Sword

A Sword, more specifically a Roman Gladius

A sword is a type of melee weapon that's comprised of a long, sharp blade and a hilt to hold it with. In the real world, the blades of swords normally range in between 50 to 150cm and typically weigh between 1 to 4 kilograms, depending on the size and materials used on the weapon. 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.

Why swords were awesome

Spears are good at poking stuff, but were long and clumsy once you got real close, only had a sharp edge at the very end and easily get tangled in stuff. Axes were good at chopping, but were not good at deflecting other blows and took a bit of time and a fair bit of space to build up momentum. Swords were good at both chopping and poking. If you got close up in a fight back then, a sword was your friend. Some swords are more pokey, some more choppy, some were balanced, but they could all do the job in a pinch. If you have a sword, you have more options available to you.

Shortcomings which should be acknowledged

Swords however requires much, much more skill than any other close combat weapon and while untrained militiamen with spears, halberds or axes still could be a threatening foes, untrained men with a swords possess a danger mainly to themselves. On top of that, they were more expensive than either one of those two weapons. Swords are also not the best weapons when it comes to cutting through metallic armor, although a handful of them were fairly capable at thrusting through gaps in said armor.

One should note, that swords aren't good for fighting giant non-humanoid monsters. Going against bear or a boar with a sword is generally a fucking stupid idea, even more so if you face things like battle elephants - you need either pole arms, or ranged weapons against them, unless you have a death wish. Considering all this, it's strange that swords are the go-to weapons of your average melee murderhobos in any fantasy setting where they are supposed to fight giants and dragons on a daily basis.

Parts of a Swords

• Blade: The main part of a sword used for cutting (duh)
• Edge: The sharp edges of the Blade used for chopping people (dur)
• Point: The pointy end of the Blade used for poking people (derp)
• Fuller: A groove hammered down the length of the blade in the middle, thus making it stronger.*
• Length: The main metal form of the sword. It is composed of the blade and the tang.
• Tang: A part of the Sword's Length that comes behind the blade, a narrow flat blunt bit of metal. Around this the Hilt is built. *
• Hilt: The part of the sword which you hold and as such is not sharp.
• Grip: The length of the sword you grip in your hands built around the Tang. Usually with wood and leather to make it comfortable.
• Crossguard: A metal or wood flat bit of metal or wood at the base of the blade which separates the grip from the blade so that you don't end up accidentally cutting off your own fingers.*
• Pommel: A mass of metal or wood (usually circular) at the end of the grip to keep the sword from slipping out of your hands when in use.*

(*) Technically these bits are not necessary and are not present in every style sword

Types of Swords

Unlike, say, the spear or the mace, which were pretty much the same all over, swords, being essentially jack-of-all-trades weapons, came in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes to fit the needs of the people using them.

• 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, began making bronze knives like their rock ones, then began enlarging the shape. They also were composed just a bade with a handle (or Hilt) bolted on, rather than having a tang, Others were simply a single piece of bronze with maybe some leather or cloth tied around the handle to make it easier to hold.

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

• Khopesh: One of the oldest varieties of sword with a distinct sickle shape. Originally of Egyptian design, this weapon's distinctive blade allowed it to cut, hook shields, and even thrust. It was fairly good for its day in the bronze age, but in that day armor better than leather or padded cloth was a rarity. Its time was done once chainmail and scale armor became common in the iron age.
• Kopis: An ancient Greek short sword from the age of Hoplites, about 50-70 centimeters long. It curved inward and was a single bladed weapon on the inward curve. This did limit flexibility in slashing attacks somewhat when compared with swords with blades on both sides, but meant that a sharper edge could be put on edged side.
• Gladius: The standard sword of the Roman Legions, a short sword about 60 to 80 centimeters long. This sword was the main weapon for the average Roman legionary. As one of the smallest one handed swords of its time, the gladius was decent at chopping and slashing, but excelled at stabbing; combined with Roman shield formations and the bash-step-stab-block move, this gave it a deceptively large effective range surpassed only by pole-arms. The fact that Roman legionnaire maniples was able to crush Macedonian phalanxes in melee should tell you a lot about their effectiveness. It was later phased out in favor of the longer spatha, which was itself a precursor to the arming swords and longswords.
• Arming Sword: Also known as the side-sword, this was a one handed weapon pretty much carried by every decently equipped man-at-arms/archer/spearman/knight ever. Often carried with a shield of some sort, it can also be used if your main weapon breaks or happens to be too long to use in corridors. When most people think of the classic sword-and-shield combo, this sword is what most often comes to mind.
• Longsword: A knightly sword, befit of any self-respecting knightly individual, it's your two-handed or hand and a half go-to knight killer with multiple functions such as sword(duh), crowbar, spear, and hammer. Though there are dozens of techniques to use the longsword two of the most common and useful styles are the Italian and German styles. The Italian longsword technique allows you to strike and parry quickly, greatly emphasizing on using the general physics of a longsword combined with well planned footwork. The German style of "half-swording" (gripping your sword with right hand on the handle and the left on the percussion point of the sword) this technique allows you to use the sword like a crowbar and fight armored opponents more efficiently in close quarters, the objective being to use the sword to catch and topple your opponent so you can shove the pointy end into his visor or other less armored spot. It is also good to note that the longsword strikes faster and harder than the arming sword, due to the fact you're using two hands to operate it.
• Greatsword: Or Zweihander, is a mighty 120-150 centimeter blade that appeared somewhere around the 15th century which was mainly carried by fuckhuge men with fuckhuge biceps and fuckhuge balls whose jobs were to run forth as the vanguard and hack enemy pikes, pikemen, swordsmen and occasionally cavalry to meaty chunks. Greatswords bear many of the same abilities as the longsword though it was a bit slower and struck harder due to the weight, and also require even more training. Good greatswords were some of the most expensive close combat weapons in medieval Europe, and good landsknechts were the most expensive foot soldiers, but for the good reason, as they combined the devastating killing blow and armor piercing capability of axe, speed of the sword, and were also able do chop through tough spear or halberd formations. 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 as something survives his swing - even while they usually wore heavy armour landsknechts were known to die young.
  • Flamberge: So one day one smart fucker thought "Battleaxes are lighter than greatswords, but they still chop through the armour better, maybe that's due to the curved blade". So he went to the blacksmith and ordered the Zweihander with waved blade. The result was BRUTAL. To put it simple, it cuts through fucking anything. ANYTHING! Is your opponent carrying a heavy shield and full plate? You still can kill him in two blows - first it cuts his shield and shield carrying arm in half, second slice cuts HIM in half. If he somehow survives and escapes you, the ragged wounds it leaves are likely to be infected, leaving him to die of gangrene and shitty medieval medicine. On the other hand, you could just hire five men with regular greatswords for the same price it took to make one flamberge. Some landsknechts found a way around it, though, by sharpening the blades of their regular zveihanders into waves - such "fake flamberges" were not near as good in a fight as a proper ones, but at least they where cheap enough to be used by someone without his own manor.
• Scimitar: A variety of sword of middle eastern design, the scimitar was a curved single bladed sword. 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.
• 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 a groove along the edge, in which bits of sharpened obsidian were placed. Shards of obsidian can get really really damn sharp, sometimes having a monomolecular edge. As such a Macuahuitl could cut through flesh and bone like nobody's business. But obsidian is also a type of naturally forming 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 harmlessly, leaving its wielder helpless against the wearer of the aforementioned armor.
• Katana: No wait, come back! Look, katanas get a lot of hate because weeaboos believe they are unstoppable God-weapons that can cleave through tanks, cut through time, and cure cancer. And that's bull, no one who isn't stupid disputes this. But, they were perfectly functional swords for their place and time. Sort of a hybrid between the scimitar, with its curved cutting blade, and the thicker, less-flexible blade of a longsword (though the longsword is a very flexible blade) that allowed for more cutting power in the swing. Katanas were made using a more "primitive" steel than European swords, mainly because the Japanese at the time didn't have such a surplus of iron like the Europeans did, nor did they have the advanced forging techniques, which caused Japanese steel to have mixed concentrations of carbon. The multiple layer blade is impressive and it partly solved this problem, but the Europeans (particularly the Celts, Anglo Saxons and Vikings) had already done something similar to this. Because of this, the katana was made using heavier steel with less carbon, making the core/spine of the blade softer but the edge harder and sharper (meaning that the edge would take longer to chip, but the whole blade would be more likely to shatter and weighed more than a European sword of the same size). Also, you don't swing it like a baseball bat, you pull inward as you swing so the blade cuts as it goes. Historically, it was often used with a shorter sword called a wakizashi, which was commonly used as an alternative to the katana in situations where the long blade would be a hindrance (e.g. indoor fights). Such a pairing was referred to as a daisho and was considered a symbol of the samurai; as it served as a badge of their power, their ownership was forbidden to anyone other than them until the late 19th century. While in most circumstances only one of the pair was used at a time, at least one school of martial arts (the Niten Ichi-ryū) exists that allows a swordsman to wield both swords at once. Katanas and similar swords were used by the Koreans and by the Chinese to some degree.
• Jian: A Chinese variety of sword with a long straight narrow blade. More-or-less equivalent to the European arming sword, though the blade was often more flexible, like a sabre. Usually seen being used one-handed by priests, sorcerers, and badasses doing tai chi in kung fu movies.

The Chinese 29th Division all carrying Dadao, against Katana wielding IJA troops.

• Dadao: A Chinese Sabre meaning "Big Knife" in English that gained prominence towards the end of the Ming Dynasty, only to flourish and become a symbol of authority and tool of execution towards the end of the Qing Dynasty and the early Republican era. It was thick, long, curved blade, and often had 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 it was used by the Chinese Nationalists for defending Chinese territory against Japanese invaders. To just about everyone's surprise, was actually fairly effective in deterring any Japanese troops from getting too close, which was very useful when your foe likes to bayonet charge when it runs out of ammunition. One highly specialized division, the 29th, (Ershi jiu jun) specialized in the Dadao, and became infamous for their beheading cavalry raids.
• 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 and a few of which having a fairly common straight sword shape more commonly associated with European swords. The Ida is notable for having a straight blade which bulges towards the point.
• Cutlass: A European broadsword from the age of Enlightenment. Cutlasses had a point which went off to one side and were often slightly curved, but were usually double bladed. A very effective weapon for chopping and cutting. The stereotypical user of this sword is a pirate, which is not an exaggeration as it was commonly used by sailors and pirates during the age of sail, though it also saw use on the ground in the hands of infantry.
• Rapier: As firearms became more prominent, swords became relegated to the purposes of self-defense and dueling rather than full-fledged military warfare. Unlike most swords, rapiers possess long, thin blades (commonly about a meter long and 2.5 centimeters wide) with a sharpened point- useless for cutting, but perfect for thrusting. They were frequently made with elaborate hilts meant to guard the wielder's hands more effectively, preventing them from being disarmed (both figuratively and literally). Over time, the rapier evolved into the small sword; as the name suggests, the blade was made shorter and the hilt was simplified. At this point, they served more as status symbols than weapons in their own right, as duels to the death had become increasingly frowned upon. (The foil and épée used in modern fencing are also derivatives of the rapier, much like fencing itself is a distant relative of sword duels.)
• Pistol Sword: In the 1600s, someone got a bright idea that seemed ingenious at the time: what if you stuck a gun barrel onto the side of a sword so you wouldn't have to fumble around changing your weapons in the middle of a battle? The answer was not as cool as it sounds- instead of getting a weapon that could be used both as a sword and a pistol, you got a sword that was unbalanced towards its hilt (making it difficult to wield properly) and a pistol that was too heavy to aim with (and was also too expensive to mass-produce). Needless to say, they weren't all that popular, and remained more of a curiosity than anything else.
• Sword Bayonet: There were other attempts at uniting sword and gun after the pistol sword, and many met with with more success. One of the better ideas was to make the hilt of a short sword into a socket for a gun-barrel. Thus you had a soldier who was armed with not only a sword and a gun, but also could combine the two into an effective halberd. And the rest, as they say, is history.
• Machete: Somewhere between a short sword and a long knife, the machete is, like the bayonet, still with us today. Essentially a short one-handed blade with a curved edge, it is mostly intended for cutting through undergrowth in tropical climates in the modern era. However in parts of Latin America and Western Africa "machete fencing" is still practiced.
• Falchion: The European equivalent of the scimitar and dadao, the falchion is a slightly curved single-edged sword vaguely similar to a machete. It was heavier than most swords of its size, giving it increased power at the expense of speed, much like an axe.
• Sabre: The sabre has a long, slightly curved blade and a prominent handguard which covers the knuckles as well as the thumb and forefinger which can be described as a cross between a scimitar and a one-handed longsword (although straight and double-edged versions of the sabre also existed). It used to be the favored weapon of calvalry forces, but when the use of calvalry fell out of favor during World War I the saber fell out of service as a weapon; however, it has been retained as a ceremonial weapon among many modern military forces. (The fencing sabre is a distant relative to the military sabre, as the only similarity between the two weapons is the shape of the handguard.)
• Broadsword: Also referred to as the basket-hilted sword, it's distinguishable by the basket-like shape of the hilt and broad blade (compared to the then-contemporary rapier). While the rapier was used mainly for duelling, the broadsword remained in use as a military weapon.

Sword Related stupidity

There is oh so much of it...

Love and Hate

There are two types of sword related retards.

• Sword Wankers: Overly romantic morons who believe that the sword is the be all end all weapon until people got good with guns and tragically ended that. Buying into all that chivalry/Bushido nonsense.
• Anti-Sword Wankers: People who respond to the sword wankers by going too far the other way. Seeing swords as worthless weapons that were only carried by overly romantic morons. Sword blades would always shatter on impact with plate armor and ten swordsmen would easily die to one guy with a spear.

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

Carrying a sword

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

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

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

Double wielding

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

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

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

Parrying all day long

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

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

Cutting arrows and bullets

If hit straight-on, a sword will cut a bullet in half in mid-flight. The problem with this is that you are standing right behind where the bullet is going, meaning that unless your sword is shaped in such a way that it causes the bullet to split in a wide angle (This is usually done by shaping the sword's blade like long, flat diamond/parallelogram.), you are now shot twice. If you're not standing right behind where the bullet is going... why are you bothering cutting it in half? The same goes for arrows, but there is likely more batting aside involved (sort of like it goes in Star Wars with lightsabers and blaster bolts). The thing is, if you can move so fast that you can deflect incoming projectiles (the projectile from a decent bow can easily go faster than your car does) 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.

Unsheathing fun

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

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

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

How not to make swords

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

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

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

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

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

The issue with lightsabers

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

Another point is the double lightsaber. Based on a variety of unbladed pole-arms like the Gun or the Bo, it has a double-sized handle with the laser parts coming out from both ends. Some models could also be split into two at the center so that you can dual wield (as described above why this is a Bad Idea). The problem with this style is that it gives the wielder only a limited surface to work with without burning their hands off. Maybe this can be discredited as training in the Force and all that jazz (plus, Ray Park is REALLY good at what he does), but this would still involve swinging a large dangerous ravestick very close to your body. And a good number of these styles involve holding the weapon near the end to gain great striking power at the tip of the weapon (like with a pole-arm. With a lightsaber this is not possible.

And the lightwhip, lighttantos and all other kinds of outlandish lightsabers can go right fuck themselves.

Swords in Fantasy

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

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

• Humans will make use of whatever sword their society is supposed to be an analog to. Medieval European analogs will make use of longswords and arming swords, with rapiers and suchlike for bandits and rogues (especially if they have a Spanish Streak to them). If it is a middle eastern analog, expect Scimitars and variations on that theme. Are you on the high seas with pirates, its cutlasses all round. If it's an East Asian analog, you will definately see some Katanas as other Japanese blades, with Dao and Jian coming up as well.
• Dwarves will make use of a variety of heavy broadswords to accompany their more traditional axes.
• Elvish Swords for the most part come in two flavors: Leaf shaped swords and curved swords to the effect of katanas and scimitars
• Orcish swords vary a bit, but as a rule they are heavy single edged weapons. That said, Orcs will also use a lot of stolen weapons as well.

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