How magic and super metals change sword design, feat IMPERIOUS

this episode of shadow versity is brought to you by the release of my debut novel shadow the Conqueror book 1 in chronicles that ever fall where the hero is also the villain and because it it makes sense when you read it so who better to fight back the darkness of the world and the one responsible for most of it it's available in eBook print and hardcover the audiobook is coming very soon and if you love epic fantasy on a grand scale you'll lot ratings I'm shadow and we have a bit of a special episode of fantasy rearmed here because as you probably know I'm holding something Bravo awesome this is a cosplay kind of version reproduction of the sword in my debut novel shadow of the Conqueror book one in Chronicles of ever fall and the name of this sword is imperious and it's going to give us a great reference point to the subject of this video which is how would fantasy materials and indeed in Chairman's effects or design because that is exactly what I've done with my sword here and then through describing the logical kind of process that I went into designing this sword I'll also reference some of the other classic sword materials like say mithril or adamantium because it doesn't apply to fantasy it's also a pop culture and sci-fi and then hopefully that will inspire and give you a kind of a logical baseline or inspiration as to the way to approach this concept this idea and before we dive right into the meat of this video I need and of course like it's my privilege to give a shout out to quantum leap cosplay who made Imperius for me his youtube channel is awesome and he's making such great content with a different kind of cosplay build with each episode one where it's just a montage of him putting it together kind of like a speed build and another a voiced over commentary of how he actually did it he's got the very build video of this awesome cosplay store right here Imperius on his channel so please do go check him out and of course subscribe links to his youtube channel in the description boy so looking at imperious what are some of the differences in design that you'd be added have a look from a cursory glance well you might not be at a tell actually because one of the big differences that Imperius has is in regards to its length for a one-handed sword this sword blade length is huge giant beautiful massive sorry in my other hand I have a very historically accurate one-handed arming sword and have a look at the a difference in blade length in fact the blade length of imperius is closer to a two-handed longsword than a one-handed army sword check this out but this is the longsword was wearing at my side like beautifully historically accurate sword you might have seen it on scholar grams channel awesome sword now let's compare the blade length Imperius is actually still longer then you know I still the high what I say standard a long sword this one is actually only longer into the spectrum with long sword lengths there are longer ones okay but there are more shorter ones than this then there are longer ones and yeah have a look at the blade lengths so then why does Imperius have such a long blade and of course why would you want a longer blade on a weapon and if you do want a longer blade why aren't they longer than the standard conventional lengths of swords both one-handed and to your hand and all comes down to the material properties of what they're made out of swords historically made out of steel and yes I know iron as well as bronze but I look medieval period we're gonna focus on steel okay now steel has certain mechanical limitations in regards to its strength its flex and stuff like that and sorry the standard length that you see with say long swords and armor saw arming swords are kind of the optimal properties and lengths depending on certain small variations like for instance the arming swords that are a little bit longer a little bit beefier historically is because the that's thought that's a purpose of item they want a bit more bite in the cut all right and perhaps they want a little bit more reach this one the long-sought I'm wearing right here is a thrusting beast okay have a look at just how tapered this tip is it is vicious but it's actually quite effective in cutting from tests that have been done online medieval review has you know had had a version of the sword testing quite effective at cutting as well I'm sorry this is a really beautiful balance in getting kind of the optimal shape to get good cutting and also devastating thrusts increasing the length of this blade would throw off the balance in a big way and it would actually in my opinion result as a worse sword overall because regardless of its cutting ability and also its thrusting capacity it's also its versatility how easy it is to really direct the blade and use in combat all these things need to be taken into account when a sword is being made and designed and one of the biggest things that will determine how it's designed is the materials that it's made out of but if it was made out of a material that had different properties for instance the weight to strength ratio it has and you might say well there are already kind of materials that do that say like titanium titanium is crap at holding an edge all right steel still is one of the very best materials to make swords out of even the modern day we make them out of modern steels really high quality incredible stuff so still better than the historical counterparts that yes they were made out of Steel our Steel's are just better and we haven't really come across a different material that's better than steel for swords but in fantasy we are not limited with that limitation so then what are the material properties of imperius that has led me through kind of trying to assist as logically to such a design without having such a longer blade well one of the things is its weight okay now in my book setting this item this is a cut is essentially an enchanted sword but there's not the traditional kind of magic in my sitting with magic but the magic system is what's called a hard magic system with very strict rules and parameters and how it's worked and it's actually treated more of a science almost so a little bit of setting information for my book in this setting light of the actual physical light of the world is magical it's not like regular light in a hiring universe and it is the fuel source for the magic that exists in the book and they have developed a technology called Sun forging where they're able to bonder this magical light to physical objects and when that happens a supernatural process happens in the object one making it near indestructible there are two things that will cause these items to shatter instantly so they have some devastating weaknesses in the context of my book setting so the items when Sun forged are called Sonic okay mechanical properties I said they're near indestructible what about the weight okay how does the weight work into this well sonic calls are made out of whatever object that you're bonding like to and whatever weight the object originally had it will retain that way and so Senecas are often made out of light woods timber basically carved okay and then you bond light to them and they become cynical x' and whatever color they originally had they kind of retained that color and then turn into a translucent precious stone like they might look like you know a blue diamond or a red ruby or something like that and you get the color simply by painting the wood or staining the wood whatever you want before the Sun forging process and so Imperius actually is really really light now it was carved with the intention of it being Sun Forge becoming enchanted and so because of that they knew was going to be near indestructible and so the blade this is something you can't replicate with a foam version is incredibly thin we're talking about one millimeter at half a millimeter thinner than you would ever be able to get away with a sword why can't we do that with sorta they'll be way too flexible in floppy they wouldn't be able to hold their strength and you know you're striking gets an opponent's a flyout so I can't do that with regular sorts but in a fantasy setting you can why would you want a sword to be so incredibly thin well that means when you strike when you cut someone okay there is less material that needs to be pushed aside no matter how insanely magically sharp an edge is if it can't push aside the material there's too much resistance it can get jammed in that material okay especially that steel something like that and so the thinner the blade the less distance the material needs to be pushed part to push the part to cut and so that's a huge mechanical advantage if your sword could be designed this way if you had a material that could still keep it rigid and strong with being so light and so this is one you know additional design difference you can put two fantasy swords if you have the fantasy material that allows the weapons retain its strength and form while being so thin because remember sauna coals are effectively indestructible except for those horrible weaknesses that I mentioned and sorry while being sorry indestructible it's also so light because it's such thin wood and that means it can be way way longer now how long would you want it and is there such a thing as too long yes there is such a thing as too long for instance versatility and function okay if this sword was like hugely long and stuff like that as soon as you do a strike in your coming low you can easily hit the ground and it can get in the way and so there are limits to the length that you want but by having it longer you can get way more reach on your opponent like if you could actually have a sword that had these material you know properties as imperious in the real world and you're fighting someone not only with like one hand it's or but even a long sword like this okay the advantage you would have in reach and because it's so wide it would be devastatingly fast and so we're just talking about material avenges not even magical enchantments yet and if you had these material advantages because the weapon is made out of a fantasy material you would have such an insane advantage over your opponent and so a lot of what I kind of talking about here in regards asana calls can also be applied with say mithril depending on how the setting treats mithril in Lord of the Rings mithril is like insanely strong but also incredibly light similar properties that we've kind of been talking about but I wonder if there's a limit because the IKE you know imperious being like half a mil thick on the actual cutting plane I'm not sure if that is too thin for mithril and if it would be have too much flakes of stuff like that I'm sorry you would get to determine this in your own setting Dungeons & Dragons another fantasies interpret mithril being as from the steel but almost twice as live that's a huge advantage but it means you wouldn't be able to make the blade nearly as thin because if it's just as strong as steel that means it needs the same amount of thickness to retain the rigidity of the weapon when you strike you do want to measure reflects you basically you want it to be hugely flexible with huge amount of resistance to get it to flex which means massively rigid okay but when put under the massive strain of stress it'll flex and then Bend back that's kind of what you're going for in regards to sword sorry just saying it's massively flexible isn't necessarily advantage you want it to be resistant to flexing but having the capacity to flex with enough force and if you have a material that is simply twice as strong as steel but weighs about the same and this is like adamantine or some other materials and adamantium is kind of in the same regard well that means if it's the same weight you might not be able to get away with having it longer than the average length of weapons because you need the balance to get the versatility but it means you probably couldn't get away with it being so much thinner because it's so much stronger able to resist the flex and it would cut devastatingly effectively because it's so thin just like a razor blade through flesh and if it's stronger it means it can retain the edge for much much longer why is reg retention so good well that means if it's thin doesn't need to push her you know apart material very much and it's still able to cut into things that means it can keep cutting once it goes through with regular steel when you strike something as soon as it strikes it starts to get blunted okay and then it gets jammed in the wood or whatever you're trying to cut into and so if you could overcome the the pressure on the sides to stop a getting wedge and it doesn't get blunt and it's cutting would be so much deeper and would have much higher chances even cutting metals like other Steel's and so those are the advantages you had something like adamantium or so now when you come into enchantments this becomes very case-specific so with sauna calls in my book setting when you Sun Forge any object and this is just not only weapons can be some forged by the way the there is a supernatural enhance from that comes from the magical light that you're infusing into the object that increases its functional ability for whatever purpose it was made for now of course swords meant to cut and thrust and so that on top of his mechanical advantages Imperius has a supernatural magical enhancement to its cutting capacity on top of that which basically means it can essentially cut through all normal materials except other Sun forged objects some forged armor and anything that Sun Forge has that near indestructible characteristic and whatever the item is the purpose that was made for is supernaturally enhanced through this in Chairman so if you had a Sun forged a hammer it would drive in nails with the slightest tap your Sun Forge shoes they grip way way more than they should ever be out of grip even in super slippery surfaces or stuff like that and so that's how the enchant works and with weapons of course they cut much much more but of course broadening that to fantasy generally it's a very case-specific thing if the magical enhancement is making it indestructible like just basically as strong as anything well of course like you would be limiting yourself by enchanting a weapon a sword that was made to operate under normal conditions this one-handed arming sword here was made to get the most out of what is made from steel okay terms a thickness flex and everything like that if you knew that this weapon was going to be enchanted with some magical thing that made it stronger you would actually make it far different and you're taking to account the ideas that we've talked about in regards to Imperius because remember Imperius was specifically made for the purpose of it being sun forged enchanted and that's why I was made different much much thinner and that's the same with a blade like this and so the question kind of arises and say a classic fantasy setting if they are able to enchance objects to be nearly indestructible why are you enchanting steel why not enchant a wooden sword which is technically what Imperius is and let the magic make it nearly indestructible and then you have a much lighter nearly indestructible weapon there you make much thinner basically a lot of the things that were talked about in pyrius but this can be adapted into classic fantasy why aren't we enchanting wooden swords well is it the edge you can technically make wood as sharp depending on the type of wood okay caveat as sharp as steel just won't hold that edge very long at all and I've even heard of accounts of cutting implements made out of wood wood that's like fire hardened and sharpened to give a cutting edge on wood in a house already exist in the real world their durability is spit of course especially against harder things but against flesh wood it can be enough to cut through flesh absolutely and so you could make a wooden sword with a good solid cutting edge and enchanted with the magic of your setting and it's - it'll be way better then shading a steel weapon and so it's kind of odd it's like everyone is enchanting steel weapons but the steel weapon was made to operate and exemplify the properties of steel not the properties on the enchantments now there's going to be too many enchantments to go through every single one but I'm gonna try and touch on some more prominent like a specific ones have you heard of the vorpal sword the vorpal sword it comes up in different fantasies and is represented differently in like different role-playing games and so this isn't gonna apply uniformly to every fantasy setting that has a vocal in chairman but one of the interpretations I had is a vorpal in chairman in here the damage that all you need to do is cut someone a slight cut and that cut can turn into a massive gash - sometimes just decapitating someone completely either if you've got the slightest Nick now if you had a weapon that you're going to give a Worple enchantment like that you would honestly design it differently all you need to do is land a cut and so enchanting a weapon that had poor reach okay and oars built around cutting is defeating the purpose honestly you would get far more effect out of enchanting something with huge reach where like a weapon that gave you much greater chance of just landing a cup a and stain it on your opponent and you let the enchantment do the damage afterwards and sorry enchanting well sort of like this no it would be rapier like okay even in a stock or something like that huge reach and just you know our weapon let's focus around landing the tap that cut on the opponent and it does the job for you and so using that vorpal and chairman on other weapons that were not designed to really take the most advanced yeah the enchantment does it make sense okay so again we need to look at the enchantment that's what is the enchantment doing specifically and then try and figure out is this weapon optimized to take advantage of that magical enchantment and what about fire okay that's kind of a classy thing like a weapon being wreath in fire well as a fact is that gonna be useful at all because I odd burn people but I mean technically I feel deep cuts are more debilitating devastating than burning someone having said that burning can be really painful and intimidating but in terms of cutting someone with a blade that was super hot you're technically cauterizing the wound as you cut which makes them less deadly and so a firing Sharon why not be that great with a weapon at all yeah in actual fact firing chairman's might work so much better to be shot like you know being out a shoot fire instead of just having to run in close and landing a strike to get the fire damage on top of it poison there's an interesting in chairmen okay if you had a magical enchantment that made your weapon poison I think that would come into the vorpal thing as well if you're relying on the poison to kill or not the actual cutting you would I feel to take the most advantage out of it you will put her on a weapon that again enables you great gives you great advantages landing that touch all you need to is Nick them for that magical poison to get into their blood and so again something much longer so like it's funny we're kind of falling towards rapier-like weapons is there a in chairman that makes so much sense for a more classic kind of sword like a longsword well a speeding chairman all right if you had any shipment that on a weapon that just magically enhanced the speed in which you could cut with well that would have huge benefits on the like the depth and the severity of the cuts you can land with any type of cutting weapon or implement because again speed is something that impacts the severity of the strike and also from your resting position if you have a guard position or whatever and you can suddenly just jump forward into a massive strike and it's super fast again well that is an enchantment that suits over likes of course what's sweeter a rapier as well reviews just better in all things well look sometimes you want to cut to fend off more opponents than one alright and the rapier is nowhere near as good as cutting yet there are so many in Chairmen's to consider and honestly too much if I tried to list them off in the video I'd love your help share them in the comments below what are some you know magical and Chairman's that would naturally affect weapon design like swords and are they you know enchantments that particularly suit say long swords or cutting like swords over other swords where because their design they agree in a benefit out of that chair meant specifically I'd love to read them so please do share them in the comments below so now I want to talk about and analyze some of the aesthetic liberties that you can take in your sword design when that swords material properties are different and that is whether from a magical enchantment or actually being made out of some different fantasy material for instance if the sword is considerably lighter you can get away with adding additional elements that would have added unnecessary weight but because it's already so light you actually might want that little bit of extra weight to lower the point of balance and give you far more point control now that would generally affect the striking power of the sword but the reason why swords need a certain amount of heft in the blade is to help push apart the material is trying to cut the thick of the blade the more resistance it runs into in this regard but if the blade is really really thin it actually needs far less force to cut deeply this is the exact logic I used with Imperius I some additional spikes which funnily enough is what you often see on fantasy swords they have spikes and aesthetic elements thrown in all over the place I was far more conservative with imperious and the intent was to make it look like a flaring Sun interestingly enough these spikes have some functional value in that any source Freight that comes down can get caught in between these spikes if the person using it twists it at a certain angle and you'll be out a lock away the opponent's sword would that lock away your own sword well if you position your sword at the right angle you could lock away theirs and then put yours on point for a counter attack so when we look at the more cliche kind of fantasy sword designs they often have bulbous oversized hilt and pummels and of course spikes everywhere and like I said before those sword designs could be far more plausible if the material the sword is made out of due to again magic or the material itself is considerably lighter it is actually really useful to have your sword balanced in a certain way and placing weight in areas to achieve that is very important if the weight of this sword made out of mystical materials or simply enchanted is the same as say a normal sword then you need to be aware of these visual embellishments and keep unnecessary weight or here's another fantasy sword design I've made that belongs to a superhero character the sword is called regalia and in the hands of the wielder it feels as heavy as it naturally should according to its size and dimensions though to anyone else it actually feels like it weighs a full ton that's one of its enchantments and of course I wanted this sword to look really impressive and cool one of the designs I went with are again different kind of spikes but spike seem to meet a very common fantasy sort they add a cool aesthetic I fully admit that yet being mindful of weight in sword design if we look at this sword from a different angle you'll notice the cross guard and the spikes are actually really thin they're only two millimeters and so the overall weight of the cross guard including these side spikes it would actually still be very low because one of the other enchants of the sword is of course it's indestructible that means you don't need nearly as bulky a guard to maintain its strength when impacted another Liberty that you can take in fantasy sword design are really exotic blade profiles now you want to keep them in the realms of functionality so these blade designs that again spikes going off all on the blade on these went random ankles not horrible bad don't do that again this was my logic with imperious you'll notice that the connection of the blade is a bit smaller and the blade actually broadens out above it it's not really a problem but you could consider the connection point a weak part on the blade but being indestructible it can have this blade profile without any problems at all and so thank you very much for watching and please do go check out quantumly cosplay honestly it is an awesome youtube channel he deserves way more subscribers than he has please subscribe and I mean if you've been interested in the properties that I've been talking about in regards to my book sitting and Sunnah calls an imperious a magic sword well my novel is out it is available in eBook print and the audiobook is either out or it's coming okay it's just current it's currently in review as the moment of filming this video so you'll know in the description below and the audiobook is narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate reading that is just phenomenal Michael Kremer Kate in case you didn't know Michael Kramer and Kate reading they voiced Wheel of Time audiobooks brain and Sanderson storm lights and my book that's right shadow the Conqueror chronicles of all their generators it's awesome and so yeah check it out is my debut novel it's awesome it's got a pyrius in it and that's just one sitting element amongst many other cool setting elements of the novel so yeah I hope you check it out and of course I hope to see in the next video so until that time [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 608,544

Keywords: sword, swords, fantasy, design, fantasy swords, imperious, shadow of the conqueror, medieval, middle ages, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, enchanted, mystical, legendary, artifact, chronicles of everfall, fantasy re-armed, weapon, longsword, sunacle, sunblade, shardblade, stormlight archives, history, historical, hema, shad m brooks, shadmbrooks, excalibur, oathbreaker, brandon sanderson, way of kings, game of thrones, lord of the rings, skyrim

Id: 0zBsUdUKmhk

Length: 24min 0sec (1440 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2019