Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-85.130.101.225-20130816112245/@comment-10390252-20130816113222

For a while, I've speculated that the hilt of Jaune's sword contains the apparatus to use a single Dust crystal to create an effect around the blade - fire, ice, electricity and so on. It's nowhere near as flexible as Weiss's rapier because it has only the one mode and the crystal has to be changed manually.

The point to remember is that Jaune's weapon is maybe a century and a half old compared to the other characters' weapons, so it is likely relatively primative and won't have as many advanced features. It's possible that Jaune doesn't even know about the weapon's special feature; no-one does because the sword has been on display for the last century and there's no-one left alive who knows about it... except a certain red-cloaked weapons dork who studies stuff like this for recreation.