An Unnecessarily In-Depth Discussion of Silver Swords
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- This is for those who are wondering if the silver swords in the Witcher series and other games / movies / novels would be feasible in real life... Well... if werewolves and other monsters who are allergic to silver existed. ... Oh come on, you like this realism-in-fantasy nonsense, don't you even lie. ;)
To make it educational too I threw in some information about the properties and hardness of silver and other metals, and some creative solutions for how to make this work.
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#Witcher #Silver #Fantasy 
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In the Witcher games there are several sections of dialogue where silver swords are discussed. The reason Witchers don't use them on humans is because they destroy the silver plating, and fixing silver blades takes a lot of money and time. In one particular side quest, you learn about the fate of the Witcher George who died because he had to fight a dragon with a steel sword while his silver sword was being repaired. The whole "silver swords are not as effective against humans" thing is just a game mechanic to force you to use certain swords against certain enemies.
@@clitcrusader4897 I feel it's so the swords dont unsheath at the same time.
@@clitcrusader4897 from a gamer's perspective, i think its to differentiate between silver and steel swords so players dont get confused
@@clitcrusader4897 i guess its to make it more unique, and v shaped hilts looks cool imo
@@clitcrusader4897 But then if you are using it against a monster who has claws or something that you might want to catch on the hilt you are boned. I think the hilt is fine.
I thought witcher silver swords are silver and meteorite aloy i think i heard vessimir falking about it at khaer morhen
"An unecessarily in depth descussion of silver swords". No. No. This is completely necessary
agreed
Yes...yes 😌
Unnecessary? I cant think of a more important topic!
@ J. Michael Cherry
Indeed, i can see nothing unneccessary about that topic.
He forgot to mention Judas and his silver and their association to evil.
Here is a quote directly from Season of Storms in the Witcher Series:
"And the second sword... is silver. Partially, of course. A steel tang fitted with silver, also the edges are steel, since pure silver is too soft to be sharpened effectively. On the cross guard and along the entire length of the blade there are runic signs and glyphs considered by my experts indecipherable, but undoubtedly magical."
So yeah, as you said, the swords are inlaid or plated with silver, the edges and tip of exposed steel. This is commonly done with modern high-carbon knives. Fold stainless steel around the softer core when you forge the knife. That way, you only have a small exposed edge that can rust if not cared for.1
Late response, sorry, but I wanted to contribute especially because you quoted season of storms.
In the last wish, first chapter, Geralts sword is described as pure silver. Pure. Silver.
So either
-Sapkowski changed his mind about what silver swords should be like
Or
-there are multiple ways to make silver swords in the witcher world.
also, let's keep in mind Sapkowski is not an expert on swords. He calls one perfectly balanced, with the point of balance being exactly on the crossguard. But it should be a bit above the crossguard, as most sword-owners know.
All in all, it doesn't really matter what the swords are made of. If Sapkowski says it's pure silver, so what if that's not realistic? If we were really serious about realism, we first have to ask why Geralt isn't using silver polearms, a sword is a stupid weapon to fight huge fiends and griffins in the first place. The point is that the fictional hero has to fight fictional monsters, so he needs a fictional weapon that works against fictional enemies. Which is why I think pure silver swords are just as valid for the witcher. Even if I like the steel with silver plating explanation better.
@@12pluz I understand your frustration but internal logic is stil important. Regardless of the contents being fictive or not. Elements that are not fictional and not supernatural/magic should match reality as is. If not then the author has failed properly researching whatever subject they are writing on. I mean imagine if in the Geralt uses a steel sword to cut open a large steel door. Now we know that unless you have access to magic you ain't going to slice steel with steel, much less a 4" thick steel door.
@@CeroAshura what frustration? I have joined this discussion and watched the video for the fun of it.
I just think there is a limit on how far to take your expectations for realism. You can't expect any author to know about all laws of physics, historical facts, psychology, etc., the problem is you can always take your expectations further. Right now we are discussing silver swords. That in itself is a problem, since swords are a horrible weapon to fight all sorts of monsters, then we're discussing silver polearms and arrows, then we're discussing why there aren't firearms when there's fire magic and explosives around, and so on anf so on, ignoring that a silver sword is just a tool of the writer, who wishes there to be a special weapon that is effective against monsters. Now a silver polearm would be more realistic, no doubt, but it does not improve the story itself in the slightest. This is no discussion of a realistic simulator game, we are discussing novels. And damn good novels at that. No matter what you replace the silver sword with, it will always be nothing but the writers tool, the weapon against monsters, which only exists at all because he wishes it to. It is all the story needs, applying realism does not improve or worsen this tool for the average reader.
@@12pluz Is not necessarily a contradiction; if the silver on the silver-plated sword has to be pure silver, not Sterling silver or any other silver alloy, the quote "pure silver" still holds up, it just doesn't describe the entire blade.
It also explains the extreme delicacy of Silver Swords and the need to bind it in a satin-inlaid box in order to preserve it during travel.
It was also not used for monsters very often as not all were vulnerable to it. Geralt would usually just use his steel sword unless he know for a fact it was going to be better to use the silver.
Steel for humans
Silver for monsters
Pommel for Skall
Both swords are for monsters
@@rodrigocampos1302
humans may equal monsters
Pommel for all
Iron generally considered to hurt fairies
@@jayhill2193 actually in the books both swords were for monsters, there was just this whole category of monsters that only silver sword could really hurt
Solid silver metal does actually have antibacterial effects, though it requires direct contact to kill. It kills because it reacts with the enzyme bacteria use to respire, basically depriving them of oxygen. And yes, this means it's only effective with aerobic bacteria. It's a huge reason silver was used for eating utensils, because people noticed they got sick far less often when they ate off of silver.
Yeah i heard that silver coated medical instruments are making a comeback too.
Interesting
Copper has similar property.
Would this be one of the reasons a silver plated swords in that game doesn’t work as well against humans? Like the silver that cut you also have antibacterial effects so you don’t get infections.
@@kistuszek
I've heard of Field Doctors in rough places using Silver but are Western Hospitals getting in on this too now?
finds a silver sword
archaeologist : must be ceremonial
In our world yes, simply because most _Witcher_ monsters are from other dimension.
In our world yes, simply because most _Witcher_ monsters are from other dimension.
@@Petaurista13 ahh.. I see that you missed the joke.. go watch some metatron videos
@@shiroyasha4995 Are you saying that RUclips has become...
:: looks around :::
... meta?
@@Petaurista13 implying the conjunction isn't a thing in this world lol. You've seen a picture of Hillary Clinton haven't you? Higher vampires are no small threat.
"What about your sword? I heard witchers carry two - a silver blade for monsters and steel for humans..." "Both are for monsters."
Very true
So true.
"I wonder if he keeps an extra prick in his trouser, too."
TheRetu81 funny about that quote, in the books there were actually more differences in monsters so Witchers actually had to use the steel sword for certain varieties
@@TheKingsPride actually steel for most. Silver is just for some monsters. In the books he only uses silver against a strigga, for the rest he uses steel.
Your tip about adding a coating or oil is actually accurate to what happens in the Witcher. They're professional monster hunters - they know how to track them, what they eat, where they sleep, and most importantly; how to kill them. So they prepare not only by training their entire lives, and being physically fit, but with their armour, their weapons, their performance enhancing drugs, and by coating their silver blades with different oils depending on the monster they are fighting.
Vampire Oil - for example - is made up with various ingredients, one of which being Hydragenum _(an old name for Mercury,)_ which is a silvery substance _(at least in appearance.)_
Useless information, but it shows how detailed the Witcher lore is. They really do try to create _'realistic'_ monsters.
"Believable" might be another term that could work.
They didn't wear armour though.
@@БакдаулетЕлмурзаев They do wear armour. The most of the time wear armour. You know, geralt is always salty when triss or yen take him to an event where he needs to be dressed well because he feels the best in his armour
@@БакдаулетЕлмурзаев They just wear light or medium armor. And that armor is mainly meant for the humans they face. Their armor is almost useless against most of the monsters they face, hence why it needs to be very light for agility.
Actually covering a blade with mercury (if you can get it to stick), wouldn't kill fast, but will still kill ... it would just take longer.
Further, an organic form of mercury would be pretty damn dangerous. In fact, there is a group of organomercuries that almost all organic/inorganic chemists fear, due to the devistating side effects of even a very small exposure to it ...
ruclips.net/video/NJ7M01jV058/видео.html
The “silver venom” you mention at the end sounds similar to Witcher oils that they coat their swords with to be more effective in combat
Hanged mans venom I think it is. Adds more attack damage to animals and humans
At that point, isn't salting your sword as effective?
@@ChatarraCrow na mate use sand
@@shadowknightgaming1874 stick ur sword in shit for poison damage
and in real life, in order to plate silver onto other metals we use LOTS AND LOTS of sodium cyanide/potassium cyanide in the tank along with a bunch of other nasty chemicals, and getting stabbed with a sword with any of that would be lethal, hell getting barely any of the potassium cyanide in your blood will suffocate you from the inside out.
Some points about the video:
1: Your craziest idea is basically just the moon dust bomb from The Witcher. (I love that)
2: considering how much gold I spend having to repair my swords in The Witcher, one could assume the silver sword needs regular re-plating.
3: The Witcher's crafting system has all kinds of special alloys, like meteorite silver and dimeritium (both of which are used in some silver sword diagrams.) So who knows how the hardness of silver is altered by the inclusion of said metals.
And remember that the dimeritium is anti-magic
@@Zero-tk1hb yeah, I was going to mention that, but I figured most people familiar with The Witcher know that.
If I remember correctly, your average Witcher sword is basically a mix between steel and silver, special alloys aside.
Meteorite silver is same as silver found on earth tho 😐. And dimeritium is a pure fantasy metal.
@@specter0432 meteorite silver in the Witcher is an alloy of silver and ore from a meteorite. It's more than just silver. I'm aware that dimeritium isn't real, that was my point; since we can't be sure how it'd mix with other metals. Dimeritium is an alloy of dark steel, meteorite silver, and glowing ore.
I doubt that sharpness is a high priority for silver swords.
When Geralt fought the Striga, he used a silver chain like a lasso against the monster. Mere contact with the chain burnt the Striga’s flesh.
That's the point. The edge of the sword is actully steel.
The edge is steel to cut in. But the real damage comes from having the monsters inside touching the silver plating
@@thesatelliteslickers907 yes, people think the silver is supposed to cut monster flesh but no. Take a drowner for example, a rotten corpse brought to life with chaos. The steel cuts open the corpse but the silver cuts the magic thread giving life to this dead corpse
@@pyotrilyichtchaikovsky3733 Or you know, wherever word magic appears you can run your imagination wild i mean only the writer can set boundaries of his fictional sword
@@plazmica0323 yeah what we are discussing are the inconsistencies the writer has created by referring to them as fully pure silver and silver plated with a steel core and edge several times, he cant apparently stay consistent
Steel for Human and non-humans
Silver for monsters
Dong for Sorceresses
K i l l J e s t e r
Yeah Geralt actually carries 3 swords, steel, sliver and meat.
Do you keep an extra prick in your pants as well?
no, STOP the steel swords are not for killing people it is for other types of monsters that do not have regenerative abilites
@@pilky_boooi so humans
Fun fact: In Skyrim, the Legacy of the Dragonborn mega mod has a safe house that includes crafting stations where you can forge stuff. The safehouse has this exact theme as background music. My first playthru of the mod was a relic hunter / restorer, and i spent ages in that room painstakingly forging every regular weapon and armor to fill up the armory. Including silver weapons. It's really funny and a bit of a throwback to have you talk about the technical details of silver swords to that tune, lol. Great video as always, XD
Spice it up use a uranium sword instead
There's probably some poor asshole who made one and then died after a few weeks lol
or plutonium sword
@@metadude1234 Very unlikely.
Depleted uranium, tank armour I think.
@funny_haha - or adamantium
Geralt takes delivery of a witcher sword and the smith who delivers it reveals the specs. Its 38.5 inches long, 40 oz in weight, silver plate on a siderite steel core.
That's Ciri's blade. His swords may be different from hers.
@@Codex_0613 he ordered the blade so all witcher blades are like that.
@@peasantofpersia he did, that still doesn't mean his blades are the same specs.
Codex any of the books cover Geralt’s blades?
@@mtlacunae8659 i don't think so
In the books it is stated that only the cores have silver. The edges are steel:
"»The second sword, similar in weight and length, is made of silver. In part, of course. The core is made of steel and coated with silver, the edges are equally made of steel, pure silver is too soft to sharpen properly. On the quillon and on the entire blade there are runes and glyphs, which are impossible to decipher by my experts, but they are undoubtedly magical."
The passage in question is taken from 'Sezon burz (Season of Storms)', Chapter VIII; the last book from Sapkowski.
EDIT: The translation had an error, "trimmed" has been replaced by "coated".
read your comments first line and please tell me you are either drunk or tired,
because you are contradicting yourself in the first line and first quote
I understand it as - the core is made of steel, the edges are made of steel and there is silver sandwiched in-between.
Finish reading, he's not contradicting himself.
Animi is correct. I was gonna make a comment about this til i saw this one. Just read season of storms a few months ago and loved that this was addressed in the book since silver by itself is a poor choice for a blade.
Oh, so the core is steel, The trimming is silver, and the edges are steel? That's what the quote seems to say
No, Skall, you're wrong.
This level of detail is totally necessary.
Yay, science!
Yeah Mr white! Science!
To add some in-game evidence that the blade itself doesn't need to be of silver but just to be present to hurt monsters -
In one point in game Ciri is going to fight a werewolf and she doesn't have any silver blade. What she does she add a mixture of herbs and boil it and use it on a steel sword to fight and kill the beast. And it does it job perfectly. ( Like it mimics the effects of silver on a monster.)
SO , the speculation from Skall is spot on. Any silver designs or a silver goop or any touch of silver on otherwise steel sword would do the job.
We have never seen Skalls reflection in a mirror 🤔
I mean... Just saying...
We've seen him recorded on film. (as far as common beliefs went, all the reasons for vampires to not be in mirrors, are doubled when it comes to being captured by an analog camera, and the soul part alone applies to all forms of filming/photography)
@@cyryl3827 There's no silver nitrate film in a digital camera.
Yeah digital would catch them because digital can catch ghosts ;)
That’s because he’s not a vampire he’s an immortal trained by Juan Sánchez VillaLobos Ramírez before a certain uppity Scotsman.
Skall, this discussion is not unnecessary. You mention the high maintenance of the silver blades, but if we recall what Ciri remembered Master Vesemir saying "A witcher will forget to eat, sleep, drink, even breathe - but a witcher, never, ever forgets to care for his blade". With that said, Silver swords are said by Geralt to be weaker than the steel swords used, and silver swords aren't used for all monsters, only those reactive to silver.
Also your craziest idea is sort of a thing in the Witcher series, The Moon Dust Bomb - Silver Shards/Dust that do damage and force the monster into a material form, if it can become immaterial. There are also specific oil coatings, some of which could utilize silver, I imagine. Might be useful for the monsters that doesn't warrant the use of a silver sword.
Yeah I found it funny when he mentioned the silver shards which is basically moon dust
The blade oil is called Argentia, it's featured in the first Witcher game
Hmm...do silver swords lose condition faster? It sure as hell feels like it but maybe that's because you need to use it alot more
@@Legitpenguins99 They likely do and I think that effect is even stronger on human enemies because of the effect of armor.
in the Witcher books steel blades can kill monsters, it's just that silver hurts some of them a bit more. Ciri carried a steel sword throughout all the witcher 3 and she had no trouble killing monsters, she just commented (before fighting the werewolf) that since she didn't had silver, she need to coat the blade in oil to hurt the monster.
and also, like many others have said already, witcher don't use silver on humans because they destroy the silver coating and it is too hard to maintain.
Ocelot: Your engravings provide no tactical advantage whatsoever.
Soldier: But sir, werewolves.
Ocelot (Nodding): Carry on then.
I really didn't expect to see a mgs3 reference here.
@@noblesseoblige1076 He says that in mgs5, but you are still right as that was a reference to mgs3 anyway.
Your pretty good
@@spartankongcountry6799 boss says it to ocelot in mgs3
@@archangel6676 Ik, but the op put ocelot as the speaker in this case.
I work in the electroplating industry, so I find this topic fascinating.
I'm sure the silver plating in the Witcher series is done through magic/alchemy, but in real life it would be pretty tricky. First of all, you can't plate silver directly onto steel. You'll need to strike it with a thin layer of copper or nickel to get it to stick. Depending on the process, it can be hard to plate onto hardened steel, so getting good plating adhesion will be difficult.
Then there's hydrogen embrittlement. The tempered steel can actually absorb excess amounts of hydrogen during the plating process, which has the potential to ruin your heat treat and make the blade brittle. You could bake it, but I'm not sure how precise that would be compared to a carefully heat treated blade.
neat
Is it possible to alloy silver and iron instead?
@@456MrPeople I suppose it's possible to make such an alloy, but I have no idea what the properties would be. I'm gonna have to do some research!
There are historical examples of silver plating for both hilts and blades as well as scabbards. The one I have seen was from 19th century and belong to an officer of the Coldstream Guard. This of course was done to inhibit corrosion on the steel.
Maximilian Ruane I remember that spoke about hydrogen embrittlement (väteförsprödning) when I did my military service, for gun parts. If the surface of the sword is low carbon mild steel/iron could that work? Like San Mai, Triplex knives.
Silver for monsters, Steel for humans, Gold for Witchers.
No, red headed witches for witchers.
@@rehanmemon3969 lmao ayeeeee
Adem Aljović no both swords are used for monsters, as some monsters can only be damaged by silver or steel
And magic tricks get the bitches
Steel is for the fey while the silver is for the undead/unholy
Ciri puts silver oil on her blade. I guess your silver "venom" works :)
I'm pretty shure that's just your average cursed oil
Not sure you can make silver oil
In the game ciri made a regular oil using materials like herbs and wolf organs
@@bonns36 you can make silver ink so id assume you could make silver oil
What about colloidal silver?
@@95spades is right
2:14
Silver does have anti-bacterial properties even in it's "solid metal form" because like you mentioned, it oxidizes which creates silver oxide - stuff that do kill germs.
"For decorative purposes"
Sure those couldn't possibly be specialized demon fighting wepons *wink wink *
I for some reason thought Demon Slayer (Which actually has a mechanic like this). But then I realized what you meant.
They did believe in that stuff back then, so you maybe right
Lesson of this video: penetrating monsters is easier when being really hard.
Ohh, thats why silver blade dont do as well as steel against human
Giggity
just like your mum
Only with a succbus
Why
interesting point of note in here is that as opposed to game - in books geralt does not wear his silver sword like he does with his regular steel sword - instead he has it safely packaged when he's traveling and only unpacks it for jobs requiring silver blade.
which would akwardly fits what you speak of in here.
True, from the books you get the idea that the silver blade is a VERY special tool for witchers which thay must take very good care of. Not only because it is a symbol of their trade and given to them in their "graduation", but also because of costy maintenance.
@@thelegendaryklobb2879 yeah its 2to1 steel silver but still expensive as fuck
Makes sense they probably thought having your main character tell you to switch swords as you mash the attack button may diminish the immersion of the rpg.
@@nicklol8269 can't speak for others, but for myself having to actually prepare (including unpacking the silver sword) for each job would greatly improve aforementioned immersion ;)
(but that's probably because I've read the book and I know that's what witchers did...)
Trejgon lol you know i mean for less hardcore gamers or witcher fans, the "why can't i use this sword against humans it's a sword, it's pointy, i should still be able to poke someone with or without magic type xD.
2:28 so that's why Gwyn's Knights armor went from silver to black, they fought demons after all
Atomic bombs are just big pommels
End them rightly ? :-D
@@jackfables3470 Well those are some entertaining implications.
@@jackfables3470 End everything rightly.
Wow America really enjoyed ending japan rightly
for Japan to survive 2 they have balls of steel (yes that's a pun, cause pommels look like steel balls to me)
As far as elemental lore goes, gold IS more associated with purity and immutability, especially as a medicine rather than a weapon. However, silver is associated with Artemis by way of the moon, and Artemis is the patron goddess of both virgins and hunters, and in reflection of the crescent moon, was often described as bearing a silver bow. It's therefore little wonder that silver became part of the iconic image of those who hunt bestial, monstrous and corrupt beings. (Not to mention Artemis is portrayed as decisive and violent, as in her execution of the mortal princess Coronis for infidelity against Apollo.)
There's still more to it than that, however- Such as Artemis's association with witches by way of her alternate identity as the Hecate, or goddess of childbirth, and in that capacity associated with Clotho of the Moirai, the three (often conjoined) goddesses of fate, witchcraft and crossroads and the source of the "maiden, mother and crone" meme common in witch lore (of which Artemis/Clotho is obviously the maiden). Witches, of course, are unaffected by silver and often use silver implements to control the daemons and monsters they consort with, but can be robbed of their powers and gravely injured by contact with the Martian metal, iron, which fay-folk are also abnormally vulnerable to.
you know your stuff dont you OwO
There's also that there are less bad things associated with silver which makes it's "purityness" more commonly associated with it rather than gold. Gold is also associated with greed, corruption, desire, and lust, so it's true to say it's also associated with purity, but the negative associations diminish the commonality of gold being associated with purity. A.K.A. between the two, silver is usually seen as more pure than gold.
P.S. Cool mythos btw.
Taking notes now
Ok, silver sure is a controversial material, much like the Moon it's associated with.
this grabbed my attention
"Vampires have no soul." You hear that Twilight fans? You might as well date a ginger!
Gingers in the dark ages used to be executed for being vampires.
Depends on universum.
In my stories vampires do have souls because they wouldn't be able to think otherwise. Essentially in my universum vampires and werewolfs are Undead - their "life" doesn't come from biological processes of the body but from a peculiar kind of Magic that powers them up. Destroy their magic power and they die even if there's no single wound on their body.
don't insult gingers like that!!!
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer
Reflected light have slightly different properties than direct sunlight.
@WhoDarestheMAN gamer
It's elementary, dear Watson. Every time light reflects of object, part of the spectrum is absorbed. What is absorbed depends on object.
So no, light of the moon IS NOT the same as direct sunlight. The Moon absorbs part of the spectrum. Which is precisely why light of the moon has different color than direct sunlight.
Also light of the moon is far, far weaker and this alone may explain why it doesn't kill vampires.
Now to be a right bastard, coat the sword in silver nitrate. Burns mortals and werewolves alike
I think Pentex operatives used silver nitrate bullets...
Blade used silver nitrate in his serum to keep his vampiric half in check, and also used it offensively by injecting it into vampires (which made them explode IIRC)
I could be wrong about this, but if i remember correctly the silver swords weren't actually weaker when used on non-monsters they would just get beat up way too much. I remember using my silver sword on a bunch of bandits and it worked just fine, but afterwards i had to go to a BS to repair it. Why use your fancy monster slaying sword on a normal bandit when, like you said, right after you'd have to take it to a blacksmith in order to resharpen and replate the whole thing. More cost effective and time efficient to just carry two swords.
I like the idea the blade is regularly oiled with a silver solution and is just cheap thin metal. Thick enough to stay in its form when swung. It cuts through monsters with little to no physical resistance so having it be as light and quick as possible just takes advantage of that to its fullest extent.
Edit: It being in comparable cost to a regular sword in game simulating the maintenance cost of keeping up on your silver solution.
@@silasstryder Yeah, but then you botch it up with the coatings (oils) against specific types of monsters. And a lot of these oils use blood of some other monster type, which can be acidic, corrosive or something like that.
Pretty sure this is incorrect. In the game, the silver swords have a far higher listed damage value than the steel weapons, but perform significantly worse against human targets than the steel weapons. Their damage against non monster targets is modified.
@@madmanarrivednow no? Just have a specific oil for a monster have silver infused in the oil solution.
@@silasstryder Good thinking and I would do the same thing. You need only one sword for the hunt. Here is the deal. A "true fan" will always say "but in the books..." "But in the games...". I mean, clearly the new school of thinking is abominable and just pure bad, when the author of the books is... well who he is (sold the IP for a buck, when the games are successful raging like Alan Moore). And what you are talking about is the basic idea behind the Moondust bomb in the Witcher games. It's effective against vampires because of the silver dust in it. Additionally the silver fuses to the monsters skin not only hurting it, but if the monster tries invisibility, it just won't work. The silver dust gives a reflective surface.
Had to edit it... sorry... have a suspicion why i wrote diamond instead of silver, but hey, at least I notice my errors.
I'd really been needing this video. Silver weapons are important for one of my major worldbuilding projects, because the fantasy race using them is bioelectric, and pure silver is one of the most conductive materials in the universe. But, I knew about the whole "they'd be really flimsy" problem and had been wondering how to address it.
The idea of using *inlays* to that effect is simply brilliant.
That last idea: if it was a Dark Souls item, they'd probably call it Silver Pine Resin.
Buff your weapon for 2-3 minutes, dealing bonus damage to unholy enemies.
Pertaining to gold vs. silver representing purity, I actually kind of like that silver's purity can be tarnished. Good symbology there.
That's a great point, but at the same time I think silver is seen as a more good metal because it's been used to root out evil whereas gold is often associated with greed for gold/money and a lot of people getting shafted for it.
Although gold being precious for its mysterious protective qualities would be a reeeeally damn interesting fantasy take on greed... yeah that's probably gonna be put in my d&d setting some way now.
This episode was really fun. I love the fantasy idea of silver as a material having magical properties. Thanks for the content.
In the witcher Games The Silver seems to be particularly damaging to non humans and natural creatures because of multiverse theory, this event called the plane meld oppened portals from numerous worlds and dumped large chunks of these other worlds onto the human realms,, some dimensions had elves, and beasts from their worlds, some had vampires, some just had weird energy beings but all of these alien life forms got plopped into the world, and the weird thing about our realm is that it was the only one that had elemental silver in it, maybe the elvish or dwarvish plane's had it too but all of the monster races are weak to it because it's this sort of extra dimensional element that is completely alien to them and it functions much like a poison to them, causing in many cases burning and irritation on contact.
The games say the construction of the swords is a secret of the witcher's guild but it's heavily implied that they function by leaving a little bit of silver behind with each strike, it's likely that the symbols/"runes"/patterns in the blade are the silver cores or silver plating themselves and considering the nature of the hardness they could simply be a specific hardness of steel that is coated with pure silver by rubbing the softer metal onto the harder one like sharpening. it's likely possible that silver swords have varying construction methodologies designed to optimize cutting edge and silver exposure.
Sorry to point this out but the planemeld was from ESO, it was the conjunction of the spheres in the Witcher.
Its called the conjunction of the spheres the plane meld is when Molag Bal invaded Tamriel and tried to convert it to his realm of Oblivion.The conjunction caused humans and monsters to be thrown onto the elves, dwarves and halflings’ world, not the other way around, the humans are the aliens
@@shekelboob Elves are outsiders too. They arrived before humans thought
I read a book that literally just explained it as he used magic to fuse the steel and silver together
@Marcus Tullius the steel would be less durable
@Marcus Tullius Book lied to me for years I assumed you can't mix the 2 metals book was called The Forging of the Sword (The darkweaver legacy) I enjoyed it a lot when I was 14ish doubt it held up though
No. They coated sword with thin layer of silver. Tgat explayed in books. No magic or anything. Even gnomes Sigill is a bulat, not magic sword. If we are talking about the witcher.
You could electroplate the sword, or you know just dunk it in silver
Literally dying lmao XD XD XD 😂😂😂
The silver inlays is probably my favorite one. Its pretty tough to break them away even on impact because they are ingrained, would be awhile before they need repairs. A coating or venom would demand repairs and refills on the daily, so if inlays work that would be the way to go
The green screen effect on your sword 8:07 actually makes it look like a reflection which in some way looks like you're actually are there.
@@AggressiveAegyo Or, key out the blue reflections to overlay a star-field or galaxy like image, to get a fun "Cosmic Steel" armour effect.
I prefer silver swords myself. There's something cowardly about shooting a werewolf with silver bullets when you can go Mano-a-mano with the beast.
That reminds of that story i thought up of a men hunting killer furries,that were revealed to be werewolves
Same i love silver weapons.
Depends on the werewolf, if the bastard is 10ft tall, as strong as a gorilla, and can run as fast as my car, Fuck swords I'm shooting that SOB.
Look at this coward using a sword to fight monsters
The manliest way to face a beast is a silver pommel
spada a mano* in this case.
This was equally nerdy and geeky. Kinda like this whole channel. Loved every minute of it.
If I remember correctly from the crafting system of Witcher 3, for the higher level swords you have to craft a silver-steel ore, and there's no implication that the swords are only silver plated. As for the silver venom you mention at the end, you actually hit the nail on the head, as coating your blade with material specific for each monster you're going to face is a big part of the Witcher games and books.
It's flat out stated in the books that the sword is plated and they do coat their swords for certain beasts but if you're grabbed by surprise it's easier to just grab a silver sword
12:12
In the books, Geralt's silver blade is actually made from Meteor metal covered by a thin layer of silver.
I love these random topic videos so much. Swords reviews are amazing but learning about all the topics ya cover in addition to reviewing swords is so fascinating to me! Hope the channel stays above water btw mate!! I know it's really hard for older channels to survive these days from what I've heard from ya and also shadiversity has mentioned.
A sword that automatically sanitises the wound of the person struck XD
Like sanitizing the surface of skin before lethal injection.
@@Madadader No, the needles of lethal injections are sanitised because a man once survived a lethal injection and sued the prison because he got blood poisoning after
Reminds me of 21st century gangsters boiling their bullets in water with garlic, to inflict more pain.
It also technically kills off the cells it touches, since it's antibiotic, not specifically anti-bacterial. Of course, your dead cells can be replaced, so it's no issue.
Me: Im gonna go to bed early tonight
Also me at 3AM:
I love how much he dives into fantasy elements to analyze tropes.
This was interesting.
I have an assumtion for your final option: silver oil.
Since many use some sort of oil of sort to maintain the weapon and prevent any decay of it, it could just fit in.
And since the property of silver to have antibacterial effect is not that much of a secret, everything you hit will at least wont get gangrene from your cuts ^_^
I also have an alternative, but since I lack the knowledge of possibility here its more or less just an idea: a new silver alloy, that strengthens the silver to a degree that makes it more durable.
But the longer I think about it, I much more would refer to a Katana made of silver/ed/alloy, and therefore you mostly avoid hitting something you cannot cut with it, to prevent damage to it.
my travel knife has a very soft chrome steel blade. Freshly sharpened the soft knife is always sharper than my hard steel ones. Making soft steel sharp is much easier and takes a very short amount of time and can be done with simple stones. The softer a steel is the less it is vulnerable to rust. For a soldier, a soft steel sword would be much cheaper and better, since blood accelerates the rust process and soft steel will stay good for a long time by simply wiping it with a dry cloth. For example, a prince with a very expensive and hardened steel blade is very vulnerable if he blocks something heavier and very hard, once that hardened steel blade is chipped or even broken his efficiency would go down a lot for the next battle. In the end, the soft steel is more fun to use and the maintenance is short and takes less strength.
But you come across the problem of having to constantly resharpen softer steels because it's exactly that: softer steel. Harder steel takes longer to sharpen, granted, but harder steels also need to be sharpened less. If you had a good tough and hard steel (like 1075), then it is good for swords. Another one is spring steels, like 5160 and 6150, as they spring back to true when made properly. Also, the Japanese always wiped their katana with a dry cloth to get rid of blood before sheathing, so it's not specific to soft steels. And again, harder edges means that it's gonna be harder to bend and chip. And a sword that is prone to rusting means you take regular care for the sword to make it perform its best instead of taking it to a steel and calling it a day. As a soldier, you show dedication to your higher ups by regularly maintaining your service weapon to make it perform its best. This is why Modern Military knives and Machetes are not made of soft steel, but either hardened 1095 steel or 6150 spring steel because they just perform better than really soft steels
Thumbs up for the hard work and detail on an niche subject. THANK YOU!
This was a pleasant unnecessary use of my time thank you
Well.. in the witcher's book it is never said, but i think the idea of "just" engraved steel sword in silver would technically work. Even worse, a steel sword can kill monster, in the witcher, the silver is just here to touch the ghost (like.. literally absurd for a sentence but its what it is for). So is you have even a bit of silver its effective however to truly cut a ghost you need the edge to be silver. The funny thing about the video is that skall could be a witcher for what we know of the universe: they spend a looot of time taking care of their weapons! (and therefore might be in their agenda to re-plate the weapon at a smith.. that would explain why they never get really rich in the end))
The weapon repair mechanic in the game makes sense too. I end up spending more money repairing my silver blade than my steel one
"Hold on Mr. Werewolf, suffer Me the time to apply some silver suave to My sword so I can kill You."
how about a thin silver shell that you can put on and of of your actual blade
Silver swords being less effective on humans in the Witcher games is a game mechanic, if they had them equally effective there would be no reason to use the steel sword. Silver not being durable is the reason they are only used on monsters, less use equals longer lasting silver plate. And it isn't the silver that does the cut, in the Witcher world just touching silver harms monsters so the edge can be steel and the flat silver plate.
Skall wasn't talking about The Witcher. Silver is a real metal, you know. And it is quite soft.
@@kevgmeiHe was talking about them in general and used Witcher 3 for the thumbnail... yes he was talking about the Witcher as well as any other silver sword fantasy weapon... or even the real ones that were plated. And as you would have noticed if you read my post I said plated silver not solid because it isn't durable enough to make a sword.
Finally some witcher refrences on this channel
"finally"?
@@gj4312 Is there any other video in which Skall talks about The Witcher ?
@@slimshady9756 He references it in his back scabbard video.
@@slimshady9756 drawing from the back, for instance
@@slimshady9756 It's quite common as I think it is one of his favourite games. That's just one off the top of my head.
Being mostly a DnD player, I'm used to see this question handwaved with the idea of 'alchemical silver' which should function as both steel and silver for mechanical and magical purposes respectively. I like the extra thought and attention in this video!
Handwave no more! In 3.5E there's an alchemical goop you can pour on your weapon to give it a handful of rounds worth of acting like a silver weapon, without having to carry one around with you (or suffering the damage penalty on non affected creatures if it's your only weapon)!
It's like 1/20th the cost of a silver weapon, and the same book (Complete Adventurer iirc) has goops for different monsters band effects. Sweet stuff
@@Matthias129 Duly noted! Are you referring to Silversheen or something else? That's just DMG, though I believe that's magical in nature, not alchemical per se.
Silver is seen as good because of it’s white coloring and the fact that people saw gold as more valuable.
Gold is seen as evil because usually evil people were rich, which lead to dragons protecting great hoards of gold.
The enchanted system of steel and silver and gold
Silver disables monsters from using magic abilities like rapid regeneration, fires usually more effectively however, just look at how Hercules defeated the hydra, fire for the monsters, but silver is still good.
Steel isn’t as special because it’s fairly common.
I learned a new, unintentional meaning behind my user. I started my "SilverFox" name with "TheSilverFox," so when I saw someone already had that in another game/site, I thought "what sounds cool with 'SilverFox?'" Thus, "PureSilverFox."
I had no idea silver was associated with purity, so I'm gonna take that and use it to make myself look smart.
It actually matches me irl by a surprising amount. I'd have to think for a couple hours to piece together everything that is similar, so I'm not gonna do that.
In a roleplay I'm part of I am the main blacksmith and woodworker. I'm not a real life blacksmith or have any training outside of school (at least I have a baseline) so I get all of my knowledge from RUclips and internet research so this is giving me some lovely insight. In the roleplay I have an interesting design for swords where the steel blade is a little smaller to make the sword lighter overall but still retains some mass while making use of a special oak wood that is extremely light and strong. The idea is the wood is attached along the blade to make the cutting part of the blade and is much sharper but so it still feels like a sword. It's also a redundancy factor since if the wood breaks, the steel remains and leaves you with something to defend yourself and the wood is much easier to replace than reforming the blade. One of the best parts about the wooden blade attachment is that they can be individually coated giving the user the ability to have different blades for different occasions, and a double edged blade can have two different coats, one for each edge. There are several other reasons I don't make the entire blade out of wood, the idea of feeling like a sword is an ergonomic one but also a safety one, also wood has a grain and if struck along the grain can simply split apart. These are factors I considered myself without much outside input but it did give me ideas when I watched your video on high hardness woods. I don't make most weapons this way, they're the higher quality weapons since it takes longer to make and I don't want to break the economy.
Despite being a fantasy, it's a fantasy with access to modern firearms but not on an industrial level and most players with swords tend to have alternative tactics available to them to counter gunfire, for my character he has the power of light, as well as being incredibly fast and agile so I can just dispense infinite flashbangs and run up to people. I also tend to adopt more realistic sword fighting techniques where I can, taking up most of my combat with a longsword in two hands and focusing on agility to provide both attack and defence simultaneously and has worked well to the point that I have not lost a duel even when the opponent uses fancy fantasy moves.
In the witcher books, the silver-steel paradigm is more of a there are monsters weak against silver and those weak against steel for example werewolves and faeries. Not a human killing and a monster killing one, that is for the games.
"Both are for monsters" - Geralt
+Matt Bradock silver for monsters, steel for man
@@korpsmaninfantry7238 Maybe, but Geralt himself really says at some point they are both for monsters - implying that some monsters can be harmed by steel and that the men he kills are monsters too.
@@bujtorm that might also be a philosophical statement that also humans are capable of doing horrible things, and then they are nothing better than monsters
@@doc8125 Correct. Not sure why anyone would read it as anything other than a philosophical statement.
The silver is for supernatural beings, monsters, ghosts etc
Steel is for humans.
This is explicitly stated in the first book.
Old Olgierd studying witcher blades
And we just found Skal's Halloween costume for this year.
Watching your content in general just gets me inspired for fantasy games... Even when it's just your vids of sparring/matches, I'm still watching and just wanting to hop into The Witcher again or make a new blademaster on Skyrim xD
I think in terms of The Witcher, silver is only used for specific monsters like wraith's, undead, and other monsters of magical make.
Exactly!!! you are right. i could never understand why you needed (in The witcher 3 the game i have played) silver against all monsters because in the book he used steel against almost everything and only silver against magical and non solid monsters.
@@fredriksvensson7116 I think the games were only like that so you'd have more usage of the silver swords. Like they tried to balance out the usage of each so you weren't only using a steel sword with little to know usage of the silver sword in most cases. Lore wise, the little usage of the silver sword makes perfect sense, but gameplay wise it's really boring to use only one and not the other.
@@hammerstix5791 true.
"Ya fancy nerd" made me laugh, great intro
This was a very interesting and necessary video. That silver venom idea was really good skall!
Would it be practical to make silver pommels?
Aldor Seems normal.
Imagine still making pommel jokes in 2018. Cringe
I'll take it serious this time: yes.
It's quite heavy, easier to mold and forge into complex shapes and it won't rust with skin contact...
End the werewolf rightly
Hilt components of swords were often covered in precious metals, whether it's a plated hang guard or a wire-wrapped handle.
If shorter blades for silver are fine then wouldn't a spear be optimal, especially for beast-hunting so you can keep your distance?
Could you generate enough force to cleave through tough monster hide or scales? Not to mention how versatile swords are, good for a variety of foes. Spears are cool but I don’t think they’re the best for hunting monsters.
@@adamyooz Actually if your using a spear the point isn't to cleave. Spears are thrusting weapons and even a relatively soft metal with enough force behind it can do a lot of damage. hunting monsters I'd imagine you'd want to use something like a board spear which usually had a solid point and then a few inches past where the head ended would have a cross guard to keep what your hunting at a distance. a well made bronze spear can punch a hole through chainmail- you'll probably have to melt it down and recast and work it before you use it again, but when you stick a 8inches of metal into a body you've got good odds of hitting something vital to living.
Because, as I've mentioned under other vid made by other RUclipsr, if monster break your spear you will end up looking for proper piece in mud. And die while trying to find it. And thrusting it? So Geralt should walk around with dozen of silver spears on back? Plus spears are quite long, so crappy in small corridors or tunnels.
Nemo TheEight Spears are better in tight spaces than swords because they thrust
@@adamyooz And swords don't? I know spears are boringly effective in most scenarios, but I disbelieve that spears are anything but awkward for the wielder in a confined space. Even manoeuvring a long gun around corners is challenging enough, look at all the solutions the lads in the trenches had to come up with and see also how counter-terror units across the whole planet have consistently trended towards shorter weapons for indoor fighting. Bring your spear, but bring a sidearm too.
One of blades with silver inlays said, “ Black Smith Maung Tin Tae” which is a mythological figure/Nat in our country 14:53.
the engraved silver platting definitely the most preferable imo as it's also looks beautiful LOL. Maybe some kind of runic & slavic pattern on the sword, so you get the magic from rune & anti monster from silver plate engraving.
in Witcher lore, there are some oils & grenades that mixed with silver & venom to fight monsters so that also make sense. Some of the oils give a burn effects on the monsters so maybe that have silver in it.
What I personally suggest would be a silver plated bolos & chains to render monster indefinitely instead. with this, no need of a delicate maintenance of the silver plating.
A scenario: throws the silver bolas, monster entangled & got a painful burn those losing focus, finish with a killer move.
Well, I guess no wonder witchers are generally poor af with all those silver equipment LOL
Search for a cinematic intro/trailer of first Witcher game, the one with Geralt fighting a cursed princess Adda. I think Geralt has actually used a silver chain in it to bound a monster for a short time (thin chain was snapped by the beast, but it did tire it out, wounded it and bought some time for Geralt to prepare for further combat). If it could be made thicker it would propably be strong enough to bound a monster for long enough to go for a kill (not really an intention in this case). Or you could use something akin to modern steel ropes, as they have more tensile strenght, but I don't think they could achieve a necessary technology to make these in-universe in reasonable time period.
@@wojciechkowalski8061 Exactly what I was talking about silver plated chained bolas in the first place. Striga itself is a very powerful monster & in that particular case Geralt trying to lift the curse not killing it fast, so he tried to tired out the striga instead. the successful probability of these gadgets certainly would help in hunting other monsters, especially the fast/agile ones.
Wojciech Kowalski its probably dimeritium not silver
Fancy nerd...? Sure.
I honestly could listen to you rant all day. Very creative mind.
Just a FYI, the moon doesnt reflect very well, moon soil looks more like asphalt. It just doesnt look that way from here because its reflecting direct sunlight at night, and the sun is very very bright.
Was about to post exactly the same thing!
I accidentally illustrated this effect recently, when I was trying to get photographs of Mars on a cheap camera with no manual focus and hit on the bright idea of focusing on the Moon instead then swinging to Mars. Mostly I'd say it's an illustration of how badly the camera struggles with vastly differing brightness levels in different parts of the image (maybe it'd help if I went back to whole-image rather than central-ninth monitoring) but it kind of shows how the Moon can seem really bright when everything else is very dark.
ruclips.net/video/PBiw0ft8ulE/видео.html Terrible, isn't it?
Pathfinder also does the alchemically silver-plated deal, although weapons made from mithral (yes it's spelt that way in Pathfinder) also count as silver for all purposes.
True true.
Also, yeah there's half a dozen ways to spell Mithril. Tolkien just liked west Germanic, so he popularized "Mithril".
I really like the amount of thought put into potential workarounds. Good stuff.
Silver was more effective on monstrous creatures in The Witcher's universe because it was the only metal capable of retarding their magical connections/essence. Keep in mind the 'Monsters' in The Witcher are, except for just a few, alien creatures from another world with their own purposes that just happen to be really fucking scary to humans.
This being said, Silver and Truesilver are known to have connections to magic in other universes such as Warcraft/Warhammer Fantasy wherein they carry a spell...or are capable of BREAKING spells and magic. The idea behind Silver on a sword in The Witcher isn't the concern of wielding it with intent to cut the shit out of something as much as making it less resistant to BEING cut by using a magical means hence all of the additions of poisons, spells and so on. Several monsters are absolutely murder-fucked in the series by simple usage of magic spells such as Drowners, Mudnixers, Ghouls and even the help from Sile de Tansarville in Witcher 2 while fighting the Kayran.
TL;DR Silver swords are just Witchers using 5e Fighter's Eldritch Strike passively because what is no longer magical, even for a brief moment, can be cut like anything else.
Interesting thing about silver is that it is the best electrical conductor from all known elements, with copper getting close but still not being able to beat it, also silver maybe was often considered a pure metal cuz gold wast often symbol of rich, but also of greed and corrupted lust for power and tressures, after all, we have stories of Midas, or Fafnir where gold is what makes them greedy to point of it being an evil trade of character, also possibly one more thing about silver is its white color, which was associated with purity on its own so noble metal with this color is more likely to be associated with this than gold which is yellowish, and from what I remember yellow had some negative symbolics in old times
Yes, because yellow is the colour of piss.
not sure but i remember it was associated with jealousy, besides sulfur is yellow too what gives another reason to believe it's not color related with good
I thought gold was a better conductor than silver.
Silver also has antibacterial properties, which adds to the purity factor.
Lofwyr begs to differ.
Love the video, I should watch more of your stuff. I actually thought of this when I was working on a sorta steampunk-y D&D setting, and my idea for a non-magical silver-steel alloy lightning sword (chemical battery, hollow hilt and removable pommel, silver-steel blade like what engravers are made of, and a copper rod in the fuller) made me wonder how much silver you'd need to hurt a werewolf. That anecdote aside I wish I'd seen this when I was writing that stuff, because this video was very informative.
The way it looked to me the silver swords are shorter and lighter than the steel longswords in the Witcher. You don't really need that much of a reach advantage against a beast that doesn't use weapons it isn't equipped with naturally, and since they react to silver, it's better for DPS and defense to make the blade lighter and faster, while a heavy, long blade of steel is important when fighting Humanoids with weapons of similar design and ample armor. Also the Witchers are quite competent alchemists, and if I were an alchemist I wouldn't just plate a blade, but I would actually alchemically fuse the top layers of the steel and the Silver to make a quite wear resistant silversteel coating for the blade. After all, if it were such a mundane process as just plating a blade with another metal, any blacksmith could make a Witcher's Silver Sword, and the real ones are quite rare in the game.
The scabbard filled goop idea is actually pretty interesting.
You can do that in the game. You can brew a coating for your steel swords to give them a temporary silver effect
This was really interesting. And informative for those wanting a more reasonable flair to fantasy elements. The silver edged steel and silver spike were things I thought of, but the inlay never occurred to me-that sounds genius for those kinds of settings.
What about Pattern Welding Steel and Silver together to have waves of silver along with steel on the edges?
I'm 99% dure they would not properly fuse together. Neat idea though.
the issue with this would be the vastly different melting points of steel and silver, it's probably possible to get a steel silver damascus blade but damn would it be a difficult and expensive process especially since it would take even the most experienced blacksmiths multiple try's
also, the mixture of steel and silver would completely screw over the hardness of the blade on top of all the other problems aformentioned.
Different melting point so it wont work, but you can make an alloy with iron and silver and other shit in it
If you have to hon the edge wouldn't the silver 'decorations'/patterns come off ?
You can have a common blade, carve a whiting in the blade like some random runes or things like that and then fill the carvings with the silver
16:11 it’d be really cool to see like a witcher fanfic or something with someone who isn’t like trained or poorly equipped to fight monsters, and so just carries like three swords sheathed in silver nitrate solution, and switches swords whenever the solution rubs off. That’d be a cool fight scene to see.
"Sulfur is associated with the Devil"
When I heard that, I immedately thought of Slipknot, since they also have a sing called Sulfur
Since he has letters on he's sword I always thought it was the steel cut through that monster and the silver letters on it Berner disable the healing Factor you know have lots of Engravings on your sword and then just fill the Engravings up with silver get the bite of Steel and the effect of silver all at once without having to compromise or do anything fancy
Ok a hypothetical question to all the sword experts around here.
What if (for some reason) there would have been no iron, but only aluminium or something similar (but slightly harder) availlable instead?
How do you think Sword design would have been developed?
Do you think Bronze Age sword style would have been continued, but swords would have become bigger in general (because of reach advantage and lighter weight of the material)?
As much as i have understood, medieval and renaissance sword design relies on spring steel nature to flex.
I'm asking because i think about writing a fantasy story where iron is unknown.
that's an amazing though dude I'm not smart enough to answer it justly .
My idea was that with lighter material (that does not flex as much), swords would be constructed more rigid, similar like bronze swords where constructed (just longer/bigger). Maybe it doesn't need to be very much harder than Bronze anyways (since it had been proven to be very deadly for several millenia)
Construction wise, maybe add a ridge, instead of a fuller to make the construction more stiff/robust, instead of allowing it to flex. But of ourse this would create a lot of different problems. But i can't imagine it would keep people from creating the most deadly weapon as possible. We humans are notoious for being creative in such things, sadly.
Anyways, i think Swords like these would probably be mainly thrust only weapons, similar like a Estoc probably.
Another idea was to make blades similar to the Japanese Katana (which do not flex very much either. ...and no i'm not a Katana fanboy, lol).
I could imagine a two handed Messer like sword having a single edged blade with a thick back side and a well developed handguard.
Of course it could be hard to create a Zweihänder with such a material, but maybe if it had a really thick and/or broad blade?
But i have no experience with aluminium anyways and i don't know about the relation between stiffness/blade geometry and weight, so i could be completely wrong, but i'll definitely put some more research into it. Since i find this topic somehow fascinating.
(Btw, i think you are right, 7075 Aluminium would be the closest real life material for that imo.)
Aluminum isnt viable in a medieval setting, refining aluminum is a high tech process. Around WW1 aluminum was more expensive than gold.
To me, it would seem this would be a society that wouldn't be so focused on Swordplay. Short swords would be viable, but longer blades would be prone to damage, so swords would likely be relegated to side arms at most. Spears, polearms, shields, axes, or bows (and arrows) would likely be the best primary weapons in this scenario.
Aluminium is refined from ore (mainly bauxite) by electrolysis. Since doing this at any scale is impossible without some sizeable industry in place ( a quick wiki search showed that the first aluminium metal was refined in 1824 while the first large-scale production process was invented in 1886), I'd recon people would just stick to bronze for a very long time.
1:50 I think it might rather come from psychology, as certain imaginary creatures or effects do not show up in mirrors and this mirror treatment is used in such cases i.e. phantom pain.
I know this is an old video, but I wanted to clarify that Mohs scale doesn't measure stiffness of a material. The Mohs scale actually measures how easy it is for other materials to "scratch" them (Chalk has a low value cause it can be "scratched" by a lot of materials).
Other than that, awesome work! I love your videos.
Hello there #Skallagrim,
As a geologist here's few weird add-in thoughts to this.
First, wouldn't Japanese style "layered" construction work with steel, I'm purposefully not calling it damascus steel, since I do not know if there's been any successful modern replications of original process, but simply forging steel & silver as layers of metal on top of each others would guarantee cutting steel edge, with very fast and immediate contact to the silver. This method would allow you to sharpen it normally in any conditions and still retain steel-silver cutting edge in all conditions, although it might wear down a bit faster than all steel blade. This would also lead all the strands of silver connecting to the middle and possible runes on the blade if we consider why silver works on monsters, as silver is very good conductor for electricity, if we think magic would work in a bit similar ways?
The second point in my opinion would be platinum and palladium. Platinum has been called "little silver", is very similar in coloration although much harder and heavier and impervious to corrosion. So it might actually be possible that silver's magical "properties" have come simply by accidentally gaining access to silver that is heavier and differs from standard silver(aka platinum group metals). Just like meteorite iron was superior to normal iron, because normal blacksmiths of the time weren't able to yet produce such properties in normal iron blades and were considered to be "magical". So it could be behind all this magical properties of the silver, that there were three different types of silver before folk really understood that it's completely different metals they're dealing with.
Anyways, sorry for rant, just tossing around weird ideas, also I wouldn't want to be the person to try to wield platinum broadsword, since the weight would be terrible, but palladium-steel alloy might actually work if done in layered construct. Good luck getting one of those to test though, might be mighty expensive (and still probably worse than titanium-steel or tungsten-carbide) :D
Keep up the good work though!
I'm using an idea similar to this in my stories. I have a metal that's called silver but really is more similar to lightweight platinum. I just call it silver.
It's a neat idea, and can be explained away with magic IMO but this doesn't work in reality. This has to do with the atomic structure of silver. The difference between precious metals and regular metals isn't just rarity and value, they also have a sated atomic structure while regular metals are less so. This means that the number of electron/proton pairs on silver is high, which makes the metal nonreactive to most other elements on the periodic table. There are some exceptions, but steel/iron isn't one of them.
In practice this means that while you could probably make something the shape of a blade this way, it would cause weak points in the blade in every spot where silver meets steel as they don't bond on the molecular level. As soon as you hit something remotely hard with it, it will break in the weakest spot or the spot where most force is exerted.
But as I said, I see this as feasible with magic. You could just say that magic creates the molecular bond artificially, making it stronger.
I don't think you could actually forge steel and silver together. They are dissimilar metals and wouldn't bond to my understanding. Just like you couldn't forge aluminum and steel together. Smelting them together also doesn't seem possible as silvers melting point is quite a bit lower than steel. You'd end up burning the silver in the process making it useless. Explosive welding (Yes that's a thing, and it's awesome) would probably be the only way to bond them. But that's not very conducive to sword smithing.
Watch literally 80% of Man at Arms if you're uncertain about modern replications of damascus.
General Kenobi!
>when skallagrim calls me a nerd
nou
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the Witcher's silver sword is actually a steel sword, coated in silver, and with edges re-coated with steel. The ideology behind this is that the steel holds an edge longer and provides a strong core, but after the steel cuts through the flesh of a monster or supernatural entity, their flesh/entity comes into contact with the silver that coats the entirety of the sword (besides the edge) to inflict whatever specific damage silver inflicts.
My understanding is that only the "sides" were plated in silver, not steel, silver then steel again.
2:00 Aaaaaaaaaaaaand you have given me an idea. I've been looking for semi-real reasons for some monsters not to show up on mirrors. I'm not gonna say what the idea is, but this is gonna be FUN
Dr. Stone taught me that silver is very useful in detecting the deadly gases that sulfuric acid produces
Hah, yeah. Dr. Stone was one of those lucky finds, watched the first season recently. Great story and interesting characters.
Your content makes me happy man. Dont give up
But Silver is definitely strong enough to make a pommel out of. And in the end, that's all you need.
I'm gonna have an entire arsenal of Silver Pommels. That'll show them rightly!
If it is silver plated then a possible added effect could be of silver rubbing off inside the wound.