Enchanted Weapons, an Overview

Enchanted Weapons can be as varied as a fingerprint, and are most often created as expensive, once-off items. In contrast to enchanted armor with which there is some over-lap in the basic effects all users want, weapons tend to be highly specific. The best weapons are created through unique, irrepeatable processes. A weapon is more likely to combine all three forms of enchanting, and as weapons are smaller, much more effort has to be made in both creating a high starting capacity and ingraining as many effects as possible within the magics.

Standard Effects

Like armor, typical weapons will include the standard three: unbreaking, untarnishing, and stain resistance. Blades weapons will also typically include a "sharpness"-enhancing effect of some kind, while blunt ones uses any common varition on an "impact" effect.

Armor Bypass

Far and away the most common effects seen are those intended to bypass or circumvent armor. exo-elemental magics, and most commonly fire magic, are seen frequently. In this style of enchantment, when a weapon impacts a target, it releases a powerful burst of directional elemental magic.

A typical example of a very cheap, simple, and effective enchanted weapon would be an axe head enchanted with fire magic. Upon impact, the axe releases a powerful burst of heat and fire extending toward from the sharpened blade. If impacting regular unenchanted armor, this would be enough to cause severe or even fatal burns even from a relatively light tap.

Any sort of damaging energy can be used this way, which is why anti-magic effect6 are incorporated into most enchanted armor. This creates something of an arms race as weapons makers product more powerful effects while armorers invent more effective defenses.

Impact

During the First Chaotic Period, an effect similar to that found on the Hakens Guard saw widespread use on weapons, most particularly swords. Later artificers lost the knowledge of how to apply this effect to melee weapons, making the ones that existed extremely prized. Historians theorize the knowledge was lost when in the Dynastic Period, the various elements of enchanting were split between different professions, E.G. an alchemist, enchanter, and smith all collaborated on an item, as opposed to a single do-anything master. The inability to see the whole of the project made creating Impact and other effects much harder.

The Sub Component Effect

One interesting aspect of enchanted weapons as opposed to armor is they tended not to be a single item. Using a sword as an example, there is the blade, the cross guard, the hilt, and the pommel. Each can be enchanted separately. With axes, the handle and head were typically separate. Baubles are often added to provide additional effects. This is how most artificers got around the problems of capacity. A forged silver sword made from relatively inexpensive materials for the rest of the components could still be quite powerful.

Cost and Economics

Creating event a very simple enchanted weapon is a vary laborious and time-consuming art, such that even the most basic of swords costs a very large sum. An aspiring fighter on a budget could buy a very fine mundane sword for less than even a very cheap lightly enchanted weapon.

However, thanks to The Standard Three, the functional portions of a typical enchanted weapon last forever. During the mage wars, enchanted axeheads were churned out in such high quantities they began to be used as high-level currency. As such the secondary market became the most common way to get a real weapon, behind of course killing someone else and taking his.