So, in the land of futuristic feudalism, the board of sword duels has a dilemma. During a duel, one of the duelists added put gyroscopes in his sword. He claimed this was to improve his balance, which was affected by his stubbed toe, but it turned out the gyroscopes where powerful control moment gyroscopes! This gryosword could be swung extremely quickly despite being fairly massive, resulting in extremely powerful impacts. He easily won the duel, seriously maiming his opponent.
The board of sword duels immediately banned these gyroswords after the duel for all future duels. However, duelists started using more covert gyroswords. They would only use the gyroscopic strikes at critical moments, and only increase the power of the strike enough to give them a slight edge. Duelists starting accusing each other of using gyroswords, but this was hard to prove or disprove.
How can the board of sword duels detect these gyroswords, so that they can ban them?
Notes:
- The settings is near future. The first duelist to use a gyrosword was a Noble, who invested a lot of money into it. Afterwords, he started selling them (gyroswords where banned by the board of sword duels, but not illegal). The gyroswords have very advanced control moment gyroscopes.
- The gyroswords have the gyros in the blade, hilt, or both.
- The gyros are computer controlled. Only gyrosword have electronics in them; legal swords are just one solid piece of material. The electronics are shielded.
- Most swords (including all gryoswords) have metal blades and hilts.
- To disable the gyrosystem, the duelist allows the gyroscopes to rotate freely, so that the gyrosword will not behave oddly when rotated. When enabled, the gyroscopes are used subtly, so that is difficult to tell that a gyrostrike is being preformed by simply watching the swing.
- Custom swords a long tradition in sword dueling, so making duelists use standardized swords is a no-no.
- Destructive testing is also a no-no. No duelist, rule-abiding or not, would allow someone to destroy their sword.