I feel really bad for the Sword of Adventure; This can technically be seen as him dying, because he doesn't have his soul anymore. Not to mention that he'd been waiting a long time to be wielded, only for this to happen to him.
I did some googling after seeing the 'Apologies to Shoe' note at the top of this comic, and apparently this is a reference to another comic called 'Shoe'. The character on the road is Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk from that series.
I like the detail of how the Sword of Adventure has six gems on him, which presumably represents the six brave heroes' souls that formed his.
To bad his soul would later end up in the body of a forest lich...
The series establishes that, while a sword can get a soul when it turns 100 years old, it can have an artificial one if a wizard gives it a soul.
I'm assuming most, if not all of the sentient/talking swords we've seen in the series, were forged by wizards. They were all forged with very specific themes/purposes, and thus, had to have gotten their souls from wizards.
