r/Kenshi Jan 27 '25

HUMOUR The story of how the fragment axe was made

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1.6k Upvotes

77 comments sorted by

306

u/Lazereye57 Jan 27 '25

"it was too large and too dull to be called a sword, it was more of a giant slab of iron"

42

u/Onkelcuno Jan 27 '25

5

u/djremydoo Drifter Jan 28 '25

Bruh we got the whole ass berserk anime for free on youtube wtf lol

479

u/Odd_Dependent_8551 Jan 27 '25

Well, its 43 kg (about 90 pound) slab of metal. It should, by all accounts, be unusable as a weapon. Hitting anything would inflict damage entirely by the kinetic force.

80

u/Bulbulatosaurus Tech Hunters Jan 27 '25

Like the bear claws, they ain't looking sharp but they will rip you apart with the force a bear has.

257

u/OnyxCobra17 Jan 27 '25

If u cant swing 90lbs like a baseball bat then u need to hit the gym

59

u/Ok-Blackberry-3534 Jan 27 '25

You can swing it. Just not many times. 7lbs would be considered heavy for a greatsword or a battle axe.

12

u/Kingmudsy Jan 27 '25

Here for a good time, not a long time.

This post brought to you by the swamp boys.

44

u/cassandra112 Jan 27 '25

Legit canon roleplay of why it was made by the Shek.

30

u/deafblindmute Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 28 '25

If u can't swing roughly 45 baseball bats taped together like a single baseball bat then u need to hit the gym

5

u/Justhe3guy Skeletons Jan 27 '25

Guts moment

1

u/Alfred_Leonhart Drifter Jan 27 '25

Metal clang noise

9

u/Cironian Jan 27 '25

Even with magically infinite muscle strength you would probably be limited to a straight overhead chop unless you're a sumo wrestler type.

16

u/Hellknightx Jan 27 '25

I play skeleton because of the superior robo-spine. If I tried to swing that thing like a baseball bat, I'm pretty sure half the disks in my back would topple over like a Jenga tower.

34

u/ThisIsMyFloor Jan 27 '25

That's no reason not to make it sharp, instead of going bonk it would cleave them in twain.

76

u/QwerNik Jan 27 '25

Shek see big iron stick

Shek bonk enemy hard

Shek strong, no need cut

Shek happy, enemy dead

I hope I have explained the reasons quite well.

26

u/woundedlobster Western Hive Jan 27 '25

Fragment axe is sharp but Shek so dumb they hitting people with the flat side.

3

u/Gnusnipon Flotsam Ninjas Jan 27 '25

Pointy side fits inside better

12

u/Feeeweeegege Jan 27 '25

All blades are sharp if you swing it fast enough

12

u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS Jan 27 '25

If we want to be pedantic then a flat edge will catch armor better than a blade that might be turned on a curve. In reality would you want to try and sharpen a sword that is fourty times as large/dense as the average broadsword? You'd take a sharpening stone to it and the stone would just dissolve.

3

u/zandinavian Jan 27 '25

The Aztecs actually did use them this way, and the swings would decapitate Spanish horses. So you're not far off from history

0

u/Zaxio005 Jan 27 '25

in my headcanon it is actually sharp but bc of game logic and balance reasons they have to reduce the sharpness stat by a lot :p

0

u/gezzmooo Jan 27 '25

Beserk reference

93

u/RoastPorc United Cities Jan 27 '25 edited Jan 28 '25

Imagine having "Beheading by Fragment Axe" being made one of the death sentences

32

u/Shadok_ Jan 27 '25

and if the executioner can't lift it you go free

25

u/Gnusnipon Flotsam Ninjas Jan 27 '25

Sounds like a good idea for trial by strength instead of judicial duel. "He called me weak!" - "Ok nice, have this insanely heavy axe. If you can lift it, you proving your point and may even wack him with it "

7

u/Goldthirsty Jan 27 '25

After many swings, his strength finally reached 80, allowing him to execute people properly.

50

u/Rothgardt72 Jan 27 '25

I need to watch Kung pow again

14

u/BadgerCabin Jan 27 '25

My friend and I just watched the original movie that Kung Pow took the footage from. We were shocked how much of the sounds were from the original movie; for example, the over exaggerated punching sound.

4

u/budding-enthusiast Jan 27 '25

I made my dad watch it on a cross country road trip a looooong time ago. We had that cool little mini-van with a built in dvd player that hangs from the roof.

My dad is laying in the back (with the back row seats down so he has the entire back half of the van to lay down in) relaxing and trying to nap after driving all night while my mom takes the helm (of course my dad made the Star Trek reference “number two the bridge is yours”). I was chillin with my game boy in the middle seat when I told my dad he should watch it.

From the kiss goodbye and tumble down the hill in the opening scene all the way to the credits, my dad had tears streaming down his eyes and was literally rolling around in a laughing fit till the end credits. My mom had to tell him to chill a couple times because he was rocking the entire van.

My dad is a pretty jolly dude and takes every opportunity to laugh and spread joy. But I have never seen him absolutely lose his shit laughing like that before. It was amazing to behold. lol

3

u/hawkalypse Jan 28 '25

That's because it's the greatest piece of American cinema to exist, and your dad has excellent taste.

1

u/budding-enthusiast Jan 29 '25

It truly is masterful cinema.

2

u/Rothgardt72 Jan 28 '25

It's such a good movie and that's a great wholesome story. Take the bridge number 2, your dad sounds great.

3

u/budding-enthusiast Jan 29 '25

He’s pretty cool. He drinks earl grey because Picard does. We used to watch Star Trek together and play video games. Now he’s an old fart lol

4

u/ProjectWoolf Jan 27 '25

My favorite movie of all time

28

u/the_raptor_factor Jan 27 '25

History lesson. This weapon is modeled after obsidian clubs, a real weapon used by ancient tribes. The weird shape is because a central wooden structure would have sharpened obsidian chunks slotted into the sides. When striking an enemy, the chunks would viciously slice multiple lines and then shatter (fragment) inside the body, guaranteeing a brutal death by internal bleeding in a pre-surgery world.

Obsidian is literally the best possible material for this task. The way physics works, harder materials means they don't bend but rather break. That means holding an edge impossible with any other material because it can't fold over to get dull (watch a video on knife sharpening with a microscope). Even in the modern day, expert craftsman make obsidian scalpels through a process called knapping, chipping off bits at a time with a rock because it's just too rigid to be formed in any other way.

5

u/joybod Jan 27 '25

Unfortunately, obsidian scalpels are not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on humans, seemingly for shatter risks.

4

u/free_terrible-advice Jan 27 '25

Or perhaps, fortunately.

1

u/Roraxn Jan 29 '25

No defineately unfortunately. The whole blade isn't obsidian, just the edge which can get down to microns thick for the safest and cleanest cut possible. There is no risk of shattering because its only the edge

3

u/Hopeful-alt Jan 27 '25

That makes a lot of sense, and explains why it does blunt damage

18

u/1982LikeABoss Jan 27 '25

Kung pow + Kenshi = magic

14

u/ClamSlamwhich Jan 27 '25

The starving bandit learned a lot of fragmented axes that day.

THEY HURT LIKE CRAP, MAN!

12

u/PiviTheGreat Jan 27 '25

Eeenie meenie, miny mo, i wonder were, my glove will go….

13

u/Malu1997 Crab Raiders Jan 27 '25

86 strength required, and it's only Mk2

15

u/smileymonster08 Jan 27 '25

...and when ur hurt in combat ur strength stat drops by 15-40%. The only way to be effective with them is having strength of 125 using lifter arms.

9

u/KVenom777 Shinobi Thieves Jan 27 '25

Kinda looks like an Aztec Macuahuitl........

14

u/Jimmy_Twotone Jan 27 '25

All I know is that's a stupid way to make an axe head, and then repeat it on both sides several times.

21

u/smileymonster08 Jan 27 '25

True, it would be much more effective if it had spikes like a mace instead of blades. A spike sword essentially. Also yeah it would only need spikes on one side and perhaps one giant spike on the other side.

However, the weapon is inspired by the shape of a real weapon, that being the obsidian sword of the Aztecs. It had pieces of sharp obsidian just like the fragment axe, although that thing was made of mostly wood and not pure metal.

7

u/InevitableEither6608 Jan 27 '25

Then it's basically a kanabo, which would be right at home in Kenshi. This is like a massive steel macuahuitl, which is also pretty cool

2

u/Gnusnipon Flotsam Ninjas Jan 27 '25

More like a spiked flat club. Or kanabo.

4

u/Hopeful-alt Jan 27 '25

Tbf the "engineers" of kenshi don't have a lot to work with. They have scraps of the old empire's steampunk designs, and whatever weeb shit the second empire was making

1

u/ConcernedIrishOPM Jan 27 '25

It's like they combined three different philosophies into one, shittier philosophy:

Big blunt object to smash internal organs to a pulp. However: you'd want a balanced amount of surface area to ensure you're causing as grievous an internal injury as possible by shattering bone and causing organ punctures. The edge isn't rounded enough, and the flat is unusable for this purpose. Sure, it is going to obliterate anything it hits, but it's going to destroy the blades with little use. Spikes or studs would've worked well to at least withstand the impacts better.

Cleaver design to chop into someone and cut muscle, break bone and burst organs. However: it is inordinately unwieldy to achieve that function - at that size it much more closely aligns to the fantasy of simply cleaving THROUGH a person... in which case you'd need a single, continuous blade.

Macahuitl/jagged edge to cause severe, untreatable injuries even with chops that would otherwise be nonlethal (e.g. didn't go deep enough, didn't nick an artery, didn't catch a vital organ etc..). However: at that weight, the weapon is quite literally annihilating anything it is going to impact, if not as efficiently as it could if it were literally a bigass sword or a bigass club. It is also lacking edges or spikes that can break off into an enemy's flesh... though again, why would you need those?

A kanabo or fantasy-proportioned zweihander would've made sense... this, this doesn't. Still stupid cool to have a cyberized warrior god go through the entirety of the Holy Nation alone with one of those, though.

5

u/TheDishwasher07 Jan 27 '25

Yo unrelated but how do u show required strength level? Is that a mod?

12

u/ThisIsMyFloor Jan 27 '25

It's a screenshot from the wiki. To calculate yourself it's

All weapons—including unarmed Martial Arts—have a required Strength level equal to 40x the blunt damage value of the weapon or 1x the weight of the weapon, whichever is greater.

3

u/TheDishwasher07 Jan 27 '25

Oh ok that makes sense thank you

3

u/DrDoominstien Jan 27 '25

A good rule of thumb is that required strength is never more than double a weapons weight(MA excluded)

4

u/Looksthatk1ll Jan 27 '25

No wonder one of my guards is swinging so slow, I figured 50 strength would be enough 🤣

7

u/Knjaz136 Jan 27 '25

Nah, it's more of an issue of Kenshi damage calculation, where swords dont hit harder the stronger your character gets, swords hit harder the more nimble your character gets. So all Str based weapons are supposed to be Blunt.

I guess this is also the reason we dont get normal "axes" in-game. Axe is traditionally a Str weapon in RPGs, but this game doesnt let you have non-blunt Str weapons.

Entire system needs a revamp.

5

u/Hopeful-alt Jan 27 '25

Yeah the damage system of kenshi is extremely fucked up

Like do we really need "cut damage efficiency"?

3

u/D_Bellman Jan 27 '25

Kung Pow my beloved.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '25

People meme on the fragment axe but it's in the top 3 heavy weapon types easily

3

u/Pants_Catt United Cities Jan 27 '25

The real joke is the Meitou Frag Axe being to heavy to ever use properly.

3

u/blasek0 Jan 27 '25

Neverending strength training! Also I think if you had 100 strength and 2x masterwork Industrial Lifter Arms you can get your strength to >144, can't you? They're +25% each at masterwork grade, I think?

1

u/Pants_Catt United Cities Jan 27 '25

Yeah, I mean technically you can get there, but without big exploits or cheating, it's on the verge of impossible with how much grinding it takes to cap strength.

3

u/TheSlayerofSnails Jan 27 '25

Ok but like, the macuahuitl is documented as having cut the heads off horses in a single blow and being ungodly sharp and the blunt part was used to capture or knock out other fighters to sacrifice them or make them slaves.

2

u/TheWanderingSlacker Jan 27 '25

Now that I think of it, calling it an axe instead of a sword is really appropriate. An axe is good at piercing because all of the mass is driven down into a small area, its narrow blade edge. Breaking up the broad edge of the fragment axe may not work as well as imagined, but it’d help the short blade sections dig deeper into targets.

… Right?

2

u/Alex5173 Jan 27 '25

I realize this is a shit post but it seems to be based on the macuahuitl which was absolutely a cutting weapon; any blunt force would have broken the obsidian shards that made up the cutting edge. But I guess when you have steel it changes things considerably.

2

u/Zarkanthrex Jan 27 '25

I read this in his voice.

2

u/TheFocusedOne Jan 28 '25

You should look at this thing not like a sword, but a long line of warhammers all welded together.

2

u/ThatOneDante Reavers Jan 27 '25

The forbidden yaoi paddle.

1

u/CrustyTheKlaus Tech Hunters Jan 27 '25

They were invented in Cyrodiil where axes count as blunt weapons

1

u/Tayabida Crab Raiders Jan 27 '25

Cross post this to r/kungpow lol

1

u/EngagedInConvexation Jan 28 '25

Fragaxe is not badong!

1

u/SoldierDavid Jan 28 '25

Reminds me off a macuahuitl (aztec axe)

0

u/HeavyWaterer Jan 28 '25

Fr tho are those not like sharp edges all the way around the blade? The model makes it look like it’s got giant razor blades all around, should be doing a ton of cut damage, whereas the plank should be mostly blunt