Sword Familiar

The is a sword which has free will and generally attacks on its own without being wielded in its owner's hands. This is essentially an Evil Sword that helps the player instead of trying to kill them.
==Sword Familiars in Castlevania==
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night introduced the Sword Familiar. In addition to randomly slicing enemies on the screen, it had a personality: could talk, could level up and gain new abilities, including the ability to be used as a regular sword. Soma Cruz can summon a similar familiar called the Alastor Familiar in Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow by obtaining and using Alastor's soul.
==Game specific information==
===Castlevania: Symphony of the Night===
The Sword Familiar is available once Alucard finds the Sword Card in Olrox's Quarters. This card can be accessed once he can turn into a bat and is located in the room right below the one where the Olrox battle took place. However, it is not accessible from the Olrox battle room, Alucard will have to access it from a hallway that runs a bit below that room, then break the ceiling near where the Holy Water is. In the original Japanese as well as all the DXC versions, the card is found in a slightly different location within the area, namely on a pedestal in a small dead-end hallway located below the Save Room. In the English-language PlayStation version, this room contains a common Garnet instead.
The Sword Familiar becomes the active familiar when the player activates the Sword Card in the Relics menu. When it is first activated, it says: "Have you power enough to wield me?", it will then hover around and every now and then head toward an enemy, stop for a moment, and then twirl around, exclaiming "Slash!" or "Slice!" and inflicting Cut damage on anything it touches. Because it stops before attacking, if Alucard is moving it will often lag behind him, and is not very effective at this point unless he is standing still. If Alucard leaves the current room while the Sword Familiar is preparing to attack or attacking, it will attack wherever it was in relation to him in the new room.
As an offensive familiar, it benefits greatly from the Mojo Mail: at high levels it can end up dealing far more damage than Alucard himself does with this armor equipped.
As the sword levels up, it will become more powerful and aggressive. Once reaching level 50, the Sword Familiar will disappear from the screen and can now be equipped as a weapon (explained below) or reactivated in the Relics menu to continue working as a familiar. At level 50 it also changes in appearance by gaining two smaller blades on both sides of the main blade extending from the hilt. Once reaching level 60, the sword deals damage when moving to a new attack location, leaving a trail in the air when it does so (in The Dracula X Chronicles port of Symphony of the Night, the sword doesn't deal damage when passing through enemies). At level 70, it changes its method of attack, instead of its original attacking method of attempting to fly near enemies and slicing in a circle, which is usually very inaccurate, it will now quickly fly directly at an enemy, or group of enemies, damaging them and then flying into the background, then damaging the same enemies or different enemies it targets as it quickly flies back into the foreground. At level 90, the sword changes in appearance one last time, gaining a translucent light blue add-on over its blade. In the Saturn version, the Sword Familiar does not get the blue add-on on its blade when reaching level 90, probably due to that console's limitation with transparency; as such, it's permanently stuck in its level 50 appearance; however, it does gain an electric blue aura that creates afterimages as the sword moves along.
The Sword Familiar is the only familiar which can use a spell. The Sword Brothers spell is accomplished by pressing down, then rolling the directional pad 180° forward and holding up for two seconds, and then pressing down and attack at the same time. It will perform a move that damages all enemies on the screen. This will consume a hefty 30 MP, the second highest consuming spell after Soul Steal. In versions of the game where the sword gains a blue add-on over its blade at level 90, it loses that add-on during the spell animation. In the PSX version, the Sword Familiar will say, "Gather, brother soul blades!" when casting the spell. In the DXC version, he will say: "The power of all upon one!"
Once the Sword Familiar hits level 50, there will be a short animation where it travels diagonally across the screen twice with "shing" sounds, and then disappears, automatically switching off its Relic. When this happens, it can be equipped as a normal one-handed sword by equipping the new "Sword Familiar" weapon that has appeared in Alucard's inventory, or re-summoned as a familiar by turning the Sword Card Relic back on. When equipped, it has an ATT boost equal to its level. The Sword Familiar won't level up when equipped, though, and the Sword Brothers spell cannot be used while it is being held. The next time the Sword Card is activated, it will say "You have grown mighty, my master. I grant you my power."
It will almost certainly be the strongest sword in Alucard's arsenal once it can be equipped: the only swords that can potentially exceed a base of 50 ATT are the Saturn Jewel Sword with at least a Garnet and Opal equipped (maximum of 79 ATT for two Diamonds), the Badelaire if the player has more than 50 hours played, and the Muramasa if a huge number of blood heals have been achieved with it: the Muramasa is the only one that exceeds the maximum power of the Sword Familiar, since it maxes out at 999 ATT rather than 99, though this would require more than a million blood heals to achieve. Even at its weakest equippable point, it's already stronger than the Alucard Sword, the strongest constant-strength sword.
There are a series of glitches related to the Sword Brothers spell, which can allow the player to go to areas of the castle that normally cannot be accessed and increase their map percentage to levels higher than intended. Sword Brothers also allows the game to be paused in situations where it should not be possible to do so (most notably on the Master Librarian's store menu and during save operations) which allows for exploitation of an integer underflow error if the player has just one of a particular type of gem: by triggering Sword Brothers, going to the "sell gem" section of the Librarian's menu while it is active and pausing the game, the player can equip the gem, exit the pause menu and still sell it. Since this will result in selling 1 gem while having 0, the value will underflow to the maximum of 255, which can then be sold normally. Selling a huge number of gems will show hexadecimal values in the store menu rather than normal numbers, but works normally. The maximum amount of gold Alucard can have is 999,999: anything above this is lost.
===Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow===
The Alastor Familiar is essentially a watered-down version of the Sword Familiar found in Symphony of the Night. It does not talk, does not level up, cannot gain abilities, does not have a special on-call attack move and cannot be equipped. Despite this, it is still a fairly useful guardian soul, randomly attacking enemies every once in a while. The only other familiar in this game is the Imp Familiar, which can be obtained much earlier in the game, but is not nearly as good. The Alastor Familiar causes about four times more damage, consumes the same amount of MP, attacks more often and has a greater attack range.
It has two attacks: It either slowly moves toward the next enemy near it with a slow, single slash dash, or launches itself in a spin attack at high speed that deals two hits. Both attacks have the same damage power.
The Alastor Familiar can also be manipulated via the Waiter Skeleton's soul, Delicious Curry, but unlike the Imp Familiar, it does not deal damage per second while standing, making it ignore enemies.
It can only be found near the very end of the game, in the Chaotic Realm. The first one is found a little bit before reaching the second Save Room.
===Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow===
The Alastor Familiar in this game is very similar to the one found in Aria of Sorrow. It can be commanded to attack a particular enemy by pointing to that enemy with the stylus in this game. It also gains one level for every three Alastor souls Soma obtains, up to three. It becomes stronger each time it levels up.
Like in Aria of Sorrow, the Alastor soul can only be found late in the game, in the Pinnacle and the Abyss.
While Soma cannot equip this sword in his hand as in Symphony of the Night, he can use the soul that gives him this familiar to evolve a Final Sword into the most powerful and evolved great sword in the game, the Claimh Solais.
===Castlevania Judgment===
In Judgment, Summon Sword Familiar is Alucard's guard-breaking attack.
===Castlevania (animated series)===
In "For Love", Alucard uses his sword in a similar way to that of the familiar in Symphony of the Night.
On November 2, 2018, it was confirmed by series Director Samuel Deats on Twitter that Alucard's sword was based directly on the Sword Familiar.https://twitter.com/SamuelDeats/status/1058543018293239808
==Item Data==
==Quotes==
===Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PSX version)===
*"Have you power enough to wield me?" - When summoned under level 50.
*"You have grown mighty, my master. I grant you my power." - When summoned at level 50 or above.
*"Gather, brother soul blades!" - When activating the Sword Brothers spell.
===Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (DXC version)===
*"Are you worthy to wield me?" - When summoned under level 50.
*"Bravo. You must be the one foretold to wield me." - When summoned at level 50 or above.
*"The power of all upon one!" - When activating the Sword Brothers spell.
==Gallery==
===Animations===
SOTN Sword Familiar 2.gif|Sword Familiar from Symphony of the Night.
SOTN Sword Familiar.gif|Sword Familiar as one-handed weapon from Symphony of the Night.
SOTN Sword Brothers.gif|Sword Brothers from Symphony of the Night.
AoS Alastor.gif|Alastor soul from Aria of Sorrow.
DOS Alastor.gif|Alastor soul from Dawn of Sorrow.
J Summon Sword Familiar Alucard.gif|Sword Familiar from Judgment.
===Sprites===
Symphony Sword Familiar sprite (level 1).png|Castlevania: Symphony of the Night(starting level)
Symphony Sword Familiar sprite (level 50).png|Castlevania: Symphony of the Night(level 50 or above)
===Screenshots===
Sword Familiar LV 90+ Saturn.png|Sword Familiar from the Saturn version of Symphony of the Night.
Familiars GoS.png|Sword Familiar with other familiars in Grimoire of Souls.
Sword Familiar Netflix.png|Alucard in the animated series using his sword like a familiar.
==See also==
*Alastor, Bloody Sword, Shadow, Spectral Sword (enemies)
*Sword Brothers (spell)
*Swords (weapon class)
*Symbiotic Swords (weapons)
==References==
es:Sword Familiar
Category:Familiar Relics
Category:Familiars
Category:Guardian Souls
Category:Slash Damage
Category:Summoning Spells
Category:Swords
Category:The Dracula X Chronicles Items
Category:Symphony of the Night Items