially a super-tank, as it can give itself temporary hitpoints and advantage on all of it attacks as a bonus action for a turn three times per short rest, proficiency on Wisdom saving throws (which changes to your choice of Int or Cha saves if you've already got that power), can trade advantage on a combat strike to instead strike that target twice once per turn, and can delay taking damage that would reduce it to zero hitpoints until the end of an immediately gained bonus turn once per long rest. Oh, and it also gets to add its Wisdom modifier to its Charisma modifier when making Charisma checks to please or persuade those of high social rank along with either a bonus language or free proficiency in either History, Insight or Persuasion. Appropriate, given that the samurai were courtiers and nobility as well as warriors.

Outside the gigantic D&D juggernaut, most of the player characters in [[Legend of the Five Rings]] are going to be samurai of one stripe or another, though unlike D&D it refers to the entire social class, including courtiers and sorcerer-priests along with the warriors.

[[Shadowrun]] uses the term "street samurai" to refer to runners who tend to be of a violent persuasion, though the term no longer explicitly refers to melee-focused characters. One of the megacorps, Renraku, has got an elite hit-team called the Red Samurai, who ''do'' rock the futuristic samurai armor look, though they use guns and explosives along with their katanas.

Appropriately enough, the Japanese RPG [[Log Horizon]] has Samurai as one of its eleven base classes.

{{D&D3-Classes}}
{{Pathfinder-Classes}}

== See also ==
* [[Rising Sons]]: Samurai Space Marines
* [[Elder Scrolls|The Blades]]: The former protectors of the Emprah, who also hunting dragons with [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|samurai sword]].
* [[Samurai Jack]]: A FOOLISH SAMURAI THAT WIELD A MAGIC SWORD MADE OUT OF PURE GOODNESS AGAINST AKU, THE SHAPESHIFTER OF DARKNESS, THE MASTER OF MASTER, THE SHOGUN OF SORROW.

[[Category:History]] [[Category: Legend of the Five Rings]]

Sword

2019-08-16T17:35:57Z

2601:582:8602:C02A:A547:5B60:F4A9:5E79: /* Swords and dual wielding */

[[image:gladius.jpg|thumb|300px|right|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 various 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.

*'''Nipponese Wankers''': People who claims that [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|Japanese swords are THE BEST]], magically sharp and indestructible because the metal has been folded a thousands times, able to cut through a Tank's armour and pierce steel plate. Western swords are, by comparison, unsharpened metal slabs used by hairy barbarians.

*'''Western Wankers''': On the opposite spectrum, these guys think that katanas are at best crude baseball bats that stands no chance against GLORIOUS EUROPEAN PLATE, and that by comparison European swords are the best thing around in therms of technology, sharpness and usability

[[Skub|All of them are stupid]]. Swords were not the be-all end-all of medieval warfare. Other weapons did have their advantages. [[Mace]]s did concussive damage even if someone was wearing heavy armor and could break bones. [[Spear]]s had a longer reach and were better against cavalry. Halberds could deliver a devastating chop at range. 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. There is a reason why any civilization that developed metalworking (and a couple that didn't) eventually came up with swords in one form or another, and there is likewise a reason why the sword was not the only weapon ever created.

In the same way, people comparing western and eastern swords should take in account that while Europe was and is a big place with lots of trade and plenty of steel, Japan was not. So European swords faced lots of tough metal armour, and there was a sort of "arms race" where swords became increasingly good against armour, that in turn became better at stopping swords and so on. This got to a point where people stopped carrying [[shield|shields]] around because armour was just that good, and swords became increasingly narrow and quick because slashing or piercing plate armour was totally ineffective and your best bet was stabbing weak points.

Japan on the contrary had a lot less metal around, so there was less armour and good quality metal was rarer and costly. There was just no point in developing pointy (AH!) uber-piercing swords, and they had to use the metal they had in a smarter way, such as the practice of 'folded steel', a smithing technique to make crappy steel more passable in quality (hence that '1,000-folded metal' bullshit that weeaboos go on about). This does NOT mean they were worse: they were perfectly good for use in the role they had in the place they were, and developing European-like swords would be pointless. This is discussed below in greater details.

== So why are swords so popular? ==
Swords generally have five major advantages over other weapons:
* '''Ease of carrying''' - Almost all types of swords fit in a sheath or scabbard and are generally compact and light enough to not cause any discomfort when carried on person. If you have a sword, you can keep it as a backup weapon for when your main one is at major disadvantage, is damaged or lost. You can also comfortably carry it out of the battlefield as a self-defense weapon.
* '''Versatility''' - While most battlefield weapons are specialized in chopping, piercing or crushing people, swords can generally do anything, if a bit worse than any weapon specialized in it. Even if the sword is specialized, like the thrusting rapier or the slashing sabre it still gives you more options than say an axe or a spear.
* '''Reach''' - Swords are good at a wide array of ranges, most importantly at extremely close range, where most other battlefield weapons suffer badly. If you're stuck in a close melee, fighting indoors or in the narrow streets, sword is your friend.
* '''Defense''' - Swords are made of metal, are generally quite long and most have crossguards or some other hand protection, which means that aside from the shield no other weapon is as good at parrying enemy blows.
* '''Lethality''' - Swords are great at disabling and killing unarmored humans with as little strength spent as possible. They generally don't cut through any kind of armour, but on the plus side most people didn't wear full sets on the battlefield (and in the hot regions it was quite common for people to go to battle almost naked), and advanced control of the blade sword provides makes hitting unarmored body parts easier than most other weapons.

There is also another half reason of '''status''' - quality metal was often relatively expensive, and the skills required to make a sword were likewise very specialised and expensive. Therefore, swords were a good way to show off how baller you were.

Considering all of this, sword was mostly used on the battlefield as a backup weapon, as while most soldiers through history went to battle with something way more specialized, almost anyone who could carry the sword would, often even choosing it over better armour if he cannot afford or carry both. Out of the battlefield it held the title the best self-defense weapon up until revolver pistols were invented.

That being said, 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 and have you ever heard of people going hunting with a sword? Going against a 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. Their sole function is to kill other humans. To warriors and societies run by warriors it's only natural that some symbolism would wear off.

Considering all this, it's strange that swords are the go-to weapons of your average melee [[murderhobo]]s 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. Then again, murderhobos almost exclusively fight in duels and smaller skirmishes rather than large formation warfare, where bringing a pike or other main battlefield weapon would be stupid in comparison. The close confines of the average dungeon also rule out the use of polearms in most cases, to say nothing of the ability to carry a sword and still leave the other hand free.

== 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, or throwing you off your balance and flails (at full speed) can hardly be parried at all, but that's to be expected given it's their main shtick. However the sword shines in attacking first before they build up the momentum which the sword's 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 more skill than most other close combat weapons, 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. While high skill floor is a definite disadvantage, skill ceiling with a sword fighting is also much higher than with most other weapons, meaning if you can dump a lot of time into training sword training would give you more result - one more reason for it to be a staple weapon of warrior/noble classes in most culture. Additionally, 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 if you're really hard pressed (let's say somebody comes at you in armor), 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 (a German technique called "mordhau"); after all, this is the origin for English word "pummel". Or you could 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 of these are fairly good techniques for very close quarters combat.

*'''Availability and Reliability:''' Swords ran the gamut between very cheap and very expensive, more so than pretty much any other weapon of the time. Using England in the middle ages as an example, a sword could cost between 3 pence and thousands of pounds. A line archer made 3 pence a day on average while a professional archer made around 10. This means that the cheapest of swords were extremely affordable for pretty much anyone who actually needed them (remember, mythical beasts didn't tend to run around in real life), even if the sword was of lower quality it was still a tool of war and useable. Depending on the period of time and region, swords were legally made "nobility only" weapons of status, though in practice many people got around this through rule lawyering, most commonly by simply calling a particular type of sword a "big knife." Fun-fact: the rapier (commonly thought of as a nobility-only dueling sword) was an extremely common back-up weapon for soldiers.

*'''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 pretty much any armor 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 (and likely more poor bastards) 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 unless you manage to get that sharp point between the gaps between the plates. Another issue with stabs is that they lack in stopping power, and while they're considerably more immediately lethal than any other attacking move other than chopping the head off, they're not ''instantly'' lethal, so they guy you've just impaled on your sword still have few seconds to take you with him if he's angry, crazy or high enough.
:*''Half-swording'', or grabbing your sword by the blade. It may seem utterly retarded at first, and you need a bit of practice not to cut off your fingers, but works surprisingly well against armoured opponent. If you encounter an enemy in full plate or even chain-mail or a padded gamberson, you'd better forget about hitting him with a blade, as it would only serve to damage your weapon, as swords don't cut through metal. Like at all. 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 with a pommel or a cross-guard like a makeshift mace or warhammer respectively. By the end of the Medieval period, when plate became widespread, pommels and cross guards became arguably more important than the blade itself, especially if you want to [[Meme|End Him Rightly]]. And if you hold your sword with the main hand on the handle and the off-hand on the blade close to the tip you get a short spear or a dagger with a very long handle, that you can jam between the plates of your opponent's armor. It was also a good way to use the Zweihander against pike and halberd formations: You used the long blade to cast the pikes aside, and when you're inside the ranks you switch to half-swording and started slashing and stabbing around.
:*"Chopping" is more common in axes, but the element is still present in some swords. The chopping value of a heavy, weighted sword allows it to slice through tissue and bone, cutting off part or all or a limb or neck. In areas with plentiful armour, this feature is less effective and therefore less common. However, warm areas such as Southeast Asia have machete-like blades intended to do just that.

== Types of Swords ==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">

Unlike, say, the [[spear]] or the [[mace]], which were pretty much the same all over, swords, being essentially jack-of-all-trades weapons that could also be designed to excel in specific circumstances, 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.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
===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 of 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. While bronze is quite easy to forge and shape, it's relative rarity compared to iron and it's softness means that bronze wasn't an ideal cutting material; swords made of bronze can't be too large or they'll bend after a strike, and they can't hold an edge as well. Later societies moved to iron, and then steel, once they mastered the smelting techniques necessary.

[[image:Khopesh.jpg|thumb|300px|right|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 [[mail|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 the 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 [[polearm]]s. The fact that Roman legionnaire maniples were able to crush Macedonian phalanxes in melee should tell you a lot about their effectiveness (though outflanking 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. (Historians are actually still divided on whether the pilum, a cross between a javelin and a spear, or the gladius was the legionnaire's main weapon. What is know is that each legionnaire carried two pilii and a gladius, but whether they were supposed to throw both and engage with their swords or keep one to engage in melee and only draw their sword later is unclear, with surviving evidence hinting at both tactics being used.)

===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. This was also the sword that developed the cruciform crossguard, which would be used by nearly every European sword design due to its defense value and versatility. 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. The standby weapon of knights, it retained some degree of use even after the advent of longswords due to their greater degree of adaptability. When most people hear the word "sword", this sword is what most often comes to mind. Often incorrectly called a longsword in games and other fiction.
:*'''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 [[wikipedia:Ulfberht_swords|Ulfberht swords]].
:*'''Messer''' A straight single-edged sword, this German weapon basically became the poor man's sword because, according to the law, [[rules lawyer|its construction meant]] [[wat|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 man 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 (though it could be wielded with one hand in order to use a shield in the other, albeit not quite as effectively).
*'''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. Interestingly enough, there is very little information on how falchions were used in combat, though it is theorized that it was used with a shield (quite unlike the common fantasy depiction of a big two-handed fuck-off machete).
*'''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 most armor, 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 or to guard vulnerable flanks. 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 [[landsknecht]]s 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 [[wikipedia:quatrefoil|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, which is why Katanas have there distinctive curve, the different types of steel cool at different rates. 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 fanboyism, as it's actually an OK weapon in the hands of complete amateur, unlike most other swords). Katanas were pretty good all-around weapons that excelled at slashing - as you might expect from a relatively short (60 to 73 cm long - a longsword would be 89 to 109 cm long), thick, heavy, curved blade with a long handle, and was still decent at stabbing - being thick means that it didn't flex much and so the energy of the blow was transferred very efficiently. You didn't swing it like a baseball bat (though of course you don't swing any sword like a 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-ryu) 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. Contrary to popular belief, the katana was not the main battle weapon of the samurai, that was the bow or the naginata, a glaive-like pole-weapon. They were, however, pretty valuable status symbols as only the samurai class was allowed to wield them. Following the dissolution of the samurai during the Meiji Restoration and the subsequent ban on carrying swords for all but a handful of former lords and military officers, the katana's use declined in favor of the cruder but more easily mass-produced guntō until the end of World War II when sword manufacture and all sword-related martial arts were banned entirely. Following the end of the US occupation in 1953, the new Japanese government re-legalized katana construction, but with hefty limitations to ensure that katana quality could not decline over time. Modern Japanese swordsmiths now must be licensed (which is possible only after a five-year apprenticeship) in order to produce authentic katanas, and even then they are only allowed to produce two full-sized katanas per month (the katanas themselves must also be registered with the Japanese government).
:*'''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 [[/v/|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, [[Gabriel Seth|Makara Jûrôzaemon Naotaka]], who actually [[Kor'sarro Khan|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 [[Landsknecht|specialized units]], unlike in Japan where only specialists individual fighters used them (contrary to popular Shogun Total War induced beliefs).
:*'''Kodachi''' Like the Messer mentioned above, a sword that's ''technically'' a knife for classes not allowed to own/carry swords.
::*'''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 smith in a pseudo-brand sort of way) 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 [[Tau|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 [[Derp|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 [[Edgy|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 [[Ninja]]s 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).

[[File:Chinese_Dadao.jpg|thumb|300px|right|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.

*'''Bolo:''' A Phillipeno sword that resembles a machete in almost every aspect. Originally designed as an agricultural tool for cutting rattan and bamboo, it comes in many shapes and lengths, but your battle-ready bolo was typically between 60-90cm with a wide, slightly curved blade. The bolo lacks a cross guard, leaving the hand vulnerable, but the traditional martial arts of the region (Kali/Eskrima/Arnis, depending on when/where/who you’re asking) favor using it more like an axe, with the sword arm frequently in constant motion. When the Spanish showed up in the 16th/17th centuries they outlawed both the weapon and the martial arts, leading it to be kept alive through practice and ritual using hardened rattan sticks which are still used for practice in the sport today. Sometimes paired with a second Bolo (for maximum shred) or a dagger called a Begaw or, the latter of which grew in popularity under the Spanish who imported their style of Espada y Daga (English: sword and dagger).

===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, and as such a macuahuitl could cut through flesh and bone like nobody's business. But this sharpness comes from obsidian's nature as a 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 and leave 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. Fantasy scimitars and real scimitars are often two entirely different beasts. Fantasy scimitars tend to look like thinner, slightly more curved sabers while real scimitars were usually very thin and had such an extreme curve it was essentially impossible to stab with them.

*'''Yatagan:''' An inward-curved sword, popularized by Turkish Janissary, and adopted by many nations that fought against them or were conquered by them. Legally counted as a knife (seeing a trend here?), since Janissary being slave-soldiers weren't allowed to wield swords which were weapons of free people. Notable by being the least skill-demanding sword in the Middle East and later Balkans and being not as terrible at fighting people in armor as most other swords.

===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 [[Firearm|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''': Not actually a sword but a technique for making a blade 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. This is all theory, of course, as the minor discomfort from parrying a flammarded blade would only really build up over time... and personal combat doesn't last that long.

*'''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 as often ass axes tend to), 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 (as this factors in ''after'' the battle it ''does not give the wielder any advantage'', maybe aside some psychological pressure if his opponent knows about this effect), 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. Once again, this is all theory and there has been no proven advantage to having a flammarded blade. In fact, many historians lump the flamberge style weapons in with the flambard style weapons as it is simply that, a blade style.

*'''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 katanas 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 smallsword; 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. While often portrayed in media as light and flexible due to their conflation with their descendents, the modern fencing foil and épée, real life rapiers were nothing but: they were about as heavy as an arming swords and about as stiff as technologically possible, and given they where longer then arming swords, fighting with a rapier was actually more taxing on the wielder's strength, contrary to "go-to weapon for [[-4 Str|girls and feminine guys]]" reputation they have nowadays. Rapiers were actually extremely common as infantry weapons and were not the sole purview of the nobility, with their identification as a noble's weapon occurring long after their military use had ceased. Smallswords are still used by some military branches as part of their formal/ceremonial uniforms.

*'''Pistol Sword:''' In the 1600s, someone got a bright idea that seemed ingenious at the time: what if you stuck a [[firearm|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 the 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. Apparently Russians weren't paying attention to German and Turkish history, and predictably the Caucasians made a saber that by legal definition counted as a big knife and named it (you guess it) "A Big Knife", or Shashka in Adyghe. It's heavier and straighter than a proper saber and lacks a 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 handled the brunt of peacekeeping/oppressing (depending on your view) work in the region found out it was a damn fine weapon for the task and adopted it to the point it quickly became their hallmark weapon. Later shashkas became so popular in Russia they almost pushed out sabers from the military and civilian use and by the late 18th century only hussars and high nobility were still using sabers instead of shashkas. 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, it is just as effective at cutting through flesh, and the ease of their acquisition by civilians has made them popular among guerillas and other paramilitary forces, especially in Latin America and parts of West Africa.

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== 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 [[C.S.Goto|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. Useful for carrying, not combat. 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. Carrying a sword on your back is for hiking across open country, NOT marching to the battlefield. Soldiers armed with large two-handed swords carried them into battle much like their [[spear]]-wielding colleagues: [[Dwarf|held over the shoulders as the soldiers sung songs of war and victory.]]

===Sharpness===
There are two misconceptions about swords - one is that combat swords were rather blunt and relied on the power of impact, and another that they were sharp enough to shave with and could cut padded cloth with little to no effort. The truth as always in the middle - blunt blades are obviously stupidly impractical (such a "blunt edge" comes from a flanged mace, not a sword), while extra sharpness leads to extra brittleness making the edge extremely vulnerable to chipping. Sure, in some cultures swordsmiths could get away with razor sharpness if metallic armor, shields, etc. weren't widespread and fencing styles developed in ways to avoid parrying, but really it only lasted for long in Japan. Now with ''modern'' swordsmithing, using modern materials and techiques it's quite possible to make the blade both resilient and razor sharp, but even then most HEMA practitioners prefer reasonably sharp swords, because they last fucking FOREVER when made with top-grade modern steel, while razor-sharp ones made from the same stuff would ''eventually'' wear down from use. Ironically, some of the absolute sharpest swords are also the most primitive. Stone swords made from obsidian or other vitreous (i.e, glass-like) rocks are absolutely sharp enough to shave with. However, any sort of vitreous material tends to be quite brittle. Some swordsmiths circumvented this by setting many sharp "teeth" into a sturdier frame.

===Cutting off limbs and heads===
Possible, but heavily impractical and dangerous (to one attempting it). The reason is swords are really bad at cutting through solid hard materials, and one of such materials is bone. You can cut through a bone with a sword, but it needs excessive force, meaning either excessive speed of a swing or mass of a sword itself, to a point it becomes hard to control the sword and can lead to a dangerous overswing that leaves you '''dead''' open to counterattack. And because sword blade isn't magically immune it '''would''' blunt, chip, or even break in contact with a human bone. Worse even, it could ''stuck'' in the bone, effectively disarming you. And the best part is, cutting ''to'' the bone most times does as much damage as cutting ''through'' it - a man with his neck arteries and veins cut is just as dead as the one with his head chopped off, and an arm or leg with severed muscles and strings is just as useless and painful as the one cut off clean. And don't even start with cleaving people in half. Machetes are better at damaging bone because they are meant to chop hard material such as wood and sugarcane, though at best it would cause a compound fracture. There are a few varieties of swords created for untrained peasants that were made to be both heavy and cheap, hoping to cause a single limb or head cut.

=== 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 media and instead only attack in short intervals before retreating and attacking again or until one of you suffers a fatal wound. This was the case 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 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMqlFY7T64 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 are questionable. It would dig huge divots out of the softer sword, if not both of them at once. Sword fighters of some schools tended 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, while in others edge-to-edge was considered an acceptable move, since it provided better grip, more reliable block, better use of cross-guards and inevitable blade damage could be repaired later, while your cracked skull could not. It was a matter of [[skub]] both when sword-fighting was relevant and in modern HEMA community.

For those wondering why movies do this if it's so unrealistic and bad, it's simple: most actors and stunt doubles aren't trained swordsmen. Having untrained actors swing at each other's swords instead of each other's faces (a practice called "Flynning" or "pirate halves" after Errol Flynn swashbuckling pirate movies) is just safer and easier, with the added benefit of cool metal-on-metal sound effects.

=== Swords and dual wielding ===

If you go to battle with a one-handed sword, you'd generally want some other weapon in your off hand as well. Ideally it should be a shield or a buckler, but lets face it: if you're going into battle, a sword is probably your sidearm, and your main weapon is likely to be two-handed or incompatible with shields in some other ways, and if you use a sword for self-defense against bandits or assassins on the town's street, chances are you didn't bring a huge-ass shield as part of your civilian outfit, and the only other weapon on you would likely be a dagger. So you grab your ''other'' sidearm, like a dagger or a small axe, or maybe even a mace or warhammer. Why not another sword? Well, wielding a single sword requires a lot of skill and attention to do it properly, and operating two requires ''more'' than twice of both, since you use the other sword with your off-hand, which by definition is weaker and less dexterous. That's not to say, master swordsmen didn't try it - some of them did, often with quite a success on tourneys and duels, but none of them was crazy enough to go to war with double swords when sword and something less skill-intensive is so much more sensible. Once you got two weapons in your hand you ''do not'' get to attack twice as often, like it's normally portrayed in traditional or video games - a good attack move requires muscle effort from a whole body, but by attacking with both hands simultaneously (like with showy "scissors" move movies and video games so love) you can only use your arms and to an extend shoulder strength. What dual wielding is really about, is attacking with one weapon and defending with another. This allows you to parry an enemy attack with one weapon and simultaneously retaliate with another, or attack with one weapon without compromising your own defense (much). So contrary to how it's normally portrayed in media and games, dual-wielding is a defensive technique rather then offensive one. And you'd need that extra defense, since with one-handed weapons you would have lower reach. This is also the reason why people didn't block enemy attacks by both their weapons crossed, which is another showy but extremely impractical move popularized by media - one weapon is almost always enough to deflect a blow, and using both you'd just throw away the immediate counter-attack feature, which is the prime selling point of double-wielding. Now double-wielding might look to you like a poor man's sword-and-shield style, but there is one more thing: your options for attack angles are doubled with two different lethal weapons no less, which makes defending against your attacks hell of a lot more difficult for your opponent. Sure, shields and bucklers could and would be used for bashing people, but it's nowhere near as lethal as dagger or axe to the face.

Now, in the Renaissance there was such a thing called the main-gauche or "parrying dagger," but these usually required special training to use effectively, and some models came with specialized designs to aid in parrying; for example, "swordbreakers" had notches to catch the enemy blade and twist it out of their hands, while the trident dagger had spring-loaded sides that could also catch the blade. However, daggers were not used to attack unless the wielder was able to lock blades and close in... which would put you in range of the other guy's dagger as well.

Another notable exception are the Chinese Butterfly Swords, a pair of short single-edged swords used in Wing Chun martial arts. The blades have to be short so that the user doesn't accidentally stab themselves as they swing them around; its also very handy to keep them short since using the swords just require the same moves as unarmed Wing Chun, so no specialized training was needed if you were already a practitioner. As far as we know, these were never used as battlefield weapons, but were pretty handy in a street fight.

=== Cutting arrows and bullets ===

Actually, this is possible: if hit straight-on, a sword will cut a bullet in half in mid-flight. Sometimes you'll see this as evidence by the Katana-cultists ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPQ1W3qobys The glorious bastards actually tried it!]) that the Katana is a uniquely sharp/strong weapon, but ''any'' blade will cut through a fast-moving block of lead, even a butter knife. 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). Also the arrow won't split in half like a bullet, for various reasons related to wood grain, arrow wobble, etc. and unrelated to swords. The thing is, if you can move so fast that you can deflect incoming projectiles (the projectile from a decent [[Bows and Arrows|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. As you can see in the test video above the blade only broke on the seventh impact, but each bullet being cut chipped away at the blade... and would all other things have been equal, forging a blade costs one hell of a lot more money and time than casting and loading a cartridge. Just get the hell out of the way!

=== 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. Pirates were partially famed for this combo. Rather than shoot at range and run the risk of missing, 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, only reloading in opportune times. Beyond pirates, this was basically universal practice among all civilian or military sailors at the time.

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, they gave them the weapons they requested: small, handheld weapons that were easy to use and wield within the confines of a trench: especially pistols, trench knives, clubs, sharpened shovels (and later trench guns and sub-machineguns). These were much easier to bring to bear 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 [[Tyranids|a swarm of enemies]]. Though you still need to sharpen and repair it from time to time, 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 [[Orks|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 an 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 [[Kayvaan_Shrike|with melee weapons only]], there is a good chance the enemy won't know about it for a while. Granted. you can [[Raptors_(Chapter)|snipe from afar using advanced suppressed rifles and scopes]]- but you don't always have the luxury of doing that.
* 40k has [[Power Armour]], which can only be reliably threatened either by melee [[Power_weapon|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 [[Tyranid_Warrior|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 defense. Two reasons why they are very popular amongst officers and champions alike.
**This means there are gradations in weapon/armour interaction; [[Flak_Armor|flak armour]] defeats weaker [[Autogun|firearms]] and [[Lasgun|lasguns]], but falls to [[Bolter|bigger]] [[Shuriken_Catapult|and]] [[Gauss#Necrons|scarier]] [[Plasma#Pulse_Weapons|advanced]] guns, which are nigh useless against [[Power_Armour|power armour]], which can't protect against [[Power_weapon|power weapons]] or [[Plasma_gun|advanced]] [[Meltagun|anti-tank]] guns. So unless you happen to have the latter either [[Incubi|on very fast elite melee units]], on [[XV-8 Crisis Battlesuit|sufficiently mobile weapon platforms]], or simply [[Aspect_Warrior#Fire_Dragons|in abundance]], when Adeptus Astartes come for you, you are beyond screwed, just as in fluff.
**While [[Terminator]] armor does protect against most common power weapons, the aforementioned advanced anti-tank guns still have a good chance at hurting them anyway and the greatly reduced speed puts them at a disadvantage against enemies that are either faster than they are or can hit them from far away. And while they do have Power Fists equipped as standard, they're slow enough to give an appropriately geared opponent the chance to kill them before they get a chance to use said power fists. So it all works out...unless you're dealing with Assault Terminators, that is. In that case, you're screwed if you're stuck in melee with them if you're not a Dreadnought or something equally big and nasty.

=== 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 ===

[[image:Conan sword casting.jpg|thumb|300px|left|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 swords, 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.

[[image:Chinese_Trip_Hammers.jpg|thumb|300px|right|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. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E6TzT0eCYs 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, 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 so rapidly, it will shatter after the first blow. Note that casting was a legitimate way to make one type of sword; the ones made of bronze, although bronze swords do not match up to the performance of an properly-made iron sword. (Note for the pedantic: you CAN quench in water instead of oil, but it's extra work for no real benefit since you risk warping the blade and need to temper it afterward).

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.
Firts there's a, let's say, logistical problem: a sword is a meter long or more, and you need to immerse it completely to get a proper quench - and the supply of people at least a meter thick is quite unreliable... Or did they use elephants and walruses?
Then there's the metallurgical problem: when you quench steel you want it to cool in a quick, controlled and homogeneous way to avoid warping and having differtial hardening where you don't want differtial hardening. Flesh is not a good at dispersing heat, so your sword will probably not harden at all, and even if this gruesome process did somehow work, you'd need an army of clones to get repeatable results.

=== Folded a thousand times ===

''Ah, Grorious Nippon Steel, Forded Over 1000 Times....''

This is, as you might expect, bullshit, even if it contains a (small) grain of truth. Japanese swords were created by combining three types of iron alloys, which (if you drop weaboo names) were basically low carbon steel, high-carbon steel and extra-high-carbon pig iron. The limitations of Japanese smithing techniques made it so smelting of those alloys happened below their melting point temperature (or, in other words, they became soft and malleable but not liquid), hence they were unhomogeneous and contained lots of impurities. So it was ultimately plain common sense to "knead" the mix (like you would do with bread) to get an homogeneous bar by stretching it on an anvil, folding it back, forge-welding the 2 parts together again. Repeat, repeat and repeat until (almost) all of the impurities were driven out.

This process, called lamination, was meant to spread the carbon content in the steel and remove inclusions by bringing them to the surface where they could be hammered away as slag. It also created layered laminated steel with layers of hard but brittle high-carbon steel and soft but plastic low-carbon steel (actually pig iron and high-carbon layers initially, but by the time laminating was done enough carbon would burn out of them to change their type) which combines the strong points of both, so the blade could be almost as sharp as hard steel and almost as flexible as soft steel. (You have to give it to them, the Japanese swordsmiths did a pretty good job, all things considered the limitations they had to work with.) This was however an horribly time-consuming process (and thus costly), not to say prone to errors. And even if everything works correctly, the very act of working the steel means you lose some every time you work it: external layer of steel burns off, slag detaches from the workpiece, small pieces fly away with every hammer strike - so you would try to keep work to a minimum. Keep in mind that the number of layers of your sword doubles with every fold: 2-4-8-16... and so on, so after 10 folds you get 1024 layers, and after 20 your steel is as homogeneous as it can get due to having over a million layers that blend in each other, losing all the sexy benefits of laminating. One thousand folds would theoretically get you more layers than there are atoms in the perceivable Universe (it's 302-digit number in case you wonder), you'd also end up with only a small fraction of steel you started working with, and almost all the carbon in it would burn out long before you reach 100 foldings, leaving you with almost useless soft iron. A traditionally forged Katana isn't folded a thousand times (perhaps a dozen, if even that), however it does possess over a thousand discernible layers in its structure when looked at with a microscope.

Other nations also used techniques similar to folding (welding) to get over impurities and make layered steel sandwiches, but then one day some smart Indian smith invented crucible smelting to make much purer steel right of the bat, and after that another Indian smith invented tempering that was both cheaper, easier and more cost-effective than laminating. Some enterprising Chinese and Arabian traders spread these techniques all over Asia and Europe, so people there immediately stooped folding/welding their Glorious Steel and adopted the better (mostly less time-consuming and hence cheaper) technology. All, of course, except for fucking Japan that decided to isolate itself from the rest of the world and only found about these technologies when Commander Perry gently knocked their front door off.

A huge chunk of the reputation of Japanese swordcraft comes from the fact that, by the time Europeans forced their way into the island, swords had became largely a ceremonial part of officers' uniforms in the Western militaries and so little attention was given to their crafting that their quality had become quite poor, not even half as good as they were made but a century before. Low-tech Japanese swords, on the other hand, were still crafted for actual battle and killing people rather then pointing at the enemy to inspire your troops, so they were of the highest quality their technology allowed. Naturally westerners were amazed by the quality of Japanese swords compared to their own stamped mass-produced junk (and keep in mind this was during a low point for Japanese swordsmithing due to reduced demand for swords- a law passed in 1876 banned public carrying of swords for all but a small number of military officials), and here's where Glorious Nippon Steel bullshit took its origins.

One a sidenote: none of the swords the IJA used during WW2 were Katanas, they were actually similar-looking Guntō; mass-produced with modern means. The ones made for NCOs were produced from train tracks while the officers got hand made units, and due to a shortage of the steel traditionally used for making swords they were often made from steel that wasn't layered at all. While effective when compared to mass produced bayonets, this was the age of automatic weapons where bringing a blade to a gun fight was pretty much suicide in most instances- as a matter of fact, since they were made with the same mass production process that led to the decline of sword quality in the West, these swords were actually ''worse'' overall than the old Katanas. Anybody who claims that they got a genuine Katana from killing a Japanese soldier in WW2 or that their grandfather picked one off the body of a dead officer are full of shit, since construction of traditional-style katanas didn't restart until 1953. While modern katanas are of much better quality, this is due more to the extensive quality control standards placed on swordsmiths by the Japanese government rather than the quality of the steel itself.

Odds are if your buddies claim to own a genuine katana at all they're either mistaken or lying; genuine katanas cost $3,000 at the very least, and that's before factoring in the cost for a licence to own them due to their legal status as art objects. It's much more likely they own a replica made with modern machine production techniques and composed of ordinary stainless steel. While stainless steel may not get rusty and works fine for kitchen knives, it's much too brittle to be used for any sword that isn't purely ornamental.

== Swords in Fantasy & Science Fiction ==

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.

Swords have an occasional presence in Science Fiction as well. Said presence is usually "justified" by the inclusion of either Magical Pseudoscientific Bullshit, or very special considerations, depending on how justified the "justification" is. (For an example of probably valid special considerations: You need a weapon that can be used around explosive gasses that also doesn't have any EM emissions and doesn't make much noise? You're pretty much down to a melee weapon (of which the sword is probably the best all-rounder) or a harpoon.)

===Lightsabers===
[[Lightsaber]]s are the iconic weapon of the [[Star Wars]] universe, and argued over sufficiently enough - especially with regards to sword-related stupidity as covered in the section above - that we have an article linked just for them.

===Busters===
Named after the "Buster Sword" from [[/v/|Final Fantasy VII]]: these are basically unrealistically huge greatswords. By unrealistically huge; we mean that a Buster Sword is about as tall and wide as a fully-grown adult human, with the weight being a dozen or more kilos. Depending on the make, it's either shaped and used like a giant greatsword used to chop unfortunate enemies with extreme prejudice or it can also be a heap of metal affixed to a grip where it can be used to bludgeon targets with maniacal glee. There's no strict criteria on what exactly qualifies as a buster sword, but if its almost as tall and wide as its wielder (or larger); it gets lumped into this category. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cHqPYnnLpo Much to the joy of neckbeards everywere, somewhere in Martha's Vineyard there's a guy who makes real Buster Swords and similar insane weapons for a living, and he's as awesome as you'd expect.]

Realistically speaking: busters would be unsurprisingly unwieldy to use. Its heft and size makes would make it nearly impossible to be wielded effectively during a confrontation where a more agile opponent can simply avoid the first swing and attack while the wielder takes their time readying the damn thing for another go, it'd be like trying to swat a fly with a tree trunk. Not to mention because the weight of the sword isn't focused on single point (like how the weight of a battle axe is largely focused on the axe head instead of all over itself), trying to damage armored opponents would be an incredibly tough, if not impossible affair (Plus a blade this large would have to be hardened to withstand the heavy damage done by its attacks; so this also isn't counting the blade doesn't outright shatter under its own weight after striking plate armor).

That also isn't counting that your wielder would have to rival the strength of an Olympic body builder in order to even bring it to bear in combat in the first place([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BIfrA6CIIk and using it combat is another problem due to the weight])], something an army would not bother with, given the tons of better, much more cost-effective alternatives - most appropriately battle axes. When you swing a top-heavy heavy object in one direction with all your might; the inertia of that is incredibly hard, if not impossible to, stop mid-swing for a normal human being (if you do, your joints and muscles will pay the price), so unless you happen to be a heavily augmented super-strong cyborg or blessed with inhuman muscular bulk to put most strongmen to shame; you will either only be doing vertical downward slashes (which isn't really that effective, unless your opponent is stunned in place) or spin around like an out-of-control top while swinging it horizontally (in which case, you might get one lucky kill before you collapse from dizziness and someone else gives you a good stomping).

In fantasy, however, the rule of cool takes over and the lore can make up a proper explanation for why that particular universe need these fuckheug weapons. Busters in fantasy (or really any impractically large weapon) are typically used in settings where they make a lick more sense; a fantasy world populated by giant creatures. You see, if you were to bring something like a claymore or a gladius to your ho-hum fantasy setting; chances are that they'll lack the mass to cut through monsters the size of city buses and beyond. With a sword as big as a human being, however; the weapon's size and weight plus the user's presumably augmented strength and the fantasy's general disregard for inconvenient things like realism and physics, allows them to cleave through thick materials like scales, bones, armor, muscles...etc, with ease. Its not the most practical way to go about it, but then again this is fantasy; your imagination and sanity is the limit.

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 [[Warjack|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. Curiously 40k of all settings managed to make its two busters more or less reasonable or at least usable: Eviscerators are outfitted with their own anti-gravity propulsion systems, throwing most issues with busters out of the window, and Incubi Klaives ares made out of light materials and have extra grips, so they can be used like polearms despite looking like giant swords.

===Gunblades/Pistol Swords===
As mentioned before, they were an idea that started in Ye Olden Times of the 16th century, where a flintlock 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- only to get the drawbacks of both weapons in just the right way to make it worthless as a sword ''or'' a pistol. It evolved from the idea of mounting daggers on pistols, which had a bit more practical sense in comparison.

[[/v/|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 [[What|set the blade oscillating such that it cuts through monsters and other opponents better, like a chainsaw.]] (See also: Oscillating Blades.) Which begs the question: if it doesn't even deal damage by firing a projectile, why build a gun mechanism into the sword at all?

In other works of fiction, this problem is solved with [[Necron|advanced technology]]. Starting off with the most well known [[/tg/]] example from Warhammer 40K, we have the Sentinel Warblades used by the golden BFFs of the [[Emperor of Mankind]]. The [[Adeptus Custodes]] put the short barrel equivalent of a [[Storm Bolter]] with a halved range on their massive swords. Since Custodes are larger than a Space Marine on average, they might as well be full sized guns. They also have direct energy weapons on their Guardian Spears, which is a better option than a projectile weapon as the user won't have to reload as often. Reduced range is not much of a problem for the Custodes; there won't be many survivors left after they are hit with [[Anal_circumference|Melta Beams or Adrathic Destructors.]] After a few volleys, the Golden Bananas will charge the unlucky bastards who weren't vaporized.

The transforming variant from gun to blade or vise-versa is often used in Japanese Media, mostly [[/m/|Tokusatsu]]. The earliest examples are from Kamen Rider 555; one is a primary weapon of the main character, Kamen Rider Faiz. Toei, unlike a [[Games Workshop|certain model making company]], likes to stretch a budget and tries to outdo themselves as technology advances. Many Kamen Rider and Super Sentai (too many to list here) will have transforming Gunblades just about every other season, some bigger or more detailed than the last. If the Sentai Team or Kamen Rider of the season has tech based powers, these Gunblades fire lasers or some other form of energy beam.

Special Police Dekaranger has a strange example in the form of the D-Sword Vega, a sword that was used as a ranged weapon on two occasions. [[What|The special effects imply it is both a blade and a direct energy weapon]]. The primary user, Doggie Kruger, typically [[awesome|shoots lightening]] out of it as his finishing movie. However, since the Space Police in the show have more advanced technology than a typical terrestrial officer the D-sword Vega itself is a century or more ahead of anything in IRL or most works of fiction have.

So TL:DR. Gunblades, while possible to turn into a useful weapon sometime in the future, will require advancements that have yet to be made and are likely to require incorporating directed energy weapons rather than solid projectiles. While fixing the gun part will be easy enough, another problem is the blade itself, which can't be easily replaced on the user end. If and when this becomes possible. In practice, the sword part would still be of questionable use compared to the gun part, and we already have bayonets for that.

===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. These actually have a real-world counterpart in the form of electric knives and jigsaws, which are saw-toothed and cut a variety of materials, but not to the degree or speed that proper HF blades can. Completely relegated to sci-fi stories and vidya. One of the most famous examples thus far is Metal Gear Rising: [[Derp|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. After all, Newton's third law is still in effect. You can test this yourself and try holding any vibrating appliance for a few minutes; your muscles will start feeling numb from all the vibrations. 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, even the megalomaniac final boss ''who manages to block and snap Raiden's sword in half with his bare hands''.

While his blade is apparently made from a well-forged katana that has been passed down in Sam's family since the 16th century; 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. The only way this makes sense is if the Katana was reforged with more durable materiel. As even the best weapon will break down with regular use.
It could have been explained better by stating that HF Blades have Monomolecular edges and are built with Carbon Nanotubes like the cyborgs themselves. So it seems that Platinum is ignorant about how swords are made like most [[Fail|fan fic writers]].

===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.

Impracticality aside, there's an argument to be made that in the 40k universe that chainswords and their non-imperial equivalents have a well-established purpose in the setting, analogous to the Buster swords 40k generally eschews. Beyond rogue humans or possibly Eldar (for which any sharpened stick should be a more sensible weapon), most opponents of the imperium pack incredibly tough flesh, extremely heavy armor, sheer mass enough to ignore grievous wounds, or any combination of the three. A chainsword, for all its downsides, can inexpensively provide some measure of response to any of these. The additional power yielded by the engine would exacerbate physical trauma, blowing physical injuries way out of human proportion. The sharp teeth provide concentration of force beyond any sword and can scrape through or catch in the gaps and seams inherent in any armor designed to move. The added motion and dimensions of force applied would help the wielder cut through limbs or body parts far too thick to slice apart for the same reason a chainsaw can gouge through thick tree trunks. All in all a chainsword gives the imperium a cheap one-size-fits-all answer to killing up close, with the acknowledgement that the weapon must be wielded not like a sword but like a saw. For all its technological improvement, the downsides are largely the same as they would be today: the wielder gives up grace, balance, most ability to parry, and accepts that they will be wounded by almost anything they fight. To take it one step further, it's an apt metaphor for the imperium itself: capable of grinding down anything through sheer low-tech single-mindedness, but always at grim cost in blood and lives.

===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:

*'''Treasure Steel:''' the legendary super-steel from the Slavic and Norse mythology. Legends attribute it with extreme durability and ability to cut through "lesser steel". It was for a long time thought completely fictional or just the name for an Iranian Bulat steel, but eventually historians found out the stories were based on the early steel-age forging techniques. IRL it was just an alloyed high-carbon steel in the early age of very low-quality unhardened steel. It was made with a very wasteful process that included burying a huge steel ingot into the ground (aka "Treasure"), letting it rust for few years and reforging the remnants - then repeating the process several times each time the ingot loosing a sizeable percent of it's mass to the rust and smelting burnout. As iron corrodes faster then natural alloys found in the ore and carbon, repeated treasuring and reforging increased alloy and carbon concentration resulting in a a great metal for it's time. Needless to say, only the nobility could afford to waste so much iron, so it also became a trademark of warlords and their champions.
*'''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 [http://xkcd.com/1114/ 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 [[Discworld|Sir Terry Pratchett]] famously [[Awesome|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 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, the same way we use the term "Hot Lead". Changeling: The Lost defines it to mean 'anything called iron', no steels, no oxides, no alloys, just pure iron. While iron in general has adverse effects on anything touched by Faerie, the most potent kind of all is "cold iron" (that is, iron that was never worked using any kind of heat). This means iron fresh out of the ground does the most damage (but is obviously just a rock so using it is hard), and Meteoric Iron (see above) since it's never been heated by man, but re-entry smelted it making it easier to work with by comparison. On the other hand, weapons of pure iron tend to be less sharp and durable when compared to steel and other alloys- and are consequently much trickier to find outside of an antique collection. You're probably best off breaking off a piece of a wrought iron fence and making it into a weapon, and even then it's not guaranteed it'll be pure enough to have any special effects.
*'''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. The reason why Silver's magical tradition likely goes back further then iron (at this rate may as well make a page for magical metals) is because of a a unique property of silver: [http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Silver_as_an_Antimicrobial_Agent water in silver pitcher takes a lot longer for it to get scummy, as silver ions damage bacterial DNA and enzymes]. 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. As for werewolves, in olden times it was thought werewolveism was also like rabies, hence the whole 'you become a werewolf if bitten by one', bring to mind rabid animals hence silver against werewolfs stems from it's anti microbial, and so healing, property's. In modern times though the logic behind silver and werewolves tends to be that since silver is the same color as moonlight and werewolves are empowered by the moon, it would suppress their powers or otherwise weaken them. 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 [[Grey Knight|coat your realistic steel blade with silver]] (or gold, for that matter) without dulling it too much, and keeping it dangerous for supernatural 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.

==Worldbuilding Considerations==

One further point, if you're doing worldbuilding: Swords, due to their versatility, will always be important in military contexts '''until''' four weapons appear, each of which absorbs a lot of the sword's unique functionality:

# The decline of the sword will usually begin when guns start appearing; the obvious combination of guns and spears to protect them quickly moves combat ranges to the point that swords are almost never needed in planned, open field combat outside of full-on charges. At this point, they still have a role in unplanned or close-quarters combat and will probably still see civilian use, although that will diminish as gun technology improves. Further, the close quarters and unplanned combat utility will eventually be completely absorbed by knives and other weapons that double as useful tools. For example, you wouldn't use a sword to cut through thick vegetation while a Machete can do both that and fill the sword's combat niche for less money.
# Reliable repeating handguns finish removing the sword from civilian contexts, as they are both more comfortable, easier to learn to use, and less difficult to repair than a sword (although, admittedly, more prone to breaking in the first place). You don't have to be an expert armorer with thousand of dollars worth of equipment to fix a firearm.
# [[Shotgun]]s and sub-machine guns are superior to swords in the field of close quarters fighting; as soon as this is realized, that's another major area the sword vanishes from. In particular, hallways are called "death tunnels/corridors" by the military for a reason: there is little room for fancy maneuvers such as dodging bullets.
# Reliable machine guns prevent open field cavalry charges, which is usually the last vestige of military value the sword has.

Equivalent weapons to the above work just as well in absorbing the sword's usefulness, so long as they remain ''reliable''. As each of these show up, expect the sword to vanish steadily from importance; the last stop before vanishing entirely will probably be as a symbol of office for officers in Empires where that still implies "nobility" in the "born a lord" sense.

Superswords, or shielding that interferes with guns but not short range weapons, are necessary for swords to reappear. Keep in mind, though, that this can easily be overdone to the point of wankery. If this supersword is in any way unique, you probably have a [[Mary Sue]] on your hands, which is usually felt to be a bad thing.

In more advanced settings a Plasma or Laser weapon could plausibly emulate an energy blade or create a [[Meltagun]] style burst (e.g. the Plasma Gun from [[Doom|Doom 2016]] does the latter). While serving as a close range armor/door/wall breacher at the same time. This also makes swords redundant, but in situations where defenses against energy-based weapons and projectiles are used, the sword (and other melee weapons at that matter) can still make a comeback as a weapon. (Case in point, 40K- a bolter might not be able to penetrate power armor, but a power sword can do so, and unlike plasma guns power weapons don't run the risk of a lethal overheating accident.)

{{MedievalWeaponry}}