Editing Sword (section)

== 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.) In [[Star Wars]], the justification is that through use of the Force, they can make up for anything their weapon lacks in range, particularly by deflecting blaster bolts back at their shooters. In [[Star Trek]], the justification is that in boarding actions which is the basis for most on-foot fights in the setting, fighting is usually done in relatively cramped spaces (though even still, to species who use them, they tend to do so partially for cultural reasons, as with the Klingons). In [[Halo]], the energy swords and gravity hammers have deep cultural importance for the Sangheili and Jiralhanae respectively, hence why they often bring them into battle together with their other weapons. In [[Dune]], the Holtzman Effect allows for shields which prevent anything that moves too fast from getting through, forcing battles to primarily be fought with blades. However, probably the easiest justification is by combining supersoldiers with melee weapons, as supersoldiers would often be most effective against regular soldiers at close range, as their protection tends to make them difficult to damage with most weapons that can be used at such a range and their value as shocktroops is greatly enhanced as well from such a range.

===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. Much of what's said there also applies to their many knockoffs throughout numerous sci-fi settings.

===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).

Unrealistic though they may be, '''there is however one RECORDED example of a buster sword.''' During the mustering of the Iowa militia in advance of the abortive Honey War with Missouri in 1839, one member (having no gun) arrived with [[Weeaboo|nothing but a 6' homemade sword]] that was basically just a sharpened iron bar. Other improvised weapons in that mustering included several farm scythes and a flail made out of sausage grinder blades.

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? The answer, of course, is the Rule of Cool.

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.

In Star Wars, vibroblades are the standard issue blades for regular non-Force using troops, allowing them to cut through droids and armor if they ever need to fight at close range. In the Old Republic times, there was a time during which personal energy shields became effective enough that they could protect their users from blasters. During this time, sword-sized vibroblades became more common as the energy shields were much less effective against them. Eventually, blasters would become more effective at going through such shields, hence why vibroswords are rarely seen in the times depicted in most Star Wars media.

The Old Republic era is also a time during which Jedi and Sith were much more common than in times depicted in the movies and while regular troops would stand little change against strong Force users like Satele Shan or Darth Malgus, their abundance meant that there was plenty of weak Jedi and Sith around and regular troops received training in how to deal with them. For this purpose, vibroswords were made out of an alloy containing cortosis, a lightsaber resistant material which in it's pure form can force lightsabers to shut down. While a sword made of such alloy cannot quite do that, it does allow for the sword to be resistant against lightsabers.

One of the most famous examples of a high-frequency blade 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. But it seems that Platinum is ignorant about how swords are made like most [[Fail|fan fic writers]]. At least they acknowledge how bad of a weapon they are. As one character mentions that a Plasma Sword would be superior to High Frequency Blades. In a setting where lasers and vehicle/drone mounted plasma cannons exist.

===Monomolecular Swords===

A feature in some sci-fi RPG settings, particularly those with a cyberpunk theme, these are swords made of exotic but scientifically plausible materials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, etc. A common element to these is that they are supposed to be exceedingly sharp, with a blade literally ending in a sharp line a single atom thick. They may also have other attributes such as being self-mending, or have electrical effects like heating up or being selectively flexible and thus worn as clothing (like a belt). Another quality of these sorts of blades is they almost universally defeat commonplace means of detection such as metal detectors and x-ray machines.

Tragically (or perhaps fortunately), research into metamaterials and carbon composites hasn't yielded anything that actually works like this, although maybe they have and the super spies are keeping it to themselves.

It should be added that monomolecular blades are a thing that actual exists in the real world; the trade off is that the edge rapidly decays. And we're talking as in an expected cutting lifetime before needing sharpening of ''seconds''. More common is blades whose edge molecules can be counted in the ''hundreds'', which are used in eye surgery and electron microscopes; the two materials used for these are diamond (which is expensive) and glass (particularly obsidian). Neither is a particularly sturdy material (while diamond ''is'' [[meme|the hardest metal known to man]], it's very hardness makes it particularly prone to fracturing when any amount of force is applied), so a large blade made of either is going to be useless pretty much instantly--although see the Macuahuitl in several places around this article for a way around that.

===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. And spinning blades such as saws carry so much angular momentum that they resist movement in the same fashion as a gyroscope.

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. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gj8pAN7Y7E]]

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 losing a sizeable percent of its 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 great metal for its 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. Mostly due to how shitty everyone else had it, these things were nasty.
*'''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 'relatively pure iron (i.e. no steels, oxides, or alloys- if it's something that the average person would think of as being made of iron, it counts)'. 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 and did not involve magic being used in its creation at any point in time). 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. Even then it's not guaranteed it'll be pure enough to have any special effects since almost all "wrought iron" products made nowadays are actually made of low-carbon steel.
*'''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 than iron (at this rate may as well make a page for magical metals) is because of 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 a 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 werewolves stems from it's anti microbial, and so healing, properties. 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. Real world silver-coated stuff is usually bronze or stainless steel, as silver and iron themselves exhibit anode-cathode behavior (which will quickly oxidize the silver in a matter of weeks) and tends to be used in the chemical/maritime industry as silver is very resistant to chlorine.
** As an aside, [[The Witcher]] series' uses for silvered weapons are usually given a pass here due to two factors: 1) the silver sword is carried as a specialist weapon for silver-vulnerable monsters alongside an steel one <ref>The games make a hard split between steel==kill_people and silver==kill_any_monster, thus overusing the silver one, but in the core books steel sword is for anything that will bleed, while silver is for very, very special and rare occasions</ref>, and 2) Witchers explicitly spend a lot of time maintaining their equipment, and a Witcher is at least as much an alchemist as a fighter so they'd know the hows and whys of effectively maintaining such a weapon.

===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.