Darkblade statistics *interesting*

Darkblade stats ... page 2 ... Cujo needs input

!! now see page 2 for discussing weapon stats requested by Cujo
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Darkblades (magical unholy long swords) are minor artifacts.

Their stats and abilities are:

+5 longsword

* Ignores all weave-based magic protections; a PC or NPC with many protection spells or weave magic protection items for a AC 32 would only have a AC of 10 + DEX bonus for the character wielding the Darkblade.

* Wielder gains 60 foot darkvision

* Deals 1d4 points of cold damage per round to anyone who holds the sword who is not from the bloodline of the person it was originally given to. Their creator, Melegaunt is excepted of course.

* As long as they are on the same plane, the user can command the darksword to Fly to them as the Fly spell. The user must concentrate to do this, and cannot preform other acts that require concentration. If damaged while calling the sword, the user must make a concentration check of DC10 + the damage.

* Each Darkblade acquires personality from its family. One Darkblade can show its master her bedchamber at home at night through Clairvoyance. Other Darkblades hum in battle or murmur at night or lose their color if not plunged into a vat of mead daily.

* Caster Level 20th

Darkblades were listed in a Dragon magazine issue.

 

Elric and Stormbringer is a book series with its first release in 1980.

StormBringer and MournBlade, the Runeblades -
Brought to earth centuries before and wielded by the Melniborne emperors, these blades where turned over to the Gods and placed in the pulsing cavern when they became too powerful to control. They are known by the names StormBringer and MournBlade. They have the ability to give the wielder unparalleled strength. They are also sentient and require feeding to appease them. This feeding is in the form of souls taken during battle. Whenever Stormbringer or Mournblade are drawn from their sheath, someone must and will die with a single strike from the sword, their soul ripped from their body for consumption by the sword where that soul is immediately transferred to hell. Many of Elric's enemies plead not to be killed by his fearsome blade, StormBringer, as their souls are sent straight to hell for eternity regardless of their deity. Although Elric is able to overcome his genetic weaknesses, and for the first time in his life he no longer needs to ingest his sorceress potions to sustain his life, this strength is gained at the price of a symbiotic relationship with his blade. Many is the time he regrets unsheathing it, as StormBringer has a taste for friend and foe alike. There is no sheathing Stormbringer or Mournblade once drawn without their first tasting blood and consuming a soul before being sheathed.

I believe Stormbringer and Mournblade are the extreme anti-holy of magical unholy swords. They are two unique major artifact bastard swords.

 

In fact Stormbringer and Mournblade are not swords at all. They are two semi-sentient demons that the Lords of Chaos forced into bastard sword form to battle the Lords of Law. At the end of the Elric series, after Stormbringer kills Elric it reverts to it's natural form, a winged demon, and flys off, a seed of Chaos in a world now dominated by Law. In the Elric Saga, the major players are Chaos and Law, not Good and Evil. On might speculate that the Elric Saga, along with other series by Micheal Moorcock were the inspiration for Gygax to put lawful and chaotic alignments in D&D. I will not dispute that the Runeblades are evil, but they may be weilded by a non-evil person, and ultimately they were not tools of Evil but tools of Chaos.

 

...what you guys said!

Ted...you ought to give those books a read. Elric has a lot in common with Turin.

:doublethu

 

There are many tales in the six books, my friend...each worth reading. Even though you now know the ultimate end, isn't this the ultimate end of every story?


:tombstone



I read one recently inscribed thus:

As you are now, so I once was; as I am now, so too shall you surely be.

 

Why am I not suprised that people on this forum have read Micheal Moorcock? He and Glen Cook (the Black Company Rules) are two of my favorite authors.

 

Darkblades are a group of unique minor artifacts as unholy long swords. Runeblades are are pair of unique major artifacts as unholy bastard swords. Darkblades and Runeblades would have different stats and abilities from each other. Originally, Cujo asked what a Darkblade was. Hopefully, the first two posts answered his question.

 

My whole point was that in the Elric Saga, Stormbringer and Mournblade were tools of Chaos, not Evil. They would be Chaotic, not Unholy. In the Second Edition Dieties & Demigods, TSR did say that Stormbringer and Mournblade were chaotic evil, but never said they were unholy.

EDIT: By the way, the book Elric of Melnibone was first published under the title The Dreaming City by Lancer Books in 1972. Part of The Weird of the White Wolf (the third book of the Elric Saga) originally appeared in a volume entitled The Stealer of Souls published in the USA by Lancer Books in 1967.

 

To all of what you said, Nod.

In basic terms of D&D and relating Runeblades to magic swords in a D&D setting like Grayhawk or Forgotten Realms, those 2 swords being Chaotic Evil with supernatural Ego and Id from the swords having a powerful demon entrapped in each of them IMO constitutes about as unholy or anti-holy as two magic swords can be in a D&D world. Entrapping the spirit of a powerful planar or demonic being is needed to make a magic weapon with Ego and Id from where magic weapons have permanent supernatural abilities and are sentient, not just weapons with a plus to hit along with shock, fire, or cold damage.

fyi : I am not attempting to lessen or be detrimental toward the great literature of those books.

 

The thing is the swords didn't have demons trapped in them, the swords were demons. Does a demon do unholy damage when striking a good character with natural attacks? A holy or unholy weapon channels energy from the outer plane to which it is attuned, thus causing holy/unholy damage to those of opposite alignment. IMO, a sword that either drains all of a victims life energy or half of said energy on every hit (from SE Deities and Demigods) doesn't need unholy damage.

By the way, according to the Elric Saga and Deities and Demigods, the swords do not send the souls they steal to hell. Those souls are devoured by the sword. They are gone. Finito. Kaput. A little bit of them gets passed on to the wielder, but that little bit is all that remains.

 

Well, the simplest thing to say is we disagree. Please read the following.

Arioch, the patron demon of her ancestors, one of the most powerful of all Dukes of Hell, who was called Knight of the Swords, Lord of the Seven Darks, Lord of the Higher Hell and many more names besides. It was Arioch who was known as the Keeper of the Two Black Swords - the swords of unearthly manufacture and infinite power...Stormbringer. Forged by the Dukes of Chaos in the inner fires of Hell, the sword Ermizhad wields has a soul of its own. Two swords had once been forged, the "Opposing Swords", the "Twin Blades", destined to change the flow of time and the balance of the world...Stormbringer and Mournblade. Their names only gave the tiniest idea of their power. Two swords created by alien craftmanship out of a dark-black metal, with inscribed runes. Two swords with an own will, the will to slay, the will to detach souls and usurp them, the lust for bloodshed and carnage. Two swords, forged by the darkest sorcery, inspired with intelligence and awareness, accompanied by their innate song of doom.

This describes artifact weapons, 2 swords each with an entrapped soul, with its own will. Plus, demons do not eat souls, they torment and toure them (in hell).

 

It says the swords have a soul of their own, not that it is entrapped.