Westeros isn’t a world where everyone fights with the same basic swords and armor. It’s a world where certain materials and weapons have the kind of power that can reshape the entire balance of power, and the person who controls them has a serious advantage. These aren’t just fancy weapons—they’re strategic assets that nations would literally go to war over. Some of them can kill things that nothing else can kill. Others can level entire cities in seconds. And some of them are so rare and legendary that just owning one marks you as someone important. Let’s dive into the superweapons that define the Game of Thrones universe and why everyone is so desperate to get their hands on them.
Valyrian Steel: The Stuff of Legend
Valyrian steel is basically the Infinity Stones of Westeros. Everyone knows it’s special, everyone wants it, and nobody really understands how it’s made anymore. Before the Doom of Valyria destroyed the civilization that created it, Valyrians were forging these incredible swords that would last for centuries, never dull, and had this almost magical quality to them. After Valyria fell and all the smiths died, nobody figured out how to make new Valyrian steel. All the swords that exist now are the ones that have been passed down for hundreds of years, and there are only a handful of them in the entire world.
This is what makes Valyrian steel so important to the entire narrative. It’s not just about having a good sword—it’s about having something irreplaceable. When Tyrion Lannister reforges Eddard Stark’s Ice into two new swords, Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail, it’s treated like this huge deal because that’s actual Valyrian steel being converted into something new. The Lannisters essentially melted down a piece of Stark history to create swords for themselves. That’s not just a battle advantage; that’s a cultural statement.
Valyrian steel has this incredible durability that makes it valuable even outside of combat. A Valyrian steel sword can last generations—we’re talking about swords that have been used and passed down for five hundred years without needing replacement. In a world where normal steel eventually breaks or needs constant maintenance, that kind of reliability is its own form of power. It’s not just that the steel is sharper or stronger; it’s that it’s fundamentally different from normal metal.
The really wild thing about Valyrian steel in the Game of Thrones universe is that there’s this suggestion—which the books lean into more than the show does—that Valyrian steel might have been forged using actual magic. The Targaryens seemed to have some mysterious process, and rumors suggest it involved blood magic or dragon fire in ways we don’t fully understand. In House of the Dragon, we see hints that Targaryen blacksmiths knew secrets about the steel that they never shared with anyone else. So Valyrian steel isn’t just a technological achievement that people could theoretically reverse-engineer; it might be something that literally can’t be recreated without lost magical knowledge.
In terms of actual combat effectiveness, Valyrian steel is shown to be capable of killing things that normal steel can’t. The most obvious example is that it’s one of the few materials that can kill White Walkers. Regular swords, regular armor, fire—nothing stops a White Walker except dragonglass or Valyrian steel. This is huge because it means that whoever has Valyrian steel swords has a military advantage against the supernatural threat from beyond the Wall. When you realize that Valyrian steel can pierce walker armor and shatter their weapons, you start to understand why people are so desperate to collect these swords before a war with the undead.
The handful of known Valyrian steel swords function as these incredible plot devices because their ownership literally determines who has military superiority in certain situations. Longclaw, which Jon Snow carries, came from House Mormont and has been in their family for generations. Dark Sister, which belonged to Targaryen warriors and eventually Brynden Rivers, is this legendary blade with an actual history tied to major events. Ice, the Stark family sword, was so significant that its reforging became a major plot point that drove a wedge between the Lannisters and everyone else.
Wildfire: Ancient Magic in a Bottle
If Valyrian steel is the sniper rifle of Westeros, wildfire is the nuclear bomb. This is a substance that the Alchemists’ Guild has been maintaining and producing for centuries, but they don’t fully understand it themselves. It’s described as liquid fire—a greenish substance that ignites and burns with an intensity that nothing can extinguish. Water doesn’t put it out. You can’t just drown it. Once it’s burning, you pretty much just have to let it burn until there’s nothing left to burn.
The terrifying part about wildfire is the scale of destruction it creates. A small vial of the stuff can destroy a building. A reasonable amount can destroy a city block. And the stockpiles that have been accumulated over centuries could theoretically level entire cities. This is why wildfire is treated with the level of paranoia that you’d expect from a civilization that discovered nuclear weapons but then mostly forgot how to make them and just hoped the old stockpiles wouldn’t accidentally go off.
The most significant wildfire moment in the entire franchise happens at the end of Game of Thrones season two, when Tyrion Lannister uses wildfire as a weapon during the Battle of the Blackwater. The explosion is absolutely devastating—it destroys half the Baratheon fleet, burns soldiers alive, and turns the tide of an entire battle. The wildfire is so destructive that the Lannisters win basically through chemical warfare. This is the moment when you realize that wildfire isn’t just a plot device; it’s an actual military game-changer.
What makes wildfire particularly interesting is that it’s implied to be some kind of ancient magical substance or the result of ancient magical craft. The Alchemists themselves are described as secretive and kind of incompetent—they know how to maintain the stockpiles and keep them from exploding, but they don’t actually know how to create new wildfire anymore. This means that every vial in existence is getting older and more unstable, and nobody can make more. Eventually, the world will run out, and the most destructive weapon in existence will become a relic of the past.
The other thing about wildfire is that it’s a material that’s incredibly dangerous to use because it’s so unstable. You can’t really control how much damage it does, and you definitely can’t use it and then have a normal conversation afterward. Aerys II becomes increasingly obsessed with wildfire in his madness, seeing it as this magical solution to all his problems. He sets up wildfire caches throughout King’s Landing with the idea that he can burn the city to the ground if anyone tries to overthrow him. The fact that he’s using a superweapon as a security blanket is kind of the perfect metaphor for his mental state.
In the books, there are these terrifying hints that the Targaryen dynasty might have actually used wildfire in some kind of weapon system—there’s this theory that dragons weren’t the only thing that destroyed entire cities. Some fans speculate that ancient Valyrians might have combined wildfire with magical technology in ways we don’t understand. Whether that’s true or not, wildfire remains one of the most powerful and least understood weapons in the world. It’s power without wisdom, destruction without purpose.
Dragonstone and Dragon Glass: Ancient Tools for Ancient Enemies
Dragon glass—also called obsidian—doesn’t have the legendary status of Valyrian steel or the destructive power of wildfire, but it has something equally important: it actually works against the supernatural threat. The White Walkers can be killed by Valyrian steel or dragon glass, and in a universe where an entire undead army is eventually going to march on the living, that specific property matters more than anything else.
The thing about dragon glass is that it’s not rare or limited—there’s actually a lot of it on Dragonstone and presumably in other places where ancient volcanoes existed. It’s not some lost magical artifact; it’s just volcanic glass that happens to have the right properties to kill the dead. But here’s the catch: nobody in the Seven Kingdoms knew that it had any special properties until Sam Tarly figured it out. Dragon glass existed for centuries right under people’s noses, and nobody had the knowledge to realize they were literally sitting on a mountain of White Walker-killing weapons.
This is where Dragonstone itself becomes important as a location. It’s not just a fortress; it’s a source of one of the only two materials in the world that can kill White Walkers. That’s why having control of Dragonstone becomes strategically important when the threat from beyond the Wall becomes real. Daenerys takes Dragonstone partially because it’s symbolic—it’s where Targaryens were born—but also because controlling it means controlling the primary source of dragon glass for the entire continent. If you’re fighting an undead army, that’s not a small advantage.
The ancient Valyrians apparently had some kind of facility on Dragonstone where they were working with dragon glass or fire in ways that modern people don’t understand. There are references to ancient artifacts and strange architecture, which suggests that Valyrians left behind technology or knowledge that nobody has successfully decoded. This is kind of the theme for all these superweapons—they’re all remnants of a more magical, more advanced civilization, and the current inhabitants of Westeros are trying to use them while not understanding how they actually work.
What’s interesting about dragon glass compared to Valyrian steel is that it’s a superweapon that’s actually available and usable by ordinary people. Anyone can mine dragon glass. Anyone can learn to make dragon glass weapons. It doesn’t require a legendary blacksmith or lost magical knowledge. But it’s still incredibly valuable because of that specific property against White Walkers. In a way, dragon glass is the “everyone” superweapon, whereas Valyrian steel is the “special families” superweapon.
Dragons: The Original Superweapon
We should probably talk about the actual thing that makes all the other superweapons seem quaint in comparison: dragons. A single dragon can burn cities, level armies, and destroy fortifications that would normally take months to breach. Three dragons, working together, can conquer an entire continent in a single season. This is why the Targaryen dynasty was so powerful for so long—they didn’t just have swords and wildfire. They had literal flying nuclear reactors that breathed fire and had their own agency.
The problem with dragons as superweapons is that they’re not really weapons at all—they’re living creatures with their own minds and personalities. A sword does what you tell it to do. Wildfire does what the laws of chemistry tell it to do. But a dragon does what the dragon feels like doing. This means you can’t reliably use dragons the way you use other weapons. You have to negotiate with them, trust them, or in some cases, convince them that burning things is the right move.
Daenerys spends most of Game of Thrones leveraging her dragons not just as military assets but as symbols of power and destiny. The dragons are part of her claim to the throne as much as any political alliance. When one of her dragons dies, it’s not just losing military capability; it’s losing a piece of her legitimacy as a Targaryen. When another dragon is turned against her at the end, it’s not just a military defeat; it’s a betrayal by the thing she saw as her greatest ally.
The reason dragons are ultimately the most important superweapon is that they’re the only thing that can consistently level the playing field against other dragons. You can’t fight a dragon with normal soldiers. You can’t fight a dragon with wildfire in any reliable way. But another dragon, or a dragon rider with Valyrian steel, can at least contest a dragon militarily. This is why the extinction of dragons during the Targaryen dynasty meant they went from unstoppable military force to just another kingdom with expensive armies.
Putting It Together: Why These Matter
The genius of these superweapons is that they’re all finite resources. You can’t make more Valyrian steel. You can’t make more wildfire (or you can, but it’s incredibly difficult and nobody remembers how). Dragons can’t be bred easily—they need heat and ancient magic and luck. This means that control of these weapons is control of actual strategic advantage. When everyone has the same swords and armor, military strategy is about tactics and numbers. But when one side has Valyrian steel and the other doesn’t, the equation changes completely.
Throughout the Game of Thrones universe, we see these superweapons being used as leverage, as proof of legitimacy, and as ways to shift power. The Lannisters’ wealth came partly from controlling gold but also from controlling the ability to reforge Valyrian steel. The Starks’ historical power came partially from owning Ice, a legendary sword. The Targaryens’ dominance came from dragons. And the threat from beyond the Wall could only be solved using dragon glass and Valyrian steel.
The reason these materials matter so much isn’t just that they’re powerful—it’s that they’re rare. In a world where power comes from controlling limited resources, these legendary weapons represent the pinnacle of strategic advantage. Everyone knows they exist. Everyone wants them. But only a few people can actually have them, which is what makes them worth killing for.
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