Entries tagged with swordtember

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Swordtember 2023 – Days 21-30

A week late compiling, but here I am (whoops) — I really did think I’d posted these already >.>;;

Nonetheless, here we go, the last third of Swordtember ~

21. Rosetta (“ornamented”)

Named for the duchess who stymied spies and assassins with her wonderfully baroque blade, “rosettas” are not practical weapons. With slender blades but heavy basket hilts adorned with metal “cords” or vines, blooms and crests and rosettes – in a matching sheath – a rosetta is utterly impractical.

Their worth is in the tiny blades, hidden hollows and secreted phials, cutting-wires and other clever fancies hidden in the sword’s fancy dressage.

22. Grand Claw (“bestial”)

There are Great Beasts upon the world. The Dragon is one such, as is the Gryphon, the Leviathan, the Roc. They are immense, ancient; and in the rare times a Beast falls, another takes its place.

Most Claws are found where the ancient creature slept its last. Massive, curved, keratinous, such a sword is suited for tearing and puncturing; it grants wild wisdom and beastspeech. Victims injured by a Claw may be tracked by the bearer with ease.

23. Essencyst (“sorcerous”)

An essencyst doesn’t look like a sword: a smooth oval lens of some crystal-like substance that nestles comfortably in the palm.
When a spellcaster pours magic into the essencyst, a needle (or other shape; some are broad wedges of sizzling force, twisting element dragons or stranger shapes) of eldritch power hovers before their hand, following every motion. The stronger the spell sacrificed for a strike, the greater its potential to harm.

24. Umbran (“shadow”)

What’s a good way to hide a sword on one’s person?
Put it where it cannot be seen.

Umbrans are spun from wisps of their bearer’s shadow, and so long as the donor exists, no one else may touch its shadowstuff. More the silhouette of a blade, an umbran is only as solid as its bearer wishes and it may be returned to one’s shadow. The edge of an umbran is hair-fine and its wounds strange; they may go unnoticed until the victim, overwhelmed, collapses.

25. Guide (“diabolic”)

Some bids for mortal proxies, and mortal souls, are more subtle than others.

A guide is a sword of fine but unremarkable make; but it soon grows comfortable in the hand, a favoured weapon and tool, a most treasured possession.

It is also a devil shaped into the form of a sword, and all too content to encourage its “owner” with subliminal nudges and frissons of pleasure when they act in ways – large or little – that accord with hell’s own plans.

26. Hundred-year (“pearl”)

In the remnant “empire” of Rekhoy is the tradition of the hundred-year sword.

It’s monstrous cloud-oysters that finish the work, after a mastercrafter pares down a blade to a hair-thin shadow of the glory it will hopefully become. That sliver is placed inside the oyster’s mantle, and the wait begins. If successful, a hundred-year sword: gleaming, nacreous, wind-sharp and granting freedom to slip beneath the waves and upon the clouds themselves.

27. Liar’s Blade (“mirage”)

A liar’s blade can look like any old sword – because looks are deceiving, right?

And lie it does. Should its wielder choose, any would dealt by the liar’s blade is but whimsy and illusion, a temporary twisting of perception. Even a fatal blow, though blood flow and breath stop, is a lie. Within a half-day at most the wounds vanish as if they never were, sometimes to the great surprise of the “dead” – or those who assumed they were dead.

28. Firmament (“celestial”)

A sword of the firmament is a shortsword, with few exceptions, mostly daggers. It takes a lot, after all, to spirit away a smooth curved shard of the sky itself; cerulean to indigo, dotted with stars.

Fortune favours one with such a blade: their luck is strong, their intuition stronger, and future insights flash through their mind. Bearing a fragment of the great beyond creates a longing in many, however, to join the rest of the heavens above.

29. Oathblade (“ceremonial”)

Is a sword with no edge still a sword?
An oathblade is crafted of such material as porcelain or wicker or stiffened silk, without edge or point, suitable to wrap a hand around. Doing so and swearing a vow seals that vow; the vowed one is marked, protected against attempts to force them to breach it.
But an oathblade also serves another purpose. Touched to the heart of one trapped in a forced binding of any kind, it destroys it utterly.

30. Fellmark (“wooden”)

Some creatures of the night shrug off steel and even silver as if shedding raindrops. But fellmark swords, and the deft woodwrights who carve them, show those monsters that mortals yet fight back.
Dark with age or freshly cut, a fellmark is carved of wood – oak or cherry, cedar or peach – cunningly doweled and dovetailed, not a touch of metal. It ignores immunity. And it is lethal to the unliving, to demons, to the fae and to malignant spirits.

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Swordtember 2023 — Days 11-20

More days, more swords ~~~

11. Blooded (“royal”)

Many kingdoms, such as Avren, Rechiv, and the Swan Kingdom, award those of their royal house with Blooded swords, from slim rapiers for courtly souls to broad bastard blades for royal warlords.

All bear inscriptions naming their bearer, and pull blood from the very pores of any not of the line who dare to wield it; but, if a single droplet be deliberately placed upon a Blood blade, it will indicate whether that one is of any sort of royal line.

12. Stone-Sword (“antique”)

Sometimes, when foundations are dug deep, or a mine expanded, or a new dungeon burrowed into the earth, one or more swords are found embedded in the stone. Strange stony swords, of middling size; sturdy blades like hexagonal prisms, with simple hilts.

No one has an answer yet, and the gods refuse to explain; but the swords take enchanting well, and absorb blows meant for their wielder. Some give hazy visions of a strange fern-forested land.

13. Finality (“glass”)

A sword of finality is a lovely sight: perfectly balanced, often etched with a dedication or oath — and worked entirely from one piece of gleaming, perfectly transparent glass.

Its frightful edge causes any struck to bleed freely unless treated swiftly; but there is always a 2-in-6 chance to break. The name comes from the decision to commit — one terrible blow that trebles the injury, bleeding the wielder as well from the cataclysmic shards.

14. Starglass (“futuristic”)

So-called starglass swords are exceedingly rare, all known examples stemming from one exploration by the Swan Knight and their companions through a metallic dungeon deep in the Rorolit Forest.

These swords, at rest, are a black ceramic hilt mounting a stiff “wire” of a glassy, unbreakable substance. At will it flares to life: a blade’s outline in burning light of many colours , the “flat” intangible and yet gleaming and capable of parrying.

15. Gigante (“oversized”)

There are greatswords, and then there are so-called gigante swords, the length of a claymore but easily three or more times the width. One needs unusual strength to wield it, but it deals twice the injury of a lesser blade and grants a bonus to strike any who has already been wounded.

Tales say the first gigante was forged for a merc whose brazen horns and towering height marked a titanic heritage, but glory-hounds throughout Nifasan covet them.

16. Godgift (“divine”)

It’s rare to find a godgift blade; these swords are not forged, but granted to a faithful one by a deity as a blessing or a tool for a divinely ordained mission. All godgifts have a numinousness clinging to them.

A godgift grants a boon pertinent to the faith: turning water to honey or blood to ice, carving through stone, etc. Anathema are maimed if they touch the sword; others who find a lost blade may be pressed to accept a lost soul’s mission.

17. Kin-crypt (“ancestral”)

Despite its ominous common name, a kin-crypt sword does not contain the remains of one’s kin. What these weapons do hold is the memories, knowledge and sometimes physical skills that former bearers chose to pass to their descendants.

A bearer may impart five memories or dreams and either a body of knowledge or physically learned skill. Accessing one of these familial echoes takes a minute’s meditation. If one is not kin, the blade is mundane.

18. Eternal (“inhabited”)

Many fear the end. Of those, most simply die; some pursue undeath or some esoteric state.

Then there are those who choose the embrace of cold sharp steel.

An Eternal is a once-mortal soul bound into a sword. They may communicate; dreams, mindspeech, ecstasy and goading pain, all known. A wych may share magic, a courtier political wiles, a warrior skill at arms. And any may place a geas to bring one closer to the Eternal’s own goals or ethos.

19. Paragon (“elemental”)

A swordsmith will only forge one paragon in their life. These are the exemplars of the form; exquisite in balance, edge, weight, silhouette. The pinnacle to which all other blades are compared.

The essence of “sword”.

A paragon is a wonder. It parts flesh like water and steel like flesh; it can sever the wind, sunder speech, cleave oaths. A blessed weapon by very nature, anathema to corruption and entropy. Like calls to like, blade to blade.

20. Bonewalk (“osseous”)

A bonewalk is an odd-looking sword; whether a cunning marquetry of closely-fitted shards or carved from a single bone, they are heavy in cross-section and duller than a metal blade.

No matter. A razor edge isn’t needed as long as the bonewalk draws any blood at all. And then, one of two things: the sword expands in an unfolding jigsaw to become a skeletal servant, or it leaves a shard in the victim to change their bones into a new bonewalk.

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Swordtember 2023 — Days 01-10

AuGhost finished — but of course now it’s time for Swordtember!

This time around I decided on three things:

– I was going to make my own list
– each entry would not be as long as last year’s entries
– this time I would stick to types of enchantments/materials/etc, rather than unique or semi-unique blades

Since these are short entries like the ones for AuGhost, I’m going to post them in batches, like AuGhost.

So! Here are the first ten sword(-type)s of Swordtember 2023!

01. Thornwrought (“fae”)

The blades of faerieland are distinctive, whether gifted to mortals (or stolen, or discovered by same) or forged by mortal hands from round billets of “faerie silver”, a disquietingly shimmering, translucent silver metal.

No matter its size, a thorn is as light in the hand as a dagger or dart. Its edge flares with silvery light if it strikes magic; wounds left by it fester, disgorging string and feathers and fishbones. Striking iron shatters it.

02. Oathbreakers (“cursed”)

Maybe not all of the swords branded oathbreaker owe their state to a literal broken oath, but the name sticks.

Whatever the cause — oathbreaking, failing a sworn quest, abandoning cause or creed — the result is the same: somewhere on the sword a tiny black barbed spiral appears, and the blade grows spiteful. Should its wielder, new or old, fall short in any way, the sword turns itself on them with the next strike, no matter how impossible.

03. Moon’s-Eye (“lunar”)

No matter the size or make of a moon’s-eye sword, this blade will follow the phases of the moon in the injuries it inflicts: full, two-handed or bastard sword; gibbous, longsword; half, shortsword; crescent, dagger; and during the new moon, a strike from a moon’s-eye sword will heal its target the equal of a full moon strike, but only once a day.

Moon’s-eye swords shift colour to reflect their phase, or sport a gem or glass that does so.

04. Revelation (“solar”)

Nothing escapes the light of the sun, and no falsehood survives the touch of a revelation blade. A wielder could use it simply as a source of light — golden to dawn, it is certainly that — but it is better deployed against lies and falsities.

One may choose to cause no injury with a revelation sword; instead a hidden truth is spoken, a true form is revealed as a sunshine silhouette, and so on. But the sword dissipates if its bearer turns false.

05. Martyring (“corroded”)

A martyring blade, whatever else its enchantments or qualities, is always rusted, tarnished, stained — unkempt-looking no matter what is done to clean it or mend it.

Each such blade has seven martyrdoms when first forged. At any time, the martyring sword may be touched to a broken object and it will make it whole. Touched to any wound it heals that wound. Each time, the sword deteriorates further, and at the end it falls to pieces.

06. Emberi (“flame”)

The blast of dragonfire; a lordly fire elemental’s heart; arcane forges, leagues-wide conflagrations — any and all of these may leave in their wake a tapering tongue of glowing essence in all the colours of Fire.

Such a congealed flame can be used as a blade on its own, but risks abound; adding it to fine metal produces a flame-hued sword that wounds like fire itself, warms its wielder, and bolsters any endeavour that requires a passionate response.

07. Gelidi (“frost”)

A rippled spar of transparent silver-blue or -teal, or a mass of glittering white nodules (best ground to powder and folded into metal now turned colourless and cold), gelidi is found at the heart of glaciers, in the permafrost of lands locked in eternal winter, and piercing the core of ice elementals.

Gelidi blades deliver winter’s numbing paralysis with their strike, and bolster any action that requires calm clarity. They are sometimes fragile.

08. Fulguri (“bolt”)

A sword of lightning? Never more literal than a fulguri blade, sharpened from a gleaming, soldified blue-gold bolt; rare as primal blades go, found in the arc of a dragon’s breath, hurled by vengeful — or magnanimous — stormlords, spun from the wake of eldritch storms.

Such a blade harms even the wielder to touch unless a pact is made. Then it boosts speed, sharpens senses, and is sure death to knights, to metal elementals, and to the constructed.

09. Dayneedle (“flower”)

On far-off mountains wreathed in clouds grow pink-golden lilies — lilies so titanic the stands of them are like bamboo forests adorned with blossoms broader than one’s armspan.

Plucked and dried unopened, mounted in cedar and silk, the right charms murmured, the bud of such a lily becomes sharp as a rapier and suited to any who won’t or can’t bear metal. Some even seep nectar into a hilt reservoir, a draft every three days that sustains for one.

10. Wychbane (“mirror”)

A wychbane sword is usually a shortsword or, rarely, a rapier; one very seldom sees, say, a wychbane claymore.

The hilt and trappings are simple — bronze or steel, leather plaiting — and the blade is unornamented. Why would it be, when its entire surface gleams like quicksilver?

It’s not for reflecting images, mind, but magic — a sword-blow can be against a spell, even mid-cast, and if the strike is true the magic is sent back to its source.

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Swordtember 2022 – guardian

Eyes Of The Moon

A shimmering silver sword — a silvery longsword, mounted in same, its grip engraved with overlapping scales (or maybe feathers?), its quillions slightly spiraled and capped with small silver spheres, its pommel a moonstone that changes its face as the moon does.

A silver sword just a little awkward to fight with, perhaps, as its blade is loosely, perpetually garlanded in indigo-blue cords and strings of tiny silver bells.

But that’s alright; the Eyes Of The Moon isn’t looking for battle. Not like that.

* Bells and garlands notwithstanding, one can fight with Eyes; there’s no great bonus to gain while doing so, however, as the blade is effectively simply a well-made longsword. It does bypass lycanthropic immunities, that said.

Kept at one’s side is where Eyes Of The Moon belongs, where it can gently whisper advice about one’s situation (it is a wise sage in matters of courtliness, politeness, gift-giving, falsehoods and white lies, and the whims of nobility in general and lunar highborn in particular) and — should its bearer actually be threatened — will animate and attack of its own accord in a nimbus of silver-white, interposing itself to block blows (armour as plate mail) and to disrupt underhanded spellcasting (2-in-6 chance to detect such, attacking caster if possible). Eyes will also watch over a sleeping bearer, hovering silently at times or perhaps murmuring soothing melodies.

* Though the Eyes Of The Moon can and sometimes does relate small anecdotes about former bearers (usually incorporated into its advice), no comment is made about the origin or creation of the sword save for the avowal that it, indeed, stems from the moon itself. The Eyes also retains a lingering affinity for its prior bearers and will absolutely refuse to cooperate with any who have claimed it by simply snatching it from its bearer’s cooling corpse or taken it away from a home — or grave — without cause or negotiation.

Some of the stories swirling around the blade include the exploits of Maruek Lightweaver, a sixth-son who came to carry the sword, the time an assassination attempt at a treaty-signed was thwarted by Eyes and the swift-thinking lady who listened to her blade’s warning, and the snow-silver figure of the Winter Knight, first known to have carried Eyes Of The Moon — and wore the bells in their hair that seem a very great deal like those now garlanding the blade.

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Swordtember 2022 – monochromatic

Magpie

This trim longsword sports a blade engraved with shallow grooves along its midrib, and a more rounded than usual tip, along with short quillions tipped with blunt recurved “claws” and a grip composed of alternating plaques of black and white horn pegged into place with brass nails enameled in opposite shade, black against white and vice versa. The pommel is a steel ring, occasionally seen sporting a tassel, a trophy tail, a few dangling ribbons, or other unassuming and fairly random ornaments.

* Magpie doesn’t have to draw blood to wound and confound those feeling its steel. It’s still a sword, of course, and may be used to injure, and grants its bearer a bit of nimble-footed advantage in that regard (+1 to attack); but what it really excels at is wounding perceptions.

By stealing colour.

For every strike taken from Magpie, regardless of actual physical injury (or lack thereof), the victim and all they carry at the time have all their colours drain away. For the next hour they appear in shades of off-white at most, greyer where shadows land — and the victim themselves view the entire world similarly, a bleached existence licked by wan shadowing at best. The experience is unsettling, leaving the victim shaken and more likely to fumble any crucial endeavour (disadvantage on all things).

Magpie’s wielder may choose to prevent the blade from dealing any physical injury from a strike by the sword. Similarly, they may choose to omit the external evidence of Magpie’s colour theft.

* Magpie — originally an unsharpened blade — was forged as a teaching tool. Symbolic of the Empty Totality school’s beliefs in the necessity of learning to see beyond one’s comforting and familiar surroundings, the sword was enchanted by northern school branch’s Forgemaster by request of Lord Midnight Vath, who would drain the colour of those followers who wished to directly understand what disorienting emptiness, and enlightenment, a truly colourless world could bring them.

The sword was stolen in a raid during the Screaming Garden Wars and its subsequent use as — among other things — as a tool of social and political sabotage has been a source of embarrassment for the Empty Totality. The school would give much to have the blade returned.

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Swordtember 2022 – fuzzy

Greyspark

Most Greysparks are shortswords — some are daggers — and none have been created, to date, any larger, though the idea’s been bandied around. All bear the same look, more or less: a hilt of porcelain over hardwood, slim and sporting the merest hint of a guard or shoulder, a smoothly grey-gold glassy dome for a pommel-nut, and a slender twin-edged blade that tapers to a fine needle tip.

A blade that is — or at least looks — perpetually vibrating, so finely and so fast that the shape of it looks to be blurry and indistinct around the edges.

* Surprisingly, perhaps, touching a Greyspark’s shivering blade is not a surefire way to lose a finger. In fact, the sword can cause no harm at all to anything of living tissue or organic nature, or even more esoteric beings such as elementals. (It does tickle, though.)

However, wielding such a blade against any form of clockwork, constructs, or otherworldly metallic- or otherwise-forged entities is a whole different story — against such mechanized foes a Greyspark inflicts double damage and forces its victim, for its first successful wounding, into a shuddering halt as its internals stutter and glitch, losing its next two actions.

Some Greysparks also ignore mechanicals’ armour as well; or, more commonly, can cast a sizzling sparkbolt one to four times a day, dealing normal damage as a ranged attack up to 60′.

* All Greyspark blades stem from the same source: the hidden foundries of the Grey Guild, who fight from shadow and fen, alley and market, against the creeping tide of the Steel Wave March that the Emperor of Porcelain and Steel sends across portal after gleaming portal to harvest the land and its people. The Guild has found weaknesses in the warbling warrior constructs, and they gladly share with any who join the fight.

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Swordtember 2022 – volcanic

Exile’s Fury

A stone sword. A shortsword of broad black basalt, to be precise — blade, grip, and quillions all shaped from one chunk of sooty black stone and ground to a deceptively velvety polish. The grip of Exile’s Fury is frequently wrapped in various softer materials; ragged linen, worn plaid wool, leather braids, or — in one notable anecdote — the shimmering hide of a strange jewel-bright lizard of some unknown type.

Beyond its changeable wrapping, the only mark to blemish the matte black of the sword’s surface is the roundel scratched into the butt of the grip where a pommel would be, a circle surrounding a shape variously described as a teardrop or a talon.

* Exile’s Fury cleaves its targets with the weight of stone and stubbornness (+2 to damage) and injuries normally-immune targets, as well as ignoring all magical or spiritual defenses — spell armour, enchanted protections, and the like simply don’t exist for it. Only solid, physical, mundane armour will do.

When wielded against an individual who has specifically wronged its bearer, or a member of an organization that has done the same, Exile’s Fury erupts — the basalt blade seems to liquify as the sword becomes a gout of roiling magma, and all injured by it while in this state take double damage and are struck by a soul-searing terror, their mind’s eye filling with all the misfortune the sword’s bearer experienced at their hands (or believes that they have).

* Equal parts personal exorcism, rage incarnate, and an exemplar of patient craft-sorcery, Exile’s Fury was created by the “rogue” hermit-saint Blind Spring Faith after he was driven from his loose confederation of huts, cells and winding paths for a corrupting ritual he did not actually take part in. Faith fled to the burning wastes of the Black Tableland and, surviving, learned to fight, and to channel his new hate, and to avenge his honour and those who had died — then passed the sword to another, in the aftermath, for his own exile was ended.

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Swordtember 2022 – monster

Pearl Diviner’s Claw

The soft nacreous sheen of this scimitar-like blade looks almost like an enamel or stain, but no — it is part of the blade itself, a feature of the Claw’s draconically-worked steel. Pearl Diviner’s Claw is also a blade and only a blade, the tip wickedly sharp, the butt ending abruptly in a short blunt wedge capped with silver. There is no hilt, no grip of any kind, and no proper tang on which to mount one.

* Pearl Diviner’s Claw, once claimed by a new owner (by touching at least three drops of blood to the butt of the blade), will hover and bob silently around their person, following the motions of a limb if its owner so desires and otherwise hanging in a neutral position, tip downward. At will, its owner can direct the blade to fly and slash at subjects within comfortable melee range as if a scimitar in addition to any other allowable actions that they may have.

Four times per lunar cycle, the Claw’s owner may trail a blood drop on the blade and ask a question or seek to identify an object or being, and the answer will shimmer to the surface of Pearl Diviner’s Claw.

* It’s a strange world out there, sometimes; and what could be stranger, to some, than a dragon that wanted to be a duelist? But that is exactly what Curacivatha The Ocean Jewel wished, and so that was exactly what he did — forging the Claw from sunken steel and his own blood and venom, according to enchantments he saw in pearl-sent dreams.

A dragon’s paw may be unsuited to the sword, but a dragon’s mind can wield any blade. The Ocean Jewel insisted, after all, on fair matches.

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Swordtember – noodle

Anvi’s Clever Flick

Well, this one is a bit different.

At rest, Anvi’s Clever Flick looks like an unassuming rapier. An ornamented — or ornamental — rapier, to be sure, with its silver handguard pierced so delicately it looks like lace, its dainty and useless-looking quillions, and the multicoloured glass finial it calls a pommel-nut, a riot of whirling colours in the shape of a tapered teardrop.

Then the Flick is, well, flicked through the air by its wielder and suddenly it is a snaking ribbon of rapier blade —

* Designed to confound and startle, as well as extend reach, Anvi’s Clever Flick will, once an encounter or engagement, cause any opponent unfamiliar with the blade to lose their next action as they stumble to a confused mental halt.

Anvi’s is a sneaky sword, capable of magically extending when swung (or even just vigorously, dramatically pointed) up to 30′ feet away in a supple arc of shining steel. The wielder of the Flick can dictate the path of the rapidly-flicking tendril; attacking at a distance, snaking around obstacles, and similar are all simple gambits. Needless to say, shields are useless against Anvi’s Clever Flick.

Worse, the flickering blade is ribbon thin and razor sharp; wounds continue to bleed freely until treated (minimum damage every action until healed or mundanely bound).

* Some things are enchanted as experiments; such is the case with Anvi’s Clever Flick. Anvi Firecracker’s attempt to create a magical sword that could fission into a blossom of flying, spiderwebbing metallic wires may have failed (for now), but the Clever Flick still turned out to be interesting, quirky and at times hilariously useful. Gifted to the swordmaster Tanton Phayar, it upset many a challenge until folks grew wise to the sword and its trick.

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Swordtember 2022 – morbid

Tany

Is Tany a sword? Sword-shaped, certainly, more or less: a “blade” of vertebrae, their processes sharpened; quillions and handbasket of jawbone fused with ribs; a rust-brown grip entirely too warm and accommodating; and — most prominent of all — the swollen adamant egg between hilt and spine-blade filled with bloody fluid, tangled veins and a slowly beating heart.

Tany murmurs loneliness. Won’t you help? Please won’t you help?

* Attacking with Tany inflicts unnatural terror on any living creature struck — even plant life will curl up — leaving them fleeing and hiding for safety wherever they may, until the fear passes (test 1/hour). There’s a price for that, though. Tany’s bearer must fight off the mental backlash (dagger damage) as Tany fights back — and fights for a home.

What Tany really wants is to be driven to the quillions through a living body (best attempted on an unmoving target, but one can improvise). Doing so explodes Tany into a torrent of fluid and bone as the heart in the egg forcibly implants itself into the victim and brings Tany with it. The wound closes over with a lacework of splintered bone … and Tany looks back at the now former bearer of the blade.

What she does depends on a great many things.

* The sword Tany will not, or cannot, surrender details of her origins. Sometimes, even his assumed gender changes; species is never divulged, though humanoid of some kind might possibly be inferred. From Tany’s wistful whispered pleas can be gleaned the work of a death-forger, a lord of the grave; is this Tany? Is Tany a student? A victim? Is it all a tale?

Tany does have necromantic knowledge and will mournfully murmur anecdotes about many unliving and diabolical things.

Tany just wants to live.

Will you help?

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Swordtember 2022 – iconic

Crown Of Glory

No two descriptions of Crown Of Glory involve the same type of blade — longsword, hanger, rapier, sabre, shortsword; dagger, cleaver, even a scribe’s trimming knife if one account is to be believed. But they all bear the same features in common: not a blemish on the blue steel blade, a grip of goldenoak plates pinned with nails capped with ivory, and on the low dome of the pommel, a glittering enamel inlay of a ring of golden flames.

* Crown Of Glory takes on whatever physical form is best suited for its owner, whether that be greatsword or carving knife. No matter its shape, it grants the ability to injure subjects immune to mundane weaponry to go with its sorcerously keen edge (+1 damage).

Carrying Crown Of Glory bolsters its bearer’s valour; they are immune to unnaturally inflicted fear and other mental and emotional compulsions.

When the time comes to lead, to share that valour, when its bearer steps up to the task, is when Crown Of Glory wakes up. When its bearer so proclaims their defiance, leads companions against the odds, exhorts people to bravery — then the blade’s magic erupts in a corona of brilliant, warming gold, surrounding its bearer with the phantom banner of rippling sunflame and a ghostly, towering representation of their ideal self calling all to action. So long as Glory’s bearer moves forward with their conviction, they are at advantage for their next five significant actions (or saves, or tests) and all allies within 100′ radius share in the psychic protections granted by the sword.

* The original form of Crown Of Glory was a bastard sword, the pride and joy incarnate of the hedge knight Amaryllis Sornyai. Sornyai led the beleaguered villagers and artisans of the Windshorn Borders against the depredations of the Bone Sphinx Auf-Nun, and again to stand against the blandishments and threats of the encroaching Duchy of Roatrix. Before her last charge, Sornyai had the Crown’s awakened magics altered to allow the sword to change physical form, specifically so that whoever came after her could make the full use of the blade.

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Swordtember 2022 – nordic

Waycutter

A broadsword, well-worn and equally well maintained despite the tiny nicks in the blade and the scarring across the burnished oak of its heavy hilt. Waycutter sports stout, blocky iron quillions and its chunky hilt is nailed with the same, with a simple iron pommel-nut; in the furrow of its blade are chiseled a string of runes proclaiming the ocean, the craft of craftiness, the glories of both, and the sword’s own name.

* Waycutter is an excellent sword, and virtually immune to damage (which begs questions about the nicks it bears), but other than the ability to harm those immune to mundane weapons it offers no further benefits in battle. Actively bearing the blade confers a more subtle benefit: the ability to roughly gauge the value of any trade good, gift or plunder, even to the benefit of more than one party should Waycutter’s bearer wish it.

But the true worth of the broad blade is greater still. At a command, wordless, Waycutter will transform from sword to trimmed and sea-worthy longship fit to carry up to a score of travellers or warriors, and their cargo, holding this shape until commanded otherwise or until its bearer draws their final breath.

* There have been many Waycutters over the generations, or so it seems; enough sagas to suggest a small fleet of such grey-winged sword-ships. Or perhaps only one, or maybe two, famous blades. Who can say? Most tales do agree, however, that the first and finest was crafted from the iron bones of a smith-wyrm and quenched in an ice-witch’s foam-flecked harbour by the battlepriest Ironheart as a gift to the long-gloried Ingvi, the Storm Wave’s King.

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Swordtember 2022 – musical

Elegy

Slim for a longsword, Elegy is also quite a well-trimmed weapon — its bronzed quillions curve in gentle scrolls, its pommel is a bronze pinecone, and its hilt is fluted segments of cedarwood pegged with gilded nails.

For all that, it is still the blade itself that is most remarkable. One flat is blackened with niello picked out with gold and silver musical notation, the other left plain save for a gilded inscription: “What is taken must be remembered, no matter the kind, no matter the life.”

* Light in the hand, Elegy sharpens the wits as well as its wielder’s prowess (cannot be surprised in combat; +2 to attack).

Any sapient creature felled by the sword becomes the subject of a ghostly, unstoppable song that commemorates the fallen’s actions in life; the notations for such a song then appear on Elegy’s blade and haunt its bearer for the next 24 hours. Even if not otherwise recorded the deeds shall be sung at least once.

If Elegy’s bearer drops more than one foe, the blade will work through its subjects in sequence and unceasingly until all have been sung.

* For good or ill, Elegy has changed hands many times since its forging as a tool of memory in the face of atrocity by the song-witch Lestral. Its original purpose was to bring swift death to those who had no other means to voice their lives (the extreme dubiousness of the method used has been a source of philosophical debate; many believe Lestral may have been an adherent of the Beloved Oblivion Rest sect); it has been used to brutally reveal true evil, to shock its bearer into laying down all arms, and to perform mass acts of terrifying protest since, among other things.

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Swordtember 2022 – shattered

Talenen, The Sundered Soul

Once, Talenen was a greatsword of legendary make; mirror-bright steel chased with delicate gold filigree and silver calligraphy, mounted in gilt bronze and turquoise and mother of pearl, the Mirror Of The Soul brought peace and clarity to the distressed and sorrowful retribution to the unrepentant.

Now the Sundered Soul is a dozen fragments of scorched steel and broken gilding, hovering about their bearer like fluttering, frightened butterflies of once-shining purpose.

* Once a day for each pair of Talenen’s fragments in one’s possession, the once-sword’s owner may dispel fear, dull or restore a memory as desired by the subject, show the image of a mysterious yet soothing flower-meadow in the metal of a shard, encourage one to sleep, or divert a shard to foul an attack (+2 to armour for that incoming attack). In duress, one shard may fly up to 60′, slashing as a dagger and ignoring defenses; all shards will blacken and be unresponsive for 24 hrs afterward.

It is said that, as the Mirror, Talenen possessed the ability of its shards and deeper, more revelatory gifts, in addition to granting its bearer great prowess against its enemies and greater prowess to defend the needy (+2 to attack and damage, +3 against deliberately evil or criminal or cruel subjects; or, lower these bonuses to increase armour in the service of taking blows meant for others, 1:2, per incident).

It is also whispered, more quietly still, that the Mirror possessed an awareness and a soul of its own.

* As the Mirror Of The Soul, Talenen was a source of inspiration and hope for many, just as its bearer, the itinerant knight Jahan Nightingale, had been. But Jahan’s light has long been extinguished, his remains long lost — if the knight be not held captive or ensorcelled or worse, or a moldering corpse in an oubliette — and Talenen scattered across the land.

Gathering Talenen’s shards has been the work of seers, devotees, would-be squires and once-been criminals, passed hand to hand as the thundering black hooves chase them in the night.

And it’s whispered that if one last shard is found Talenen will reassemble of its own accord, and grant its full strength to its new bearer in return for finding Jahan — or what remains.

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Swordtember 2022 – moss

Freshpick

An unassuming shortsword — or a dagger, sometimes even a spear — of ordinary make, with leather-wrapped grip and maybe a few brass nails or the like for ornamentation; a Freshpick doesn’t advertise its enchantment to all and sundry by being flashy.

The most common tell, when one exists at all on a given Freshpick, is a mottled moss-like pattern across one or both side of the blade, or an embossed branching sigil on the pommel-nut or the side of the hilt.

* Dungeon ecologies get so much more comfortable with at least one Freshpick at play in there. Sure you can fight with it, but it’s really meant for after the fight, yours or someone else’s — a carcass stuck through with a Freshpick and sprinkled with any kind of liquid will, once the blade is pulled free, be promptly engulfed by lichen and mossy growths and fungi and do one of the following:
– sprout thin broad sheets to harvest as “leather”, enough to be a sheepskin or even an oxhide if the carcass is big enough;
– grow anywhere from two to two dozen dense nutritious growths, each good enough for a hearty meal;
– or spawn globes of spores or masses of horsetail-like fronds or clinging moss, which depending on chance may be good for washing, padding, light sources, or baiting traps.

Bodies so absorbed cannot be raised as undead or be resurrected.

* Truly a revolution in dungeon maintenance, once the Freshpick sorcery was pioneered (by Gevasse the Greenbone, deep orc maestro, so they say) the concept spread like wildfire through the underworld. No more corpse cleanup! A peaceful recycling after adventurer invasions! More resources! Suddenly the dungeonscape worked better than ever before!

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Swordtember 2022 – geometric

Principle Of Order

This longsword appears to be carved entirely from grey marble — blade, hilt, all of it entirely from one piece of seamless, unblemished, smoothly polished stone. It is perfectly symmetrical and perfectly balanced, with a precisely angled blade-tip and squared off, prism-shaped quillions.

Nicks and scratches acquired by Principle Of Order disappear within moments; similarly the sword rejects any attempt to elaborate on its spare and spartan appearance, sloughing off everything from paint to gilding to wrapping of the hilt.

* Principle Of Order cannot be used to harm any creature or object that is not allied with or spawned of the forces of entropy; it will simply refuse to cause that harm. What it does, is act as a lodestone for setting things “right” as order defines it.

A slash of the blade against a sundered door, and the door stands whole; thrust into ashes, it raises the burned barn, pile by pile. A living being may be healed by Principle Of Order — by the blade in the wound, or against the flesh — but only once in a year’s cycle, because living beings chart their own paths and some injury and illness must therefore occur.

The sword will reveal the twisting of laws when those actions serve disorder and entropy, pulling law away from the common weal; but to do so it must be brandished against a manifestation of such a corrupted law, be it document or enforcer. Then phantom cracks, as if filled with lead, flash across Principle Of Order’s smooth stone surface until the disruption is contended with.

* A manifestation of order itself, this sword — some say it is unique, others claim a trio, still others an ennead of nine — cannot be created by mortal hands. It must be found (or “found”, as this is never truly by chance) or be gifted by one of orders champions — and the weight of accepting such a gift will be made very apparent before Principle Of Order is given into one’s hands.

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Swordtember 2022 – topiary

Cuvan, Root-Running-Deep

A wooden sword? Yes indeed — a sabre carved of cherrywood and planed to razor sharpness, enchanted as strong as any steel blade. The warmth of Cuvan’s wood extends to its hilt, cherrywood again and pinned in place over the blade’s broad and rootlike tang, and the pommel cap bears a cherry blossom to complete the theme, picked out in pink and green and white glass.

Cuvan has no quillions to speak of, merely the faintest swelling of the wood before the blade begins in earnest. What it does have is a hollow bored through the blade’s hefty tang, accessed via pulling free the pommel cap; inside the snug little space is kept a surprisingly fresh twig or leaf, blossom or cutting from a tree or woody shrubbery.

* Cuvan nurtures green life on the lives it takes. Every time a wound is dealt by its edge, the tree (or shrub, or hedge) to which the cutting in its hilt belongs receives a full season’s nourishment; and if Root-Running-Deep is used to vanquish a foe, its wielder may choose to reshape that linked greenery, or instead cause a clonal double to split and establish itself alongside the first, like a strawberry runner.

In this way, green life is sustained even at a distance, and in the most forbidding of conditions, whatever they may be and why.

* Shaping Root-Running-Deep was considered a great success by the network of briar witches, nature-priests and hedgerow revolutionaries that call themselves the Taproot. The sabre was gifted to an exiled former noble; they have found new purpose in being a ferocious defender and nurturing, among others, a truly massive apple tree and its witchery cuttings for the villages that look to Taproot — and now there is great debate over channeling resources into make several more such blades.

It could only be for the better, right?

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Swordtember 2022 – rot

Prideblight

Some swords are unpleasant necessary works.
This is one of them.

A longsword half eaten through by rust, by its looks — though its ragged blade is deceptively strong — and secured by rough iron nails to a wormeaten, oaken hilt. It does appear to have once had quillions, now broken (or rusted) off. The pommel is a broken stump.

And, when Prideblight is turned just so, an inscription in verdigris and bloody rust can just be perceived on its piecemeal flat: “Show your real face.”

* A strike from Prideblight appears to cause no injury save for a few shallow scorings, easily tended (which is a very good idea anyway, because of its general rust and foulness), a “failure” that may leave its wielder being jeered and mocked. But not for long.

Any arrogant member of high society — or any society, really, if they seek to crush others beneath their boot — callous or repressive nobility, abusers of laws and others of such ilk who receive so much as a scratch from the stained blade find their flesh beginning to look, feel and reek of decay, face and hands first: a progressive, weeping foulness spreading as the days pass that may only be relieved by the afflicted truly making an honest effort — to be a better person.

* Prideblight is a legend whispered of with hope by the downtrodden and terror by its potential victims. None know its creator, nor the identity of the first to wield it — as their face was hidden by veils of wool and bones — nor, truth be told, that of many of that Bleak Laughter’s numerous successors. Prideblight just has a way of appearing, even if it was presumed destroyed, and a brave bearer along with it; and then, once more, slipping away into obscurity to foster silent dread.

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Swordtember 2022 – paranormal

Wraith-Chainer

A strange-looking rapier, Wraith-Chainer is: heavier than most, and forged of blackened iron, with the razor edges of its diamond-sectioned blade plated with silver — to match the silver sculptings of twisted silk scarves that make up the basket of its hand-guard — while the grip of its hilt is worn leather over cherrywood. It has no pommel really speak of, though the metal cap that marks the butt of its hilt bears a scratched out inscription in tiny lettering, possibly once a prayer or plea for rest.

* Wraith-Chainer is like a (very unsubtle) dowsing rod for restless spirits and similar ghostly remnants; if such an entity is within 40′ of the rapier it will weep “tears” down the length of its blade. Should its bearer hold the rapier to point at the heavens, Wraith-Chainer will tug in the direction of the ghostly presence — and if there are many, it all but vibrates.

Once located, of course, such a spirit is often still out of reach — unless struck with Wraith-Chainer, which promptly lives up to its name: a ghostly echos of the blade lodges itself in the haunt’s intangible corpus, solidifying said corpus and forcing interaction with the living, physical world. This rapier “chain” lasts for one hour or until the ghost blade is pulled free by Wraith-Chainer’s bearer.

* The beloved sidearm of the exorcist and ghost-hunter Twylyth Nightwise, Wraith-Chainer is a rare example of spontaneous enchantment brought about sheerly by the proximity of the blade to Twylyth and his hunts for so many years.

The rapier’s awakened abilities were just what the dogged hunter could have wished — and even moreso when he discovered how many haunts will willingly press on, if only they had a small chance to interact or even simply speak with someone just once more, embedded blade notwithstanding.

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Swordtember 2022 – cosmic

Sebi, the Falling Star

A surprisingly broad shortsword with a mirror-bright edge to contrast its frosted flats, Sebi is forged of an exotic metal that fell from the heavens; there’s an almost milky white undertone to its steely frost, and when tipped into the light it shimmers with a faint golden sheen. Sebi’s hilt, including its quillions — backswept crescents — and smooth sphere of a pommel-nut are forged as one with the blade; its grip is bolstered by faceted pearl plates held in place by gilded pins.

* Should its wielder choose, Sebi may — rather than, or in addition to, simply attacking and wounding — produce one of two effects when the blade is swung: a drifting wave of soft gleaming golden stardust that obscures its wielder’s location (next attack against is at disadvantage), or the release of a silver-gold shining mote that flies up to 60′ and causes damage as a dagger.

Perhaps more useful to some, however, is Sebi’s ability as a guiding star map. Held up towards the sky and panned around, regardless of time of day or state of the weather, one may see the stars as they would be, in the flat of the Falling Star’s now night-dark blade. No feature of the starry vault may be hidden from Sebi’s sight.

* Carefully and lovingly gathered from its calamitous fall, the celestial metal that became the Falling Star was forged into its current shape by the skysmith Vanai Fatehealer, and carried by that worthy for the rest of their days. It has since been passed down to a series of skysmiths, diviners, sorcerers and charters of the heavens — and more than one star-following buccaneer amongst the lot.