I'm gonna ramble out loud for a bit about sword spirits in the untamed.
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Swords have spirits. How much power or autonomy do they have?
After their masters die, they can seek out blood or revenge - as seen by the Nie ancestors and their sabers. They can seal themselves so only their master who they have forged a bond with can use them - as seen by Wei Wuxian and his sword Suiban. But that's a rare phenomenon because it has to do with the power and skill of the cultivator. Swords can also unsheathe themselves, but is this the sword spirit's doing or is it a nonverbal command from the master?
Why is it that a sword can do these things? It seems like the sword chooses to do them, that it has some control and power over its own actions.
In the untamed, people talk about how it would take a lifetime to develop the level of cultivation required for a sword to seal itself. But Wei Wuxian's sword Suiban did this when Wei Wuxian was merely 20 years old or so.
What is a bond between a master and sword spirit like? Would the sword spirit feel despair when it's no longer being used by its bonded master - like in the case of the master dying or losing their golden core? Is that why a sword might seal itself? Does a sword spirit feel loyalty? Dedication? Does it share common spirits/souls/personality traits/principles as the master? Does it soak those up like a sponge or is it influenced over time or does it develop its own personality? Or am I overestimating the idea of 'spirit' and they're actually just blind tools forced to transfer energy from master to victim?
If a sword can choose to unsheathe itself or to seal itself or to avenge their masters death or to seek resentful energy, I'm curious, what else can they do?
A master who lost their golden core, cannot weild their sword anymore because they no longer have the spiritual energy to - what? give it power? To guide it? To control it? Or to just boost its strikes? What?
What I'm really wondering about is, would it be possible for a cultivator to lose their golden core, but their sword chooses to continue fighting for its master - through no power of the master himself?
How much skill and power and the strength of the bond would be needed for that to happen if it takes a lifetime for a sword to even have the ability to seal itself?
But if a cultivator and sword are powerful enough to accomplish that at only age twenty.... What would that cultivator be able to do at forty? At 60? At 80? If Wei Wuxian was able to continue cultivating in the traditional sense for a true lifetime, how much would he have been able to accomplish?
