The Scythe, better known as Death's Scythe, is the deadly signature weapon of its namesake creator Death, the divine ruler of Limbo and great warden of dead souls who decides who lives and who dies. It is one of the well-known objects in the Castlevania universe.
History[]
Castlevania[]
Death emerges within his Clocktower amongst one of the hallways of the infamous Castlevania and began magically summons throwing sickles at the vampire hunter Simon Belmont as he flies around with his iconic Scythe in his cold dead hands. Belmont positions himself as far away as possible and attacked him with a boomerang or a dagger in his arsenal while striking back with his Vampire Killer weapon and won the fight before moving forward the dreaded Castle's Keep for the final battle with the undead Count Dracula.
Vampire Killer[]
Death came with his signature Scythe at a hall with a painting portrait of the undead Count Dracula at the center of room within the Torture Laboratory at Castlevania as he attacks and yet has fallen against the new vampire slayer Christopher Belmont in battle.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow[]
Death's Scythe also possesses the longest reach of all melee weapons as well as the highest boost to raw offense. However, the weapon's sheer power is impractical, due to the fact that the weapon deals darkness-based damage, which most enemies are resistant to, and the slow attack speed of the weapon, leaving the player vulnerable, both attributes of which make the weapon only useful against a handful of enemies and less useful than the Light-attribute Claimh Solais. It appears in the top right corner of the room outside of Death's room (only in Hard Mode), and it can never be reached until it is obtained with the Giant Bat soul. The weapon resembles a one-bladed version of Death's own bone scythe.
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow[]
While maintaining its dark attribute, Death's Scythe gives an even higher attack power boost, making it more useful than originally. The scythe's design differs from its appearance in Aria of Sorrow, to fit its wooden-metal appearance. The scythe can only be obtained through Yoko's shop by combining the Death soul with the Golden Axe. Its Critical Attack releases the skulls that Death uses in his boss fight, which is the second most powerful attack in the game, following the fully-charged Skull Archer soul's arrow.
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness[]
Hector, a former general of Count Dracula's Devil Forgemasters, can craft a weapon similar and possibly equal to Death's Scythe using the needed materials (the 7 Bladed Sword. the Chauve-souris, the Battle Axe, and Death's Pulse).
The Scythe itself is darkness-based, (inserted in the two-handed axe class) and offers +120 Attack increase, making it the most powerful weapon ever commanded; however, it often proves to be only half as effective against a large portion of monsters, since many of the enemies posses a tolerance to Darkness.
Like numerous weapons in Curse of Darkness, Death's Scythe has its own unique offense. If Hector uses 4 basic attacks and then a finisher, Hector will spin Death's Scythe and release a large number of smaller sickles. These sickles will home in on targets, similar to the sickles that Death releases by his own magic many times before.
Trivia[]
- The original item used during the casting of the Deathscythe attack spell were tiny scythes, in reference to Death's iconic namesake instrument of doom. It was in later Castlevania games where these were replaced by sickles.
- The fact that both tiny scythes and sickles have indistinctively been used to portray the same function may be due to them both being reaping tools, which would allude to their main user, Death, who is commonly referred to as the "reaper of souls".
- There is a sickle-based type of Glyph magic used by the vampire-hunting clergywoman Shanoa called "Falcis" that categorizes 3 different spells under it including the powerful Vol Falcis" and the superior "Melio Falcis"; The name "Falcis" is an inflection of the Latin word "falx", translated in the English language as "sickle" or "scythe", and it is also derived from the 2 Proto-Indo-European words "dʰelk" and "dʰelg" which translates to "a cutting tool", which fits the name and use of this trio of Glyphs.