Darth Vader's Lightsaber

Or, Vader's Mid-Life Lightsaber Crisis

Darth Vader/Annakin Skywalker was the king of misplaced lightsabers. "If your hands weren’t attached, you’d lose those too," his old master used to tell him. Oh wait..

In all, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker went through five, count ‘em, Five different lightsabers in his illustrious Jedi career. His first was given up when he turned to the dark side, and then lost forever when he hacked his son’s hand off on Cloud City(his son, (you might know him, a boy named Luke) was holding the lightsaber at the time). Interestingly, there are reports of a cloud city maintenance man having been killed at around the same time while doing work at the base of Cloud City. Oddly, it appeared that he had been chopped in two by an energy source traveling at an enormous rate of speed. Go figure.

This particular lightsaber is Vader’s third, and was featured throughout The Empire Strikes Back. No one really knows what happened to his second (his first sith saber). His third was lost in round two of the domestic abuse pattern between father and son. Vader loses this one too before the next film, Return of the Jedi, but he does have some pretty cool fight scenes with this one, and it, of all his sabers, seems to embody him best of all.

Lightsabers

Lightsabers are probably the oldest of the known sword types. Yes, that's right, oldest. They were, after all, created a long time ago, in a gala... ahem. Well, you get the point (please excuse that last sentence and what was, perhaps, the worst pun ever jotted down onto this website).

As far as the history goes, if you don't know, then I fear it's hopeless. Go rent some movies. Oh alright, I'll try. Lightsabers are the chosen weapon of the Jedi, a powerful order of knights in the six Star Wars movies created by George Lucas.

The lightsaber consisted of a sturdy hilt with no crossguards and a short beam of laser energy that could cut through almost anything it struck. The beams were created using a focused blast of powerful energy. This energy was focused by a crystal embedded in the hilt of the weapon. The color of this crystal determined the color of the lightsaber's beam

The colors of the lightsaber said much about a jedi. Each color had its own symbolism. Anakin Skywalker started his career with a blue lightsaber. When he turned to the Dark Side, he switched to the red blade that only Siths use.

Jedis are supposed to build their own lightsabers when they come of age, and use this lightsaber for the rest of their days, or until someone cut their hand off and the lightsaber was lost, which seemed inevitable for most Jedis at one time or another.

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