"The Sword of Good" is a short story by rationalist writer Eliezer Yudkowsky. The protagonist is a man named Hirou, an avid fantasy reader and thrown into the beginning of a fundamentally generic quest to save a fantasy realm he has been thrust into. With his partners, Selena and Dolf, he must defeat the Lord of Dark and his Evil Races. And so Hirou, using everything he has learned from his hobby, must save the realm while toying with fantasy tropes along the way.
Can be read here
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"The Sword of Good" contains examples of:
- Always Save the Girl: Discussed early, and defied. Selena takes offense at the fact that Hirou evidently doesn't love her enough to choose her over the world. He doesn't understand why she can't be rational about it.Selena opened her mouth, then closed it again. Sudden hurt showed in her eyes.
"Oh come on!" Hirou exclaimed. He was too shocked, in that brief critical moment, even to think of smoothing it over. "Have some common sense, Selena! The whole world?" - Armor-Piercing Question: What the Lord of Dark uses to make Hirou change sides: "What wrong have I done?"
- Artifact Domination: The Sword of Good compels its (true) wielder to act for The Greater Good as soon as possible. Bad news is, 'Good' does not mean 'honorable', 'loving', or 'wise', and so the sword Mind Rapes Hiro into betraying his party - because they're actually assholes.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Pirate she may be, Selena's last words are exasperated despair at Hiro's apparently spontaneous total betrayal of the forces of Good.
- Big Bad: Vhazhar, The Lord of Dark, leader of the Evil Races who oppose the heroes and seeks immortality seems to be this, but is trying to overthrow The Empire. The real villain is Dolf, the wizard within the party who is the Archmage of the Empire.
- Concepts Are Cheap: The wielder of the Sword of Good must Choose between Good and Evil. The Lord of Dark commands the Bad Races of Evilland and plans to cast the Spell of Infinite Doom which will destroy the Equilibrium that keeps the forces of nature in order. Each and every one of those terms are eventually subverted and brutally broken on the ground. The Choice isn't about saying "Good" but deciding what actually is good. The "Bad Races" and "Evilland" are targets of propaganda to justify an invasion by the humans, and has done little evil beyond defending themselves and fighting back, while the Lord got his name from the humans because he sided against them. And the Equilibrium, fancy as it sounds, is just an excuse to maintain systemic social injustice where the rich and powerful exploit the poor and weak. The spell is just the means to break it down so good people have a chance to make things better.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Hirou realizes in the climax that the unfortunately titled "Lord of Dark", leader of the likewise poorly named "Bad Races" are actually not evil, just misunderstood.
- Defied Trope: The main character vows to himself:"...he absolutely positively wasn't going to go Dark Messiah, Knight Templar, Well-Intentioned Extremist, or for that matter Lawful Stupid."
- Designated Evil:
- In-Universe, the Lord of Dark's use of a Wormarium, which artificially extends his life by draining the Liquid Assets of a pit of worms, is seen as a sign of great evil. But as he points out when confronted with this, it's objectively no worse than slaughtering cattle to make food.
- Literally, in the case of the "Lord of Dark" and the "Bad Races".
- The Empire: Who the “heroes” are working for.
- Entitled Bastard: Selena outright states that she expects to be rewarded with titles, riches, and pardons for her past crimes, as well as be made queen by Hirou's side. The fact that he, in a strictly hypothetical scenario, says he would choose to save the world over her life, is something she treats as an unforgivable snub and proof that he doesn't love her. She also treats her lover's death as a truly unforgivable act but seemingly has never spared a single thought for the dozens of people she's killed herself.
- Eye Scream: Selena disposes of a courier's bodyguards with a poniard through the eye directly into the brain.
- Genre Savvy: Hirou was an avid fantasy reader before he was Trapped in Another World, which he puts to good use to defy several Anti-Hero tropes.
- Gold Digger: Selena expects to be rewarded handsomely for her part in saving the world, with riches and a noble title and the position of being Hirou's lover. She used to be a pirate with apparently no compunctions about other people's well-being as long as she filled her coffers, so greed comes naturally to her.
- Heel–Face Turn: Or possibly the other way around. Alek the thief is mentioned by the intercepted courier to be searching for a vital artifact on behalf of the antagonists. A Time Skip later, he's with the protagonists and Selena's lover, implying they convinced him to switch sides.
- Holy Burns Evil: The Sword of Good immediately kills anyone who wields it who isn't good. That the Lord of Dark can do so is pretty good indication that he's the good guy, as is the fact that he wanted to do it to ensure he wasn't a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- In Medias Res: The story starts after Hiro has been and his quest has started.
- Life Drinker: The Lord of Dark, and presumably any number of other people who used Wormariums to the point that the practice has a name.
- Light Is Not Good: At the climax, Hirou realizes that the society he has seen in this alternate world is riddled with hypocrisy and injustice, and his friends (the so-called "Forces of Good") are actually agents of the malignant status quo.
- Mind Rape: Happens during the final confrontation. Upon full activation, the Sword of Good bombards Hirou with countless experiences of injustice, evil and suffering that has happened over the ages, in person. He's a girl being raped by her father, an innocent being sentenced for a crime they did not commit, a mother watching her child draw their last breath, freezing to death, starving, burning, having their limbs crushed, and more. Calling it harrowing does not do it justice.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Hirou feels that way after Lord of Dark forces him to confront the reality of his mission and the crimes he and his allies committed. His first thought afterwards is wishing the Sword had killed him.
- Non-Action Guy: Hirou starts out as this, though by the end has accepted using the sword when he kills Dolf.
- Omniscient Morality License: The Sword of Good itself, and its dedication to the Greater Good. To be fair, it has evidence to back up its philosophy - mountains upon mountains of historical data of hideous atrocities stored in its memory. Which it then forcefully jams into its wielder to make its point of "kill your friends because they're evil and you're in denial and this proves it".
- Prophecy Twist: The Lord of Dark argues this — the relevant prophecy has the Hero make a pivotal Choice between Good and Bad. Hirou understandably wonders why anyone would choose Bad, but the Lord of Dark argues the Choice is between deciding which alternative is the Good and which is the Bad.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality:
- An In-Universe example: Selena expects to be greatly rewarded and honored (and fashions herself as the Love Interest and future queen) for her part in the heroic quest, despite her past criminal acts as a pirate - acts she neither feels remorse over or intends to atone for. She also murders the courier's two bodyguards in their sleep, as well as the courier himself after he's told them what they want to know; nobody so much as bats an eye at the act.
- During the final showdown against the Lord of Dark, he accuses the heroes of eight counts of murder - specifically, the eight "Bad Race" mooks fought in the opening. As he clarifies, they were unaware of the "heroes" and could have been circumvented easily, but the "heroes" still chose to attack - legally making it premeditated murder - because they literally didn't consider that a "villain" should get to live.
- Rightful King Returns: Hirou is the long-lost prince of the realm, which is why he's the hero of the story. Part of his Heel Realization is remembering that he believed in democracy right up until someone suggested that he was the one who deserved unchecked power just by virtue of who his parents were.
- Situational Sword: The titular sword can give The Chosen One a significant power boost as well as the ability to cut through all physical and magical defenses of those who stand in the way of good...but it also forcefully jams entire video libraries' worth of documentaries about human suffering perpetuated by humanity into the wielder's head, and then directs the wielder to cut down the nearest threat to the greater good (i.e. a high ratio between suffering inflicted by the potential target and proximity to stabbing range), regardless of their allegiance or alignment. In short, it can only be used against a perpetrator of human suffering and never against someone who seeks to alleviate human suffering.
- Sword and Sorcerer: Dolf is the sorcerer, counteracting the power of enemy mages while Selena handles the actual melee combat. Hirou later realizes that Dolf is powerful enough that he could have done all the fighting himself, and probably with lower risk to himself than Selena took on. The only reason he didn't was because she was more expendable, and therefore it was ok to use her as a meat shield.
- Torture Always Works: When Dolf threatens a courier with something that is left unmentioned, he spills his guts. Hirou later considers the fact that this is considered torture under the Geneva Convention.
- Translator Microbes: Hirou relies on a "translation spell" to understand the spoken and written languages of the world he's in. It might have a tendency toward leaving out nuance, as shown when the spell translates the sign on a building as "INN OF EXTREMELY TASTY FOOD."
- Wrong Side All Along: The "Dark Lord" was the real Big Good all along.
