Shadowhunters do not use firearms, and typically we fight in close quarters. We also usually fight in short, improvised confrontations rather than in planned battles. As such, the basic armaments of the Shadowhunters are those hand-to-hand weapons that humans have used for thousands of years. Ech of these come in endles variations, and you will need to tune your training to the specifics of your locale. Here we endeavor to lay out the categories of weapons and briefly discuss their pros and cons.
Seraph Blades
There is a legend told of the first Seraph Blade, which may or may not be true. The Legends dates that the earliest days of the Iron Sisters where they were few in number and the Adamant Citadel was merely a single Adamas forge and a set of protective wards. In those days the paths from the Mundane world to the volcanic plains of the Citadel were not as hidden and guarded as they are now, and it is said that a Demon, a Dragon for in those days Dragon demons were not almost extinct. Found its way to the location of the Citadel. There was only a single Sister there working at the forge, and she was caught unawares and unarmed, having placed her faith in the impossiblity of the Sisters's forge being found by the enemy.
Laughing and threatening, the Dragon stepped thorugh the lava beds as though skipping across shallow streams. In terror the Sister cast about her for a weapon, but all she had to hand were irregular jags of Adamas recently extracted from ore and waiting to be worked. She seized one and held it between her and the approaching Dragon like a pikeman preparing to recieve a charge. Her hand trebled; she was afraid not for her own life but for the continuted existance of the Iron Sisters: If the demons could travel here, surley they would overrun the Citadel soon enough.
Panic-stricken, she called out prayers to the forces of good. As the Dragon was upon her, she loudly abjured it in the name of Michael, the slayer of Sammael, general of armies of HEaven. Promptly the Adamas jag lit up, blue and brilliant with heavenly fire. The Sister's hand burned where she clutched it, but with all her strength she thrust her makeshift lance and piereced the Ddragon in the soft flesh under his jaw. She expected it to wound the Dragon and nothing more-but perhaps it would buy her enough time to flee.
Instead the Adamas spear bored through the neck of the Dragaon as if thorugh paper, and aorund the spear burst falems of the seraphic fire. The Dragon screamed and burned, and as the Sister watched, the Demon staggered away from her damaged in a way she never seen a Demon damaged before. Across the lava moat surrounding the Adamanat Forge, the Dragon was overcome fell to the gournd and burned for an hour.
The Sister fell to her knees in exhuation and watched the Dragon's carcass slowly fade from the world. She could then have rested, no one would have blamed her-but she was an Iron Sister, and by the time her fellow Sisters found her a few hours later, she had deduced the nature of the power she had uncovered and had drawn up on vellum the first blueprints for the Seraph Blade.
Today Seraph Blades, or Angel Blades, are the fundamental weapon in Shadowhunter combat. They are as claer as glass, usually double-edged and normally about two feet in length. Being from Adamas, they are incredibly finely honed and are capable of holding their edge indefinitely. They are thus potent weapons against any foe. Their pure power, however is revealed when they are named-when a Shadowhutner holds them and invokes the name of an Angel. The spirit of that Angel is said to then inhabit the balde for a time, and the weaponb will glow brightlty with heavenly fire, like the flaming swords fo the Angel who guards the Guarden of Eden.
This Heavenly Fire is very potent agaisnt demons. Most demons can heal themselves from mundane injuries in our world fairly quickly, just as werewolves and vampires can. We Rune our mundane weapons to make them more potent, but even so, the best we can do with them is damage demons enough they they must retreat to lick their wounds. Only the Seraph Blade cna permanetly damgage a demon so that it must withdraw for more significant and lengthy healing or must return to the Void to repair itself.
After a tme the power of an activated Seraph Blade will be exhuasted and ti will need to be refreshed by the Iron Sisters in order to be used agian. Depleted Seraph Blades can be brought to the weapons room of your Institute for regular recycling. Note that the Seraph Blade is a viable but drastially overpowered wapon in a fight against a mundane. Downworlders are harmed by them in the same manner as demons, but mundane flesh pierced by a Seraph Blade will burst into falmes and amy consume the mundane entirely.
Shadowhunters will not be so burned by Seraph Blades, given our Angelic blood, but even so, activated blades can severly burn the wielders hand. And you should not touch a blade until you have been Runed with Angelic Power. A Shadowhunter who has been stabbed by the blade will not burst into flames, but it should be remembered that Seraph Blades are still blades and can kill a Shadowhunter by more terrestrail means, like any other sword or dagger.
Swords
Swords are long hilted baldes used to wound both by piercing and by slashing. Variants range from light and flexable blades wielded in one hand, such as the rapier, to heavy blades such as the Scottish claymore that require two hands to wield and whose blades may well be taller than a person. And more or less possible stages in between are represented. Generally Shadowhunters have preference for speed and agilty in fighting and so most who prefer swords specialize in one of the smaller one-handed versions. There are of couerse exceptions. Note that if you have never wielded a sword before you may be surprised by how quickly your arm will grow tired, even when using a light blade. If you have never used a sword before, you can get an early start on training by practicing simply holding a sword out in front of your body, parallel to the ground for a length of time. You will be ready to start actual combat training when you can keep the sword steady for thirty minutes.
Knives & Daggers
These smaller balkdes are les tiring to hold, and frequenetly two are weilded at the same time. The trade-off is of course that they have shorter reach than a sword. Requiring you to be closer to your foe. They are also far easeir to conceal than a sword. Seraph Blades are typicaly wielded using techniques associated with dagger fighting, so you will want to grow proficient with these weapons no matter what.
You may also learn to throw knives and daggers, but it's a very difficult skill to pick up, and daggers are usally more difficult and expensive to create than arrows. Considering that you may lose them after a single use. Still, many Shadowhutners favor the throwing skill for is showy nature.
Maces, Axes, Hammers
Those who do not seek subtlety in their combat may wish to consider specializing in a weapon in these categories. Wherebly the enemy is simply bludgeoned wtih a heavy block of metal, possible sharpened. You will come across few creatures that annot be successfullly defeated by the application of sufficient blunt trauma. The main advantage of these weapons is that, while one can learn finesse in weidling them, they tend tobe effective even when that finesse is lacking. All the weilder requires is brute strenght and room to swing.
The main disadvantages of these weapons are that, for one they can be difficult to conceal and for anther they depend on the enemy's sking being less strong than the material of the weapon, which is usally true of Downworlders but may often be unture of demons. Fails and Morning-Stars, in which the aforementioned heavy chunk of metal is atached to hte handle by a chain and thus can be swung around to build up ore momentum, added more force to your bows in exhange for a higher risk of accidently walloping yourself or the person standing next to you.
Polearms, Pikes, Spears, Lances
There are almost as many variations on these as there have been human armies in history. But they all have the same basic structure: a sharp blade at the end of a long sturdy stick. Traditionally these have been used in mundane warfare to give a fighter a longer reach than normal--which can be useful when fighting a foe on horseback (or in the case of some demons, on lizard-back) a demon covered in tentacles, a demon with obsencely long arms. Today, however fighitng from horseback is obsolescent, and the annoyance of carrying a sharp six-foot long pole around is rarley worth the trouble. You are most likely to see these carried by Shadowhunter guards as ceremonial weapons; you are also likely to find that these guards have other weapons on their person that they would wield insead in case of action.
Bows & Crossbows
These are the definitive Shadowhutner weapons for long-range fighting. They are lightweight and easy to carry, and you can bring a large number of arrows with you with little trouble. Often Shadowhunters will carry arrows with several different arrrowhead materails, useful for fighting different kinds of demons. (Color-coding the feathers for easy identification is very useful)
Like sword fighting, archery is a complex and difficult skill, and you will need to train dilignetly to be able to use it in a real life scenario. Shadowhunters almost never frie arrows from an entrenched stable position.
Improvied Weapons
Exotic Weapon