Webcomic / Swords

5 Following

It's like if Fighter could draw and made a webcomic.

Swords is a webcomic by Matthew Wills about a fictional universe where swords are very important, taking many different roles, as well as being filled with sword themed wildlife. While the comic has a unique lore and an on-going story, it also features many one-shot comics that just end in sword puns.

Swords provides examples of:

• 420, Blaze It: Episode 420 features the high elves ("high" taken literally) lighting their sacred Sword of Blazing (which resembles a blunt).
• Abandoned Info Page: Not the case here - the Characters page lists plenty of characters that only appear once, and while they don't always tend to say very much about the character (though some are pretty extensive), they provide direct links to each of the character's appearances and are constantly updated with each comic.
• Adaptational Villainy: The crossover with My Dad is Dracula turns Dracula into a sword that craves blood. Despite being a vampire, Dracula is completely benign and non-bloodsucking in most MDiD strips.
• Adjective Animal Alehouse: The Wet Dog, a tavern that appears in this issue.
• Advanced Tech 2000: The Backstabber 9000, one of Sickle’s inventions.
  King of Drakness: Was the 9000 part really necessary?
• Adventure Guild: The Adventur'r's Tavern serves as a place for adventurers to take quests and earn rewards.
• Aerith and Bob: See the gods Kargob, Argok, Baltad, Bograk, and Greg.
• Alien Blood: Orcs, giants, and Sabre's monster sword have blue blood. Choplets have black blood. Trolls, mimics, and the Demon of Relentless Omens have green blood. The Demon of Boundless Hunger's blood is yellow, while the Demon of Eternal Slumber's blood is a vivid shade of purple.
• Alliterative Title: Many strips have titles like this, such as “Duck of the Draw”, “Kutty Cat’s Clean Cuts”, and “Sword in the Summit.”
• All That Glitters: Spoofed in "Treasure".
  Troll: You may take one sword from my treasured collection! But be warned — many carry terrible curses!
  [Adventurer picks up a wooden sword]
  Adventurer: A simple test! Only a humble sword such as this will be safe!
  Troll: [snort] It wasn't a test, you dumb idiot.
  [the Adventurer's whole arm is now a tree]
  Adventurer: Oh... Is it too late to pick again?
• Amusing Injuries: All the time, and almost always sword-based.
• Anachronic Order: Especially towards the earlier parts of the comic, a lot of the events involving the main plotline are presented to the reader completely out of order. This is Lampshaded in "The Boredsword is Defeated".
  Demon King: Now tell it again in an order that makes sense.
• Angry Eyebrows: After failing to guard the Sword of Absolute Fury, the Dwarf hides his failure by creating a new one, which is just a normal sword with angry eyes drawn on it.
• Animal Jingoism: The fictional “Puss-In-Greaves” is no match for a sword-wielding dog.
• April Fools' Day: Every year, an April Fool's comic is posted, each with a similar joke — the comic's name and central weapon is changed, with the comic's creator claiming that it's a new series. Joke comics so far include Axes (which did become a real mini-series), Shields, Muscles, Wands, Guns, Spells, and Bows.
• Armless Biped: Sworcs, sword-orc hybrids, have no arms, as their upper halves are shaped like swords.
• Armor Is Useless: In a comic entirely about swords, people getting stabbed is an extremely common occurrence. Wearing armor doesn't do anything; the sword will typically pierce a hole right through the middle of the breastplate.
• Arms and Armor Theme Naming: Just to be even more obvious, plenty of Bit Characters as well as more significant ones are named after kinds of swords, parts of swords, or occasionally Named Swords.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Dreihander, a sword so big, the King of Drakness (sic) cannot lift it.
• Baguette Beatdown: From "The Knight's Loaf", it's the titular loaf.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "Absolutely Pommeled", Hawk the blacksmith explains to Sickle what a pommel is, using an incredibly long list of innuendo-laden terms. Sickle doesn't notice, and instead laughs at him saying "blade but" ("blade butt").
• Bald Mystic: In “Mother Nature”, Kara the Monk is a wise monk with a bald head.
• Beast Man: Multiple species of beastmen exist, including lionmen, lizardmen, horsemen, and snailmen. It's explained that the beastmen arose due to the influence of the Demon of Absolute Fury on ordinary animals.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: An Averted Trope — all kinds of characters, male and female, retain cuts inflicted on them and are visibly scarred in later strips.
• Bedroom Adultery Scene: In "We Need To Talk About Your Obsession", Smith the Blacksmith is caught in bed making out with a sword by his partner, Harpe, who promptly leaves him.
• Bedsheet Ghost: In "Trick or Treat", two actual ghosts dress up in bedsheet ghost costumes for Halloween.
• Benevolent Abomination: "The Everstabbed", a being of black void energy that is "kept eternally bound between life and death by the sword that cut through [their] heart,” is willing to help a human open a pickle jar upon request.
• BFS:
  • Langeschwert, true to his name, wields an ultra-long longsword. In fact, it is so long that the comic never shows its full length.
  • Mincer's tech sword is quite large, while also possessing spinning buzzsaw blades that tear through monster flesh like paper.
• Big Ball of Violence: Kutty Cat and its owner form one of these in "Kutty Cat's Clean Cuts".
• Bizarre Alien Locomotion: After much fan debate on how merblades moved around without legs, the author has since confirmed that they hop around on their hilt.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Armblade the Pirate, the Blade Maiden, and the protagonist of Swords-For-Arms, among others.
• Blade Enthusiast: Given the content of the comic's universe, there are quite a few of these. Smith the Blacksmith is a prominent example.
• Blob Monster: A gelatinous cube appears in “Cutting It Fine”.
• Blood Magic: In "Swordtember - Blood", a warrior summons a sword made from the iron in his own blood.
• Body Horror:
  • In "The Real Sword Was in My Heart All Along", Piercy the Pilgrim claims that the real sword was in his heart all along, then pulls out his own apparently sword-shaped heart, still beating, and promptly dies.
  • In “Injured”, a man brings his injured friend to a blacksmith for help. The blacksmith turns the friend into a horrifying flesh-based living sword with body parts randomly stitched together. The friend isn't bothered.
• Boomerang Comeback: The Swordarang, a boomerang with two bladed tips. Money back guarantee! Well, yeah, considering that the adventurers who use it keep getting stabbed on the return, it's guaranteed that they'll ask for their money back.
• Breaking and Bloodsucking: In "The First Patron Swor'nament - Sabotage", Viscount Varris sneaks into the bedroom of the Mysterious Stranger and drains his blood with his Blooden Blade.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In "Cutting the Fourth Wall", Cutbert literally cuts the fourth wall to encourage the reader to support their favorite creators. A slash is seen on the edge of the first comic panel, indicating that the fourth wall has actually been cut.
• Bungling Inventor: Sickle, whose (sword-related, of course) inventions never end up being legitimately useful. Understandably, King of Drakness eventually fires her.
• Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": The giants of the comic series more so resemble the Classical Cyclops.
• Call-Back:
  • The last two panels of the Monster Magician's debut comic mirror the last two panels of the Sword Dragon's debut comic.
  • Sickle once made a Dreihander, which is to say a "three-handed sword". She puts this knowledge to good use later by knowing the gods sword is also a three-handed sword.
• Cartoon Bomb: Invoked by the design of the sword that only lasts for one minute.
• Cassandra Truth: The Sword of Truth always tells the truth (obviously), but when one adventurer confuses it for the Sword of Lies, it has dire consequences.
• Cat Folk: Lionmen are a lionlike version of this trope, though they still showcase a number of cat behaviors.
• Cats Hate Water: In "Kutty Cat's Clean Cuts", when Knifey tries to bathe Kutty Cat, the cat responds with its claws, creating a Big Ball of Violence.
• Cats Love Laser Pointers: Kutty Cat loves to play with the Knife of Glowing Dot.
• Cat Up a Tree:
  • In "Just a Sprout After All", Quest Sprout and the Sword Dragon he's riding in search of a worthwhile quest decide against joining an epic battle against the Demon King in favor of just saving a cat up a tree.
  • In “Patron Tales - Maple the Moosekin”, a moosekin tries to get an elf child’s cat out of a tree by cutting it down, but their magical sword just makes the tree grow taller.
• Caught Monologuing: Prêt-y-pus, the master fencer, is attacked mid-monologue by Rapier Tapir in "Ready or Naught".
• Censor Box: The Censword plays this role when Sickle's clothes are melted off by acid.
• Censor Steam: Durengal’s naked breasts are censored in this way twice: once by Magic Cauldron steam and once by bathtub steam.
• Challenging the Chief: A completely accidental case: the final battle of the Swor'nament is Joyeuse vs. the Rapier Tapir. Thing is, between the beginning of the tournament and the final battle, behind-the-scenes events caused both Joy's father and brother to die, making her Queen of Hiltshire at the final battle...and because the Rapier Tapir defeats her in one-on-one conflict, that makes him the new King of Hiltshire. After her initial shock, Joy takes her loss in stride and decides to leave Hiltshire to find Harpe and warn her that her father became the Demon King.
  Joyeuse: What.
• Chameleon Camouflage: The chameleon lizardman in "Coat" uses camouflage to turn invisible and hide from enemies.
• Chest Monster: Mimics appear in multiple comics. They can take the form of swords, beards, treasure chests, and even people.
• Chupacabra: El Chupaespada is a fearsome monster that lurks at night and sucks the rare metals from swords.
• Clown Species: The tags for "Go Crime Lore Treason" imply that mimes are considered a species. The description on their creature page just reads "Terrifying."
• Cobweb of Disuse: In "Fire Types", there's a cobweb in the corner above the Lukewarm Shank, indicating apathy towards the weapon.
• Colorblind Confusion: In "Colour Blind", a warrior is told to slay a red golem with the green sword and a green golem with the red sword. The warrior, a dogman, can't tell red from green, and is confused.
• Color-Coded Speech: Multiple characters use a specific color to distinguish their text. The Travel Goblin uses yellow speech bubbles. Each of the gods and demon swords has their own color of speech. Most other magical swords also have uniquely colored text and/or speech bubbles to match their designs. Certain species have distinct speech bubbles as well: trolls have pale blue speech bubbles, the speech bubbles of lizardmen match their scales, and wraiths speak in wobbly green bubbles. In the Realm of Dreams, every character's speech bubbles are colored.
• Comic-Book Time: Averted for the joke in "One Year Anniversary". It's been a year since the first comic, and it apparently really did take Bread Knight a whole year to reach the Demon King.
• Constantly Changing Name: Mad Alice (or is it Mercurial Audrey?) changes her name as constantly as her form. The only consistency between the names is the initials: MA.
• Cool, but Inefficient: The Demon Sword of Unspeakable Darkness looks scary, but they only have an attack power of 1.
• Cool Sword: What else can be expected from a comic about swords?
• Creepy Doll: In "True Colours", two samurais demonstrate the Funky Katana technique, which transforms their swords to match the wielder's soul. For the second samurai, his katana turns into a creepy antique doll.
• Cumulonemesis: A dark knight gets turned into a cloud in "Clouded Judgement" when his paladin enemy sets his Smartsword to "vaporize". The now-cloudy dark knight proceeds to attack the paladin with lightning.
• Cupid's Arrow: "The Blade of Love" reveals that the Sworniverse's version of Cupid uses a sword instead of a bow and arrow. It still causes people to fall in love, though it comes at the cost of a body part or two.
• Cursed with Awesome: A man cursed with a dragon's arm, which allows him to wield a giant sword in that arm with ease. The other man in the comic is cursed slightly more conventionally and has a fish arm which can't even grip a blade.
• Cute Slime Mook: Bathad's Blade's soul usually appears like this. The only word is can say is "stab" with different inflections. Actual Cute Slime Mooks also appear in a few comics, such as this one.
• Cutlass Between the Teeth: Rapier Tapir wields a sword in his mouth, probably because he doesn't have hands.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Kargob, the god of darkness, is a mild-mannered, good-aligned god who banished multiple demons at the dawn of the universe. He's worshipped by countless good people, who consider him to be "really cool." The dark knights are also often non-evil.
• Dead All Along: In "Slay It Forward", the main character discovers that he's actually a ghost.
• Deity of Human Origin:
  • The gods of the Swords universe used to be liches who survived the heat death of the previous universe by gorging on souls. Not actual humans, but definitely former mortals.
  • An actual human example: Xiphos the Barbarian ends up replacing Kargob after his death.
• Demonic Possession: Demon swords are able to possess living beings to wreak havoc upon the world. The Foolsblade is also able to possess creatures, using their bodies to make mischief.
• Demon Sorcerer: All magic in the setting, especially the Runic Magic in the many, many Magical Weapons, draws power from the Demon of Sacred Oaths, one of seven demons who are older than the universe. Every rune represents an agreement with her in exchange for magical power. Unfortunately for her, said agreements tend to be rather one-sided, and ever since the invention of "smartswords" saturated with hundreds upon hundreds of runes — many of which have powers that are frivolous and wasteful, such as "Insult Opponent" — she's been particularly taxed.
• Depraved Dentist: The Bite Knight performs dentistry with, you guessed it, a sword.
• Dire Beast: There are a number of dire beasts in the comic: dire wolves, dire rats, dire snails, and even dire cabbages. In "The Demon Sword Chronicles - II", it's explained that dire beasts arose from the influence of the Demon of Absolute Fury.
• Discovering Your Own Dead Body:
  • The ghost of a warrior discovers his own dead body in "Slay It Forward", though it takes him a moment to realize it.
  • A wraith discovers his in "Days of Stabbings Past", but he's been dead for a long time, so instead of being frightened, he just finds it amusing.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • The monk in "Caught Red-Sworded" has a sword that turns red when enemies are nearby. Eating the last cookie is enough to be considered an enemy, which is punishable by stabbing.
  • In "Bad Apple", when Druid loudly eats an apple right next to his roommate Necromancer, who's trying to read, the annoyed roommate responds by impaling Druid with a sword.
  • Invoked and referenced near-verbatim in "Revenge Edge".
    Alt Text: You shouldn't trust a sword whose entire job description is "disproportionate punishment".
  • In "A Doomsday Sword", a sworlock summons a gigantic doomsday sword above a town... to get revenge on a single chicken who keeps waking him up early in the morning.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: In "Rusty Tactics", Rusty (a rusty sword with a face who may or may not actually be conscious) wins a Swor'nament battle against Swordfang the Annihilator because Swordfang left the arena to ask the host where the "real" opponent is.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • The toxic gatekeepers, described as mutants who guard a swamp full of strong opinions, disparage Sickle's new "mobile version" of the Shrieking Hellmouth Blade of Destruction, calling it "garbage" and crying for a "true sequel".
  • The Forge-O-Matic from "Fresh Off the Forge" creates swords in a flawed manner reminiscent of the way artificial intelligence-powered image generators create images.
• Door Fu: The Bread Knight asks a Doorsmith to make him a shield, and receives a tiny door-shaped shield.
• Doppelgänger: The Doppelhänder, a sword that mimics a person and then takes their place.
• Dr. Frankenstein: Dr. Fullerstein is the comic's equivalent, being a Mad Scientist who crafts sword golems and stitches people together.
• Druid: A cheerful druid named Druid appears in two comics, along with his many animal companions.
• Dual Wielding: In "Dual Wielding", Dr. Fullerstein attempts to create the perfect dual-wielder by stitching together two swordsmen with opposite dominant hands. What he failed to realize was that he used the non-dominant hand side of both swordsmen, resulting in a person who can barely hold a sword at all.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Multiple issues before their official introduction, Pest Sprout lurks in the background of the tavern in "The Dragon Hunt".
• Embarrassing Superpower: The bar patron in "Wereblade" is embarrassed about his wereblade form — a sword with a wolf head.
• Emotion Bomb: The Sword of Sorrow makes anyone who holds it burst into tears.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The pair of roommates in this comic are named Druid and Necromancer. No points for guessing what types of mages they are.
• Evil Doppelgänger: Pest Sprout is this to Quest Sprout, at least before their Heel–Face Turn.
• Evil Laugh: After the Bread Knight's Smartsword activates its Obvious Betrayal Protocol and collects a sample of the Demon King's blood before fleeing through a portal, the character lets out an evil laugh.
• Exact Words: In "The Fencing Tree", the fencer claims that eating a seed from the fencing tree will "give you an edge." Turns out he meant it literally — those who eat it will grow a wooden Blade Below the Shoulder.
• Exposition Fairy: The Beginner's Blade, a sword that teaches new adventurers the ropes.
• Eyepatch of Power: Subverted with Sickle, who is a woman with an eyepatch complete with a few Rugged Scars on her face too. She's clearly just a Bungling Inventor, and probably just lost her eye and got those scars due to her work on sword inventions. Though it does later turn out that she's worthy to wield a godsword.
• Eyes Always Shut: Due to the creator's art style, about half of the human characters have horizontal lines for eyes, as opposed to vertical lines.
• Façade Drop: When an adventurer notices that his "Fungeon" isn't very fun, the Fungeon Clown stops acting cheerful and threatens them at swordpoint to enter it.
• Fade to White: Occurs in "The Winds of Change" when the Travel Goblin combines two godswords, creating a powerful flash of energy that kills him in the process.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: The series features countless sword-themed animals, including swordfish, sworddogs, sword sheep, swordbats… you get the idea.
• Fastball Special: In "Long Range Sword", the Red Barbarian prepares to throw a sword-wielding boy at Xiphos.
• Fast-Killing Radiation: The Plutonium Sword in "Mysterious Mysteries" destroys its wielder before they can finish saying its name, leaving nothing but a skeleton.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Fauns are one of the many humanoid species in the comic's setting.
• Finders Rulers: Parodied in a strip where the Plague Doctor pulls a sword out of a kidney stone and becomes the Kidney King.
• Fingore: In "Swords X Burn My Shadow", Broghan and Jayde accidentally cut their fingers off while playing their guitar swords.
• Fire Is Red: Solder the Pyromancer wears a red Robe and Wizard Hat.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • In “Bag of Infinite Swords”, the Bread Knight’s smartsword’s pommel turns orange as he reaches for the Bag of Infinite Swords, indicating approaching danger. It turns fully red one panel later when the knight opens the bag and gets several slashes to the face from the emerging swords.
  • In the first panel of "Bad Apple", Necromancer is seen reading a book titled "Stabbing: The Ultimate Guide". Three panels later, his annoying roommate Druid has a sword through his chest.
  • The mountain and temple in the first panel of "The Wind Blade" foreshadow the shape of the Wind Blade, which is not a sword with the power of wind, but a sword that is winding.
• Flaming Sword:
  • "Powerful Flamedge" has one that only burns its wielder.
  • "Fire Types" features four blades that vary in both size and flame content.
  • "Flame On" features a fire sword, a pyre fire sword, a dire pyre fire sword, and a fryer dire pyre fire sword.
• Flat "What":
  • Joyeuse's reaction after being beaten in the Swor'nament by Rapier Tapir, and learning that this makes him the new king of Hiltshire. And then another one when Rapier Tapir actually talks.
    Rapier Tapir: Thank you, everyone, for this great honor. I will do my due diligence to reign with kindness and dignity.
  • Rapier Tapir himself starts saying "Wrrh?" as weird stuff happens during his reign.
  • The Demon King gives one when a dragon flies away from him with Quest Sprout on its back.
  • A recently-created Durengal gives this reaction when she finds out she was only made to be a component in another spell.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: The comic's version of Cupid uses a sword to cut peoples' hands off so they can fall in love with the person who heals them.
• Foe Romance Subtext: In their debut comic, when Night Knight declares that he's thought of Bright Knight every day since their last battle ten years prior, Bright Knight blushes, and the two leave the battlefield hand in hand. Later comics depict them as romantic partners.
• Food-Based Superpowers: The Potato Paladin has the power to summon and launch potatoes at his foes.
• Foregone Conclusion: Future Shiv is noticeably younger than future Knife, strongly hinting that Knife was never able to restore her beloved to her original age after accidentally de-aging her into a baby.
• Forged by the Gods: The five godswords, each one forged by a different god.
• Fortune Teller: One of these appears in "Swordtember - Divine", reading a paladin's fortune through tarot cards.
• Frog Men: There are numerous frogmen, including the very handsome Chadpole.
• Fruit Cart: The stabbage cart in "Thief" is destroyed during a chase, damaging the cart, the stabbages, and the customers impaled by the stabbages.
• Ghost Story: Hellswing tells one in "Cryptid Casefiles: El Chupaespada", describing the fearsome Chupaespada.
• Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: A short sword to an orc is a long sword to a fawn.
• Given Name Reveal: "A New Threat Rises" reveals that the Bread Knight's name is Ryan.
• God of Chaos: The Demon of Endless Chaos, the five-eyed demon who rules over the Chaos Realm.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: "I Left My Blade..." shows the god Kargob literally just dropping his sword in Xiphos.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: In "Duality of Wielding", a sword has these.
• Good Luck Charm: The Sword of Good Fortune grants good luck and prosperity to its wielder. It seems to gravitate away from those who are extremely lucky and towards those who truly need good luck, screwing over its wielder at times.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence: Behold the Disco Blade! A magic sword that can apparently summon such sequences on a whim.
• Gravity Screw: The Sword of Up. Whatever it points toward is "up". So, if you hold it parallel to the ground, everything starts falling in the opposite direction. It needs to be kept "up" all the time.
• Green Aesop: In "A Very Special Episode of Swords", the Sword of Truth states that climate change is real. The last panel shows the world flooded as the human who found the sword sits in despair. The Alt Text is "Just try. Even just a little bit."
• Grievous Bottley Harm: In "Glass Sword", a Surly Bandit smashes a glass object on the bar to get a threatening edge... only the object was a glass sword in the first place.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: In "War is Love", Castir wields Durengal, a sword-turned-woman, and attacks a group of bandits by swinging her human body like the blade she once was.
• Groin Attack: Harpe incapacitates the Relentless Omens-possessed Whitesmith with a swift kick in the groin.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Most of the paladins have blonde hair (though they're not all completely pure).
• Half-Human Hybrid: Merblades are born between the union of a human and a sword (don't think too hard about how that would feel).
• A Handful for an Eye: In "The First Patron Swor'nament - Sabotwoge", Zhar throws pocket sand in Viscount Varris's eyes to stop him from Breaking and Bloodsucking.
• Hand Puppet: "Achilles Heel" shows one sock puppet stabbing another. The last panel shows that the puppeteer actually stabbed his own hand.
• Happy Harlequin Hat: Worn by the Foolsblade, and then by the Quest Sprout while possessed by said blade.
• Headless Horseman: Multiple dullahans appear in “Head Thief”. They apparently lost their heads when a “head thief” stole them.
• Healing Shiv:
  • There's a Blade of Healing, that actually reverts people to how they were before getting wounded. Overuse will cause age regression.
  • There's also a sword used to vaccinate against swordpox.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power:
  • In "Duck of the Draw", the Dreary Knight is initially doubtful of the usefulness of the Sword of Summoning Ducks... until its wielder summons a duck inside of him.
  • The Tournament Guy is initially unimpressed by the Potato Paladin's potato powers, until he summons a potato storm.
• Heel–Face Turn: After Quest Sprout defends him from the Demon Sword of Eternal Slumber, Pest Sprout rebels against their creator and becomes an ally of Quest Sprout.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In "The Winds of Change", the Travel Goblin combines two godswords to create a weapon powerful enough to defeat the Demon King, causing a powerful flash of energy that kills him in the process.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • Exploited by the monsters in "Seal of Disapproval", who cause their human captor to get sucked into his own Monster-Sealing Sword by declaring that he is the true monster for capturing them.
  • A Ghost Story told by Hellswing describes the Grudge Iron, a sword that screams at adventurers to remind them of all the murders they've committed.
• Hobbits: Halflings are one of the setting's many humanoid races.
• Hollywood Prehistory: As "Wood Chuck Would Chuck Swords" indicates, the prehistoric humans and elves of the Swords universe existed alongside dinosaurs (which were also sword-themed).
• Hologram: According to "Pale as a Ghost", Smartswords are able to project these.
• Hook Hand: A number of pirates have hooks for hands. One even has a hook for a foot! And Quench the Piratemancer has a wooden hook hand that acts as a wand.
• Horse of a Different Color: The Bread Knight's mount is Buttercup the Giant Horse, who resembles a giant naked human. Mere rides upon Chips, a giant kiwi.
• Hot Springs Episode: One episode is specifically titled "The Hot Springs Episode". Oddly, the hot spring is inside a sea monster's stomach.
• Hoverboard: In "Hoversword", the orcs invent a hoversword.
• Hugh Mann: Guy Fauxman has somehow fooled everyone (or at least Olack) into thinking he's a human and not a sword for many years.
• Humans Are Average: As this comic exemplifies, humans aren't as magically deft as elves, as technologically advanced as orcs, or as skilled in blacksmithing as dwarves, but they have just enough capability to mash all of those things together into a weird and probably pointless sword.
• Hungry Weapon: Dracula from

• Hurricane of Puns: The Haunted Sword speaks in this way, mainly because it has too much free time.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: The Bridge Bandit in "Pattern", uses the same attack pattern against all his foes, until a canny observer pushes him past that.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Olack the Orphan Eater is this, if his name is anything to go by (though he argues that it was "one time").
• I'm Having Soul Pains: In "Swordtember - Shadow", a man feels a stabbing pain due to a sword sticking out of his shadow. His doctor ignores this.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Happens every so often, given the amount of stabbing that occurs in the series. Krog's death is the earliest example chronologically.
• Impossible Pickle Jar: In "The Everstabbed", a man seeks out The Everstabbed, an entity made up of black void energy that is "kept eternally bound between life and death by the sword that cut through [their] heart"... to ask them to open his pickle jar. The Everstabbed can't open it either.
• Improvised Weapon: The very first comic has a knight making do while in search of a sword but happening upon a bakery. Inverted in very many other comics which instead contain a sword intended specifically for a purpose beyond killing... which usually still end up cutting people accidentally.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  Sharp Sharply: Next we have a bartender named Xiphos up agai—
  [Xiphos kills his opponent, Sharply gets covered in blood]
  Sharp Sharply: Well I'm glad he's a bartender because I could use a stiff drink after that one.
• Infernal Retaliation: "Fire vs. Fire" shows a man stabbing a lava golem with the inferno blade. This seems to have just put it aflame while not hampering it at all.
• Insufficiently Advanced Alien: "Starswung" shows an alien presenting humanity with a gift - a sword! Two other humans of course tell him that they've got a lot of those in weirdly large quantities, and the alien is quite impressed with the craftsmanship of a human sword he is shown.
• Irony: Embodied by the Sword of Irony, which doesn’t contain any actual iron.
• Kill and Replace: In "New Year's Revolution", a swordsman is killed and replaced by his exact double.
• Klingon Promotion: Non-lethal version. Because the Sword Tapir defeated Joyeuse in one-on-one combat, and because she was technically queen of Hiltshire at the time, that meant the Tapir is the new king of Hiltshire.
• Kraken and Leviathan: A kraken appears in "Krak".
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Mere, the fighter from a Maori-like tribe, looks like a burly man... until she presses Chad the Bastard Sword against her bosom, giving him a nosebleed.
• Lame Pun Reaction: The human in "Swordtember - Ice" is not "cool" with the "flurry" of ice puns made by the Sword of Cool Ice.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Twice so far, both from Xiphos.
  • When he enters the Swor'nament in disguise:
    Xiphos: I am Xiphos! The bar...tender.
  • When he prepares to kill King Hilton, but realizes Joyeuse is there:
    Xiphos: Excuse me, everyone; I still have to go slay the ki... eeeerr... wi. That darn big bird someone left outside. Hah.
• Literal Disarming: Poor Entrails the Dark Knight gets this happening to him, after he was already missing one arm beforehand (heh).
• Literal Metaphor: A Swordmaster declares that the sharpest blade is the mind. So his student learns how to cuts through things with only his head.
• Literal-Minded: In "The Movie", when the director yells "Cut!", the actors take it literally. All we see is a huge splatter of blood and the director's traumatized face.
• Living Lava: The magma golem from "Fire vs. Fire" fits the bill.
• Lizard Folk: Lizardmen are a race of horned lizard people. Some of them resemble chameleons, and can change their color.
• Locked into Strangeness: The moment of Rapid Aging Knife experienced while warping through time left her with a gray streak in her hair.
• Logic Bomb: The Smartsword has thousands of enchantments that let it do almost anything, but being shown a Captcha on a scroll causes it to explode.
• Long-Lived: Elves are so long-lived, their current king was alive in prehistoric times.
• Losing Your Head:
  • In "Creature", the Monster Magician allows his head to be chopped off so he can grow two new heads in its place like a hydra. He messes up somewhere along the line, resulting in two severed heads.
  • In "Cutting Edge Medicine" the Edgesmith attemps to heal an injured dark knight with "Last Aid", which apparently consists of beheading.
• Lower Half Reveal: Sharp Sharply's lower half is seen for the first time in "Round Two", revealing that he's a merblade.
• Magical Girl: The Sword Princess, as seen in "Swordwoman".
• Magitek: The orcs invented Smartswords, rune-powered technological weapons that can perform many of the functions of modern technology.
• Major Injury Underreaction: All in all, Krog (the first human) takes rather cooly being impaled through the chest by a Trisabertops.
  Krog: Krog okay! Dinosword miss all of Krog's vital organs. Heart not vital, right?
• Marshmallow Hell: Chad unexpectedly experiences this in "Partners", giving him a Nosebleed.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Xiphos, who is named after an ancient Greek kind of sword. One of his wives, Kopis, and his daughter, Harpe are both named after other kinds of ancient Greek swords, too.
  • The three Wraiths - Wraith with Bandana, and Wraith with Hair and Wraith with Scar.
  • "A New Threat Rises", reveals that the Bread Knight's name is Ryan — as in "rye". The Toast Knight, an evil knight who appears in a later episode, is named Wheaton.
• Mecha: The Giantslayer Mechanoid from "Mobile Suit Swordarm" is a sword-themed Magitek mecha.
• Mercury's Wings: The Gnomish Boots of Flight manage to fit both forms of this trope — they're intended to be worn on the feet by gnomes, but since the Bread Knight is too large to equip them in this way, he wears them as earrings.
• Metal Muncher: El Chupaespada sucks the rare metals from swords at night, leaving nothing but shriveled daggers.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: “The Gold Standard” features an eelipede — half eel, half centipede.
• Monster Adventurers: Starting in “Rise of the Choplet”, a growing party of small monsters explores a dungeon, let by a sword-wielding Choplet.
• Morphic Resonance: Mad Alice can take many forms, but all of them always wear an eyepatch, often a purple brooch, and the clothes keep a purple and yellow color scheme.
• Morph Weapon: The Quicksilver Sword, invented by Fphergus Fphancyforge, can adapt to multiple situations. Swallowing it is ill-advised, though.
• Multiple Head Case: The two heads of the cursed human in "The The Sword Sword of of Something Something" won't stop arguing.
• Mundane Solution: You don't need a cool magic sword to stop the spread of swordpox; all you have to do is wash your hands. Incidentally, this strip was released during the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Murder Water: In "Now You Sea Me", the Piratemancer summons a swordsman made of water.
• Mustache Vandalism: In "Skin Deep", a human's Power Tattoo is given a mustache by a random prankster.
• My Future Self and Me: In "The Final Straw", a future version of Sharp Sharply travels through a time portal to meet his past self, much to the past self's annoyance.
• Name Amnesia: When the Demon of Unspeakable Darkness was banished by Kargob, so was their name, causing them to be unable to say or remember it.
• Necromancer: Multiple appear in the series, including Kris the Necromancer and Necromancer the Necromancer.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: The Bread Knight tells the Demon King about the many adventures that he had before reaching him. The Demon King finds the story so interesting that it overpowers the effect of the Boredsword and dislodges it from his heart.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: "Swords and Souls" shows a 100-year-old blade (a sword that gained its own soul upon turning 100), a soulsword (a sword imbued with a human soul by a necromancer), a merblade (a half-human, half-sword), and a 100-year-old merblade that fought a necromancer.
• No One Could Survive That!: The Demon King leaves Ōdachi for dead after impaling him and taking his godsword. The following day, when the demon sees Ōdachi standing again, he laments that he needs to get better at killing people.
• Nosebleed: In "Partners", Chad suffers from one of these after being placed in Marshmallow Hell.
• Not a Morning Person: As "Swordtember - Sun" indicates, if you wake him up early, the Good Knight will not have a good morning.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: In "The Dream Cutlass", the titular sword makes a young lad's dreams come true, unfortunately including this one.
• Nuclear Mutant: The radioactive megadwarf was presumably mutated by exposure to plutonium.
• The Nudifier: The Acid Sword, one of Sickle's inventions, promptly melts her clothes off.
• Off with His Head!: In "Exposure", when the entrants of a sword-designing competition are told by the prince hosting it that the prize for winning is "exposure", an executioner beheads the prince.
• Ominous Message from the Future: A future version of Sharp Sharply comes through a time portal to warn his past self of coming danger.A future version of Sharp Sharply comes through a time portal to warn his past self of coming danger. Past Sharp is annoyed about him interrupting the Swor'nament.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Olack (the Orphan Eater) forges a thousand swords in the hopes of getting a new title. The first person to see him after he finishes asks if he's Olack the Orphan Eater, which he protests that he only did that once. However, the Alt Text claims they have at least stopped calling him Olack the Non-Recycler.
• Oni: They appear in a few comics set in the eastern kingdom of Katana. They are tall, muscular humanoids with yellow skin and horns.
• Open-Minded Parent: Kopis may be a barbarian, but she doesn't mind if Harpe wants to be a knight. Surely that will still entail Harpe destroying her enemies regardless.
• Orcus on His Throne: Justified. The Demon King fell into depression after being stabbed with the Boredsword.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: As "Wild" reveals, the Elfwood is home to blue-furred, lavender-skinned, purple-maned centaurs with horselike features on their humanoid faces. It's also home to giant tree centaurs called Entaurs, and... *shudder*... horses.
• Our Dark Elves Are Different: They have dark blue skin, white hair, four eyebrows, large red Monochromatic Eyes, small tusks, and tufts of fur on their ears.
• Our Demons Are Different: The demons of the comic’s universe are seven primordial Eldritch Abominations who were sealed by the gods into seven demon swords.
• Our Dragons Are Different:
  • "Sword Dragon" has a normal-looking dragon that vomits a storm of swords.
  • "Sword-Nosed Dragon" has a more unusual dragon which looks like a giant, flying, flexible sword with eyes and legs. Its enemy is the sheath-faced leviathan.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: They're short, bearded humanoids with large ears and noses, and they have an affinity for mining and metalworking. However, the dwarves of Swords are fairly unique as fictional dwarves go, with varying skin and hair colors and clans associated with minerals and compounds: bronze, silver, carbon nanofiber, boron, bone, plutonium, and even helium.
• Our Elves Are Different: Most elves have pale bluish skin, red hair, four eyebrows, large purple Monochromatic Eyes, small tusks, and tufts of fur on the tips of their pointy ears like lynxes. In addition to these common elves, there are dark elves, which have dark blue skin, white hair, and red eyes; and high elves (named for their constant smoking of the halfling leaf), which have light green skin and dark green hair.
• Our Genies Are Different: The Golden Sword Djinn is a sword-shaped Energy Being bound to a sword, and grants Three Wishes to anyone who discovers the sword (though Wishing for More Wishes is taboo).
• Our Giants Are Bigger: They're related to orcs, with similar green skin and purple eyes — well, eye, as they seem to be based on the Classical Cyclops
• Our Goblins Are Different: They're short and covered in fur, with cloven hooves, pointy ears, and yellow Monochromatic Eyes.
• Our Hydras Are Different: The sword hydra is a giant draconic monster with multiple sword-shaped heads that grow extra sword-heads in their place when severed.
• Our Imps Are Different: They're small red goblin-like creatures with a knack for runecrafting.
• Our Liches Are Different: Liches are made up of several spirits that joined together. They're stronger and smarter than ordinary undead, and less prone to accidentally completing their Unfinished Business and disappearing. If a lich amasses a massive quantity of souls, they can attain godlike power. In fact, the five gods are all liches who absorbed the souls of an entire dying universe before creating a new one.
• Our Mages Are Different: A few species, such as the Quest Sprout, are able to use magic innately. Other species, humans included, can craft magical swords and use magical items, but they can't cast non-ritual spells directly under normal circumstances. A few humans have gained magical powers through other means: Hack can cast spells because of the shard of a magic sword lodged in their shoulder, and the Monster Magician gained his powers from the Demon of Absolute Fury.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: Minotaurs haven’t appeared in the regular comic, but one does appear in an April Fool’s episode.
• Our Orcs Are Different: The orcs of Swords are tall green humanoids with pointed ears, horned brows, cleft chins, eyes with purple sclera, and (of course) tusks. In an inversion of the typical depiction of orcs as barbaric brutes, these orcs are hyper-intelligent, and are known for their advanced smartsword technology. They're still very much evil, though, and they regularly eat dwarves.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The Swords universe has swordpires, with swords for fangs. Their chins have little sword sheaths on them!
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Wereblades are people who transform into wolf-like sword creatures during the full moon. They infect those they cut with their condition.
• Our Zombies Are Different: After his death, Xiphos the Barbarian's body becomes a zombie. He has some control over his zombie's actions, but only when his soul is kept close to it. Zombies separated from their soul will tirelessly wander around searching for it.
• Overly Long Tongue: The mountain toad in "Tungsteel" has a tongue so long, it's mistaken for a giant serpent.
• Overly Nervous Flop Sweat: The Anxiety Blade exhibits this.
• Painting the Medium:
  • Unusually colored Speech Bubbles are sometimes used to this effect. The most drastic example is exemplified by the eight-eyed demon Pandemonium, whose speech bubbles are multicolored and roughly shaped, with white text that seems to change font with every letter. Names or pronouns of people, such as Baltad or themself, are written in a corresponding color. Sometimes, Pandemonium's text and/or bubbles even change shape to match the message being said.
  • In "Cut Loose", the Edgesmith's color-eating sword even drains the color from the edges of the last panel.
• Palette Swap:
  • A character who looks almost identical to the Bread Knight but with blue hair is named Brad Nite, lampshading this. Ironically, his first appearance features him complaining about unoriginal designs.
  • Referenced by the Alt Text of this comic: "After 99 floors you're just fighting the same enemies again, but slightly different colors."
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Xiphos the Barbarian's disguise as "Xiphos the Bartender" has him put on a shirt, pants, and gloves, but his signature barbarian helmet is still clearly visible.
• Pawprint Stamping: Pandora the Penguin signs their name on the Swor'nament signup list with a food dipped in ink.
• Peeve Goblins: If you wake up to find that your sword is missing its pommel, it may have been stolen by a pomgoblin.
• Perpetually Protean: The shapeshifter Mad Alice is constantly changing form purely for fun.
• Pineapple Ruins Pizza:
  • In "Cutting One's Teeth", the Pepper Knight is nauseated by the pineapple on Sage Knight's Pepperoni Pizzablade.
  • Referenced by the Alt Text of this comic about a giant pizza dough-lem: “Aah! It has pineapple!”
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: The colors of the Blades for Ladies and the Swords for Lords fit this trope.
• Pink Product Ploy: Parodied in “Bladies for Ladies 2”, where the pink “Blades for Ladies” are twice the price of the blue "Swords for Lords".
• Plague Doctor: The character Plague Doctor MD, a medically trained troll who wears a surgical mask and a plague mask at the same time for extra safety.
• Plant Person: There are numerous plant people and creatures. Examples include the Quest Sprout, his mother, and Motar, the soulsword possessing a tree stump.
• Pocket Dimension: "Pocket Knife" features a knife that can cut open a portal into a pocket dimension... which turns out to be filled with actual pockets.
• Pokémon Speak: The Quest Sprout can only say "Qwest!" (with the exception of one strip, where he cries out for his mom). The Pest Sprout is similar, only saying "Pest!"
• Post-Stress Overeating: After losing the Swor'nament in the first round, Randall eats ten bags of fries.
• Power Tattoo: The Sword Tattoo in "Skin Deep" allows its bearer to summon the sword it depicts at will, though it's apparently affected by Mustache Vandalism.
• Pun: The elvish kingdom is known as "the Shelf".
• Punny Name: Many of the swords in the comic have names involving puns. And like the Sworcerer, quite a few characters have names or titles that involve sword puns.
• Radiation-Induced Superpowers: In "Megadwarves", a human asks a plutonium dwarf to stab them with plutonium so they can gain powers. The dwarf refuses, stating that all the radiation will do is kill them. Then, a mutated megadwarf walks up behind him.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • In "Wereblade", the eyes of the bar patron turn red before they transform into a wereblade.
  • In "Broadsquito", the Monster Magician's eyes turn red before he mimics the powers of a broadsquito and sucks the blood from a sleeping human.
  • The eye of the Demon Sword of Eternal Slumber is red, as are the eyes of his henchman, Pest Sprout, when in wyrm form (as seen in this comic).
  • El Chupaespada, a monster that sucks the metals from swords, has glowing red eyes.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Quest Sprout, a baby plant creature going on their own quest.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: After the Demon King rises to power, Princess Joyeuse personally tracks him down and uses the Boredsword to seal him away before returning to the Swor'nament.
• Rugged Scar: Subverted by Bread Knight, who suddenly appeared with two scars across his face and only one eye. These were later explained as being inflicted in "Bag of Infinite Swords", from him opening the bag.
• Runic Magic: Swords are frequently enchanted with magical runes. The orcs have figured out how to combine a multitude of runes to create a Smartsword.
• Santa Claus: He appears in "The Kris of Kringle" (under the name "Kringle"), where he drops gift-wrapped swords down the chimneys of houses on Christmas Eve. Kringle appears again in "An Unreasonable Quest".
• Save the Villain: In Episode DLXIX, Quest Sprout defends the sword-breathing dragon to prevent it from being exploited by the humans. Hack casts a fire spell to set it free, and it flies away with Quest Sprout on its back.
• Scary Scorpions: Swor'pions are terrifying giant scorpions with sword-tipped tails.
• Scary Stitches: The injured person in "Injured" is turned into a living sword made of stitched-together body parts.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: The Dinosword does this in "Walk the Dinosword" when its caveman wielder attempts to use it to fight a man carrying a giant boulder.
• Seadog Peg Leg: "Captain Swordbeard" has one with two peg legs. Except, of course considering this comic, the peg legs are blades.
• Secret Test of Character: Subverted in "Treasure", where a troll allows a human to take one sword from his collection, but warns him that many of them are cursed. Believing it to be this trope, the human takes a humble wooden sword. As the troll laughs and declares that it wasn't a test, the wood of the wooden sword grows over the human's arm.
• Shout-Out: So we have a one-armed, one-eyed Dark Knight named Entrails, huh?
• Shower of Awkward: In "Stargazing", the Great Sage of the Heavens looks through the Great Sword of Distant Sight and accidentally catches sight of the god Kargob taking a bath, embarrassing him.
• Shy Finger-Twiddling: A dragon does this after objecting to a wedding before confessing their love... for both the bride and groom. Cue the three of them flying off with a triple sword symbolizing their union.
  "I thought we really hit it off during your quest to slay me..."
• Sickly Green Glow: The radioactive megadwarf's beard glows green.
• Similar Objects, Similar Description: A character page example. The character page descriptions of Forro, Aurro, and Orro, the Three Zorros, are "A sword man," "A swordsman," and "A man of swords."
• Smelly Skunk: Broadtail, the skunk merchant from "The Smell of Victory", sells Poisoned Weapons that stink horribly. He isn't aware of the smell at all.
• Snowlems: A giant one appears in “Questmas Present”.
• Somewhere, a Herpetologist Is Crying: "Strange Monsters" plays into the common misconception that frogs have long, skinny tongues.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace:
  • A dragon objects at a wedding... because the dragon is in love with both the bride and groom. Cue the couple flying off with the dragon, with three swords symbolizing their union.
  • In another wedding, someone tries to object, only to be scared off by the entire wedding party pulling out their swords.
• Spiders Are Scary: In "Battlecry", an armored warrior is frightened off by a person yelling "BIG SPIDERS!"
• Spin Attack: Spoofed. A warrior monk surrounded by zombies starts a "Spinning Blade Attack", only to spin a bit too fast and goes flying.
  Alt Text: Fighting the undead really winds me up.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Hack is able to summon magical flaming swords.
• Sssssnake Talk: Saber Snake talks in this way.
• Stable Time Loop: "Time Knife" has an explorer trapped in an endless loop of grabbing a Time Knife and being sent back in time. Once this gets broken, the Time Knife is used (accidentally) for the ultimate purpose of inspiring the gods to create the universe at the dawn of time.
• Stab the Sky: This pose is used frequently both in the comic and in promotional art.
• Stealth Pun: The punchline of "A Hard Job" is a dick joke.
• The Stoner: The high elves are a whole race of stoners.
• Sudden Anatomy: In "Partners", Chad has a visible Nosebleed despite not previously being drawn with a nose.
• Taken for Granite: The ancient hero Quillion suffered this fate — and mid-sneeze, too.
• Talking Weapon: The series has several magical swords that can talk.
  • Chad is a reoccurring character who, other than talking, appears to be an ordinary sword. In reality, he is half merblade (sword from the waist down) and half sworc (sword from the waist up).
  • The Sword of Illusion is a sword who takes on the guise of a human magician and reveals his true form as a magic trick. His wife and daughter are also swords who can cast illusory disguises.
• Technicolor Blade: Being a webcomic about, well, swords, naturally there are plenty of blades that fall under this trope. Examples include the Birthday Blade (gold and green with a red bow and pink icing on the tip), all the Demon Swords (varying colors), the Longsword of Time (bluish white), and most of the Mystery Swords.
• Tele-Frag: In "Duck of the Draw", the Dreary Knight thinks that the "Sword of Summoning Ducks" isn't very practical on the battlefield... until the Duck Knight makes a duck appears inside his throat.
• Temporal Abortion: The Time Knife lets the wielder retroactively kill a target without even time-traveling. Unfortunately, as the assassin finds out, it also prevents the client from paying them as they no longer remember the victim.
  Alt Text: Always get paid before you create a paradox.
• Tempting Fate: In "The White Tower", a golden dwarf calls to a bone dwarf in an ivory tower, warning him about the Infinity Blade that will soon swallow it. The bone dwarf, not believing him, decides to stay in his tower. “Hah! As if anything could get me up here,” he says to himself in the last panel, as the tip of the Infinity Blade winds in from the right.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The simple artstyle doesn't make the faces of women especially clearly feminine compared to men, but they tend to be drawn with two lines coming out of their eyes to indicate long eyelashes.
• Thanksgiving Episode: In "Shanksgiving", a pilgrim father and son hunt a sword-turkey to celebrate Shanksgiving.
• Theme Naming: Many of the named characters (with the notable exception of the gods/demons) have monikers that refer to type of swords (or other weapons), historical swords, or are otherwise sword-related: Harpe, Sickle, Xiphos, Joyeuse, Sharp Sharply, King Hilton, Mere, Ōdachi, Knife, Stabbins the Fawn, Dirk the Fawn, Baselard the Fawn, Langeschwert, Hack, Glaive, Shank, Cutter, Mincer, Hash, Jian, Kopis, Shiv, Emperor Ricasso, Knifey, Slicer, Lord Wakizashi, Choil, Dagger the Gnome, Edge the Merblade, Black Stabbeth, Hiltilda, Sabre, Quillion, Estoc, Stiletto, etc.
• Three Wishes: Granted by the Golden Sword Djinn in "Wish Master".
• Time Abyss: King Grelf, the king of the elves, has apparently been alive since prehistoric times.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In "Cryptid Casefiles: The Doppelhander", the reader looks in the mirror and discovers that they may have been replaced by the Doppelhänder.
• Totem Pole Trench: In "Call of the Cursebreakers", an evil sword and the living stone it's stuck in attempt to conceal their identities by hiding in a trenchcoat.
• Tournament Arc: The appropriately named Swor'nament was the original Tournament Arc, and the First Patron Swor'nament (featuring fan-submitted characters) is the second.
• Transformation Sequence: The Sword Princess performs a Magical Girl-style transformation in "Swordwoman". It turns her into an actual sword.
• Triangles Are the Worst Instrument: In “Mystery Swords Return”, multiple instrument-shaped swords are shown, and the customer who drew the mystery sword is disappointed to have gotten a “Sci-Angle” (a scimitar shaped like a triangle).
• Troll Bridge: There is a bridge guarded by the Bridge Bandit, a swordsman who always uses the same pattern of attacks to defeat those who challenge him. One determined adventurer tries to defeat the Bridge Bandit by memorizing this attack pattern, but gets defeated whenever the Bridge Bandit adds a new attack to his repertoire, forcing the adventurer to start over every time. He also refuses to just go to a different bridge.
• Turn-Based Combat: Defied in "Real Time Combat". The warrior is stopped from attacking by an adventurer because it's not his turn to attack. The warrior attacks anyway.
• Turns Red: Referenced in the Alt Text of "Pattern". The bridge bandit fights over a hundred opponents with only his most basic moveset — leading the nearby observer to think that is all he has.
• Unexplained Recovery: Piercy the Pilgrim has pulled out his own heart (which was the sword all along) with the expected results, and appeared in more comics since. Perhaps these were simply before he pulled out his own heart, but that has not been made explicit.
• Unlockable Difficulty Levels: In "Hard Modes Breed Hard Men", a warrior unlocks hard mode, and is forced to do math problems to defeat demons.
• Un-Paused: The hero Quillion was turned to stone by a Blade of Sealing centuries ago. At first it looks like Quillion's statue is in the middle of screaming from the blade embedded in his chest, but when removed it shows he was about to sneeze all this time.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: In "Spill", a cart is carrying a barrel of "Unstoppable Attack Swords" and another of "Immovable Defense Swords". The carriage bumps over a rock, spilling its shipment, and when the swords mix it results in a massive explosion.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • In "Topical Ointment", a patient refers to his testicles as his "pommels".
  • In "The First Patron Swor'nament - Bad Roll", when the Saex Wizard gets hit in the crotch, he says "M-My snake eyes..."
• Use Your Head: "Which Type of Sword Is the Greatest?" shows a student cutting a sword with his head because "The sharpest blade is the mind".
• Vampiric Werewolf: In "Halloween Special", a warrior is bitten by a swordpire, cut by a weresword^note a vampire with swords for fangs and a werewolf with everything south of the neck replaced by a broadsword blade, respectively, and had her guts devoured by zombies, in rapid succession on her way to a date. The final panel shows her as a three-way hybrid of vampire, weresword, and zombie.
• A Very Special Episode: "A Very Special Episode of Swords" delivers a Green Aesop about the reality of climate change.
• Villain-Beating Artifact: Only one sword in the world has the power to defeat the Demon of Endless Chaos.
• Visual Pun: "Pocket Knife" features a knife that can cut open a portal into a Pocket Dimension... which turns out to be filled with actual pockets.
  Alt Text: It's a pocket dimension? Do you get it? DO YOU GET IT?
• Volumetric Mouth: The Saex Wizard has one of these in the third panel of "The First Patron Swor'nament - Bad Roll".
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Mad Alice is a shapeshifter who's able to change her form at will.
• Was Once a Man: "Valentines Sword" has a man who was turned into a beast by a cursed sword. Removing the sword ends the curse, but the maiden puts it back in as he looks better as a beast.
• Wham Episode: "Destiny Calls" and "A New Threat Rises", back to back, in which in order to fulfill Baltad's prophecy, Bread Knight must challenge Rapier Tapir to a duel to claim Hiltshire for himself. And Bread Knight's father is also looking for him. And Bread Knight's name is Ryan.
• When Life Gives You Lemons...: In "Lemon Age", a human melts down the lemons life gives him and forges them into a "lemony fresh sword of revenge".
• White Male Lead: In "Leadership", the elderly couple (wrongly) assumes the white man must be the party's leader.
• Why Won't You Die?: In "Return to the Fungeon", the Fungeon Clown ponders "Why aren't you dead?" in a puzzled tone after seeing the Bread Knight happily stroll through the deadly Fungeon.
• The Wild West: The setting of Guns, an April Fools' Day episode^note though, unlike the other April Fool's comics, it was posted on March 31, with the April 1 comic focusing on Quest Sprout being possessed by the Foolsblade.
• Wishing for More Wishes: The Golden Sword Djinn in "Wish Master" specifies that this particular wish is off limits. The bystander who discovered the djinn gets around this by wishing for a compass that detects other wish-granting djinn.
• Wizard Classic: The Sworcerer fits the bill, with blue robes, a blue wizard hat, and a long gray Wizard Beard.
• World of Pun: A good majority of the swords and sword-based objects in this webcomic have a Punny Name.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Among humans, hair colors we consider unnatural are just as common as, if not more common than, natural ones.
• World Shapes: An in-universe myth is that the whole world is a sword wielded by a god. The narrator then immediately says that the world is, of course, round.
• Wrong Assumption: In this strip, a troll invites an adventurer to take one sword from his collection, but warns that many of the swords are enchanted with terrible curses. The adventurer assumes this is a Secret Test of Character to see if he is greedy enough to choose the flashiest-looking sword out of the collection, which is guaranteed to result in Death by Materialism or worse. He instead picks up a humble wooden sword thinking it's safe... only for his arm to turn wooden as well, much to the troll's amusement.
• You Are Too Late: In "One Year Anniversary", the Bread Knight finds that the princess he set to rescue already left during the one year it took him to reach the Demon King.
• You Dirty Rat!: Viscount Varris turns into a rat in order to sabotage the Swor'nament.
• You Wouldn't Hit a Guy with Glasses: "Thee wouldn't dare stab upon a sir with spectacles, wouldst thee?"
• Zorro Mark:
  • In "Rowdy Rogue Robbery", Forro, Aurro, and Orro each leave one of these on their victim's chest, spelling out "OAF".
  • In "The First Patron Swor'nament - Thank You Mysterious Stranger", the Mysterious Stranger signs his autograph by slashing his initials into a piece of paper with his sword. He also accidentally slashes the fan holding the paper, but the fan doesn't seem to mind.