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Hi there Dakkanauts,

I stumbled today on pictures of a splendid Grey Knight Strike Squad, and I wondered once more where this blue hue comes from. Since I don't have an answer beside the usual "power field" thing, I thought maybe more knowledgeable people do : what do in-universe depictions of power/force weapons tell us ?
Does it represent flickering electric arcs coursing on the weapon (as seen in DoW) ? Is the very metal "blue-hot" in reaction to the power channeled through it ? Is it just an artistic convention used because it looks good ?

The latter i think, with a subtle headnod to lightsaber blue glow

Personally, I feel that power weapons work by somehow forcing the edge to be mono-moleculer.

Meaning that it, litreally, can cut through anything.

Actually, powerweapons are superior to mono-molecular weapons. A "monoedge" weapon has an edge that is one molecule thick. This does offer good armor-penetration, but is not the same as the powerfield, which disrupts matter on a molecular level and, basically, blows it apart.

But what makes it blue ? That was the question being asked , i think?

Your answer:

Heh, works for me

Hyd wrote:Hi there Dakkanauts,

I stumbled today on pictures of a splendid Grey Knight Strike Squad, and I wondered once more where this blue hue comes from. Since I don't have an answer beside the usual "power field" thing, I thought maybe more knowledgeable people do : what do in-universe depictions of power/force weapons tell us ?
Does it represent flickering electric arcs coursing on the weapon (as seen in DoW) ? Is the very metal "blue-hot" in reaction to the power channeled through it ? Is it just an artistic convention used because it looks good ?

They're described as gold in a couple of the books. But blue weapons look cool so that's how they get painted.

I believe its the power field causing the distortion of light. Color can vary.

Force Weapons are described as arcing with electricity although thats usually from the Psychic channeling.

Lightining Claws generate high voltage in addition to the powerfield.

Argen Tal from The First Heretic has swords of red Iron that are clearly power weapons, but they still remain their same color. Then again, in most of the guard novels involving power weapons, when they hit the activation rune, it can be described as powering up and glowing in some instances.

Basically it's whatever the author feels like making them

You want the science?

Allegedly a plasma field could be projected around the blade (hence the glow) and contained around the weapon by internal magnets.

When swung against an object. The plamsa field at the local impact site would become super heated and allow the weapon to cut through, and this happens for a fraction of a second or however long it takes to cut through the object.

Its akin to a light saber in terms of the impact effects (sparks, melted metal or seered flesh at the impact zone etc)

Science for a fiction weapon! for the Omnissiah!

there are also multiple types of power weapons.


Eisinhorn even has a particularly rare type that does exactly what a lightsabre does with no physical blade.

Power Weapon is really just a slang word for melee weapons that penetrate most types of body armor with little to no resistance.


I have also heard that some PWs use a field that causes moleculer bonds within the field to weaken significantly, allowing the physical blade to more easily cut through the target. essentially it destabilizes the target matter enough to where the blade passes through effortlessly. the bonds reform when the field is removed as its only temporary destabilization.

Then there is the plasma field and the lightsabre design.

Power Klaws ignore armor because of brute strength.

Bloodletter Hellblades ignore armor because they are extremely sharp by virtue of being daemonic.

Well the GK weapons are force weapons and have a crystal blade. If you look in C:SM you will see.PWs with metal blades and a.gold electrode. That is how PWs should look but ever since GK came out everyone thinks that is how they should be painted.

Engine of War wrote:You want the science?

Allegedly a plasma field could be projected around the blade (hence the glow) and contained around the weapon by internal magnets.

When swung against an object. The plamsa field at the local impact site would become super heated and allow the weapon to cut through, and this happens for a fraction of a second or however long it takes to cut through the object.

Its akin to a light saber in terms of the impact effects (sparks, melted metal or seered flesh at the impact zone etc)

Science for a fiction weapon! for the Omnissiah!

Neat and very plausible explanation - sadly wasted on WH40k, of course.

English Assassin wrote:

Engine of War wrote:You want the science?

Allegedly a plasma field could be projected around the blade (hence the glow) and contained around the weapon by internal magnets.

When swung against an object. The plamsa field at the local impact site would become super heated and allow the weapon to cut through, and this happens for a fraction of a second or however long it takes to cut through the object.

Its akin to a light saber in terms of the impact effects (sparks, melted metal or seered flesh at the impact zone etc)

Science for a fiction weapon! for the Omnissiah!

Neat and very plausible explanation - sadly wasted on WH40k, of course.

That.

The universe of 40k is basically ridiculous. All attempts to make rational sense out of are therefor doomed to futility. The best explanation of how any machine works in the 40k universe is the one that the mechanicum believes in: because the machine-god wills it. The older fluff was better in this regard. It had marines praying to their bolters and stuff like that because they literally thought that there was a spirit inside of it that made the gun work. If it jammed, it was a manifestation of that spirit's displeasure. Perhaps the marine's spirit was burdened by some secret sin which angered its spirit, causing the gun to jam? etc etc. Even the mechanicum basically doesn't know how their stuff works. All they can do is follow the steps laid out in the holy technical manuals. Since they're all basically a bunch of savages who believe in ridiculous mumbo jumbo, the secrets of technology in 40k are basically inscruitable. Nobody in the 41st millenium even knows how half this stuff works.

I could have sworn it was supposed to be raw, unpainted ceramite, which just looks like that...

IRT the Machine-Spirit, I've considered the possibility that, despite the AdMech ban on artificial intelligences (Silica Animus, as they call them), most of their STC-based technologies actually do contain some sort of basic AI, which can display personality traits, likes and dislikes, and so on.

Vendetta 476 wrote:Personally, I feel that power weapons work by somehow forcing the edge to be mono-moleculer.

Meaning that it, litreally, can cut through anything.

That wouldn't help at all, as the blade itself is NOT monomolecular. The edge could pass through stuff, but the rest of the blade would get jammed.

Kaldor wrote:

Vendetta 476 wrote:Personally, I feel that power weapons work by somehow forcing the edge to be mono-moleculer.

Meaning that it, litreally, can cut through anything.

That wouldn't help at all, as the blade itself is NOT monomolecular. The edge could pass through stuff, but the rest of the blade would get jammed.

Not being condencending.

But by that logic, every single weapon ever made will always get stuck whenever someone slashes or staps someone else.

Personally, I feel that power weapons work by somehow forcing the edge to be mono-moleculer.

Meaning that it, litreally, can cut through anything.


That wouldn't help at all, as the blade itself is NOT monomolecular. The edge could pass through stuff, but the rest of the blade would get jammed.

This!

That people simply cannot grasp why a mono edged sword will NOT cut through metal puzzles me.

Well, it's not exactly that, since the wedge-form of the blade does help, to an extent, though against heavy armor plate or otherwise resistant materials, the weapon would still get stuck, as the wedge of the expanding blade-thickness would not be able to press apart the tank's hull it's trying to slash through.

Vendetta 476 wrote:

Kaldor wrote:

Vendetta 476 wrote:Personally, I feel that power weapons work by somehow forcing the edge to be mono-moleculer.

Meaning that it, litreally, can cut through anything.

That wouldn't help at all, as the blade itself is NOT monomolecular. The edge could pass through stuff, but the rest of the blade would get jammed.

Not being condencending.

But by that logic, every single weapon ever made will always get stuck whenever someone slashes or staps someone else.

Most of them will. Thats why you have to swing them hard, and it's why blades are often very thin.

At first you're slicing the two sides of a thing apart, but almost immediately you're forcing those two sides apart as you drive the thickness of the blade into the cut you've created. And here we have the age-old dilemma of weapon making: Thinner blades cut better, but are light and have no weight. Thicker blades are heavy and hit with great force, but don't cut as well.

Psienesis wrote:IRT the Machine-Spirit, I've considered the possibility that, despite the AdMech ban on artificial intelligences (Silica Animus, as they call them), most of their STC-based technologies actually do contain some sort of basic AI, which can display personality traits, likes and dislikes, and so on.

It doesn't even need to have an AI for that sort of explanation to make sense. You ever use an old car, or an old computer? The way all sorts of things don't work just right, or if you want them to work, you need to know how to fiddle it just so to get it to do what you want? Where the only person who really knows how to make it work is its owner, who's internalized every little quirk and procedure?

Imagine that, on a machine the size of a city block, and it's 1,000 years old.

(Some machines also do have at least a rudimentary AI. Ships, land raiders, Titans.)

Though in RL, a mono-molecular blade would be uselessly fragile. Also I tend to the of power weapons like this, the field around them disrupts matter so that foot of concrete and steel is as sturdy as a foot of cardboard. So build life-sized models of tanks and then use an actual, sharpened sword/hammer/over-sized fist to go through it ;D

In my minds eye, no matter what form the blade's field looks like, the distortion of matter by the field makes things struck by a power field run molten, not through heat but through molecular disruption.

Imagine a really hot object coming near butter, the butter loses its form & just sloughs away from the edge of the hot object.

Well the GK weapons are force weapons and have a crystal blade. If you look in C:SM you will see.PWs with metal blades and a.gold electrode. That is how PWs should look but ever since GK came out everyone thinks that is how they should be painted.

I know it sounds dickish to say it like this, but contrary to popular belief, "copying Grey Knights" is not the basis behind everything. I have been painting metallic blue power weapon blades for 15 years. the tru gaming convention is that it makes them look cool (always the most important), and that it's easy to spot them on the table if they are different from normals blades.

Dure there is the odd bloke like yourself, but never in GW display models. C:SM has actual metal blades.

Some people don't seem to understand mono-molecular either. A milk jug is mono-molecular. It doesn't cut through very much.

A milk jug is not a single molecule thick edge sir.

mrwhoop wrote:A milk jug is not a single molecule thick edge sir.

it is ...thats how they make the cow liquid !