Comic Book / X of Swords

Draw your sword.^note Clockwise from top: Apocalypse, Captain Avalon, Captain Britain, Wolverine, Magik, Storm, and Kid Cable. Not pictured: Gorgon.

Monet: So we, what, pick our champions, find the blades...and then what happens?

Opal Luna Saturnyne: Then the contest begins.

Monet: Care to be more specific?

Opal Luna Saturnyne: It's exactly what you think, mutant. You step into the arena, knowing the full measure of what you're fighting for... You face your enemy, who wants nothing less than your total annihilation...you look them in the eye, steady yourself... And then... And then... You raise. Your. SWORD.

— X of Swords: Creation #1

X-Men: X of Swords ^note (pronounced Ten of Swords) is a 2020 Bat Family Crossover published by Marvel Comics, devised by Jonathan Hickman & Tini Howard and running throughout the entire Dawn of X line of X-Men titles: X-Men, Marauders, X-Force, Excalibur, New Mutants, Hellions, Cable, Wolverine, and X-Factor.

The crossover marks the end of Dawn of X and leads into the next phase of the wider Krakoan Age storyline, the Reign of X.

Once upon a time, Krakoa was a part of a larger island, Okkara, but an invading force of demons from the "black world" of Amenth tore the land in two, into Krakoa and Arrako. The mutants of Okkara, including their leader Apocalypse, fought the demons, but in the end, Apocalypse was forced to send Arrako (including his first Horsemen) off into Amenth and close the portal behind them.

Now, Apocalypse found a way to open a new portal and rescue the mutants of Arrako...but it turns out that they don't want to be rescued. Over a thousand years of living in Amenth has turned his first Horsemen against him and together with the leader of Amenth, Annihilation, they plan to invade Krakoa and Earth. But first they must cross Otherworld — and before they can do that, the leader of Otherworld, Opal Luna Saturnyne, insists that a tournament be fought between Krakoa and Arrako. A tournament of swords. Ten swords for each of Krakoa and Arrako's champions.

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Comics involved in X of Swords

Preludes

• Excalibur #12
• X-Men #12

Story Issues

• X of Swords: Creation #1
• X-Factor #4
• Wolverine #6
• X-Force #13
• Marauders #13
• Hellions #5
• New Mutants #13
• Cable #5
• Excalibur #13
• X-Men #13
• X of Swords: Stasis #1
• X-Men #14
• Marauders #14 - 15
• Excalibur #14
• Wolverine #7
• X-Force #14
• Hellions #6
• Cable #6
• X-Men #15
• Excalibur #15
• X of Swords: Destruction #1

General Tropes:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Muramasa Blade's power. Solem has adamantium skin that stops Wolverine's claws with ease. One slice by a Hand ninja with a Muramasa and it easily cleaves through Solem's adamantium skin even though it's only "ordinary" steel. It can do so because the mad smith Muramasa sometimes puts so much of himself in his work, that a bit of his soul is forged into the blade.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Issue 14 of Marauders has Logan deciding to get drunk at Saturnyne's party in anticipation of the fighting to come after. He gets drunk enough to act like a jerkass to his friends, wrongfully accusing Brian, a married man, of causing the fight children might die in because he wouldn't have sex with Saturnyne, even though the prophecy was already underway by then (and all sleeping with her would have gotten is him personally being spared). The issue ends with him seemingly stabbing Saturnyne in a rage, though this was later revealed to be a hallucination. This ruins any chance of Brian managing to talk Saturnyne into disqualifying Arakko for War attempting to poison Logan.
• Alien Invasion: One last agent on the S.W.O.R.D station informs Jean Grey why the station was abandoned before he sends himself out of the airlock. Inside the station is a door to another universe, where the alien Vescora come from. The Vescora are not bound by physical law, capable of surviving any environment. They cleanse, analyze and harvest the detritus of the planets and realities they invade additionally infecting victims to produce more Vescora. These traits also make them perfect servants for Saturnyne at the end of the event, becoming scavengers and harvesters in the Blightspoke.
• Alliance of Alternates: Saturnyne casts a spell to restore the Captain Britain Corps, but ends up with one comprised of variants of Betsy Braddock. This is bittersweet to her, as she secretly wanted a version of Brian back that she could rekindle a relationship with.
• All Just a Dream: Issue 14 of Marauders ends with Logan trying to stab Saturnyne. Issue 15 begins with the demons of Arraki storming through to Earth, laying waste to all in their path, and Logan finally getting put out of his misery. ... except it's all a psychic vision Sat put in Logan's head, to show what would happen if he actually was stupid enough to try and murder her.
• Almost Dead Guy: Banshee, after Summoner brings him back from Otherworld. Fortunately, he pulls through.
• All for Nothing: The Hellions, after many off-screen adventures, find that the tournament has already begun and their mission was completely useless. This was by design, Sinister needed a pretext to harvest Arakkoan mutant genes.
• Animal Superheroes: Two members of the reborn Captain Britain Corps that we see are clearly a frog and a swan. There are also two other birds, which may be an owl and a dove. There's also a T-Rex.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Poor Alex Summers. Havok loses his left eye when Mr. Sinister offers it up as a tribute to some hippogriffs offscreen. Then he gets both hands chopped off by the Hex Butcher.
  • Orphan-maker then gets both his arms ripped off by Amino Fetus.
  • Wolverine and War's fight is until someone loses a limb. Logan wins by slicing off her left hand.
• Ancestral Weapon: The Skybreaker, a sword made of pure vibranium that was forged by the first king of Wakanda.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: The demons would have eventually defeated the mutants of Arakko, but the dark god Annihilation has his new minion Isca deliver a message to her sister. There'll be peace between them if a mutant can defeat a pair of his champions and puts on the Golden Helm of Amenth. To buy time for the Earth, Genesis takes up the offer and sends Apocalypse back to get stronger.
• Antagonistic Offspring: The Horsemen are the kids of Apocalypse, who has always been a Social Darwinist. Turns out several thousand years cut off from civilization having to fight endless hordes of enemies does not improve that attitude, even toward their own dad.
• Asshole Victim: Nobody mourns the large numbers of demons that the White Sword's forces had crucified.
• Badass Finger Snap: Saturnyne shows who's really in charge of Otherworld when she stops the fight between the X-Men and the First Horsemen with nothing more than a snap of her fingers, freezing everyone in place. She does another to make the room quiet so she and Brian can hear each other as he tries to parlay a disqualification for Arakko.
• Badass Boast: In Marauders, Magik and Gorgon are scoping out the competition when they meet Isca. Isca tells them to spare her the platitudes and not to whine about not being in a fair fight. Gorgon says to her the following, which impresses her with his mettle.
  Gorgon: I've never been in a fair fight...they all had to face me.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: The conclusion of the tournament features the X-Men fighting the hordes of Amenthi demons and the other Swordbearers.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Just as the Krakoan Swordbearers are being overwhelmed by Arrakii demons, Brian Braddock looks up and sees the newly reformed Captain Britain Corps.
  • And then, even with the Corps on their side, the battle seems lost, Cyclops and Marvel Girl send the S.W.O.R.D station (this was the missing 10th sword of Krakoa) into Otherworld and unleash a mighty strikeforce of mutants - both (relatively) weak and strong (including Gwenpool) that saves the day.
• Bad Boss: Mr. Sinister's goal isn't to steal swords but to get DNA samples from Arakko mutants, after he collects his specimens - he murders his surviving Hellions (luckily they're back in Krakoa when he does this).
• The Bad Guy Wins: Zig-zagged with Saturnyne. While she does ultimately end the event in a stronger position than ever and escapes any punishment or reprisal for her actions, she fails to get the one thing she truly wanted: Brian Braddock is still not Captain Britain and far from loving her, now distrusts her more than ever due to correctly suspecting she had a role in Betsy's apparent death. To rub salt in the wound, the spell that she used to restore the Captain Britain Corps winds up backfiring, and as a result the new Corps is made up of multiversal equivalents of Betsy Braddock, a woman she despises and had gotten rid of to ensure that Brian could re-inherit the title.
• Bait-and-Switch: Cypher prepares himself for his battle with Bei the Blood Moon... and then it turns out the competition is one for marriage, with both teams earning a point upon completion of their wedding. In fairness, the couple are immediately drawn to each other.
• Big "NO!": Siryn unleashes one when the Horsemen stab Apocalypse, backed by her power.
• Bittersweet Ending: The contest ends in victory for the X-Men, Arakko is reunited with Krakoa and the Captain Britain Corps, MIA since the lead up to Secret Wars (2015), are back, but Apocalypse has been chosen to be sent to Amenth as part of the agreement that sent Arakko back to Earth, Rockslide, Gorgon and Wild Child are Killed Off for Real and Betsy Braddock is currently MIA. Apocalypse also suggests that Cyclops' decision to ignore the Quiet Council and invade Otherworld is the first crack in Krakoa's foundation with the Quiet Council.
• Bring Help Back: Summoner was sent to find Apocalypse in order to save their nation from the Amenthi. Except not.
• Boxed Crook: Solem, one of Arakko's champions, was imprisoned for over a hundred years for killing his cousin War's husband, Bracken, in a duel, so she's not very enthusiastic at having to free him.
  • To add insult to injury, Solem was even rumored to be Bracken's extra-marital lover who seduced Bracken into cheating on his wife War.
• Brutal Honesty: Illyana, like Warlock and Krakoa, is worried about Doug entering the tournament due to him usually being a Non-Action Guy. Even as she trains him she bluntly tells him that if he enters that battlefield, it'll be the last thing he ever does.
• Came Back Wrong: X-Factor #4 adds a massive wrinkle to the resurrection process: a Mutant who dies in Otherworld is effectively "erased" from existence and replaced with an amalgam of other variations from the multiverse, effectively killing the original.
• The Cavalry: Repeatedly, in the last act. As the surviving champions of Krakoa are facing off against the armies of Arakko and the hordes of Amenth, all seems hopeless... and then Jubilee arrives, leading the Priestesses of the Green. And then the reborn Captain Britain Corps arrives, all of whom are alternate reality counterparts of Betsy Braddock, including versions of her as men, a gorilla, a werewolf, a velociraptor, a dragon, a lizardwoman, a swan, an owl, a dove, and even a frog. And then the X-Men — pretty much all of them except Kurt, Kate, and Emma — make a Dynamic Entry in the S.W.O.R.D. orbital space station. And when even that isn't enough... Cable opens the portal to unleash the Vescora.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Cable goes to retrieve his "sword in the stone" in Cable #5, he discovers that it opens a portal to a world populated by the Vescora. In X of Swords: Destruction he realizes that the obvious counter to the demon hordes of Amenth was in his hands all along.
• The Chosen Many: Ten champions are to be decided on by each side from a prophecy provided by Saturnyne.
• The Chosen Wannabe: Downplayed with the Silver Samurai. Harada is pissed that he wasn't one of the chosen one despite being one of the best (or possibly the best) mutant swordsmasters ever. He shows his displeasure by withholding information on the Muramasa unless Logan can show his worth by beating him.
• Citadel City: The beachhead of Arakko became one, when mutant alchemists and engineers created ten towers that would fire bolts of energy that incinerated demon invaders. For thousands of years, the encampment would never be breached and new generations of mutants were born and raised there.
• Cool Sword: Swords are going to play a major role in the series. The Skybreaker sword, Muramasa, the Light of Galador, the Soulsword and many others are all set to play a role.
  • Subverted. After serving their roles as MacGuffins to start the plot for the first half of the crossover, they are mostly forgotten once the setting switches to Otherworld in the second half of the crossover.
  • Though Storm's vibranium sword comes in handy when she reflects Death's gaze back at him, power magnified.
• Comically Missing the Point: Pogg Ur-Pogg eats his seating card. Illyana thinks he's an idiot, seeing as the cards are not edible.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Subverted with Wolverine. When he walks through Hellfire in the form of molten lava, his flesh burns away, but he keeps wading through it as a skeleton.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Magik is up against Pogg Ur-Pogg. Unfortunately the duel is an arm-wrestling match. Magik is 5'5" and occasionally works out, Pogg is a demon mercenary several times Magik's size. Pogg slams Illyana's arm so hard that she goes through the podium and considered lucky that her arm is still in its socket. Magik easily wins when they fight again. She drags out the real Pogg, a short fat old man, and hammers him with a massive uppercut.
  • The Hellions get slaughtered by Arakko mutant plunderers, the Locus Vile. Only a few Hellions escape that battle.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Betsy manages to land the first blow in her fight against Isca. After that, it goes downhill for Betsy. Admittedly, given Isca's power is that she is literally incapable of losing, Betsy was always screwed.
• Deadly Gaze: Death of the First Horsemen has a gaze that can reduce someone to ashes. He appears to use his Anubis shaped helm to keep this power in check.
• Deadlier Than The Male:
  • The arc introduces Apocalypse's wife, Genesis, a Chloropath/Chlorokine who can definitively state minus any objection at all from him — in fact, he actually admits it to himself with awe — that both of them know that she's stronger than him. It is her husband's own objective assessment that his wife was easily the the deciding factor in the first war of Okkaran mutants against invading armies of Amenthi extra-dimensional demons.
  • Apocalypse further states that she is actually the strongest mutant of Okkara, the original mutant homeland, which he had revealed to the rest of the Quiet Council itself, had consisted of scores of god-like mutants.
    • Essentially, Genesis is to botany what Storm is to meteorology, a veritable goddess (and Marvel's own version of DC's Poison Ivy).
• Death Is Cheap: Averted. The mutants of Krakoa have become increasingly casual about death, as the Five can always resurrect them. But if a mutant dies in Otherworld, the person the Five resurrect won’t be the same. Perhaps they’ll Come Back Strong. Perhaps they’ll Come Back Wrong. But they will be changed, and the original personality will be gone.
• Decided by One Vote: The Quiet Council debate whether to destroy the External Gate to stop the forces from Amenth getting through to Krakoa. They put it to a vote, but then Krakoa pipes up to point out it gets last say on what happens, and the gate stays open.
• Demonic Possession: Arakko and Amenth are united because of a deal struck between the two leaders Genesis and Annihilation. Genesis willingly places the Golden Helm of Amenth on her brow. The helm, which houses the spirit of Annihilation, now possesses Genesis as its host.
• De-power: Wolverine and Storm are depowered when they're given a magical wine from the Crooked Market.
• Didn't See That Coming: Even though she's the who one who prophesied the whole thing Saturnyne is still taken by surprise when Betsy and Brian work together to seize both the Sword of Might and the Starlight Sword from her. According to Betsy this is because she intended to drive them apart, while underestimating their love and loyalty to each other. She's equally taken aback when Betsy hijacks another scheme and resurrects the Captain Britain Corps with Betsy's identity rather than Brian's. Saturnyne is then impressed at Apocalypse's choice of Arrako (and its millions of imprisoned mutants) for the peace exchange, she mentioned she hadn't anticipated that.
• Discard and Draw: Betsy and Brian obtain the Starlight Sword and Sword of Might, respectively, once the former destroys the Amulet of Right.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Jaspers feels that Wolverine deserves to die because he downs fine wine like it's cheap beer.
  • Death disintegrates a server at Saturnyne's dinner party because he was served a dish of scarab beetles, which he considers sacred.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Saturnyne introduces Famine as the regent of "the former kingdom of Dryador". Famine "corrects" her, saying that "Dryador is no more" since Arakko conquered it.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Bei the Blood Moon's power is the Doom Note. And yes, the interstitial describing it puts the Doom Note in bold every time it's mentioned.
• Due to the Dead: Polaris uses Rockslide's remains to create the ritual circle that will transport the champions to Otherworld, but also as a memorial to remind them death is still final and the consequences of their hubris.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Gorgon doesn't survive his final contest but he manages to kill so many opponents that he levels the playing fields from a strong lead for Arakko to an even match.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: For Apocalypse. He goes through a lot and that's not counting the thousands of years where he was separated from his wife and children, but ultimately he saves both Krakoa and Arakko and afterwards walks away with his family.
• Easily Forgiven: Mostly, T'Challa and Shuri forgive Storm's theft of the Skybreaker and bear her no real ill will. T'Challa does order the Wakandan gateway to be destroyed as he wants his beloved to come from the front door from now on instead of skulking in like a thief.
• Elite Four: Apocalypse's very first Horsemen, all of whom are his children with his wife Genesis, of which War is Summoner's mother.
• Enigmatic Minion: Of a sort. The White Sword of the Celestial Spire is one of the Swordbearers of Arakko — but he makes it clear, even from the start, that he's fulfilling an obligation, not following a cause he believes in. His actions during the contest then serve to destroy Arakko's massive lead (and after the first of his champions fell, he couldn't claim ignorance that it would be judged in this way), and once the contest is over he simply takes his army and leaves rather than joining the forces fighting the Krakoans.
• Equippable Ally: Doug's sword is Warlock, who turns himself into a sword for Doug to use.
• Epic Fail: Magik loses the Contest of Letters because she thinks "magic" actually is spelled with a "K."
• Everyone Has Standards: Zig-zagged; White Sword objects to War's attempt to poison Wolverine before the fighting begins, particularly because Cypher ended up being collateral damage. However, when the next dish served at Saturnyne's dinner is unicorn, he's one of the few who has no hesitation to eat it. More notable in the fact that he doesn't need to eat, but chooses to do so exactly because he doesn't want to pass up unicorn.
• Evil All Along: Summoner.
• Evil Is Petty: Saturnyne is understandably mad about the attempt on her life, but her jealousy of her crush's sister is beyond.
  • Ironically, Brian tried to woo Saturnyne back when he was still a single bachelor, even before he ever met his current wife Meggan, and Saturnyne cruelly rejected him outright. She realized that she was actually also attracted to him too, but only when Brian and Meggan were already married with a daughter of their own.
• Exact Words:
  • The fight between Wolverine and Summoner is a fight "to the death." When Wolverine kills Summoner, Saturnyne awards the point to Arrako, since Summoner was the one who fought "to the death."
  • Similarly, Cable and Bei's fight to the death ends with the former at Bei's mercy, at which point Cypher steps in and persuades his new wife to spare him on the basis that the trauma Cable will sustain qualifies as the death of his spirit.
  • At the conclusion of the event Saturnyne demands that both sides exchange mutants as a sign of good faith. Apocalypse chooses the mutant island Arakko, meaning it and all the mutants that reside on it will go to Earth.
• Extinct in the Future: Played with. An item on Saturnyne's menu is assorted raw seafood from Dryador, where each bite is the last of its kind as the invading Amenth forces have exterminated all life in the realm.
• Exotic Entree: Saturnyne's pre-fight dinner party serves nothing but this. It underscores her callous detachment, as a lot of the meals are so rare as to be endangered, a serving of roasted unicorn being particularly notable.
• Eye Scream: In the fight between Wolverine and the Summoner, Logan tosses his Muramasa right through Summoner's eye.
  • Alex has to let a hippogriff tear one of his eyes out as bridge toll.
  • Gorgon gets his eyes gouged out by one of the 100 champions, this barely slows Tomi down.
• Fallen Hero: The White Sword and the One Hundred Champions had grown embittered by the daily cycle of slaughter and resurrection for thousands of years. Never being rescued by their fellow mutants, they came to see the Arakko mutants as no better than the demons and they attacked the crusading force of Genesis when they made it to his bastion.
• Fashion Show: One of the tasks has Storm and Wolverine (and Redroot and War) strut around on a catwalk. They lose easily because while ALL three of the women apparently have experience knowing how to model clothing, Wolverine does not even try to hide how much he hates it.
• Foil: Arakko as a society is deliberately contrasted with Krakoa, having its own council and liaison to the land itself. The former is ancient and born in conflict, seeking to conquer and dominate all around it while the latter is new and created with peace in mind, seeking to forge longstanding alliances with all neighbors. Arakko even has its own mirror of Krakoa's three laws; sharing Make More Mutants but having Destroy Our Enemies and Defend this Broken Land instead of No Killing Humans and Respect this Sacred Land.
• Forced Transformation: Saturnyne transforms the Golden Helm of Amenth into a staff/spear for its owner to bear. This greatly weakens the ability for Annihilation to take over its host, as the helm provided direct access to the wearer's mind.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In chewing out Brian for honoring his marriage vows over trying to persuade Saturnyne to call off the tournament by sleeping with her, Wolverine points out that Cypher has never been married – and by the way, neither have Magik or Cable. Part 15 has Cypher get married.
  • When Saturnyne is making her declaration, we are shown the S.W.O.R.D. Space Station just as she says "Raise. Your. Sword." In the last issue it proves decisive in the fight.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Of the mutants who went to fight in Amenth, 10% of that army went mad at the sight of the demon world and wandered off into the wastelands. This would have grave consequences, thousands of years later, when it ended up producing Summoners.
• Got Volunteered: Exodus proposes that since Mr. Sinister so kindly suggested to send the Hellions to Otherworld and stop the tournament before it starts, he should lead them in this mission personally. The rest of the Quiet Council, especially Exodus and Magneto, agree he should go.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Summoner slices Rockslide in half, which normally wouldn't be a problem for Santo, who can just reconstitute his form using any nearby minerals... except his attacker's using a specially created sword which destroys Santo's energy form as well.
• Half-Human Hybrid: After taking the invitation to go to the heart of Amenth, Genesis learns what would be the doom of the Arakko mutants. The mutants who had gone mad and wandered off had been rounded up and made to mate with the demons, until there was an army of mutant/demon hybrids. With their mutant powers and being trained in newly developed dark arts such as summoning, these abominations spearheaded an assault that destroyed Arrako's defense emplacements.
• Heel–Face Turn: Bei turns on Amenth and joins Cypher and the Krakoans after he convinces her to aid them.
• History Repeats: Cypher was the New Mutant whose power had the least amount of combat applicability, who always had to be equipped with a shapeshifting Warlock to hold his own at all, and he was still the first to die in battle. Here the setup is played out again because even with his upgraded abilities and Warlock's help he's still the least combat capable member of Krakoa's Swordbearers.
• Hold the Line: Havok, Polaris and M stay behind in Otherworld to keep the Horsemen back.
• Hopeless War: The mutants of Arakko had been fighting the invading demons of Amenth for millennia, and after the initial breakthrough with their counterattack by the White Sword and his 100 Champions, the mutants were dead-locked until their champion Isca joined the demons, because she was incapable of losing.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: The Amenthi daemon hordes, driven by Annihilation to seize everything, but even without its intelligence guide them they'd be driven to destroy everything or die trying.
  • Similarly, the Vescora are reality-bending aliens that seek to rend, analyze and harvest material out of whatever reality they're currently in. Additionally they're into converting other lifeforms into more Vescora.
• Human Sacrifice: The Externals Nicodemus, Saul, Crule and Candra are sacrificed by Apocalypse to create a portal that connects the Otherworld with the Amenth dimension.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: When the X-Men invade Otherworld to save their comrades, Cyclops tells the other X-Men to not hold anything back because dying over there means dying for good.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Cypher falls head over heels for Bei because he can't understand at all a single word of what she's actually saying.
• Inconvenient Attraction: Zig-Zagged with Cypher and Bei the Blood Moon. He's smitten the moment he hears her yell untranslatable threats at him, but it turns out their duel might just be marriage.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Bei the Blood Moon communicates entirely through her power, the "Doom Note", which can convey her intent without actually speaking words. Even though her way of communicating is the platonic ideal of language, the only person who can't understand her is Cypher, whose own powers ironically nullifies this quality for him because it's not technically a language.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Storm knows stealing Skybreaker will upset and hurt T'Challa (along with Shuri and Ramonda), and make Wakanda frosty if not just outright antagonistic to Krakoa, but justifies it on these grounds, with the stakes being what they are.
  • Genesis breaks her husband Apocalypse's heart when she sends him back to Earth and she takes up the offer of joining the demons in a peace deal, but it brought the Earth necessary time to build up their forces for the demons' eventual return.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: A side-effect of Isca the Unbeaten's Tychokinesis, she can't be beaten so her power led her to join the demons of Amenth, who are too numerous and powerful to be truly defeated by Arakko. Her betrayal broke the spirits of the mutants and eventually they took an offer from the demons. When Apocalypse takes the Golden Helm of Amenth and surrenders to Saturnyne, Isca again turns on the Arakko mutants.
• I Know You Know I Know: Storm tells Wolverine she knows what he's planning (to kill Saturnyne). He replies that he knows she knows that. Turns out Saturnyne knows as well.
• Immune to Fate: In Stasis, Saturnyne does a tarot drawing for Krakoa's champions. Each one gets a card, with Betsy's being especially bad with her 9 of Swords, but each time Saturnyne draws for Gorgon the only result is the back of the card, no matter how many times she redraws. Finally she just leaves the unknown card for Gorgon, who dumps it as rubbish. In the end, he chooses his own fate.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: In issue #14 of Marauders, Wolverine decides to get hammered at the party Saturnyne is throwing because of the intense severity of the fight they're about to undertake, especially with young people running the risk of dying.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The focus of the series. Both sides of the conflict are in a race to gather their swords after discerning who the champions named by Saturnyne's prophecy are.
  • Skybreaker, a sword made of pure vibranium, in fact the first weapon made of vibranium. It took months of forging at the peak of a volcano by its blacksmith and his children, and began the base of Wakandan knowledge on vibranium's applications as well as its effects on organic tissue. It amplifies all energy it interacts with, making extended exposure to living tissue toxic, but these effects can be insulated with even a thin layer of material. Furthermore, in spite of said effects on living tissue, extended contact with dead tissue just makes it Stronger with Age. In the present, the leather and wood in its handle has become stronger than steel.
  • The Light of Galador is a seemingly endless source of energy with enough power to terraform an entire planet. Cable can use his telekinesis and weaponize some of its power as energy blasts.
  • The Starlight Sword was forged by Saturnyne from the walls of the Starlight Citadel itself. She intended it for Brian as her champion of the new Captain Britain Corps, but Betsy manages to get it instead.
  • Apocalypse has Scarab, a khopesh forged by his sister-in-law Isca, an invincible mutant, as a wedding gift. The Khopesh was made in four parts to celebrate each of Apocalypse's children and is composed of Red-Gold Iron rendered from royal Uhari blades (Uhari being an aquatic merpeople kingdom on Earth that's the rival to Atlantis).
  • The Champions of Krakoa only had 9 swords (Grasscutter/Godkiller are considered a single set for the competition) compared to Arrako's full 10. Turns out the final sword for Krakoa is the previously abandoned S.W.O.R.D space station. The base dwarfs even Saturnyne's citadel in size and S.W.O.R.D was one of the deciding factors in the final battle between Krakoa and Amenth/Arrako.
    Saturnyne: (narrating) The tenth sword would descend from heaven, only to return at the dawn of a new age.
• Ironic Nickname: Isca's sword, Mercy. Whatever it touches automatically breaks into shards.
• Killed Off for Real: Otherworld, due to its nature as a multidimensional nexus, wreaks havoc on the resurrection protocols - it creates a composite being from across all realities, and wipes out the Cerebro backup in the process, meaning any mutant that dies in Otherworld will come back as a whole new person. Farewell, our Santo Vaccaro.
• Last Bastion: The White Sword's stronghold, Ivory Spiral initially subverts this. His force of champions smashed far past the portal and established their citadel, where they fight off daily demonic assaults. This gave the other mutants the time to establish the ten towers that protect Arakko for thousands of years. It gets played straight when the demons eventually destroy the towers and conquer the mutants. The White Sword, his 100 Champions and their Ivory Spiral are all that remain of the mutants who didn't take the knee.
• Last Request: Though she is not dying at the time, when Genesis parts from Apocalypse for the last time she asks him to make sure only the strongest and worthiest survive. As history shows, he spends several millennia honoring that request.
• The Legions of Hell: It was an invasion of Arakko by an army of demons from Amenth, that started the mutant invasion of Outherworld in the first place.
• Literally Shattered Lives: This quickly happens to Betsy during her match with Isca.
• Mama Bear: Solem decides to ring in Logan before his fight with War, and then informs her Logan's just killed Summoner, her son. So now Logan, with a deactivated healing factor, has to try and fight an angry, aggrieved Horseman. He wins.
• Mass Resurrection: The reason why the White Sword's forces have never been conquered in Amenth. The White Sword has Resurrective Immortality as an External and his mutant power is healing ability so powerful that it can completely resurrect all his champions that died, bringing them back unscratched.
• May–December Romance: They're both of Vague Age, but Bei the Blood Moon is chronologically at least well over fifty (of course, she physically looks to be around half that age), whereas Cypher has to be around twenty.
• Meaningful Name: Magik figures out that "pogg" is the Arakkii word for "sword". And so Pogg's pogg would be the alligator suit.
• Misplaced Retribution: A drunken Wolverine places blame on Brian Braddock for everyone risking their lives in the event for not sleeping with Saturnyne. This is in spite of the fact that she had already prophesied the fight, the alternative was full on war with everyone called to fight, Brian being a married man, and all sleeping with her would have accomplished is Brian personally being spared from participating.
• The Missing Faction: X-Men #12 reveals Summoner comes from a mutant nation named Arakko that ended up in a dimension named Amenth.
• Monster Suit: Magik figures out Pogg Ur-Pogg's secret. The giant armoured crocodile is essentially the "sword", not that large khopesh-like blade he swings around. The real Pogg Ur-Pogg, a green-skinned elderly obese midget, is inside the giant croc and pilots it, with Magik referring to it as "alligator pajamas".
• Mood Whiplash: The prophecy of the Arakko swordbearers is suitably cryptic and poetic, except for the part about Pogg Ur-Pogg, which is just parts of his name repeated like it's a language.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Pogg Ur-Pogg is a giant demon crocodilian bio-mech with six arms, superhuman strength and so heavily armoured it can withstand BFG firepower from Domino, Bishop, Forge and Gwenpool as well as psionic arrows from Mirage. The Vescora are other-dimensional four-armed aliens that can dismantle and harvest material from reality itself, they're so dangerous that a swarm of them are able to overcome one of the top-tier demon giant worm summoned from Amenth.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Roma, daughter of Merlyn and current ruler of the Fair Kingdom of the Fae, has now devoted herself to gentle hedonism and got the requisite Fanservice Pack upgrade. She's also dropped the Pointy Ears and goofy topknot ponytail of the 1990s for something more human and a lot classier - going from a poorly drawn elf to an art nouveau covergirl a la Alphonse Mucha. As well she ditched the mystical armour for a robe with an opening that plunges past her navel.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Pogg-Ur-Pogg, one of the swordbearers of Arakko, is a twenty-five foot tall six-armed, bipedal Crocodile. The fandom fell in love with him immediately.
  • And with his first scene in Stasis, he's also a Blood Knight mercenary who speaks in rhyme.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: War attempts to poison Wolverine, which Brian attempts to parlay into a forfeit for Arakko, but Saturnyne declines because Wolverine had simultaneously being thinking of assassinating her. This elicits a cursing from Brian, and Saturnyne mainly stops him by showing him a vision detailing exactly how much this would have left everyone on Earth at the mercies of Arakko.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Saturnyne calls a dinner party for the Swordbearers of Arakko and Krakoa both, just before the competition.
• Non-Action Guy: Cypher's one of the champions, despite it being pointed out that, ability to read body language aside, he's this, and if he does, he will almost certainly die, probably the minute fighting starts. Even with training from Magik, he's still this. Subverted because, as luck would have it, Cypher is only drawn for the wedding contest and the eating contest, and he wins both, though one is technically a draw.
• No-Sell: Logan's adamantium skeleton saves him from getting his head chopped off in his fight with War.
• One Judge to Rule Them All: Saturnyne can set a match between any participants she wants, with the winning condition she wants. There are even matches between Swordbearers from the same island, ensuring a point for this team. And as issues pass, Arakko increases its score advantage… until Gorgon fights White Sword: White Sword easily wins by sending all his soldiers at Gorgon, but Saturnyne gives one point for each soldier Gorgon kills before falling, evening the score.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Ororo asks for Skybreaker, citing an urgent crisis as her reason, she agrees to wait patiently for T'Challa to return. Shuri smells the rat.
• Out-Gambitted: Betsy ends up doing this to Saturnyne in Excalibur #13: Saturnyne's attempt to make Brian her Captain Britain again gets derailed when Brian claims the Sword of Might and Betsy claims the Starlight Sword she was aiming to give to Brian.
  • Eventually Saturnyne does this to everyone through her Sword Trial machinations - she ends up getting the Amenth/Arrako forces as her subjects in Dryador, the islands Krakoa and Arakko are reunited but the government is in turmoil and won't be able to act against her in the near future, the undead lands of Sevalith falls under the deceased Death's management, the Summoner School and the alien Vescora are under her control - she's able to have them tame Blightspoke and counterbalance erratic James Jaspers of the Twisted Market, and finally she has a psionic Captain Britain Corps to enforce her will on any other realm that decides to get uppity.
• Pet Monstrosity: Thanks to Wolverine, Saturnyne remembers that Shogo the dragon is just a baby. So she uses her magic to take over his infant mind and make him into her pet dragon. She's so pleased with her new acquisition and the wedding between Bei and Cypher that she forgives Jubilee's assault on her citadel. Near the end of the final battle, she rides him into the fray and uses his reality-altering flames to banish the majority of the Amenth forces back to their world.
• Poirot Speak: Tarot does a bit of this, slipping into French here and there, which is slightly odd given she's doing so in writing.
• Poke in the Third Eye: M uses her telepathy to get in touch with Saturnyne mid-fight. Sat uses her powers to dispel M's psychic projection, which apparently hurts. Rachel Summers doesn't fare much better.
• Pokémon Speak: Pogg Ur-Pogg is directly named in the prophecy, that is to say parts of his name are repeated over and over as a verse for the Arakko champions' prophecy. Subverted with the man himself, who speaks in rhyme.
• The Power of Hate: What's kept the First Horsemen going all the time they've been fighting.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: As part of her change to a Ms. Fanservice, Roma always goes barefoot and her robe shows that she's bare from the upper thigh down.
• Prisoner Exchange: At the conclusion of the tournament, Saturnyne demands one mutant from each side go to the other realm. Apocalypse stays in Amenth willingly, and sends Arakko and the six million mutants living on it to Earth.
• The Prophecy: Saturnyne plants one in the minds of Polaris and Plague of the Horsemen each, so they can gather their fighters.
  • Defied, as Cypher admits he doesn't identify with "his" entry. All he knows is it refers to Warlock.
• Prophecy Twist: The X-Men were set to have ten swords, but they only brought nine. The tenth sword? The Peak, the former base of S.W.O.R.D.
• Pun: Cable's real sword is the S.W.O.R.D. space station.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: The realm of Blightspoke in Avalon. A place that's essentially a dumping ground for the fragments of broken realities, where anyone that treads has the life bled out of them as they warp through all kinds of forms from conflicting physics and the fallout of apocalypses up to X-4 in scale.
• Redemption Equals Death: Ex-villain Gorgon dies in his fight with White Sword. Cable, Cypher, and Magik are all visibly distraught by his demise, while Apocalypse solemnly notes that he died fighting in a blaze of glory like a true mutant.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: The White Sword only agreed to help the Horsemen during the Sword trials. When it comes to Annihilation declaring total war on Otherworld, Krakoa and eventually the rest of Earth, he up and leaves to return to his citadel along with his followers.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: As lampshaded by the arriving Krakoans, Saturnyne plays this for all it's worth, to the point that the competition might as well be a game of Calvin Ball. To underline this, Krakoa has nine champions to Arakko's ten. As well, Wolverine's fight with Summoner ends with Wolverine stabbing him in the eye, but Saturnyne grants the point to Arakko because "to the death" meant "first one to die wins", a rule which in itself is a huge middle finger to the man she's been referring to as "deathless one", all along subtly acknowledging that this would be the sort of fight he cannot win.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In the finale, Cyclops asks the Quiet Council for permission to invade Otherworld. Sebastian Shaw forces a vote to prevent the Quiet Council from going, expelling any of the members who choose to go. However, since Cable's life is on the line, Jean decides to go with Scott. The end of the issue also reveals that Scott also gave a middle finger to Shaw for another edict of his - dissolving the X-Men in favor of the Quiet Council, which Magneto and Xavier are very proud of.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Gorgon can't resist the siren call of the living rocks of Clevermore, but we're not forced to watch them have sex with each other. Wolverine and Magik also wisely get out of there.
  • It's an in-joke for long-time hardcore Marvel comic fans, as Gorgon, during his time as a villain, was shown to have the sexual fetish of petrophilia I.e. turning women to whom he was sexually attracted (mostly his subordinates in HYDRA) into literal statues using his mutant power. This was in the Secret Warriors series by current head X-writer Jonathan Hickman.
• Shout-Out:
  • Sinister paraphrases "Not all those who wander are lost" as "Just because you're wandering around, it doesn't mean you're lost, necessarily".
  • The demon hordes ride cthulus and sandworms. Wouldn't be remotely the first time Hickman's snuck in a Dune reference in his Marvel works.
• Showy Invincible Hero: Isca the Unbeaten's power turns her into The Ace so perfect, that she never loses in whatever she does - whether it's winning fights or stacking a wine glass tower. She'll do it and in style too.
• Significant Anagram: Arakko is an anagram of Krakoa. The same with the continent that originated the islands, Okkara.
• Simultaneous Arcs: New Mutants #13 and Cable #5 take place around the same time, showing Illyana's side of her conversation with Scott in the former, and vice-versa in the later.
• Slasher Smile: The first sign Banshee and Unus got that Summoner wasn't on their side.
• Summon Magic: In the last battle, all sides make heavy use of it. Amenth have their summoner schools portal in the darkest elements of Amenth, Saturnyne summons a new Captain Britain Corps that's based on Betsy and finally Illyana and Cable join forces to summon the alien Vescora into the fray.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: T'Challa and Shuri wanted to join the fight against the Horsemen and were even going to bring the Wakandan army into the conflict. Storm declines their aid as the fight against the Horsemen is a trial of champions and not total war.
• Take a Third Option:
  • Mr. Sinister has an alternate plan of dealing with the contest, he's going to have the Hellions go to Otherworld and steal the Horsemen's swords - thereby forcing them to forfeit the contest.
  • How Apocalypse ends the cycle of demonic possession by Annihilation. Instead of trying to overcome Annihilation by Heroic Willpower (something other wearers of the Golden Helm of Amenth tried and all failed to do), Apocalypse surprises Annihilation by quickly surrendering to Saturnyne.
• The Talk: Magik offers to give Cypher this on his wedding day, although she claims to be self-taught.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: In Marauders #14, War slips something into Wolverine's food, but he doesn't get around to eating it.Cypher does, and would have died if it weren't for White Sword having standards against poisoning an opponent before battle – and accidentally a very young one at that.
• Tarot Motifs: The Tarot card of Ten of Swords serves to introduce the event.
  • Played for laughs when a man gives Magik a card for seating assignments and she dismisses them because she doesn't understand, sardonically asking where "The Chair of Asses" is for her.
  • Kid Cable gets pretty irritated when his card is The Fool. The card represents (among other things) untapped potential, which describes young Nate to a tee.
• Tarot Troubles: Saturnyne, Tarot and two random people use tarot cards and draw the same cards, all pointing to death and destruction.
• Tempting Fate:
  • While running from the Horsemen's attack, Beast makes the profoundly idiotic move of asking out loud whether it could get worse. Pestilence then shoots Rictor with one of her arrows.
  • Subverted when, declining Saturnyne's repeated offer to retake his mantle as Captain Britain, Brian says he "trusts she won't go to pieces", which is British for "you'll survive this disappointment". In the first match of the tournament, Betsy literally breaks into pieces.
  Saturnyne: (to herself) No, not I.
• Token Human: Brian Braddock is the only human among Krakoa's Swordbearers.
• Token Nonhuman: Unlike the rest of Arakko's Swordbearers who are human mutants, Pogg-Ur-Pogg's a monstrous demon of Amenth. Since he already starts off with one of the prophesied swords, the Horsemen hire him by offering him a whole new world to plunder.
• Tournament Arc: For Hickman's X-Men run.
• To Serve Man:
  • Saturnyne's party menu of delicacies includes mashed pharaoh brains.
  • Sevalithian blood wine, tapped from nobles. Sevalith is a nation of vampires.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness:
  • The Five jump to conclusions about why Rockslide Came Back Wrong, and destroy the entire batch of backups without giving it any more thought.
  • Wolverine tries to avert the whole competition by stabbing Saturnyne. Instead she stops him with a vision of how this will forfeit the fight for Krakoa, leaving no defense for Arakko to raze the whole Earth, with Logan himself crucified and forced to watch because of his healing factor.
• Trial by Combat: On the one side, the Horsemen, who want to get to Krakoa and are fully prepared to violently murder their way there. On the other, the X-Men, reluctantly and slightly angrily chosen by Saturnyne to stop this.
• Uncertain Doom: Betsy shattering like a glass window is treated as ambiguous. For all intents and purposes she lost the match and is essentially dead but is listed as "disappeared" rather than dead. Heck the circumstances of her shattering itself remains unexplained, only that it opened an opportunity that Saturnyne tried to exploit.
  • It is later revealed in Excalibur that Betsy's mind survived the battle and was sent to an alternate reality.
• Unflinching Walk: After retrieving his sword from his living family's graves, Apocalypse blows up the pyramid their memorial caskets were in and walks away.
• Verbal Backspace: A waiter is trying to serve the first course of the banquet, but changes his mind.
  Waiter: (carrying a tray) Our first course is…
  Wolverine: SOMEBODY POISONED MY APPETIZER!
  Waiter: (turning around) Why don't I give you a minute.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: After two murder attempts by named characters on other named characters are met with anger from all sides, Death straight up melts an innocent waiter for serving food he didn't put on the menu himself, and no one cares at all.
• What Were You Thinking?: Magneto and Xavier chew out an injured Apocalypse for his hubris and the danger he brought to Krakoa.
• You Kill It, You Bought It:
  • The Horsemen conquer the Otherworld land of Dryador. As Saturnyne notes, this means they sort of own it now.
  • Whoever defeats the wearer of Annihilation Helm, must claim it for themselves. Should they refuse, the Amenthi daemons would run amock and consume everything.
• Visual Pun: Famine is dressed as a sarcophagus.
• Worldbuilding: As the event unfolds with the participants seeking their swords, there are notes of the current composition of Otherworld.

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