Storm of Blades

It's raining swords
Hallelujah, it's raining swords
OH LORD!

"Sunny with the occasional rain of swords. That's pretty nasty weather."

— So I'm a Spider, So What?

You know how Throwing Your Sword Always Works? Well, let's crank that up a pinch with some Beam Spam thrown in; and you've got this Death In All Directions trope.

The Storm of Blades is a multitude of sharp objects descending upon the enemy. Just as potent as the stabby death is the Symbolism of the Sword, squared. Aggression, offense, smite. Sister Trope to Flechette Storm, Rain of Arrows and Blade Spam. It will typically involve Flying Weapons although versions when the swords are thrown exist. Also logically this trope will naturally end up with a Field of Blades.

Not to be confused with the novel A Storm of Swords.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• Used in a television commercial for a wood preservative paint. Shows virtually everything coming down like rain on a wooden deck, including lots of sharp blades, and nothing happens. Turns out it was only the rain falling, and it was All Just a Dream by the guy watching the rain landing on, and being repelled by, the deck he had painted with the wood preservative.
• An Australian car ad showed a man fleeing through a deserted city at night as knives rain down out of the sky. He escapes by leaping into a car, which somehow causes the knives to stop falling. The message was supposed to be something about how safe the car was but it really wasn't obvious.
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword commercial involves this trope. With Master Swords.

Anime and Manga

• Haseo uses this attack in the .hack//G.U. trilogy movie. Of course, calling up a bunch of swords isn't awesome enough. He's gotta do it while Dual Wielding BFS chainswords. Ovan manages to block the attack so we're left with a Field of Blades for the rest of the scene.
• Kongou uses this against Iona in episode 12 of Arpeggio of Blue Steel, after the latter somehow survived multiple torpedos shot at her, along with evading the Wave-Motion Gun multiple times.
• Black Clover:
  • Licht uses his Light Magic create countless blades of light to fire at enemies. His "Arrows of Judgment" spell forms enough through the mana stored by the Third Eye to rain down on all of the Clover Kingdom.
  • Lumiere Silvamillion Clover can form multiple giant blades of light, which he used to bind the demon that attacked the kingdom and eventually kill it.
• Bleach:
  • One of Kaname Tousen's shikai attacks is Benihiko, which creates hundreds of blades that rain down on his opponent.
  • In Shikai or its lowest level of Bankai, Byakuya's sword forms a swirling mass of tiny blossom-like blades. Byakuya can create the form of tiny daggers or entire swords out of them, enabling him create a storm of blades whenever he likes. When the Bankai enters Senkei, it creates an arena of thousands of fully-formed swords. Although Byakuya promises not to fight Ichigo with any more than swords than his two hands can hold, when later faced with a Quincy opponent who can take on him, Zaraki and Hitsugaya at the same time, he unleashes the entire lot at Gerard's head.
• Fairy Tail: Erza can summon lots of swords with her Re-quip magic. She threatened to use this against Evergreen, who promptly gave in. If she has enough time to set it up, she can even launch 200 swords at once, each set to hit a target across an entire town.
• In Get Backers, Akabane can do this with the many scalpels he has stored within his body.
• Inuyasha:
  • Kagura's Dance of Blades sends several energy blades at the opponent.
  • Inuyasha's "Blades of Blood" technique also applies. He uses his own blood and swipes his claws across thin air in such a way that tons of blades made of blood are let loose upon his enemies.
  • And then there's Inuyasha's Koungousouha ("Adamant Barrage" in the dub), gained from Hosenki and later copied by Naraku, wherein he launches a hail of spears made out of diamond which somehow passes through barriers like they're not even there.
  • And then his most powerful attack, the Cutting Meidou Zangetsuha, wherein he throws a rain of portals that can tear through pretty much anything, up to and including the barriers between life and death, and overlapping dimensions.
• After he uses The World, Dio Brando from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure tosses rows upon rows of throwing knives at Jotaro which stop in midair. This carries over to the fighting game, where you can get creative with the knives and be flashy before your super meter runs out.
• The third chapter of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT had Lord Dearche displaying her power by casting the Legion of Doom Bringer, a spell that summoned innumerable black swords that covered the skies before raining down upon the cityscape that served as the virtual arena.
• In Magi: Labyrinth of Magic, Dunya Musta'sim, using her Extrema Magic, can conjure a massive number of swords that rain down upon her enemies.
• Jack Rakan from Negima! Magister Negi Magi pulls this with his artifact The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Every time he uses it, expect massive amounts of win for anyone who manages to survive.
• The "Million Swords of Hate" in Revolutionary Girl Utena is an active, symbolic-yet-real representation of the fury the world has against realistic failings of any who attempt to be "The Prince". (This being Utena, what exactly the symbolism represents could be argued.)
• Soul Eater: When he decides to get serious, Mifune takes his box of swords and throws them up into the air en masse, which rain down and cover the area in swords to use in attacks. He calls it mugen itto-ryu, or "infinite one-sword style." He's also got a special attack that uses a 13-blade combination, and when he wants to show he's serious, brings two sword boxes.
• Toriko developed a technique called Flying Fork and Flying Knife. As he mastered this technique he was able to launch more and more forks and knife respectively. He also learned how to make them homing attacks by using his sense of smell.

Card Games

• The Rain of Blades card in Magic: The Gathering. Unfortunately, the actual effect is quite underwhelming.
  • There's also the Wall of Swords.

Fan Works

• Children of Remnant: Pyrrha combines this with Flying Weapon. She has thousands of weapons in her "Armory," a Hyperspace Arsenal where she tosses everything that might be useful. At full power, she summons all of them at once, telekinetically controlling all of them with perfect precision and allowing her to duel a hundred people at once.
• Vow of the King: An alternate use of Yūrei no ken is to simply launch all of the summoned blades at once rather than mentally control them.

Film

• In Thor: Ragnarok, Hela is capable of this. The blades can grow to ridiculous sizes, but were not enough to stop Surtur's destruction of Asgard.

Literature

• Chrysalis (RinoZ): Skilled swordsmen can project blades of light far beyond their actual weapons. True experts can launch many blades at once, allowing them to fight an entire company.
  "HOLD!" Rianus roared. "Folk Blademaster!"
  That was all he could say before the rabbit creature flickered and vanished before them. An instant later, a slash rang out overhead, followed by a barrage of sword light, slivers of silver death, raining down from above.

• In Fengshen Yanyi, the Howling Wind Formation is a deadly magical trap where a powerful black wind launches whoever enters inside the formation's ground into a wall of super-sharp blades. Then there are the Ten Thousands Blades Wheels, a pair of harmless-looking paper pinwheels adorned with hanzi and talismans but capable of launching an array of flames, wind and countless swords and cutlasses at the victims. What's more, the original Wheels are only two, but they can be mass-produced and given to ordinary soldiers to multiply the deadly effect.
• In Haruhi Suzumiya, this is used by Ryoko Asakura in a reality-warping attempt to kill Kyon. She's stopped when Yuki Nagato pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment as a human shield.
• In the novel Stormbringer, the first weapon that Elric gains for usage against the invading Lords of Chaos is a spell that summons a one-time storm of Stormbringers from another dimension to attack them. This wipes out many gods and their minions, but barely makes a dent in the invasion.

Live Action TV

• The titular character of Kamen Rider Gaim can summon a collection of weapons from every other Rider once he attains his Super Mode.

Tabletop Games

• Ocanthus, the lowest layer of the plane of Acheron in Dungeons & Dragons is a gigantic storm of black ice blades.
  • Eberron has hurricanes of weapons occurring in several manifest zones tied to Shavarath.
• Exalted has the Cascade of Cutting Terror which allows an Exalt to replicate any thrown item and rain it down over a large area. Anything the exalt can lift can be thrown as an improvised ranged attack.
  • One must keep in mind that many Exalts can lift elephants.
• Similarly, the Warhammer spell Blade Wind.

Video Games

• One of the most powerful spells in the Age of Wonders series features a volley of sharp projectiles raining on the entire field. The Spell appears in the second game, but this time, it rains actual swords, that only hit enemies. It is also the most powerful spell that can be used by heroes, which means you can actually use this spell several times in a single fight.
• Weiss's Critical Heart summons up a storm of swords in Arcana Heart 3.
• One of Chakravartin's main attacks from Asura's Wrath is this.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt 3: ZedΩ's Rexcalibur move involves creating a host of BFSes out of solar fire and dropping them point-first on his targets. According to the description of the Image Pulse that allows Kirin to summon a facsimile of Zed to perform this very attack (which can be upgraded to strike all over the screen), this attack has the power to raze countries.
• BlazBlue's Nu -13-/Lambda -11-. Her entire character is pretty much based on the concept of the sword. Her basic combo throws 5 blades (9 as a boss). Her Limit Break throws 20 (30 as a boss), capped off with launching a final BFS.
• Bloons TD 5 features Blade Maelstrom as the activated ability for the Tack Shooter. It sends out a rotating storm of blades with infinite pierce, making them great at taking down Zerg Rushes of Bloons, and it recharges a lot faster than most other abilities. BTD6 adds an upgraded version, the Super Maelstrom, which shoots twice as many blades for a much longer period of time, letting it decimate even more Bloons with every use.
• The "Thousand Blades" spell introduced as the Knife Item Crash in the Castlevania series.
• Custom Robo for the Gamecube features the Sword Storm gun. Firing the gun causes a swarm of blue energy swords to form above your opponent, then fall at them with impressive speed but only middling accuracy. Volume is this gun's watchword, as opposed to precision.
• Dark Souls has the Gravelord Sword Dance, a powerful spell without stat requirements that summons and launches lots of phantasmal blades at enemies.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Dante's Lucifer weapon in Devil May Cry 4. And the blades explode.
  • Vergil's Summoned Swords, which are made of magic.
• Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice:
  • Mid-Boss does this with his Super Adonis attack by Magichanging dozens of copies of himself into swords and throwing them rapidly.
  • Tyrant Overlord Baal, aside from simply dropping a blade onto his victim's noggin as his standard attack, has his "Sword Rain" skill, which rains down a bunch of swords onto multiple targets.... which then explode!
• Dragon Blaze 2000, a High Fantasy-themed Vertical Scrolling Shooter, have one of Ian's power-up attacks being firing scores and scores of flying swords that homes in on his foes.
• The "Swords of Eternal Light" paladin ability from DragonFable allows you to call down a rain of swords of light upon your enemy.
• The Epic Battle Fantasy series has Ragnarok, which drops a collection of giant swords, axes and spears onto the battlefield before following up with a giant version of Matt's signature sword, Heaven's Gate. It first appeared as a summon for Natalie in Epic Battle Fantasy 1 named Catastrophe (or Calamity in the EBF Collection), before returning as a reocurring Limit Break for Matt in Epic Battle Fantasy 3. Epic Battle Fantasy 4 would give it an accuracy and power buff, whilst Epic Battle Fantasy 5 would have Ragnarok give the party a significant Attack buff and the Brave Status Effect upon being cast.
• A variation appears in the Exile series, starting with Exile II, in the form of blade walls: clouds of floating blades that could be passed through if you didn't mind taking major damage from them. Could be created directly, appear as traps, or as part of a multi-layer shielding spell which included ice and fire walls, as well as an Anti-Magic cloud in the center.
• EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: Coma's EXTRAPOWER ability, usable only at critical health, opens a portal behind her and releases a flood of edged weapons that flies out in a horizontal line as tall as she is. Whatever got her to low health, odds are it's getting erased.
• Fable II has the Blades spell, which summons several swords that fly into the target(s).
  • Fable III has a more powerful version by merging a spell with the blades spell
• This trope appears often in the Final Fantasy Series,
  • From Final Fantasy XII we have the Big Bad Vayne who has 10 or so swords called Sephira flying around and cutting you while he just beats you down with his fists and magic, there is also Basch whose final Quickening Flame Purge impales the enemies with a bunch of fiery swords.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: The Ninja’s level 3 Limit Break, Chimatsuri, summons dozens of phantom katanas and launches them at the target from all directions. The Red Mage’s Contre Sixte ability is similar, launching six magical swords at the target.
  • From Dissidia Final Fantasy we have The Warrior of Light who shoots swords of light at his enemy when in EX Mode and during his Radiant Sword attack as well as The Onion Knight who spams a LOT of sword like beams after his sword attacks and of course we have Gabranth who uses the aforementioned Basch's Quickening except his is named Frost Purge and finally Ultimecia's Knight's Blade attack fires a bunch of sword shaped missiles at the enemies.
  • Final Fantasy XV has a thing for this trope.
    • Early in the main game, Noctis Lucis Caelum acquires Armiger. There are thirteen royal arms attainable throughout the game; after acquiring the first three, Noctis can enter a Super Mode that lets him wield them all at once, striking the enemy with one while the rest bombard them from all directions. This power is actually innate to the royal line of Lucis, although Noct's father Regis shows that it's not tied directly to the royal arms.
    • Episode Ignis has Ignis' "Total Clarity" which lets him unleash a specific attack depending on what element he's enchanted his daggers with. Flamebound Total Clarity has him hurl his daggers at the enemy in this manner.
    • Late in the game (and in the non-canon Verse 2 of Episode Ignis) Ardyn reintroduces himself as Ardyn Lucis Caelum, and come the Final Boss fight, it turns out he's got an Armiger, too. Episode Ardyn has his primary weapon giving him access to a dozen phantom swords that attack his opponent in succession with his physical blade, and when he has all twelve, his warp-strike turns into Royal Retribution, which rather resembles the page image.
    • Bahamut, the Draconian is also known as the Bladekeeper for this reason; he carries a BFS, his wings are made of BFSes, and his summon ability has him bombard the Citadel courtyard with all of them and then some.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening: The knights of the first Feroxi outpost use this tactic with their lances. Their attack misses due to Sumia's quick rescue.
• Food Fantasy: Zongzi's power skill is called Shooting Swords, which rains swords made of energy onto the enemy.
• Gundam Vs Series: The Extreme Gundam Tachyon Phase gains an attack when it's down to about half its HP where it summons energy swords which seek out the player and attempt to impale them en masse. This tends to leave one open for its Tachyon Slicer attacks.
• Kingdom Hearts: This pops up every now and again:
  • Riku demonstrates this by shooting copies of his sword Soul Eater at the enemy with his Dark Impulse sleight in Re:Chain of Memories.
  • Xaldin carries six spears, but since he's already pushing the limits by having his hands on three in his idle pose, his wind powers usually move them for him.
  • One move in Sora and Riku's Eternal Session is XIII Blades, where swords revolve around them.
  • Xemnas' final move during his boss fight in Kingdom Hearts II is to manifest his Ethereal Blades in all directions and have them bombard Sora and Riku therefrom. His data battle in Kingdom Hearts III: Re𝄌Mind uses a variation on the attack that consists of three waves that Sora has to block alone while also dodging unblockable blue lasers.
  • Ventus from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has a command style that combines this with Multi Wielding called Wing Blade. The style also pops up in his Multivortex Shotlock.
  • Master Xehanort has made a habit out of exploiting the Field of Keyblades in the Keyblade Graveyard for this trope, invoking a magical wind to throw Keys around.
  • Both Master Eraqus in Birth by Sleep and Sora's Heartless in coded summon torrents of Keyblade echoes to bombard on the player.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, Sora gets in on the action when the fight arrives at the Keyblade Graveyard. Unlike Xehanort, however, Sora doesn't do this one himself; every dead warrior from the Keyblade War sends their Keyblade to help Sora fight off a titanic Demon Tide.
  • Also from III, the Ultima Weapon's formchange causes most of Sora's attacks to summon dozens of Keyblades that rain down upon enemies.
• Kingdom Rush: Vengeance has the Northerners' Village level. If you have troops to block enemies on the path, the Northerner leader Arkuz will command his men to throw a storm of bladed weapons from above that deals massive damage if you don't move your troops out of the Shadow of Impending Doom.
• From Kirby's Return to Dream Land onwards, Galacta Knight has gained the ability to rain down swords of Hard Light as a very hard-to-avoid attack.

• In League of Legends, Katarina's ultimate ability, "Death Lotus", makes her spin while throwing up to 10 daggers to every nearby enemy in a few seconds.
• In Neptunia, Neptune does this with energy swords and Vert does this with lances for some of their special attacks. Exaggerated in VII, where Vert's strongest Limit Break involves summoning and firing almost 100 lances at her target.
• Several Sword wielding bosses in Ōkami has an attack that summons a number of swords above their heads and sends them flying at you, one of the later enemies also has an attack that summons in lots of swords to converge at your position.
• Path of Exile has the Bladefall spell, which rains down volleys of ethereal blades on the targeted area. A cosmetic microtransaction that recolors the blades from green to gold was immediately nicknamed Gate Of Babylon.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: One of the attacks of the Pirate Master's true form has him summoning a bunch of giant cutlasses that almost completely covers the sky above Shantae, and then them all to the ground blade first.
• In Skies of Arcadia, Vyse's area-effect special move is called "Rain of Swords".
• One of the Silent's rare cards in Slay the Spire is called Storm of Steel, which discards your entire hand and replaces it with an equal number of free shivs. Shiv decks aim for this in general, as there are very few cards that only generate one - the Silent apparently keeps ludicrous numbers of them under her cloak, according to the card art for Infinite Blades (a power that produces a free shiv at the start of each turn).
• The Black Sword Rune in Suikoden II has this as its ultimate attack.
• Three of the most powerful enemy magic attacks in Super Mario RPG are "Sword Rain," "Spear Rain" and "Arrow Rain," all of which are unique to the final boss fight against Smithy. During the first stage of the fight Smithy can summon lackeys that know "Sword Rain," while during the second phase of the fight Smithy can use all three attacks, but only when he morphs his head into the "Magic Head" form.
• In Tales of Berseria, main villian Artorius Collbrande uses Savage Wolf Fury as his Mystic Arte, except his begins with a bunch of swords raining down from the sky.
• Used for quite a few Bullet Hell attacks in the Touhou Project series. Most notably, Sakuya Izayoi uses knives, and Yumeko uses swords.
• Trails of Cold Steel has an Orbal Art called "Seventh Caliber". It summons seven technicolor swords, that fall on enemy and then explode.
• This is basically the whole point of the Night Elf Warden's 'Fan of Knives' ability. Also shows up in World of Warcraft as an ability for Rogues. It doesn't actually do all that much damage though.
• In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Goro Majima's Poundmates summon is just as over the top as can be expected from the Mad Dog. It starts off with him running down the building while lightning strikes down, then jumping off while throwing a insanely huge amount of knives, which he then begins to kick towards the ground, that somehow doubles the amount of knives falling, he then finishes off the attack by grabbing one of his daggers and then striking down with lightning bolt following after to damage Ichiban's enemies.

Visual Novels

• In Fate/stay night, this trope shows up twice:
  • Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon allows him to draw out legendary weapons and have them rain down on his opponent, since he doesn't know how to actually use most of them. This is the reason he is classified as Archer. In the prequel, Fate/Zero, he uses it to fatally wound Iskandar.
  • Archer's Unlimited Blade Works can be used to the same effect, except that instead of normal swords it rains down functional copies of them. This can also be done by Archer outside of it, though to a lesser extent than what is available after activating Unlimited Blade Works. Unlimited Blade Works can also be used to directly copy another Storm of Blades, like the one created by the Gate of Babylon, and thus can nullify it with Fearful Symmetry. This is something Shirou, the past self of Archer, uses to his advantage when he has to fight Gilgamesh during the Unlimited Blade Works route.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, most fights are fought by using wedges of truth created by Red Truth (the absolute truth) and Blue Truth (theories that can pierce the red truth or be denied by them), though this trope only pops up in two instances.
  • First, in the Episode 4 Tea Party where Battler tries to get through Beatrice's riddles, he ends up piercing them with these en masse, ending with Beato skewered by many lances that appear from the ground.
  • The second occurs in Episode 8 where Battler and Bernkastel have one fight to determine how the story will end for Ange. Bernkastel abides by the game's rules, where she provides riddles that Battler must answer, lest he'll be skewered by them. However, because there's no set time by which the riddles must be answered or limit as to how many can be thrown, Bernkastel takes advantage of this and decides to throw all of her riddles at once, making them take the form of blue wings made of blades, which end up turning into an eight headed Orochi whose very teeth, scales, everything is made up of the blades!

Web Comics

• An insane secondary kitchen in Castle Heterodyne uses this against Agatha twice in Girl Genius, here and on the following 3 pages. The storm includes not only knives, but forks, corkscrews and skewers.
• Redcloak from The Order of the Stick demonstrates the Blade Barrier spell here.
• Rusty and Co. has a halfling glad to demonstrate how it's done. They don't call her "Stabs" for nothing.

Web Original

• WitchCraft SMP: The Key of the King's Law, obtainable from fighting high-powered Gaia Guardians from the Botania mod, is a golden key which summons a barrage of golden lightning bolt-shaped projectiles which explode upon impact of the target. Both Tiff and El wield this in the final battle.

Western Animation

• In the Adventure Time episode "Rainy Day Daydream", Finn and Jake are stuck inside thanks to a "knifestorm". This phenomenon is apparently not as common as rain in the Land of Ooo, but is common enough that Jake recognizes it on sight (though 13-year-old Finn had never seen it before).

Real Life

• The Mughals used this as a weapon, attaching sword blades to rockets where stabilizers would normally be found. This meant that they were capable of launching volleys of rockets, tumbling out of control with a sword blade attached to each one. As if a regular rocket wasn't scary enough, streaking smoke and flame with a very real risk of exploding, this version could also carve you up.

---