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. Bladed weapons will also typically include a "sharpness"-enhancing effect of some kind, while blunt ones uses any common variation 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 effects 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

Pre-Dynastic

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.

Post-Dynastic

Following the start of the Dynastic era, Impact effects changed radically. It could no longer be added to smaller bladed weapons at all and found itself the soul envoy of Dragon Hammers, war hammers, and other large, blunt instruments. There was famously a saxophone with impact made somewhere early in the Dynastic period. The effect also became far less pronounced and usually required an activation-trigger to function. These so-called "safety mechanisms" (though they were more likely created for reducing the magic requirements) became common on a lot of items.

Exotic Effects

The Arsenal of Freedom on Arden Song published a study done on 1,000 randomly-selected weapons from its collection. On these items, 1,300 unique effects were documented. A comparison as made to 1,000 randomly-selected pieces of armor, upon which only 284 unique effects were found. There is some selection bias, as the buyers of the Arsenal were motivated to select only the finest, most intricate weapons available, but the fact still remains that weapons are more likely to have unique abilities than armor. Even when a similar finished effect is documented, the means of obtaining it is often wildly different between two separate pieces.

These exotic effects fall into very broad categories:

• Flaming the Arsenl has many ever-burning swords in its collection. These are always paired with an enchanted scabbard which is the only thing that can quell or contain the flames. These swords burn continuously when drawn and usually include very powerful fire effects.

• Elemental or Ethereal Blades swords in particular with no actual blade (just an empty hilt), and sometimes knives or daggers, which when activated create a blade out of magic. This is not dissimilar to the Cordosa Sword wielded by paladins. Blades made from any element or even pure light have been documented. Even the Strange Matter Sword falls into this category.

• Poisons weapons that create a magical poison effect. Though uncommon, they are especially devastating against living targets.

• Bane Effects these are seen most commonly on weapons made for Paladins. These are a broad category of weapon effects which damage specific things while sparing others. Given the prevalence of necromancy during the Mage Wars, many paladins wanted specific undead-slaying weapons. Weapons to damage Blood Beasts, summoned creatures, and all manner of demons. When Strawmen started to be manufactured in large quantities, many weapons were produced specifically to fight them.

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.

While Chaotic-period Impact effects could shatter every bone in a person's body and throw the limp corpse across the room, Dynastic and later effects tended to be far more subdued, amounting to merely doubling or tripling the impact force.

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.