My story takes place in medieval times, where ghosts are a common sight. I'm not gonna go in too much detail, but lets just say that it's perfectly normal for living human beings to interact with ghosts, even in broad daylight.
Unfortunately, some of the ghostly members of society can be very troublesome, especially because of some common ghost abilities they possess (hehe), the big five being:
- Intangibility - kinda hard to physically hit or catch them
- Invisibility - hard to find them if they don't want to be found
- Possession and Shape Shifting - risky to "test"/kill someone suspected of being a criminal ghost: is the person a shape shifted ghost or someone who is actually possessed by a ghost?
- Levitation - doesn't make it any easier to hit or catch them either
Since this takes place in medieval times, Ghostbusters-type technology and gadgets are out of the question, and I also want to avoid "blessed" weapons, because not all ghosts are pure evil after all. The ghosts also can't harm each other, so you can't just enlist some friendly ghosts to take care of the troublemakers.
I want the heroes of my story to use some kind of material for their weapons that would make sense to be effective against ghosts, either scientifically (if you assume something like ghosts can exist) or... mythologically? This material has to be availalbe in medieval times.
Ideas I had:
- Mirror swords: plays on the "ghost in the mirror" trope by using it against ghosts. If you manage to hit a ghost with a mirror sword, they're gonna be trapped inside the sword. Not sure how readily available mirrors were in medieval times.
- Ghosts might have an aversion to a material that is commonly used in burials - it reminds them of their own death after all. Not a big fan of this idea, as I want something that works for all ghosts universally. A ghost who never had a proper burial wouldn't be affected by this material.