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I have this feeling that my luck is none too good This sword here at my side don't act the way it should Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave Hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave And it howls! It howls like hell! — Blue Öyster Cult, "Black Blade"
This is a big veiny sword with a creepy, blinky red eye in it. The kind of thing that, when you look at it, you say "Okay, yeah, I'm pretty sure that sword is evil, and probably cursed to boot." It looks totally badass though, and hits like a mofo. And I think we can all agree that that's a reasonable trade-off.
Some weapons are persons, complete with names and minds. And some persons are evil. This is about them.
Obviously, weapons are made to hurt and kill. These weapons enjoy it too. And some will try to talk the wielder into it, with strange voices of all kinds. Some are heard with the ears, some sound in the mind.
These weapons might kill everything in their way, rather than just what they need to. Some refuse to go back into the scabbard without killing. Some just don't activate the awesome magic without the wielder killing a kitten. Some kill not the body but the soul. Some kill their wielders as well, whether directly or indirectly, instantly if they're hungry enough or over time by draining Life Energy. Some don't. Because, you see, they wield the wielder, instead of the other way around. And they are prone to being hard to get rid of.
How did they come to be like that? Some were deliberately enchanted, or rather cursed. Some are imbued with the evil of their maker, some indeed, are the Soul Jar of an evil human. With some it's the material they were made of, and some were corrupted by deeds done with them, even worse than the usual cruelty of the battlefield. If It Was A Gift — do not trust the giver thereafter.
The "personality" of the evil weapon often varies according to the traits associated with it. A dagger is insidious, an axe encourages the wielder's carnal side, staffs are subtle and sophisticated in their corruption, a knife makes one ruthless... Swords are the most common evil weapon. Most other weapons have a peaceful purpose: bows for hunting, flails for threshing grain, axes for chopping wood... The sword is the only medieval weapon that cannot serve any purpose except war. Because they are so common they also vary much more in how they are evil.
Subtropes of Empathic Weapon and Artifact Of Doom. Compare and contrast Unholy Holy Sword.
Examples:
Anime
- The swords made by the man who made Rurouni Kenshin's sword were all like this, save for his last two.
- In this case the swords weren't evil in and of themselves, they were just more likely to attract bloodthirsty users due to the way they were made.
- Inu Yasha had Kaijinbou, who forged Toukijin from the fangs of a monster reduced to a head by Inuyasha, leaving it filled with the creature's malice. It's that Yin Yang thing.
- Slayers has a few examples. The anime has a cursed knife, which Lina attempts to pawn off to an unfortunate shopkeeper. The novels have Doolgofa, the Cursed Sword of Bezeld, which is actually a disguised mazoku who will fuse with any poor fool who picks it up.
- Love Hina had an evil katana that possessed Naru. Played mostly for comedy.
- Anubis in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure is a sword with its own Stand, which possesses whoever picks it up. Even a piece of it has this effect.
- Soul Eater has demon weapons, the evil counterpart to the Shinigami's Death Scythes. Both are good and evil in their own right. The main difference being the later powered themself up by eating corrupted souls and the former were more indescriminate.
- The Nakatsukasas' fey blade seem to be one of these; corrupted, possesses the wielder and destroys their soul...but can be turned to good use with the right influences. Apparently many, many previous members of the family had missed out on the last part before Tsubaki decided to have a meister in Black Star (probably significant she was the first of the family to have a meister, given this is a series that favours Loners being Evil.
- The Anathema Scythe from Tetragrammaton Labyrinth. At one point it was described as enjoying the pain it inflicted on it's wielder; it was so evil it was able to convince an Angel, a being that by definition does not know death, that it had been murdered. The source of its power, and root of its evil is the nail from the Crucifixion that was used in its construction.
- In Mai-HiME, Mikoto's sword Miroku is an aspect of a very malevolent demonic entity, and it rarely ever leaves her sight because Mikoto's family had trained her to use it ever since she was little, and it and the pendant she wears possess mind-controlling powers.
Comic Books
- In The Warlord, Machiste found an ancient cursed axe containing a demonic entity which took possession of his mind. The demon's will prevented Machiste from letting go of the axe. Seeing that the axe's influence was making Machiste more and more tyrannical as well as violent, Travis was forced to remove his friend's right hand, thus severing the axe's spell.
- The Ebony Blade, sword of The Avengers member the Black Knight, was afflicted with a blood curse due to all the blood the original Black Knight had spilled. Dane Whitman eventually purged the Blade of its curse at Doctor Strange's behest by plunging it into the Brazier of Truth while Strange bathed them both in magic fire. The curse returned, however, when the Sub-Mariner used it to kill his wife Marrina. The curse seems to affect different people in different ways. It turned Dane into a statue, it amplified Proctor's gann'josin-based powers, and it granted Sean Dolan great physical powers as Bloodwraith.
- Carvin' Marvin from Knights Of The Dinner Table.
- Somewhat subverted in an early Transformers comic. Megatron is damaged and becomes stuck in gun mode with no free will. A petty criminal picks up the super-powerful gun and uses it to become a highly successful criminal, but the experience ends up pretty much ruining his life anyway. To cap it all off, after screwing up the crook's life beyond repair, the gun wakes up, turns into a giant robot, insults him, and leaves.
Literature
- Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer (from the Elric stories and others) actually steals people's souls in order to give its wielder strength - including those of many of Elric's friends as well as his enemies. And Elric's. Turns out the sword is actually a demon.
- The Gonne in in Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms, which wasn't just a powerful weapon, but a weapon that could possess the mind of those who hold it, tempting it with the power it has and what the holder could do with it.
- The three titular swords of Tad Williams' Memory Sorrow And Thorn are Empathic Weapons with a twist: they can control their wielders against their will. However, the most fitting example of this trope is Sorrow, forged and wielded by the Storm King prior to his death. Merely touching it can freeze you or destroy your soul.
- In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, Fulgrim's Chaos-tainted sword. It lures him into treachery and murder and when he fights his own brother, Ferrus Manus, convinced him that he must kill him to save his life. Then it plays on his guilt and lets him realize the full extent of it, and uses that to persuade him to let it possess him.
- Morganti weapons in Dragaera destroy/devour the souls of their victims, and Vlad could sense the hunger in one he was attacked with, and felt one he used to threaten a villain trying to turn in his hand and kill. This semi-sentience is downplayed later on, as Vlad isn't up close and personal with them that often. The Great Weapons are Morganti as well, but are more versatile and don't have to destroy souls (once even being used to store Aliera's, allowing her to play possum by actually being fatally wounded.)
- The Infernal Devices were three super-kick-ass blades from Simon R Green's Blue Moon Rising. Subverted a bit, in that these ultra-powerful, ultra-Eeeevil weapons nevertheless fail to get the job done.
- The Speaking Gun from the Nightside novels, made out of meat, and capable of unmaking anything by speaking its name in reverse. Created to kill angels, but hateful and eager to kill anything.
- Subverted with the sentient sword Nightblood from Warbreaker. Though very powerful and incredibly dangerous to anyone in the vicinty, it was actually created for the purpose of destroying evil. Problem was, the Awakener who created it didn't realize that a sword has no conception of human morality, so Nightblood continually goads its wielder into trying to kill everyone in sight, just to be on the safe side.
- The "thirsty sword" in The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen is quite possibly Axe Crazy as well as evil. It can talk, but all it ever says is "More drink," by which it apparently means blood. Prolonged use turns a rebel leader into a Complete Monster.
- The sword Excalibur in Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming. After the eponymous prince takes it off a Black Knight, he finds that the sword is utterly paranoid and Ax Crazy, and tries to convince him to kill everyone he meets. After he leaves it in the forest, it tries to get revenge on him by siccing a group of demons on him.
Mythology
- Kullervo from The Kalevala had a rather nasty sword that talked to him before his suicide. It also inspired Michael Moorcock and Tolkien.
- The swords made by the Real Life swordsmith Muramasa are sometimes portrayed like this.
- Norse Mythology features swords that can not be sheathed again without killing someone.
- The Ba'al Verzi daggers in the Ravenloft setting have borrowed that idea, or at least are rumored to.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons And Dragons: there are every variety of magic swords that can be thought of, including swords that cause greater injuries if used against those of certain Character Alignment.
- Bonus points to the magic axe "Lifedrinker", which drains Life Energy from anything it hits, and half as much from the wielder at the same time, and to intelligent magic items in general, which come with an Ego score that scales with their power. If their Ego is substantially stronger than your Will save, they take over your body. Using a magic item with a similar alignment and goals can be an interesting choice, but often comes back to bite you. Using an intelligent evil sword? Not so good...
- Several cursed katanas in Legend Of The Five Rings RPG, including the blades such as Ambition (which does Exactly What It Says On The Tin and also is more deadly against those of higher position than the user.)
- Several in Warhammer and Warhammer 40000. For starters, every single daemon weapon ever. Notable one's include Kingslayer, the sword of Archaeon, the Lord of End Times (Warhammer Fantasy), Gorechild, the chain-axe belonging to Kharn the Betrayer (40k), and Drach'nyen, the sword of Abaddon the Despoiler (40k). The Primarch Fulgrim in 40k got corrupted by a powerful daemon weapon. The weapon slowly caused him to turn to Chaos, and in the end, when he refused to obey it, it posessed his body, turning him into a daemon.
- There's a Khornate mace that drives its wielder to ever-higher states of bloodlust until the wielder finally collapses from exhaustion. And then it turns on its bearer, because Khorne cares not from where the blood flows...
- Soulsteel weapons and armor in Exalted fit the bill—while they can technically be used for any purpose, including opposing evil, the soulsteel that composes them is exactly what it sounds like, and their bonuses work by draining the life and vigor out of their victims (in the case of weapons) and attackers (in the case of armor). Meanwhile, hell-forged weapons and armor may have still-living demons bound to them as part of their creation...
Live Action TV
- One episode of the Magiranger Super Sentai series featured the evil samurai Shichijuro, a Monster Of The Week with a sword that could cut anything (including non-physical concepts like the bonds between the team.) Eventually, he's taken down, but the sword remains. When Magi Green picks it up, the armor of the monster appears around him and he attacks the others, revealing that the real Shichijuro was the sword, posessing its wielder. (Which, in hindsight, means the "monster" who just got Humongous Mecha-ed to death was probably a perfectly innocent whatever-he-was before touching the sword...)
- VR Troopers had the Millennium Saber. Fortunately, it only activates once every thousand years, hence the name. The rest of the time, it's old and rusty.
- Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has the Sword of Darkness. The name says it all. And it looked so awesome, too. Of course, the weapon on Power Rangers you most want to stay away from is the Dino Thunder White Ranger suit, which drove its user mad.
Video Games
Webcomics
- Komiyan from Darken has acquired a Morph Weapon called Blackshard, also a particularly chatty one. Thus far it hasn't done anything particularly sinister, but he has been warned to be wary of it by an angel.
- Nothing sinister? It quite obviously possessed Komi when he refused one of its suggestions.
- Penny Arcade had a Genre Shift story in Japan where a man was possessed by an evil katana and forced to slaughter. When he briefly broke free of its control he drove a dagger into his eye, but it didn't let him die.
- Sluggy Freelance, of course, has Unholy Evil Death Bringer, AKA Chaz. A sword powered by the blood of the innocent. It doesn't get more evil than that. Except that it is wielded by Torg, The Hero, its primary purpose is killing demons, and the sword itself claims it is only a weapon, and therefore neither good nor evil.
- One of the Order Of The Stick strips from its brief run in Dragon Magazine featured a glowing black talking sword that Elan wanted Vaarsvuius to identify. When the elf told him to come back later, the sword said that it was cool, no problem, and hey, want to go kill some people while we wait?
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