According to the Other Wiki, a sword is defined as "a bladed melee weapon intended for cutting or thrusting that is longer than a knife or dagger, consisting of a long blade attached to a hilt." Many historical and fictional societies are known to have armed themselves with swords. They tend to be associated with upper-class warriors such as knights and samurai. Like them, their weapons may be highly romanticized as symbols of all that is noble and righteous and good. In the hands of evildoers, however, they can represent all that is low, corrupt, and bad. Either way, swords are shiny.
No doubt about it, swords are cool. They are very common in fantasy fiction such as The Lord of the Rings and the genre it helped to define (it's called "swords and sorcery" for a reason) as well as historical fiction. Swords are so cool that they even transcend genre to appear in high-tech science fiction settings such as Star Wars (in the form of lightsabers) and Warhammer 40,000 (in the form of chainswords, which are essentially elongated chainsaws and are every bit as over-the-top ridiculous as they sound—but so cool).
As in fandom at large, swords are very popular in the PPC, especially among agents who work in low-tech continua. Some agents know how to use swords well enough to wield them as weapons, and they are very tempting as a canonical method of execution for Suvians. However, proficient sword use takes a lot of training that most agents don't have, and large blades don't lend themselves well to stealth.
A sword in the hands of a Suvian may be a Sword of Sueness. Agents should exercise caution when encountering these and resist the temptation to nick them for personal use. Even if they are very shiny, they are probably best kept as souvenirs only.