"Welcome... hopelessly lost souls. To the beginning of your journey. You've been chosen to conquer this world where past and future fuse. Your trial awaits: Complete the room of swords. And open the gate to freedom."
Room of Swords is a fantasy web comic by Toonimated. It follows a group of people all from different time periods that wake up in a strange land who are told by a voice from the sky to find the "room of swords" and restore it to open the gate to freedom. The comic makes use of limited animation and music to tell the story.
It can be found here.
This Webcomic provides examples of:
- Amnesiac Hero: Gyrus, Tori, and Sylvia all woke up in a strange landscape with no idea of how they got there. It's implied that every human in the "realms" started out like this.
- Armor Is Useless: Tori is wearing plate armor but gets just as hurt as the others who wear "regular" clothing.
- The Assimilator: Don can assimilate the boss swords and the souls of the ones who carry them, regaining their abilities.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Two after she's acquired a Boss Sword has become even bigger. And then, there's the Shadow Boss.
- Becoming the Mask: Zig-Zagged with Don. He's not good at pretending to be nice because a part of him is nice. He's good at pretending to be nice because he just needs to act like the man he used to be.
- Big Eater: Sylvia the cave-girl, to the point where her Breaking Point "Hunger Strike" is to grow in size and become a Little Bit Beastly in accordance with food she eats.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Don. Even when it was just him, Gyrus, and Masiosare, he always ended up being the one to backstab Gyrus in the end.
- Brought Down to Normal:
- Gyrus is implied to be this, as all the experienced characters imply that he was once The Ace or even the leader of their group before his disappearance and amnesia. His original Cowardly Lion nature shocks Kodya, who apparently used to look up to him.
- Seems to be turning into Brought Down to Badass as, due to being a Determinator and Magnetic Hero, as well as shrugging off the effects of the Shadow Monsters latent Killing Intent.
- Clarke's Third Law:
- Tori, being from the Middle-Ages, refers to Gyrus' 26th Century technology as "Witchcraft".
- Becomes somewhat muddled when Gyrus starts developing telekinetic powers in addition to his tech.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Nephthys comes off as this due to her vague clairvoyant "feelings" and Intimate Healing tactics.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Gyrus is green, Tori red, Sylvia pink, Kodya blue, Nephthys indigo/purple, and enemies are light purple. This is shown in both their respective text colors, and the color that their Power Glows.
- In Season 2, Don is orange. Masiosare has green and black.
- Crisis Catch And Carry: Gyrus does this often using his Rocket Boots.Nephthys: That's the second time I've fallen into your arms today, love!
- Cute Bruiser: Sylvia is a Rose-Haired Sweetie. She can also lift several tons, catch boulders, and physically restrain Tori, all while still being rather cheerful and affectionate to others.
- Death of Personality: Being killed in a realm without a boss sword basically resets you to how you were when you first arrived, no matter how long you've been around. Not to bad for people who are just starting but for older warriors it can be pretty devastating.
- This is the ultimate fate of Masiosare, who is "killed" by Gyrus taking his body back from his future self's mind.
- Despair Event Horizon: Masiosare is a possible future of Gyrus where he experienced this, deciding to just end the Room of Swords and everyone in it to stop Don.
- Dual Boss: Two gains the ability to break off a duplicate of herself when she gets the Boss Sword.
- Enemy Within: Gyrus. The kid has a shadow stuck inside his head. This become a major problem after the shadow gets out and starts destroying the blackbox.
- Everyone Is Bi: Or at least varying in levels of Ambiguously Bi about the only people whose sexuality can be easily pined down are Anan, very straight, or Aleister who will literally sexually harass everyone he meets.
- Fantasy Character Classes: Every main character has a class relating to their life before the room. Sylvia is a barbarian, Gyrus is a mage, Tori is a knight, Kodya is a ranger, and Nephthys is the priest.
- Fiery Redhead: Tori. Later this becomes a very literal trope as her power is to be able to control and even become fire. She can set her hair on fire as a kind of warm up to be ready.
- Fission Mailed: Done towards the end of Season 2 as part of Feather's Breaking Point: Bad Trip, which temporarily traps Don, who perceives time as far longer than it actually is as part of it—complete with a false season ending and a fake advert. The false comment section sees Don, Feather, and Masiosare commenting, with the latter telling Feather to let Don go.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Kodya has a habit of swearing in Russian, while Nephthys often swears by Egyptian gods.
- Future Me Scares Me: Masiosare, the entity behind everyone's appearance in the Room of Swords, is a potential future of Gyrus where he stopped caring about others in his quest to destroy Don and the Room of Swords.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Gyrus struggles at first to use his powers or other mechanics of this world.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Episode titles are all song lyrics.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Being a cave-girl, Sylvia's dialogue is represented in emojis, which all other characters seem to understand just fine. Her real name is portrayed as a heart, music note, and exclamation-mark side by side, which can apparently be shortened to "Slyvia".
- Ironic Echo: One of Tori's first thoughts upon meeting Gyrus is that he shouldn't be too hard to defeat if he betrays her. When they meet again after her death-induced amnesia and his Training from Hell, her immediate thought is that he'd be difficult to beat if he turned on her.
- Kiss of Life: Nephthys can heal people via kissing, which causes some embarrassment when she starts using it on people without explaining what she's really doing beforehand.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
- While Gyrus was the weakest off the party starting out, he quickly becomes one of the stronger members after learning how to control his powers. He is still outshined by Koydas's experience and Sylvia's super strength.
- Taken even further with Gyrus' breaking point, allowing him to control all matter and energy at close range. Double for the fact that it takes longer then normal limit breaks to master.
- In the end, we learn that Masiosare—the godlike entity that invited everyone to the Room in the first place—is actually a possible future of Gyrus.
- Literal Split Personality: Xinju's ability is to split himself into 6 chakra clones. He blames Gyrus for losing his seventh, the heart chakra clone. His heart chakra clone, Hinju/Serdtse, actually survived, but is currently in hiding from Don. They reunite into Ainju during the endgame of Season 2.
- Magnetic Hero:
- Kodya believes Gyrus to be this after he easily recruited Tori and Sylvia twice after Kodya had apparently failed at doing the same multiple times.
- Nephthys Lampshades this by pointing out how Kodya's gruff and cynical nature might explain this better than any special qualities Gyrus might have.
- Marshmallow Hell: An unarmed Kodya is imprisoned in this courtesy of the giant monster Two, much to his vocal disgust.Kodya: Okay, this is it: I've died and gone to Hell.
- Meaningful Name:
- A "Gyrus" is a part of the brain that increases cognitive function, while "Gyruss" is a 1980's space-themed arcade game. He is a Badass Bookworm astronaut.
- "Tori" is derived from "Victoria", the name of a notable British Queen, and means "triumph". She is a medieval knight who desperately wishes to protect her Queen.
- "Sylvia" means "of the wild". She is a Stone Age cave-girl with an animal motif.
- "Kodya" (or "Koyla") is a Russian name meaning "victory of the people" or "victorious warrior". He is a jaded fighter who swears in Russian.
- "Nephthys" is the name of an Egyptian goddess of protection. She is a priestess from Ancient Egypt who was ultimately unable to protect her people from war, despite her healing and prophecies.
- Mental World: The Black Box, though it's also a good deal more than that.
- Mini-Boss: Two and Three are considered the mini bosses or "Wardens" of the area, and serve as the lieutenants to One.
- Mr. Fanservice: Both Gyrus and Koyda get some time shirtless or with some massive Clothing Damage, Koyda especially.
- Ms. Fanservice: Most of the female cast wears a Form-Fitting Wardrobe and get a couple of fanservice scenes, mostly Tori. Averted with Tori's "No. Just… No" Reaction to being offered a Chainmail Bikini that's supposedly a piece of very high-level armor.
- Not What It Looks Like: A Running Gag is Gyrus' actions being mistaken for perversion or blatant flirting. Notably; Tori waking up to him on top of her* , trying to get Tori to wear a Chainmail Bikini (it was a very high-level piece of armor), and calling Nephthys his "dream girl" (he'd recently had a prophetic dream she featured in).
- One-Winged Angel: As he starts to reabsorb the boss swords, Don starts to live up to his "cockroach king" epithet.
- Oubliette: The Room of Swords is a prison for Don.
- Permadeath: If you are killed by a shadow monster, you don't respawn, memories or otherwise. Chapter 54 reveals this is because those slain by shadows become shadows themselves. As it turns out, even this death isn't strictly final, since Gyrus is able to pull Kodya back at great cost; but everyone else, even the shadow monsters, thought it was.
- Personality Powers: People in this world tend to develop special abilities after handling a Boss Sword, and they tend to line up with the type of person they are.
- The Power of Love: What allows Nephthys to see a future that Masiosare could not, even after hijacking her foresight.
- Power Glows: Fairly often the case. Anyone who has gotten enough "Ruin" will start sporting Glowing Eyes too.
- Reality Warper: Don, though he can't manipulate anything beyond the three dimensions he's presently in. The boss swords are fragments of Don's power mixed with Masiosare's, which is why they grant the powers they do. Speaking of which: Masiosare is a future of Gyrus with absolute control over the Black Box, with powers over spacetime mastered.
- Respawn Point: To an extent, all humans have Resurrective Immortality, but lose their progress, items, and any memories made since their original time period in the process. These side-effects can be avoided if you're killed by a Boss Sword, but then you're stuck with everything from your previous life, including the sword still stabbing you.
- This is later revealed to be the result of Mental Time Travel—namely, stabbing yourself with the sword restores you and your mind at your past self's location in an alternate timeline.
- Ret-Gone: Season 3 introduced the character [Redacted], whose appearance is a dark grey silhouette with a black box censoring their face. People in-universe see an actual person with an actual name, it's just the audience who doesn't get to know [Redacted]'s identity. The implication is that at some point in the future their identity becomes retroactively erased.
- Robot Buddy: Scout serves as this for Gyrus.
- Robotic Reveal: Maria is revealed to be a human mind in a robotic body after a dragon knocks her head off.
- Stable Time Loop: Masiosare, the entity behind everyone's summoning to the Room of Swords, is a potential future of Gyrus that spent years manipulating the probabilities of Gyrus's future to ensure his own existence—the result of Gyrus reaching a Despair Event Horizon and deciding to annihilate the Room of Swords and everyone in it as a way of preventing Don from controlling the Black Box. Then defied: Nephthys finds a future that Masiosare could not, resulting in Gyrus's present self taking over and killing him.
- Stalked by the Bell: The Black Sun in the sky disappears in about 36 hours on every Voyage (though some take longer than others). The smaller amount of time is left, the moreShadow Monsters appear, and if the characters are still present when time is up, it's Game Over.
- Stock Video Game Puzzle: Lampshaded heavily. Three hid his half of the Boss Sword using one, resulting in Two mocking him for his obsession with "stupid puzzles" when it is found.
- Super-Speed: This and lightning powers are Ragan's two abilities.
- Sword of Plot Advancement: The Boss Swords. They need to be stolen from a Boss to win, are necessary to channel a Breaking Point before it kills the user, and are the only way to escape Laser-Guided Amnesia upon death.
- Tastes Like Friendship: Sylvia is very appreciative of people who give her food.
- Tsundere: Tori is initially hostile to Gyrus and Sylvia upon their respective first meetings, but develops camaraderie over time.
- Kodya treats Gyrus in a similar fashion due to a bitter history between the two.
- Wham Episode: Sylvia is impaled, Tori is abandoned while Chained to a Rock in front of a murderous Boss, and Kodya stabs Gyrus in the back with his own sword when he futilely tries to go back and save her. Then? Gyrus wakes up, memories and stab wound still intact.
- Later, in Season 2, we learn that Masiosare is a potential future of Gyrus that has been manipulating probability to ensure his existence and be able to destroy the Room of Swords in its entirely (including everyone summoned to it)...and he's finally reached the point where he can make his move.
- Wingdinglish: Sylvia, being a cavewoman, uses a variant instead of the language everyone else does: Emoji-lish. The Shadows use a more traditional version.
- The Worf Effect:
- Sylvia Neck Lifts Tori (who'd just cut Three in half) within minutes of meeting her.
- Two kills One (who had previously killed all the human characters) after getting a Boss Sword.
- "X" Marks the Hero: Tori has a small, x-shaped scar on her right cheek. It somewhat varies from panel to panel for other characters, and minor injuries after a battle are often portrayed as this.
