16: Shell
The blade was discovered at the bottom of the ocean floor, in the wreckage of a military ship old enough to have been in service when having masts and sails was part of the definition of “ship.” It was, or appeared to be, in the process of being eaten by a giant clam that had died of old age – the sword was in the shell, but the shell was missing clam meat. It was just the sword, sitting in the shell, waiting to be found.
It caused quite a stir when the provenance of the sword was eventually uncovered: a famous blade belonging to a general of a nation that hadn’t made it to present day, but said general had been well-respected and his ultimate fate had been a riddle of history long thought unsolved. The presence of the sword in the wreckage was the first clue to his ultimate fate that anyone had seen.
The real surprising thing – the thing nobody knew apart from the people who found it – was that the sword seemed completely unaffected by its lengthy stay on the ocean floor. Suppression of this information was determined to be necessary so as to avoid people thinking there was a magical sword in the world. As far as magical powers went, however, “staying clean” wasn’t that impressive – so eventually the information leaked and was immediately dismissed as fake.