Axe

Lore & Background

In the soot-choked workshops of Hollow City, axes were forged not for war but for industry—splitting timber for the puppet-makers, cleaving iron for the blacksmiths who built the city's endless machinery. When the city's population turned to marionette flesh and the old economy of labor collapsed, those same tools found new, darker purposes. A worker's axe became a survivor's weapon; a carpenter's maul became a statement that no amount of pinning and stitching could stop a person from swinging back.

The aesthetic of the axe in Lies of P carries this duality. The broad, slightly curved blades and long wooden or iron hafts recall the workaday tools of a pre-collapse world, yet the notches, rust, and crude reinforcement welds speak of years of desperate use. There is something almost tender about an axe in this setting: it is the weapon of someone who had nothing else, who swung with the full weight of a body that was no longer entirely human, and who still found the rhythm of the swing comforting in a city that had forgotten how to be kind.

Among the puppet-folk of Hollow City, the axe is rarely seen in the hands of the elegant or the noble. It belongs to the laborers, the outcasts, the ones who were never meant to hold a blade at all. And yet, in the hands of a player who commits to the slow, heavy cadence it demands, the axe becomes the most honest weapon in the game—no flourishes, no feints, just the clean, terrible truth of a blade meeting bone.

In Their Own Story

The workshop was silent except for the tick of a broken clock and the slow drip of condensation off iron pipes. She stood in the doorway, her marionette joints clicking faintly as she shifted her weight, the long haft of the axe resting across her shoulders like a second spine. The marionette blooper had cornered her in the alley three streets back, and it had not stopped moving. It would not stop moving. She had learned that about the things in Hollow City: they did not tire, did not negotiate, did not look at you with the particular pity that living things reserve for the dying.

She stepped inside. The axe came down in a wide, lazy arc that cracked the workbench in half, sending splinters of black wood skittering across the floor. The blooper lunged. She pivoted—slow, deliberate, the long haft sweeping a wider circle than any sword could manage—and the flat of the blade caught it square across the chest. It staggered. One more swing. Two. The third one she did not need to aim.

The clock, still ticking, finally stopped. She leaned the axe against the wall, wiped a streak of black ichor from her cheek with the back of her hand, and sat down on the broken bench to wait for the next thing to come through the door. It always came. In Hollow City, it always came.

Reader's Guide

Appearance: Axes in Lies of P feature a long, sturdy haft (wood or iron) with a broad, slightly curved blade. Many variants show visible wear, rust, and crude repair work—welds, wrapped bindings, chipped edges—reinforcing their working-class origins. The silhouette is unmistakable: wide, heavy, and unapologetically blunt.

Damage profile: Expect the highest per-hit physical damage in the game at the cost of the slowest attack animation. Each swing takes a full beat to wind up, so timing your dodges and stances around the recovery frames is essential. The wide hitbox means you rarely need to be perfectly centered on a target, which is a genuine quality-of-life advantage in crowded fights.

Stance-breaking: Axes hit hardest against enemy stance. A single well-placed overhead can crack a marionette's guard open, leaving it vulnerable to a follow-up. This makes the axe excellent for players who like to parry, break, then punish rather than chain rapid strikes.

Pins and build: Pair your axe with Pins that boost physical damage, increase stance-break efficiency, or add a small elemental edge (fire or lightning) to chip through tougher armor. Stance-focused Pins synergize especially well. Avoid Pins that reward attack speed; they will feel wasted on a weapon that wants to swing slowly and hit like a falling wall.

Where to find: Base axe variants appear early in Hollow City as drops from mid-tier enemies and can be purchased from certain merchants. Higher-tier or named axe variants are scattered through later zones, boss rewards, and optional side-quest caches. Always check the blacksmith for enhancement slots once you have a favorite.

Did You Know?

• The axe's long haft gives it a wider effective hitbox than most other weapon classes, making it forgiving in tight corridors and against multiple enemies.
• In Lies of P's Pin system, stacking stance-break bonuses with an axe can reduce the number of hits needed to crack an enemy's guard compared to lighter weapons.
• The visual design of axes in the game deliberately echoes industrial and carpentry tools, reinforcing the world's theme of a city built by laborers whose tools became weapons after the collapse.
• Because axe attacks have long recovery windows, they pair naturally with the game's dodge-rolling mechanic—experienced players often use the recovery frames as a built-in 'commitment' window to time a roll out of danger.