This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://swordscomic.com/comic/DCXLVI/
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://swordscomic.com/comic/DCXLVI/
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Intrinsically, the silver sword’s worth less than the gold sword. But its practical value is through the woof!
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And not just against werewolves (good pun, by the way). Gold would be such a terrible material for a sword. Silver isn’t great, but it’s better.
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Those pommel dots looking interesting. Almost like eyes of certain faces…
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Pommel? Sorry good sir, but that is clearly a cross-guard!
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I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the idea somewhere that gold and silver swords are only coated with the respective precious metal. That way they have the strength of steel, but are also way more shiny! And in the case of silver, good against werewolves and possibly other monsters.
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That’s a good point. I don’t think silver plating would affect the practical strength of a weapon much, so it wouldn’t be that bad. But gold is almost twice as heavy as silver (by molar mass) so I imagine gold plating would add a good amount of unnecessary weight, and would dull far quicker.
Another consideration here is what happens when you allow alloys. Even a 22 karat gold (which is still 92% pure) can, with the right alloying metals, more than double the hardness and tensile strength. This could seriously help the gold sword to be more feasible.
As for the silver sword, it all comes down to whether silver alloys can still kill werewolves.
PS given a thin enough plating, I don’t think the two swords would weigh that much different from each other.
Exactly, once you start dehomegenizing a substance, does it lose its magical properties? Like, does it need to be pure silver to kill werewolves? I think you could actually build a pretty cool magic system out of different metal alloys (but not Mistborn. I’ve accidentally plagarized that series one too many times to risk it).
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Fortunately for the fantasy genre, I havent heard of special combat properties for gold swords nearly as much as for silver. So gold should usually be pretty safe to alloy.
When you consider a plating of significant thickness, pure silver just so happens to be MUCH better than pure gold for a sword. Gold may have almost twice the density of silver, but it’s their density compared to the sword’s steel that matters most. In which case silver has a ridiculous advantage over gold.
tl;dr gold’s purity usually doesn’t matter, and pure silver’s not nearly as bad as pure gold for plating a sword.
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