The Lore of Symforá Messínis

"Ten years the King of Ithaca gave to the Trojan War. Ten more the sea kept him from his shores, a long passage of choices between the bad and the worse. The cruelest waited for him at the Strait of Messina, where the sea narrowed between two horrors, Scylla the six-headed and deathless, and Charybdis the whirlpool that breathed.

To steer toward Scylla's cliff was to accept losing six men rather than losing them all. He had been warned she could not be beaten, and he took up arms against her anyway. She took the six, and he could only watch.

The cost sailed on with him.

This lightsaber was built to carry that weight. For the base, we chose the Daemos. A snake coils around each emitter claw, the old Greek guardian of the threshold between the living and the dead, presiding over a crew bound to cross it. Just beneath, the emitter sleeve is acid-etched with motifs drawn from Odysseus' own helmet, the one that saw him through a decade of war and another decade of wandering.

Further down, the switch band marks his most agonizing hour. Six serpentine heads capture the inexorable horror of Scylla's assault, set above wave patterns that embody the crushing pull of Charybdis. From there, a composite Greek border wraps the Covertec band, its continuous Meander Pattern framing an Anthemion frieze of alternating palmettes and spiraling volutes.

Across the saber hilt, segments of copper finish are stained and weathered, giving this piece the battleworn look of a weapon that has survived twenty years of war and voyage.

Of all the sea showed him, that slaughter was the most wretched sight his eyes ever met, and for that we have christened this saber Symforá Messínis - the Disaster of Messina."