Follow TV Tropes

Following

Silver Has Mystic Powers

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1980729_bigthumbnail.png

Silver was considered a mystical element in folklore, and thus its properties become reality in fiction. The metal can do many things, from channeling magic, to stopping evil (including warding off or harming vampires and werewolves), making magic mirrors, to turning water into a Healing Potion.

The myth of silver's mystical properties goes deep into human history. As a noble metal akin to gold, this is often attributed to something along the lines of silver's Incorruptible Pure Pureness. In fact, it's because of something people noticed a very long time ago: if you put water in a silver pitcher, it takes a lot longer for it to get unhealthily scummy. Silver has antimicrobial properties that make it quite useful in medicine. In ancient and medieval alchemy silver was also the metal with an affinity corresponding to the moon, so many of the mystical properties of the moon also became associated with the metal (which would certainly explain its usefulness against werewolves). Unlike in post-Medieval works, many pre-Christian pagan mythologies also associated it with the Sun, and many solar deities are described with silver objects (like Saulė's silver thread, Apollo's silver bow and arrows or Amaterasu's silver mirror). Though ancient alchemists couldn't know it, silver does have a unique property among the elements — it exists in a naturally excited form — i.e. it has a single electron that exists in a higher energy level, leaving a gap in the shell immediately "below" it.

Silver is almost always considered to be on the good end of magic (and items formed of it may also be Made of Good). Some works can make it evil or used for evil when Light Is Not Good.

This trope is one possible reason vampires traditionally have no reflections and don't show up on film. Old-timey mirrors used silver backing to achieve reflection, and black and white film used silver nitrates to capture the image (plus some old camera models included mirrors in the light capture mechanism); since vampires are unholy, their light is not picked up by divine silver. Of course, silver nitrates were phased out of film even before film itself was made obsolete by digital cameras, and modern mirrors are usually backed by much cheaper aluminium, but the association between vampirism and lack of image reproduction still lingers.

Even beyond mirrors and bullets, this can overlap with Supernatural Repellent.

A Winter Royal Lady might prefer silver due to it fitting in with that trope's color scheme.

If Gold–Silver–Copper Standard involves all those metals having magic qualities, expect gold to be even more powerful, while silver still has its own powers. The two of them used together can also be a sign of divinity.

A Super-Trope to Silver Bullet.

See also Mithril, a silver-like Fantasy Metal (which is also called "(Moria) silver"). If this trope is true in a work that also has mithril, then the mithril might take it up a notch.

Compare Power Crystal, Crystal Skull, Thunderbolt Iron (another metal with mythic history), and Cold Iron.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Highly implied to be the case in 3×3 Eyes: the taoist Steve Long usually fights monsters with Sutra cards, but he also has a revolver loaded with silver bullets, implying that demons and monsters can be harmed by silver.
  • The three magical races of It's My Life (Imomushi Narita)'s setting are connected to silver. Antikythirans have silver eyes, the other two yet-unseen races are said to have silver horns and silver body markings, respectively.
  • In the world of Radiant there are two types of silver that affect Fantasia; Black Silver that creates a void of Fantasia, preventing sorcerers from accumulating it, are used to make cages and chains to restrain them (its filings can be stored in flasks to be thrown like grenades at sorcerers covering them with it having the same effect and using weapons to spread it) but are vulnerable to long-distance attacks, and White Silver which is rarer, while it doesn't create a vacuum of Fantasia it can repel it and is used to make weapons that with the higher purity it pierces through spells more easily, they are mainly used by the Inquisition.
  • In Rave Master Musica the Silver Claimer (people who can manipulate alchemically altered silver in combat) at one point mentions that, traditionally, silver can harm demonic creatures such as Oni (and he curb-stomps a whole gang of them alone). Both he and the other Silver Claimer Reina can unite their powers to cast an ultra-powerful magical attack based on silver.

    Comic Books 
  • Silverblade: Within the film within a comic book The Silver Blade, the hero Silverblade carries a silver-bladed sword that has magical properties. Whenever Jonathan Lord transforms himself into that character, he has the sword. When the Executioner assumed the form of the Winged Avenger, Jonathan is able to exploit the Avenger's vulnerability to silver by stabbing it with the silver blade.
  • Wonder Woman Vol. 2: When Artemis returns as a demon hunter her decorative knee coverings are solid silver, which allows her to use them to harm Neron after he thinks he's disarmed her.

    Fan Works 
  • Child of the Storm mentions this a few times, as well as goblin-silver. Mithril also exists (Tolkien is mentioned as having been given a tour of the Nine Realms by Loki and having picked up perhaps a little more than was good for him) and is referred to as true-silver in the sequel, but only really emphasised by Peter Wisdom of MI13 so that he can sequester a very large deposit of it which is primarily vibranium, even though it's in Hogwarts, on the grounds of all deposits of gold and silver coming under the jurisdiction of Mines Royal, part of the UK's 'Crown Estate' (lands technically owned by the Crown that are administered by the government). He admits, when challenged, that this distinction probably won't hold up for long in court since the chemical relationship of silver and mithril is unknown, but points out that by that point, the definition will have been amended, and in any scenario, any legal case would have to be made in muggle courts, which the Ministry would never think of, or require booting MI13 off the site, which the Ministry aren't capable of (partly due to having lost a large number of personnel only a few months before, partly due to MI13's far greater numbers — including young witches and wizards — and resources).
  • Ice and Fire (Minecraft): Silver weapons deal extra damage to undead mobs and are the only ones that will harm ghosts.
  • Openly mocked a few times in The (Questionable) Burdens of Leadership of a Troll Emperor once Naruto and Xanna come to Earth. Multiple times, someone trying to assassinate one or both of them will bring either a silver blade or a gun with Silver Bullets. Naruto's rather amused that assassins keep thinking silver has some magic powers that make them more effective, especially since he's not a demon or vampire, but a god.
  • Done relatively realistically in Carving Out a Future where Xander's silver axe is more effective against a demon than guns, but is rather useless against most other things and Rayne has to look up how to care for the weapon as he almost ruins the blade when trying to sharpen it like steel.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Taken to extremes in the Blade Trilogy, where a minor scratch from any sharp silver object causes vampires to immediately crumble into dust.
  • In Dracula Untold, pure silver is one of the weaknesses of vampires, and it appears that light glints off of them in such a way that it also makes it hard for the vampires to see. Sultan Mehmet takes advantage of this by personally fighting Dracula in a room covered in silver coins.
  • Discussed in From Dusk Till Dawn: Sex Machine says that silver can be used to kill vampires, only for Scott to counter that's werewolves; and then Sex Machine counters right back that silver bullets are used on werewolves, but silver in general supposedly can work on vampires. Kate settles it by asking if anyone even has any silver. No? "Then who cares?"

    Gamebooks 
  • In the Fighting Fantasy series of books, silver is used as an effective weapon against more than one major villain, either in the form of Silver Bullets or as weaponry.
    • The undead sorcerer Zanbar Bone from City of Thieves (1983) can be paralyzed with a Silver Arrow through the heart, for a few seconds, allowing the hero to rub a magical concoction into Zanbar's eyes. The follow-up adventure, The Port of Peril, brings back Zanbar's weakness, this time being a Silver Bullet via Boom, Headshot!
    • Legend of Zagor has the player collecting two different kinds of amulets, Golden Coins and Silver Daggers, to be used against Zagor the Demon Sorcerer. The latter is notably effective for each Silver Dagger reduces Zagor's Life Meter (of 20 points) by 2 - successfully obtain 10 daggers, and Zagor is effectively killed before the battle even begins!
    • Vault of the Vampire has a powerful silver sword called the Nightstar, which is an Infinity Plus One weapon to be used against the vampiric tyrant Count Heydrich. You obtain this weapon from the ghost of Heydrich's lawful brother, Sigfried, who intends to put an end to his brother's tyranny but is unable to do so due to being stuck as a ghost.
    • Howl of the Werewolf has the player facing werebeasts of all sorts while on his quest to slay a powerful werewolf lord, so silver weapons come in play, from silver daggers to silver swords and of course, the trusty Silver Bullet in tandem with a flintlock pistol he can obtain.

    LARP 
  • In the LARP "The Realms", Silver is a weapon enhancement which is noted in the rulebook to have enhanced effects against certain types of beings.

    Literature 
  • Silvered weapons, mostly blades, feature in Anno Dracula as one of the few guaranteed ways to harm a vampire, and is therefore heavily regulated. (Jack the Ripper is originally known as "Silver Knife", after the weapon he uses to kill his vampiric victims.) It is speculated that the silver content in photographic media prevents vampires from being clearly photographed. In The Bloody Red Baron, World War One causes a massive demand for silver bullets and bayonets because vampires are fighting on both sides, with the civilian population called on to donate their silver jewelry to be melted down for the war effort.
  • Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: Magic has two key components — The Power of Language and a silver bar to anchor the spell. No one knows why magic depends on silver, but it's a crucial resource; England's industrialization and colonial empire are built on its massive silver reserves, and it's prepared to go to war with China to secure more.
  • Spirits in The Bartimaeus Trilogy, being made of air and fire, are weak to the earth and other metals, silver being the most painful for them.
  • The rat god, in Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly, can only be sealed away with pictures using silver in them. When the god uses his mind tricks to get a master painter sent away, the people trying to stop it remember that the silver in film could do the same thing (as this took place in Hollywood during The Roaring '20s).
  • Conan the Barbarian stated that the only weapons effective against demons are silver and fire. He later used a huge candelabra made of silver to smash a demon and make it fall in a fire.
  • In The Deptford Mice trilogy and its prequels, the Starwife, queen of the squirrels, wears a magical silver acorn necklace that is the source of much of her power.
  • A subtle version in the sci-fi story Diamond Dogs. A scan of the Blood Spire detects traces of every stable isotype with the notable exception of silver. Although the Spire harvests metallic components from the people it lures inside and kills, no reason is given for the lack of silver, so the reader can imply this trope.
  • Discworld: On the Disc, silver is one of the two things that can kill a Werewolf, the other being fire. And, as Vimes discovers to his dismay in The Fifth Elephant, silver is all but nonexistent in Überwald.
  • In The Dresden Files, silver is pretty useful all around but ancestral silver is even better, i.e. it is the only thing that can kill the uber-werewolves loup garou. Harry has inherited a silver amulet from his late mom and it saves his butt at least once.
  • Empire of the Vampire: Silver burns evil almost as much as holy objects - combined, the two make for the best vampire hunting gear one could ask for. Silversaints use the metal for everything, from their weapons, forged from the silversteel alloy, to their equipment and even the aegis tattoos upon their bodies, painted with an ink infused with colloidal silver.
  • In Fritz Leiber's short story Ill met in Lankhmar, the sorcerous villain Hristomilo is defeated by means of a silver dagger (granted, a dagger in the eye will defeat even a non-sorcerer).
  • Some of the Fighting Fantasy books make silver weapons the only ones capable of harming ghosts.
  • Garrett, P.I.: Silver is the fuel of sorcerers' magic and thus an extremely important natural resource. The superpowers of the world fight wars over the control of the areas where silver is mined.
  • In The Golgotha Series, silver is stated to carry a trace remnant of divine energy, making it a potent weapon against supernatural beings. While this property makes it very useful against the monsters which threaten Golgotha, the Mt. Argent silver mine shows how this can also lead to some problems: to use the silver, you have to dig it out of the ground, at which point you may discover too late that it was already being used to imprison a Sealed Evil in a Can and you just popped the lid...
  • In Harry Potter, goblin-wrought silver is nigh-invulnerable and can absorb the properties of what it pierces in order to make itself stronger. It's unclear how the goblins make it this way, or whether it's truly silver or simply called so because of the same colour. There are many other objects in the series which are made of silver (the Pensieve) or have the appearance of silver (unicorn blood). Finally, several spells, most notably the Patronus, take a silver colouration.
  • In It, silver is one of a handful of things that prove harmful against the titular being, but mostly because the Losers believe it should after watching a bunch of werewolf and vampire movies. Ben sacrifices one of his late father's vintage silver dollars to make a pair of mean slingshot pellets, and years later upon returning to face It again he regrets giving the rest of the old coins away because the new Susan B. Anthony dollars are made of copper and nickel, robbing them of their symbolic power.
  • Like in The Bartimaeus Trilogy (and being written by the same author), ghosts in Lockwood & Co. are weak to silver.
  • And in The Magician's Nephew, the apples of immortality are silvery in color.
  • In the Magic: The Gathering novels, silver is the only material that can travel back in time without nasty side effects, hence why Karn the silver golem was made. Silver also channels Blue and White mana, and in Innistrad, it has the stereotypical effects against vampires and werewolves.
  • In Murderess, this is obviously a recurrent theme in everything Moonfolk-related, given their deep reliance on the moon and moonlight.
  • In The Nekropolis Archives, silver is highly effective against a variety of types of Darkfolk which are otherwise difficult to harm, including vampires, werewolves, and demons. It is also used as a spell component, though its efficacy as a weapon means that it is treated as a controlled substance.
  • The Neverending Story: The floating city of Amarganth rests atop many boats made of the finest silver because it's the only substance that can resist corrosion by the acrid water of Moru, the Lake of Tears.
  • Old Scores: Silver serves as an anti-vampire weapon; Anita burns Simon with a silver cross, and Salem mentions that a silver bullet could kill a vampire.
  • Brandon Sanderson has this a couple times
    • Inverted in Mistborn, where silver is one of the few metals which doesn't have special powers. Word of God is that Sanderson originally wanted to use silver in place of tin (which grants Super-Senses), but then he found out the pewter does not in fact contain silver, and had to change it to maintain Magic A Is Magic A (since silver would have been paired with pewter, which grants Super-Speed, Super-Strength, and Super-Toughness, and every pair consists of a metal and its alloy). It is worth noting however that while silver itself has no allomantic properties it does still have a use in Allomancy - It is used to turn gold into its alloy, electrum. While gold's allomantic properties are seen as largely useless, Electrum is incredibly useful as it nullifies the massive advantage that an enemy Allomancer gains from burning the Godmetal Atium. So useful in fact that the Lord Ruler kept electrum completely secret as an allomantic metal.
    • In Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, silver is the only thing that can harm the Shades or reverse their Touch of Death.
    • In Tress of the Emerald Sea, silver is one of two ways to kill aether spores, with salt being the other. Since live spores react violently to even the smallest hint of water (including blood or the moisture in human lungs and mouth), this makes silver a vital resource for human survival.
  • In the Shattered Twilight 'verse, the demon-hunting Purgatori are equipped with "silvered" maces.
  • The Shadowhunter Chronicles: Vampires and werewolves are both weak towards silver.
  • In The Silver Chair, the eponymous item is used to brainwash a prince.
  • In the "The Silver Codex II Reflections Edition" one of the characters tells how magic is divided by color with Silver Magic being the type that priests and priestesses use in their religions for blessings and exorcisms.
  • John the Wanderer from Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories carries a guitar with silver strings. This is because silver is the only substance in the world Satan fears, and as a consequence, it's proof against all beings of evil and darkness.
  • Skin Trade from George R. R. Martin has a sinister example of this in the demonic Skinner. This mirror-traveling creature easily hunts, kills, and skins werewolves because not only is it much stronger physically but it has naturally silver claws that are devastating to its lycanthrope victims.
  • Spinning Silver:
  • Thursday Next's one-time nemesis, Acheron Hades, is Immune to Bullets, possibly Nigh-Invulnerable, and is probably but not directly referred to as a demon. However, Thursday finds out Acheron is vulnerable to silver when she stabs him with a pair of silver scissors.
  • In The Witcher verse, witchers typically carry a silver sword to deal with monsters. Do note that these silver swords are not made of pure silver but are either made from steel and silver-plated or made from one of a multitude of silver-based alloys, in order to make the swords manageable.
  • In A Wolf in the Soul, Greg's inability to gargle silver water helps Dr. Belew figure out that he's a werewolf.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Friday the 13th: The Series, the episode "Scarlet Cinema" involved the Villain of the Week-turned-werewolf being killed by silver, but not by silver bullets. Older film reels were coated with silver nitrate, and so Ryan uses the reel to choke the werewolf to death, the reel coming from the same cursed camera that the villain had originally used.
  • In Moonlight it's mentioned that the reason vampires couldn't be photographed is because of the silver used in producing the negative, the silver reflecting the photographed's soul. (Which is also why they don't cast reflections in mirrors.) But modern digital photography and video don't use silver, making vamps easy to capture images of.
  • In Supernatural, silver is one of the most common monster weaknesses (next to salt and iron). Shapeshifters, lamias, and werewolves are all, in some way, vulnerable to silver. Hunters often test people with silver to make sure they aren't monsters or even cut themselves with it to prove they're who they say they are.
  • In True Blood vampires are weakened by contact with silver. It hurts too and will leave burn marks on unprotected skin. Has been shown applied as chains, handcuffs, "pepper" spray, and intravenously as a torture method.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Jess-Belle", silver can be used to kill witches.
  • In The Vampire Diaries, it's initially assumed that werewolves are vulnerable to silver (which the local werewolf plays up by avoiding touching a silver knife). While this is a Fake Weakness, it turns out that silver does have an effect on werewolves — it jumpstarts their already impressive Healing Factor. Attacking a werewolf with silver, therefore, is literally less effective than anything else you could hit them with.
    Mason: You know, I think werewolves were probably the ones who started this whole "weak to silver" thing, just for moments like this.

    Pinballs 
  • Invoked with the Silver Wizard in Silverball Mania, who's the source for the game's various mystical activities.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons uses this a lot for so many items.
    • Silver weapons deal slightly less damage than normal (read: iron) weapons, but bypass the Damage Reduction of Vampires, Were-animals, and some extraplanar creatures. Supplemental books provide an oil that can be used to coat a weapon and give it "silver" properties without making the weapon weaker, but it's hard to use while in combat (so you'll want to use it just before a fight starts, if you can). Third edition calls it "alchemical silver", claiming that it's actually silver alloyed with steel so that it has only a -1 penalty to damage.
    • Silver dust is a common material component of spells as well, ranging from "magic circle against..." to "bless water".
    • The "Cloak of Lordliness" is a Pimped-Out Cape that grants powers to make crowds listen to you, and is made of "the finest ermine" sewn together with silver thread.
    • Forgotten Realms supplement Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. Silver is the metal most associated with and suitable for magic. Magic items that involve moon-related magics, electricity/lightning, and energy discharges (e.g. Magic Missile) will automatically make all saving throws related to item creation magic if they're 60% (or more) silver by weight.
    • Dragon magazine #32 article "Poisons from AA to XX".
      Poison may be applied only to ordinary iron or steel non-magic weapons. Silver will not hold poison; the magic radiating from such weapons will burn it off.
  • In Dark Alleys has the Torturers, horrible, spiderlike creatures from outside reality who disembowel people and wear their skins as a disguise and who enter reality for no other purpose than to torment humans in revenge for humanity's former, omnipotent divine selves torturing and hunting them down for fun before being trapped in reality. The people appointed by the Powers That Be with hunting them down know that silver burns their flesh like powerful acid. The Powers From Beyond intentionally incorporated that little interaction into the Torturers' physical form within reality as a safety measure — they're all for letting humans suffer, but they can't let monsters run amok for fear of humanity Awakening into its former divinity out of desperation.
  • The golem Karn in Magic: The Gathering is made of silver, because it's the one substance that can be safely sent back and forth through time.
    • Silver on the plane of Innistrad is (supposedly) from the plane's moon, which is already highly magical, impacting the plane's ecosystem in both positive and negative ways. Normal silver is actually not that special, but silver blessed by the god-angel Avacyn or someone in her service is potent against vampires and werewolves.
  • Pathfinder borrowed the "alchemical silver" thing from Third Edition D&D, which gives a -1 to damage, but bypasses Damage Reduction of devils, werecreatures, and a few undead. It's only useful at low levels— once you can afford them, Mythril weapons give the same benefit without taking any penalty to damage, and any weapon with a +3 or better bonus automatically penetrates DR as if it were silver (and cold iron, too).
  • Rifts: Silver is one of the few things that can hurt nearly every supernatural creature in the game, up to and including many Gods. Consequently, nearly every PC in the game usually has at least a single silver-plated knife or cross. One nation at war with a kingdom of vampires equips Silver-plated swords on their Humongous Mecha.
  • Warhammer: Leonardo da Miragliano possesses the Compass of Meteoric Silver, whose arrow is made from silver taken from a meteorite and always points to the highest concentration of magic in a battlefield.
  • In Warhammer 40,000, psycannons (designed specifically to fight daemons) fire shells that are not only charged with negative psychic energy and inscribed with holy symbols, but are (of course) tipped with silver.
  • In Werewolf: The Forsaken, pure silver is anathema to werewolves: silver weapons deal Aggravated damage that their Healing Factor can't fix and that bypasses the Made of Iron powers they can learn; silver items can't be affected by Shaping charms; and even carrying silver threatens a werewolf's combined Karma/Sanity Meter. Justified because silver is associated with the Moon, which happens to be a primal spirit of godlike power who has a very old grudge against the werewolves. All of this applies to the Forsaken, incidentally; it's even worse for the Pure (descended from werewolves who didn't try to get Luna's forgiveness) - they can't even touch silver without being burned, which is why they don't use silver weapons against the Forsaken.

    Video Games 
  • Downplayed in Bloodborne - many of the weapons that belong to the Healing Church's Beast Hunters, such as the Kirkhammer and Ludwig's Holy Blade, are explicitly made out of silver, and their symbol is the hilt of a silver sword - while this does bring to mind the image of harming werewolves with silver blades, there's no actual in-universe indication that silver is any more effective than steel on Beasts.
  • Common throughout The Elder Scrolls series, crossing over with Silver Bullet for weapons. To note:
    • Throughout the series, certain supernatural enemies such as ghosts and wraiths (among others) can only be harmed by weapons of silver quality (or greater), or by enchanted weapons. Items of greater than silver quality tend to have their own "mystic" properties which justify their ability to harm these types of beings. (For example, Dwemer/Dwarven equipment was created and made to last using Reality Warping processes; Ebony equipment is made from the petrified blood of a dead god; Daedric equipment is made from Ebony which has been imbued with the souls of lesser Daedra, etc.)
    • Vampires, Werewolves, and other were-creatures are specifically vulnerable to silver, taking more damage from silver weapons. (Though they can still be harmed by non-silver weapons.) The werewolf-hunting Silver Hand in Skyrim always wield such weapons.
  • Upon the reawakening of the deadites in Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick, several vortices materialize in the town of Dearborn, and Ash is tasked by the local priest to close them with silver. This leads to a mission where he has to hunt for biker gang members who had raided stash of it recently.
  • In Fable, silver is one of the five offensive augmentations for weapons available and causes bonus damage to undead and balverines, especially white balverines.
  • Some of the best armor in Final Fantasy was named Silver equipment, but was made Mithril in the remake. This is referenced in Dissidia Final Fantasy by Garland's Super Mode, which turns his armor silver.
  • League of Legends has Vayne, a ranged carry/assassin. One of her abilities called Silver Bolts causes every third consecutive shot on the same target to deal a % of the target's maximum health as true damage letting her easily chew even the tankier champions.
  • In The Legend of Zelda and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Silver Arrows can only be obtained late in the game and were needed to fight Ganon, The King of Evil. Specifically, they're used to deliver the killing blow once he was stunned by Link's sword in both games. Later games would replace them with the Light Arrows.
  • Pokémon: This trope explains why Kadabra (and possibly its evolution, Alakazam) use silver spoons, as the element helps channel and amplify their psychic powers. The Pokédex entries in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon go into further detail saying that using gold spoons doesn't work.
  • In Ragnarok Online, Archers and Thieves (along with their Rogue class) can use silver arrows, while Gunslingers can equip silver bullets. While they don't deal extra damage to Demon or Undead races by themselves (ie: a Fire element demon), they are effective against Shadow and Undead element and are a good alternative against Ghost element enemies thanks to their Holy element nature.
  • Valheim: Weapons made of silver deal 'spirit' damage, which deals extra Damage Over Time against The Undead. The only exception to this is the silver spear because the actual spear-point is made from wolves' teeth.
  • The protagonist of The Witcher, Geralt, is a monster hunter, a Witcher, who uses a silver sword in his monster-slaying work. Said monsters are mostly things like zombies, werewolves and vampires, and the like, so silver weapons hurt them more. Specifically, silver works well on "post-conjunction" creatures, meaning creatures from another plane of reality, their presence being explained in the backstory. Witchers, including Geralt, usually carry a steel weapon to deal with non-conjunction creatures, like goddamn bears or human enemies. Leading Geralt to snark/threaten that the silver sword is for the post-conjunction creatures, the steel sword is for other foes, both are for monsters.
  • In the original Ys duology, silver is one of the higher equipment tiers, and a rash of thefts has been going on recently. It turns out that Silver, at least in this region, is in fact Cleria, the only metal capable of harming the respective Big Bad of I & II.
  • In Zombies Ate My Neighbors, silverware is useful for taking down werewolves.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • From a Magical Metals list found on the Net:
    Silver: The metal of the moon, silver is well-known for being able to ignore lunar-based defensive powers such as those of lycanthropy. Unlike gold, silver will tarnish readily unless protected, but it needs no special preparation for most magical uses. Awakened, 3 ounces of silver (6 quantities for enchanting purposes) will grant moderate bonuses to divinations and magical wards it is used in. Unfortunately, silver is also strongly attuned to goodness and purity, it does not readily tolerate evil enchantments, having a marked tendency to decay into iron should the evil continue to be forced into it, though the presence of blue sapphire will aid the metal in resisting wickedness, and emeralds will weaken the silver if set in it. Like gold, but to a much weaker degree, silver can provide support for a spell, and also like its yellow cousin, it requires strengthening for physical reasons if used in weapons and armor. A wide selection of alloys can be made using silver, many exhibit varying degrees of tolerance for magical lightning, a quality the pure metal does not seem to have. Quite a few spells utilize the innate goodness of silver to strike out at evil, generally this does not harm the metal in the least.
  • WitchCraft SMP: Silver ingots are used liberally in the crafting of items from the Bewitchcraft mod, such as altars, Witch Cauldrons, and the Athame, a dagger used in cursing.

    Western Animation 
  • Silver proves to have mystic powers for a race of malevolent alien clouds in an episode of Underdog. Why do they want all the Earth's silver? Because every cloud really must have a silver lining.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

The Tale of the Quicksilver

What do you need to banish an evil spirit? Silver!

How well does it match the trope?

5 (2 votes)

Example of:

Main / SilverHasMysticPowers

Media sources:

Report