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Unholy Holy Sword
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In many stories with fantastical or sci-fi elements, there's one particular object or weapon that the heroes rely on — perhaps a Cool Sword or Orphan's Plot Trinket that just so happens to be the source of their powers. It will always be stated as innocent or innocuous at the least, and outright holy at the most extreme. In both cases, this is the hero's trademark weapon and the crutch by which they battle and carry out their adventures; if it's of the sacred variety, the heroes may use it as a crutch for the morality of their actions, too: Sure, it might leave a bad taste in their mouths to have killed the sympathetic Anti-Villain or the Tragic Monster, but they have their holy sword! They must have the forces of Good behind them, so it's all right! Unfortunately, in cases like this it's not that pretty — this weapon or object works through evil means. Perhaps it's Powered by a Forsaken Child, or perhaps it's a keystone in the villain's Evil Plan, and he's manipulating the heroes into handing it over to him or powering it up for him. And of course, it could have originally been truly a holy weapon, only to have been corrupted into an evil one at some point in the past. The Reveal of this information is expected to be proportionately dramatic to the item in question's plot importance. Depending on what point in the plot the truth comes out, a variety of outcomes can occur: If the truth comes out early in the plot, viewers can expect a brief Heroic BSoD or 10-Minute Retirement in which the heroes attempt to cast aside the item in disgust. Sometimes they can find another power source, although usually they are persuaded to keep using it until the world is saved, when they can stop using it safely. The hero may attempt to purify the Unholy Holy Sword so that it really can be used safely and in the name of good. (This doesn't work with Powered by a Forsaken Child examples unless you can find a different power source — maybe one that works even better!). If the Unholy Holy Sword is plot-important or The Reveal occurs during the climax or penultimate stage of the story, the plot may very well shift in the direction of sealing or destroying it so that no one can use it again, if not a full-on dramatic confrontation with the villain over its true purpose. Not to be confused with Sealed Evil in a Can, where the object contains something evil; this is innately bad. Related to the Amulet of Dependency, the Evil Weapon, and the Artifact of Doom, where an item like this is Obviously Evil. Contrast with Holy Is Not Safe, where even without being "unholy" it is still a dangerous item. Sometimes may be an Artifact of Attraction — the very reason you wanted that sword so desperately in the first place was because it was messing with your head. The MacGuffin and Applied Phlebotinum's reply to The Mole. Needless to say, this is a SPOILER trope, so if you happen to be spoiler-sensitive, avert thine eyes. |
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The Subtle Knife from Phillip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials is initially presented as a useful tool. It can cut through dimensional barriers and enables the majority of the plot to happen. However, not only are the holes it creates drawing out the Dust that powers all sentient life in the universe, but using it creates horrific monsters that eat the soul of any adults (i.e. Dust magnets) they find. Iorek is reluctant to reforge it when it breaks and Will breaks it deliberately when it is no longer needed. | |
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Kite's Bracelet from the .hack R1 games was the heart of Cubia, the most dangerous enemy the party had ever encountered, and needed to be destroyed before said enemy could die. | |
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Brave Fencer Musashi features Lumina, the sword of luminescence, which was used to defeat the Wizard of Darkness in the distant past. Musashi claims it early in the game, and spends most of the rest of it finding and claiming the Five Scrolls that increase its power. Naturally, upon acquiring the final one, it turns out that Lumina wasn't just used to defeat the Wizard of Darkness, the Wizard of Darkness was sealed inside of it and the scrolls have been breaking the seal. | |
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Fire Emblem: Implied at the end of Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. After spending the entire game coming further and further under the sway of Anankos, Takumi wields a dark bow called Skadi as the Final Boss. Its physical similarity to his normal divine weapon, the Fujin Yumi, strongly suggests that Skadi is its corrupted form. The Hero's Relics of Fire Emblem: Three Houses are said to be gifts from the Goddess Sothis. In reality? They're made from the bones of her murdered children, and the most powerful of them, the Sword Of The Creator, is made from her spine. Also, while they do grant quite a few bonuses to people who can wield them properly (such as unique combat arts), they drain HP from people without Crests at best, and painfully transform them into horrible monsters at worst. |
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In Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the eponymous swords the protagonists believe they need to gather to stop the Storm King are actually the key to his return. This becomes the third version, as, after the reveal, the focus of the story abruptly shifts to how to stop the bad guys from using them. Of course, they are too late, forcing the heroes to Take a Third Option. | |
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A fundamental game mechanic of the PS2 reboot of Shinobi. Your character is chosen to wield the cursed Akujiki (after having to duel his older brother to the death for ownership of the sword), a soul eating sword that regularly drains your health unless you are constantly slaying enemies. Boss fights, which are often one-on-one, can get frustrating because of this. | |
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Harry Potter: Voldemort's Horcruxes were intended to be something like this. He bound several pieces of his soul to legendary relics of the Hogwarts founders (holy, perhaps in a "civil-sacred" sense), thus seeking to blend his evil ambition with their glory. Use of these "sacred" relics causes addiction and would eventually destroy the pawn using the object. Harry's Invisibility Cloak is revealed in the final book to be Death's own cloak! Maybe. What is for certain is that it is one of the 3 eponymous Deathly Hallows, 3 powerful magical artifacts that Death himself may or may not have made. Subverted however, in that the the series' Aesop is that Death is not necessarily harmful. On top of that, the Cloak is at the very least the most benign of 3 Hallows; while the other two have a tendency to bring their owners to early graves, the Cloak is said to allow its user to hide from Death as long as possible, living a long life until they're finally ready to "greet Death again like an old friend." |
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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's "Knights of the Nine" expansion has a variation, where there is a sword that is holy (wielded by a powerful time traveling berserker-saint who was a robotic xenophobic personification of a missing god, no less) that was cursed afterwards by someone who used it in a war for material conquest. | |
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The 13 Month Series from Tower of God are a set of powerful empathic weapons given to the Princesses of Jahad. Given what we've seen from Black March, they seem rather benign and weapons of good, but slowly information is trickling through to indicate otherwise; for instance, how the Eurasia family refused to be part of the Princess system any longer after their most powerful Princess, Eurasian Anne Jahad, went berserk after she received her sword. It turns out King Jahad secretly cursed the weapons by having an Ax-Crazy woman Driven by Envy use Demonic Possession on any princess who uses more than one. King Jahad wants to forever remain on top of everyone else, but the 13 Months can be used to open the doors to the floors that even King Jahad could not climb, and he cursed the swords while setting up the unfair trials to keep every climber and ranker too busy killing and backstabbing one another to disrupt the system that keeps things that way. | |
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Green Lantern: The Red and Orange Power Rings. Not only are they powered by rage and greed, respectively, but their wearers become consumed with those emotions as well. Yellow Power Rings are fear-based, but their wearers generally retain their personalities. The Violet Power Rings are powered by love and cause their wielders to become obsessed with it, though not to the extremes of the original Star Sapphires. This is partially due to the brainwashing most recruits go through before they are taken into the Corps. |
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Slayers: Gourry's weapon, the Sword of Light, is a legendary artifact which generates a blade of pure light in response to the user's willpower. It's initially described only as a family heirloom, a holy weapon passed down from a hero who defeated the Demon Beast Zanaffar... but during the Gaav arc Demon Lords and their direct subordinates are also shown to recognise it on sight, referring to it as "Gorun Nova". This culminates in Gourry using the Sword of Light to attack Hellmaster Phibrizo, only for Hellmaster to laugh at the "shallow-minded name" humans gave the weapon, and cause it to sprout tentacles of darkness which attack Gourry. He reveals that Gorun Nova is actually a living demon from another universe, created as one of the personal weapons of Darkstar, and promptly sends it back where it came from.note At least in the novels. Every adaptation has Gourry keep using the sword for a while after this, with the Animated Adaptation even having a season-long plotline about bringing all five Darkstar weapons together. | |
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Warbreaker features the sword Nightblood. It was created as a permanently Awakened object, infused with the command to "Destroy evil". The intent was to create a weapon with the command to do only good and the will to carry it out. In practice, this backfired dramatically. What seems like a simple command to a human mind proved terribly vague to an object like a sword. Nightblood, as a sword without human experiences, doesn’t have a concept of what evil is, and doesn’t have the capacity to learn, though it claims it’s trying. Nightblood’s need to consume Breath (an energy bestowed with one’s soul) to function also causes it to drain the life of its wielder. What was intended to be a force for good became a weapon that controls any with ill intent who wield it, destroying everything in its path (on the off chance that there will be some evil to destroy along the way), until the user is compelled to kill himself as well. Only someone truly devoid of evil intent can even look at the sword without being controlled, and it takes a divine store of Breath to wield it safely regardless. In that way, Nightblood at least acts as a decent way to detect evil | |
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Yggdra Union has the Gran Centurio. For centuries, it was believed to be a symbol of justice incarnate. However, it was eventually revealed to be a power generator that a manipulative fallen angel planned to use as the instrument of his revenge against the gods. It so happened to run on people's hatred and pain. The Gran Centurio also plays a small role in certain paths of Blaze Union and Yggdra Unison. |
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Dark Souls features Artorias the Abysswalker, who turned his signature greatsword, which had divine properties, into a cursed blade capable of harming the ghosts residing in New Londo. His sword is tainted again in the Downloadable Content, this time by Manus, turning it into the Abyss Greatsword. | |
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Implied at the end of Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. After spending the entire game coming further and further under the sway of Anankos, Takumi wields a dark bow called Skadi as the Final Boss. Its physical similarity to his normal divine weapon, the Fujin Yumi, strongly suggests that Skadi is its corrupted form. | |
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The Stormlight Archive: This is disturbingly implied in The Way of Kings (2010). Shardblades are the only weapons humanity possesses that can harm the demonic Voidbringers, but then you discover that Sylphrena, a being literally Made of Good, gets antsy around them and thinks Dalinar is a better man for getting rid of his. The truth is revealed in Words of Radiance. As it turns out, Shardblades are spren like Syl, who learned how to take weapon form through their bonds to the Radiants. When the Radiants broke their oaths, the bonds also broke, killing (in a manner of speaking) the spren they'd bonded to. Syl's revulsion to the shardblades is because they are the bodies of dead spren, constantly screaming in agony. | |
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In Dawn of War III, countless people have fought and died trying to claim the legendary Spear of Khaine on the world of Acheron. The Spear is prophecised to unite the Eldar people and lead them to victory. The Eldar Autarch Kyre is especially obsessed with claiming it due to being a narcissistic Glory Seeker. The Spear turned out to be nothing but an elaborate trap. It was no weapon of an Eldar god. A powerful daemon was sealed in Acheron, and it used the Spear to lure people to it who would fight and die for it. When Kyre tried to finish off Gorgutz with the Spear, its tip shattered and unleashed dark energies that claimed Kyre himself as the final sacrifice needed to free the daemon. | |
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The eponymous Amulets from Amulet. Sure, they enable to you to do neat things like lift objects, shield people, and attack, but they also expose you to an evil spirit that was responsible for a deadly civil war between the elves, and is responsible for the Elf King and Max spreading misery throughout the land due using the King's corpse as a puppet, and manipulating Max's anger over his friend's death. Also if you're not careful and rely on it too much, the Amulet will devour you. | |
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In Phantom Brave, Sprout was once the greatest of the Four Swords of Ivoire and wielded the Sacred Sword. After his family was slain by the demon Sulphur, Sprout became obsessed with vengeance and decided to fight fire with fire by absorbing dark energy from the demons he hunts. Sprout's once Sacred Sword became an unholy blade of darkness. | |
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Characters in Demon's Souls make a point of distinguishing magic/soul arts, which is demonic power, from miracles, which are empowered by faith in God. However, despite clerics disdaining soul arts, they never think too hard as to why both abilities only work in the same Colorless Fog that demons dwell in... Sage Freke outright believes the God clerics worship is the Old One, and that seems to be why he abandoned religion for soul arts. Allant, however, knows the Old One is the source of both miracles and soul arts, but sees it as a creation of God. | |
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Girl Genius: While it's actually a mace and his sword remained uncorrupted beyond its connection to him The Platonic Solid of the once good and now fabled king Andronicus Valois was twisted by his late Heterodyne allies into something that turns opposing forces into his undead minions. | |
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Star vs. the Forces of Evil: When Marco Diaz wields Star's wand, it doesn't look as heroic as it does when Star wields it. Marco also has several connotations with the Blood Moon. | |
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In The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, the elemental swords are well known — one is Excalibur. They also all actively consume the memories of those wounded by them, and eventually the minds of an unprotected wielder, and can potentially destroy the world if united. The heroes use one. Oops. | |
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The Monado in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is valued by the Homs for being one of the few weapons truly effective against the dreaded Mechon, and is used by Shulk to save the lives of his friends numerous times, thanks to its abilities to let him see the future and effectively warp reality to some degree. The blade, however, cannot be wielded by just anyone and its continued use caused Dunban to lose all mobility in his right arm and nearly killed him. It also turns out to be containing the soul of an Evil God who intends to eradicate all life and recreate the world, and the only reason said god hadn't taken control of Shulk was because he was unknowingly following his plans for almost the entire story. | |
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Xenoblade Chronicles 2 doubles down on the trope. As part of a Wham Episode, The Heavy Malos breaks out his own Monado, complete with Monado Arts, some of which are the same arts Shulk used in the previous game. As it turns out, Malos IS the Monado, his own weapon as an Aegis Blade. Pyra and Mythra, the other Aegis, also have distinctly Monado-like powers in their true Pneuma form as well. It turns out Monados themselves are extremely powerful, but also completely agnostic; it all comes down to the will of their users. | |
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The Wheel of Time has Callandor, the Sword That Is Not A Sword. As a sa'angreal crystal sword that shines with light whenever the wielder channels the One Power, it has all of the trappings of a true holy sword. Except... it's flawed, lacking a buffer to prevent the wielder from using too much of the One Power, and can ensnare the wielder in a trap. Worse, though, is that it's revealed that it is also a sa'angreal for the True Power, the essence of the Dark One. In the end it's subverted - the trap is sprung on one of the Forsaken, and the Dark One's prison is rewoven out of his own essence and the One Power combined. | |
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In the Secret Histories novel The Man with the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green, it's revealed that the golden armor that the Drood family wears, that makes them super powered and indestructable, are powered by the souls of their dead twins which are consumed by The Heart (a giant, living crystal with godlike powers) shortly after birth. | |
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Heroes of Might and Magic 4 : The game has the Angel's Blade. It's not necessarily evil, and its primary function is killing undead and demons, but a quest during the campaign reveals it was created by a demon. It doesn't really matter since 1) the main character is a necromancer fighting other demons, and 2) he only needs the sword because the energy released when destroying it will open a portal to where he needs to go. The last campaign of Heroes Chronicles revolves around the Sword of Frost, an extremely powerful sword which is being sought by the Barbarian King Kilgor as a counter to Gelu's Armageddon's Blade, by Gelu to destroy Armageddon's Blade and keep the Sword of Frost out of Kilgor's hands, and by Tarnum to both keep it out of Kilgor's hands and keep Gelu from destroying Armageddon's Blade in the wrong way. Sadly, the wrong way that the Sword of Frost ends the terror of Armageddon's Blade is what happens... and it is by blowing up the world, leading to the events of HOMM 4. |
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In A Song of Ice and Fire, the legendary hero Azor Ahai reportedly forged his magic Flaming Sword Lightbringer by quenching it with the life's blood of his beloved wife Nissa Nissa. The way the story is told in-universe, the moral is supposed to be that great good can only be accomplished through great sacrifice. As characters such as Stannis attempt to re-create the legendary hero's accomplishments, the real lesson seems to be that overwhelming (and near-uncontrollable, self-destructive) power can only be attained through repeated acts of violence and ruthlessness. No end of grief has been caused by would-be Chosen Ones trying to fill Azor Ahai's shoes. | |
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The prequel light novel and anime Fate/Zero has Arondight, Berserker's actual weapon. It used to be a holy sword that would never be damaged, made to be wielded only by a perfect knight, but when her wielder Lancelot went mad and used it to slay other Knights of the Round, it became a demonic sword filled with the madness and resentment of its master. | |
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Chrono Cross has the Records of Fate, which are revered in Arni as if they speak some divine and benevolent will, but it turns out they're used to control the islanders by the aptly-named supercomputer FATE. | |
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Fate/stay night The wish-granting Holy Grail literally holds all the evil in the world, and can only grant wishes through destruction. However, this is because the summoning of an eighth Servant, Angra Mainyu (Avenger), during the Third Grail War inadvertently tainted the Grail — it wasn't like that to begin with. In the third route of the Visual Novel, there's also Saber's Excalibur. For the first two routes, it is a holy "Sword of Promised Victory" that fires off a beam of bright light. Halfway through the third route, she is corrupted by the evil in the Grail and becomes the newly villainous Sakura's Servant, Saber Alter. The switch from Lawful Good to Lawful Evil is accompanied by her sword turning into the pitch-black "Excalibur Morgan" and firing off red/black beams. This is explained as being due to Morgan Le Fay's hand in Excalibur's creation. It is still referred to as a holy sword, though. The prequel light novel and anime Fate/Zero has Arondight, Berserker's actual weapon. It used to be a holy sword that would never be damaged, made to be wielded only by a perfect knight, but when her wielder Lancelot went mad and used it to slay other Knights of the Round, it became a demonic sword filled with the madness and resentment of its master. The Alternate Universe novel Fate/Apocrypha has Clarent. Originally it was a sword of peace, made not for battle but for knighting and ceremonies, but was transformed into a demonic sword by Mordred's wanton hatred and used in rebellion against the lawful king, practically becoming a blood-based Excalibur. Also from same work is Balmung, which is described as being a cursed holy blade due to it possessing attributes of Gram, an actual demonic sword. It can be either a cursed sword or a holy sword depending on who wields it, with Siegfried being able to use it as a holy sword. Fate/Grand Order later shows Balmung as wielded by his wife Kriemhild, and her quest for bloody revenge turned it from an ornate greatsword with a cross motif into a send-up to Soul Edge capable of spewing dangerous curses. |
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Chrono Trigger: The Grandlion/Masamune is a complicated example. It's first mentioned as a heroic knight's blade, but turns out to have been filled with the power of Lavos, but is also powered by a pair of playful spirits that react to people's dreams. So it goes from good, to bad, to neutral, to good again. By Chrono Cross, it's been tainted again (by a powerful person wielding it for evil). It is purified again after the spirits' older sister Doreen shows up to chew them out for misbehaving and joins them. It then becomes the Mastermune, Serge's strongest weapon. Chrono Cross has the Records of Fate, which are revered in Arni as if they speak some divine and benevolent will, but it turns out they're used to control the islanders by the aptly-named supercomputer FATE. |
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The Gran Centurio also plays a small role in certain paths of Blaze Union and Yggdra Unison. | |
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Soul Calibur of the Soul Series; a crystalline weapon of justice that is supposed to turn back the evil that is Soul Edge. However the inhabiting spirit turns out to be as bad as the sword it's designed to counter, believing that the world is unfit to continue as it is with warfare and disconcert running rampant and the only solution is eternal serenity through nothingness. The backstory of several Korean characters involves their trying to find the "Sword of Salvation" in order to drive out the Japanese. At first they thought it might be Soul Edge, the MacGuffin pretty much everyone else is after. After seeing its evil true nature in Soul Calibur II, they spend the rest of the series warning people of its manipulative nature, and trying to destroy it with Soul Calibur. Then Talim makes them realize Soul Calibur is just as bad. |
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The Elric Saga: The Black Sword(s) (of which Stormbringer and its twin Mournblade are incarnations of) were actually made to fight against Chaos and any other threat to the multiverse. It's just that the Melnibonean Emperors used them to fight anything else as well. The big revelations were in finding out how important Stormbringer is to the cosmos (instead of being just a really hard-hitting magic sword) and just how evil it truly is (Elric underestimates this to great cost). | |
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Arcadion the Shade Sword, or The Black Sword, from Ultima VII: The Black Gate (the Forge of Virtue expansion). Forged from a supernatural metal and empowered by its captive demon, it is a superb weapon that can kill almost anything that is capable of dying, possesses many other potent powers, and the demon can offer plenty of advice on matters. On the other hand, it is a demon-powered sword and you're supposed to be the Avatar, a champion of Virtue. It's fairly far-fetched for you to want to wield the thing, or forge the cursed thing in the first place. You can avoid it by not completing the expansion, but since you start with it in Serpent Isle, Arcadion is canon. | |
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The Hero's Relics of Fire Emblem: Three Houses are said to be gifts from the Goddess Sothis. In reality? They're made from the bones of her murdered children, and the most powerful of them, the Sword Of The Creator, is made from her spine. Also, while they do grant quite a few bonuses to people who can wield them properly (such as unique combat arts), they drain HP from people without Crests at best, and painfully transform them into horrible monsters at worst. | |
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Sudeki; the first half of the plot revolves around collecting crystals to power a "Peace Shield" around the kingdom of Haskillia, protecting it for all time. As it turns out, the crystals actually gain their power by sucking the "light" (akin to Life Energy) from the mirror dimension of Akloria, leaving it to essentially rot as Haskillia blooms. To say nothing of the machine's real purpose, summoning Heigou. | |
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In the Inheritance Cycle, the sword Eragon gets from Brom, Zar'roc, is later found out to have belonged to the last of the Forsworn, Morzan, who was killed by Brom. This is emphasized when Eragon finds out what "Zar'roc" actually means (Misery). | |
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In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Slayer is humanity's guardian against evil, which includes but is not limited to vampires. Then it turns out the power of the Slayer line began when the First Slayer was imbued with the power of a demon. | |
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Inverted in Goblins by the Axe of Prissan. It was designed to generate an aura of evilness, so that any paladins who are aware of it would seek it out in order to destroy it. Once they touch the axe, it telepathically communicates to them that it's actually being used to imprison a powerful demon who once tried to invade the Prime Material Plane, and that a paladin must constantly use it to do good deeds, which will strengthen the wards of the demon's prison and prevent it from escaping. Furthermore, it is not only incapable of harming a paladin — passing through them without leaving a wound — but it also provides its wielder with a suit of magical plate mail, to better aid the above-mentioned good deeds. And then it's subverted all the way to the literal Hell. The legend was a lie; the demon lord didn't reach the Material Plane nor was he defeated. The axe is a beacon forged in Hell that will allow him to travel to the Material Plane once it has stored enough energy by being used for evil acts. Paladins don't do anything to stop this as nothing works in moral absolutes in the Goblins-verse, and any deed deemed good can be perceived as sufficiently evil from another point of view. For example, the axe is being wielded by a goblin who repeatedly used it against humans, which many would consider the modus operandi of the Always Chaotic Evil at a glance. Furthermore, the axe was forged by, and was supposed to be wielded by, Kore himself, who's one of the posterboys for Black-and-White Insanity thanks to the demons cursing him. Talk about a deceptive weapon.... |
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In Night Wizard, the seven Jewels of Virtue the heroes are collecting turn out to be fragments of (God of Destruction) Shaimal's power. Once the Jewels are brought together, Shaimal begins to awaken within Eris, who's horrified upon learning that she's just a vessel for Shaimal's reincarnation. | |
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Mortal Kombat: Deception introduces us to Ashrah, a Netherrealm demon who fights for redemption, aided by the Kriss (a sword with a wavy blade) she wields, that guides her into slaying evil beings. However, Armageddon reveals, in what little backstory it has other than being essentially a Dream Match Game, that the Kriss is actually a Knight Templar weapon called Datusha, who just wishes to kill stuff while giving its wielder the illusion that they're slaying evil creatures for a greater good. And it's especially harmful to Vampires, thus giving Nitara (who is more on the Chaotic Neutral side of things) a motivation to join in on the fight, as Ashrah is unknowingly driving her people to extinction. | |
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In Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, the main characters can come across the Gehaburn around half way through the game, leading to the infamous Conquest Ending. In order to gather power for it, Nepgear is forced to kill the CPUs and their sisters, including her own sister. Even worse, turns out this is what the Big Bad wanted all along, as with only Nepgear rulling Gameindustri, its demise is inevitable. Thankfully, in the Re;Birth2 remake, you have the option to gain a true holy sword without any sacrifices. | |
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The Guardian Blade from Wild ARMs and its re-use in Million Memories. The sword is not in of itself evil and can channel the powers of the Guardians themselves. However, when the sword was first used the wielder lacked the inner strength to properly control its immense power, resulting in it going berserk, destroying humans and demons alike, and creating the Ocean of Sand (the desert that cuts across the planet). In the end, only Rudy proves able to control a small fragment of the sword fused into his left arm because his metal body and ARM abilties. | |
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Over the course of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the One Ring is treated something like this — it's Bilbo's most prized artifact and gets him out of a lot of trouble, but once its true nature is exposed, it takes a narrative six times longer than the first book to destroy it safely. | |
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