Velorith, the Stormbringer

The Strom family blade: celestial-silver hilt with luminarite filigree, lunar-steel blade, lightning motif, the Strom oak on the pommel.

True history

From the books

The vault and the theft

Velorith was the sword of Oakren Strom, called Ren, an outcast knight who died in the King's Tournament at the hands of Alerion Solastis. Seraphina Thorn remembers him on his knees in the arena, lungs full of blood, still trying to lift the blade. She thinks of it as fast, singing steel that moved like water when Ren held it.

After his death the sword went back to his family and was kept in their vault at the Radiant bank, an elven-owned house. About a year later his sister Orwen learned that the family meant to sell it, which would wipe Ren from the house altogether. Because the family name drew watchers, she could not act herself, so she found Fi and Usso at Oakren's grave and asked them to take it first. She did not want her brother's sword melted down for a cousin's dowry.

The sword was recovered during the breach of the Radiant Vault. Ferrin Stonecleaver, who had designed the vault, knew it was held in a private storage chamber off the main corridor and forged a key to its lock. His escape plan had the party sealed inside the sword's old display box and wheeled out by the guards as a delivery. Seen close, the guard is shaped as coiled serpents and engraved with the family's lineage, and a serpentine lightning motif runs along the fuller. Usso wrapped the blade in oiled cloth and carried it out on his back.

The tournament

Fi showed the recovered blade to Orwen at night beneath a yew in the park where Oakren used to push her on a rope swing. Orwen charged her to carry what Ren had wanted, which was justice, not revenge.

To bring the sword into the tournament unrecognised, Fi went to the illusionist Fate. Fate said a sword remembers every throat it has touched, and that to cloak that memory she had to taste its wielder. She drew on Fi's worst memories, warned that a lie of that size is paid for twice, and spun threads of shadow and light from her blind eye until Velorith looked like a plain tourney sword. Her one good eye turned milk-white as she finished, and Fi felt something cold snap behind her ribs.

Under the disguise the metal seemed to drink the light, with a faint pulse under Fi's fingers like a heartbeat not entirely her own, and she spoke to it as if it were a companion. In the final duel, when Alerion stabbed her with a concealed dagger, Fi finished her Old Speak vow over the blade. Spectators could see the words vibrating through the sword before she drove it home. Afterwards someone stood Velorith point down in a corner of the infirmary where she lay, like a sentinel waiting for her to rise.