what is best way for [player|npc]->data assoc?

[busyrobot]

No scripts in pecticular, what is the best way to associate variables to npcs or players?

take, say a very old sword:

Say I want to save the data that it is:

4000 years old
+3 damage
has been named "Troll Slayer or Blahrahbah"

now, save[]s only hold numbers < 220, and all this.variables are not readable by other npcs.

1) how do I associate this persistantly?

2) (I've also heard this.vars are also not saved on the server, is that true?)



3) Is there a way to save a reference to an npc, and place
npc[4] into a variable for reference, so when the index varies, I can access it always at the reference variable?

4) Can I use expressions to access bareword variable names (such as variable 'hat1' accessed with an expression '"hat" + hatCount')?