A small but influential segment of modern fantasy literature deals with evil possessed vampire demon swords (EPVIDS). The paradigm example is certainly Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer, but this article shows that Moorcock’s pulp tales have twentieth-century precursors in Poul Anderson and J. R. R. Tolkien, both of whom worked closely with Old Norse and Finnish medieval literature in order to devise their cursed blades. A new mode of subjectivity enters the subgenre with Moorcock, though—a weapon like Stormbringer reinforces a sense of liberal private selfhood and raises central concerns about personal autonomy. The closing segment of this article examines Stormbringer’s legacy in the major EPVIDS novels of the 1980s.