Sword Familiar

The Sword Familiar (剣魔 （インテリジェンスソード), Sword Familiar^?) 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.

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 changes in appearance one last time with the blade changing to a deep blue color that glows blue to blue-green and with the tip of the blade becoming pointed instead of rounded off. In this state, it also deals damage when moving to a new attack location, leaving a trail in the air when it does so. At level 70 it changes its method of attack, instead of its original attacking method of attempting to fly near enemies, which is usually very inaccurate, and slicing in a circle, 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. In The Dracula X Chronicles port of Symphony of the Night, the sword does not turn blue at level 60, and it does not deal damage when passing through enemies.

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.

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 1-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 a +ATK 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 ATK +50 are the Saturn Jewel Sword with at least a Garnet and Opal equipped (maximum of ATK +79 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 ATK +999 rather than ATK +99, though this would require more than a million blood heals to achieve. Even at its weakest equipable 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 they normally cannot and increase their percentage game complete 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's still a fairly useful guardian soul, randomly attacking enemies every once in a while. The only other familiar in this game in 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 can only be found near the very end of the game, in the Chaotic Realm. The first one is found a little bit before Soma reaches the second Save Room. If the player has collected all souls, the Chaos Ring can be found in a room adjacent to this one as well.

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, though. It also gains one level for every three Alastor souls Soma obtains, up to three. It becomes stronger each time it levels up.

There are a lot more familiars to choose from in this game compared to the previous one (Bat Familiar, Corpseweed Familiar, Mini Devil Familiar, Quetzalcoatl Familiar, Great Armor Familiar, Needle Familiar, Harpy Familiar and Gaibon Familiar).

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.

Item Data

Item Data: Sword Familiar
Image	Name - Game   Type - Users Description	Attributes / Consume	Statistics / Sell	Found	Notes
	Sword Card (Essence of Magic Sword) - Symphony of the Night   Relic (Familiar) - Alucard				[edit]
	Summons "Sword" familiar	Attrib: Cut	ATT +5 (below level 70), ATT +10 (at least level 70)	Find: Olrox's Quarters (requires Bat Form); found in a different location in the original Japanese and the DXC versions
	Sword Familiar (jpn) - Symphony of the Night   Familiar, Sword - Alucard				[edit]
	Sentient sword familiar Leveled up magic sword that chooses its owner	Attrib: Cut	ATT + Level of Sword (50 through 99)	Find: Becomes available once Sword Familiar has reached level 50	Effect: Disables Sword Familiar activation and Sword Brothers spell when equipped
	Sword Brothers (Hundred Swords) - Symphony of the Night   Spell - Alucard				[edit]
	Summons Sword Brothers	Attrib: Cut Consume: 30 MP	ATT +20	Buy: $6,000 Find: Obtain the Sword Familiar. Then either purchase Magic Scroll 8 (DXC-only) or successfully perform the action (...)	Sequence: With Sword Familiar press ↓↘→↗↑ (hold), ↓ + [Attack] Effect: Damages all enemies on screen
	Alastor - Alastor Familiar - Aria of Sorrow   Guardian Soul - Soma				[edit]
	Summons "ALASTOR" familiar. (Summons "ALASTOR" the spellmaster.)	Attrib: Sword Consume: 3 MP/sec	25 ATK	Drop: Alastor
	Alastor - Alastor Familiar - Dawn of Sorrow   Guardian Soul - Soma				[edit]
	Summon Alastor as a familiar.	Attrib: Slashing Consume: 5 MP/sec		Rarity: ** Drop: Alastor

Animations

Sword Familiar from Symphony of the Night

Alastor soul from Aria of Sorrow

Alastor soul from Dawn of Sorrow

See also

• Symbiotic Swords (weapons)
• Swords (weapon class)
• Bloody Sword, Alastor, Spectral Sword, Shadow (enemies)