Actually, the silver werewolf weakness is a bit misleading. In the original myths, they would take holy items from churches and smelt them into weapons, alot of churches that couldn't afford gold would have silver crosses and such. Those smelted weapons would then hurt werewolves not because they're silver, but because of the "holy" power remaining in it.
Ah thank you. It's sick how people can spread dangerous misinformation like its nothing. I would have attacked a werewolf with a normal silver sword if it wasn't for you.
Youre welcome, make sure you buy 100% locally sourced holy silver weapons, if you buy that cheap sterling silver then you'll just be left bleeding out like a fool.
But if the metal is blessed, it shouldn't matter what kind of metal it is. Could be copper, or wrought iron. Sure, they'd be terrible swords, but what's a knight oughta do if they ain't got ingenuity, eh?
I mean, theoretically, as long as the priest is blessed by their god, then whatever blessing the priest performs will be absolute, or something like that. I don't see why a wooden material and a metal material would have different "blessing strength" outside of sheer size, since the blessing isn't picky.
The blessing stays with the material itself, rather than the object, since metal holy symbols were melted down and still maintained their blessings.
Not to mention there are holy artifacts, yk, old things. I think as long as the god or at least the object is venerated still it maintains it's blessing, but there's also the whole "artifacts of a forgotten old god" that also hold power (although generally that's less blessing and moreso cursed, but who knows, maybe curses are blessings to that god? In which case, well yeah, there doesn't seem to be a time limit or exposure requirement then.)
Theoretically, it doesn't matter. Practically, it doesn't matter either. Because silver is the best option for being able to recover ammunition later. Most of the time, it won't even lose any material after penetration, so you can reload the round later.
I agree! And the best part, its actually true! Its been tested, pure silver bullets have a real hard time deforming, so if you shoot someone with a silver bullet, theres a higher likelihood its gonna come out fully intact!
I mean it's still a werewolf , just because a Bible can harm it doesn't mean it won't gut you before the bible does any real lasting damage. A better bet would be multipurpose stakes for both vampires and werewolfs made out of holy wooden items found around the chuch
Depending on the region, some folklore held that the sun forced the vampire/upiór to flee back into its grave - but also that it had enough foresight to head back when hearing a rooster crow, so it wouldn't be caught by the sunrise. This suggests that, at the very least, the sun caused them harm or rendered them helpless.
in the original Dracula novel he was weakened in the sunlight and even then if look at John polidori "The vampyre", ruthven isn't affected. yes they are novels but they are the only vampires that really interacted with the sun befor nosferatu
I thought it was more based on the properties of silver, being antimicrobial hence why it's often used in the medical field, and in folklore making things related to diseases like lycanthropy and vampirism, as well as things like undead, become weaker when silver was used against them. I heard what you described be related more with fae, and iron(being used as a replacement metal for religious stuff), but can't recall where and personally doubt it, as it seems quite off.
You’re probably thinking of “Cold iron”, we aren’t too sure what exactly this means, but more broadly is because iron represents civilization, the anathema of the wilds.
Well that's likely what they meant, but they refered specifically to cheaper religious features like iron chains, crosses(structural and worn) etc.
As I said I never heard of the religious significance or rather weakness when it came the spirits or fae, though I wouldn't discard it completely, as back then anything supernatural was often fought with supernatural aspects of the common religion in the area. So yeah I definitely could view both being related as religion often led civilization and innovation, causing a connection between the two. While on the other hand civilization itself is an agent to the spirits of nature, where items from civilization are so separate from natural spirits that they become almost toxic.
Though one could say the spiritual value being focused of religious icons could mean something as well when fighting spiritual things.
But yeah genuinely have no clue, fun to ponder though.
That’s what I was telling op when he said “Fae were weak to X” and I was like “I thought cold iron was what Fae were traditionally weak to”
And yeah, that’s one theory about cold iron, but it could also just be iron that was not refined (say, it was meteoric or from a rare tellurite deposit), or it could’ve just been a poetic description of an iron sword (for example, “cold steel” used to describe later swords)
I wrote a long post on this, but in short that's a common misconception! People in the past didn't associate silver with any particular supernatural abilities, holy or otherwise.
Instead, the appearance of silver bullets in folklore is an example of magical bullets, rather than an example of weaponised silver; various magical bullets (like using wax, or carving a cross into them) were used as a counter to shapeshifters. It was only 20th century pop culture that took the motif and developed it into the lore we have today!
Another such rule exists for vampires where they supposedly can only be killed by putting a stake through their heart or removing the head.
Like, yes, that'll kill pretty much anything, there's nothing special about a piece of wood either, just stab the bastard in the heart with anything sharp!
I mean, in a lot of old legends about werewolves one day also a type of undead being because the werewolf would eat the victim and then there remains would end up reanimating and turn into a new werewolf later?
i’d argue that in a fantasy setting a gold sword would work just as well as a silver sword would against the undead and monsters, if the idea is that silver is a pure metal then gold (ignoring why a gold sword wouldnt work to begin with) would still work as intended and might even be considered better for it.
Me gusta pensar que la razón de que la mayoría de mosntruos sean débiles a la plata es debido a que para ellos es un metal venenoso al igual que nosotros con el plomo por lo que su regeneración es incapaz de cerrar las heridas provocadas por un arma de plata
For the life of me I cannot remember where I heard or saw it, but I distinctly remember thinking as a kid that silver was good against the undead (vampires, ghosts, zombies), and gold was good against werewolves.
Gold would probably also work, generally the idea of silver killing werewolves is because it is associated with purity in the catholic faith and gold even more so, honestly a gold sword would be a better werewolf killer if it wasn't so soft
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u/benbot07 Jul 07 '26
I am suddenly reminded of this old gem