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(Spoilers) Why a sword?


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This has been bugging me for a while, and maybe the answer is just "because they did", but: why the heck did Vasher and Shashara use a SWORD to try Awakening metal?

Basic rule of Awakening #1: the more human, the easier it is to Awaken.

Now I realize that metal was never alive, but we know that human SHAPE counts, so why not try Awakening a bundle of wires shaped like a person? Or a metal statue? Or if they were really serious about trying, a fully articulated android?

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I've always assumed it was because they were in the midst of the Manywar at the time.

I'm sure it seemed expedient to use something quickly accessible rather than spend a ton of time and resources fashioning joints and articulation.

Plus, while powerful, because it cannot move on its own a sword is more easily contained. Remember that Nightblood was technically an experiment, had it not worked they could have retrieved the Breaths. Had it worked and gone horribly wrong... A sword is easier to defeat/destroy probably than a small man figure who can scurry and hide or a huge statue that might just kill you.

I say be glad they used a sword!

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Perhaps because it is so inhuman is the reason they went for a sword. Things farther away from the human form take more Breath to Awaken - you may need a TON of Breath to create something sentient. Thus, being purposefully wasteful with the Command in order to make it use as much Breath as possible.

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Perhaps because it is so inhuman is the reason they went for a sword. Things farther away from the human form take more Breath to Awaken - you may need a TON of Breath to create something sentient. Thus, being purposefully wasteful with the Command in order to make it use as much Breath as possible.

I like this explanation.

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This raises an interesting question for me.

Objects further away from the human form require more Breaths (Investiture) to Awaken, and I'm pretty sure that we know Nightblood required 1000 breaths to awaken, Which also awakend him to sentience.

So is it the thousand breaths that brought him to sentients or the thousand breaths that awakened a metal object, or is awakening a Metal object how far from human form and granting at sentients equal to 1000 breaths? I.e. Could you Awaken a humanoid metal form to sentience with less than the 1000 Breaths Nightblood used?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Relevant:

 

 

Q: When you say that Nightblood is "an attempt to use one magic to replicate something in another," do you mean life in general, or are you referring to a specific effect in a specific magic system?
A: There are those involved who knew that Shardblades existed before they tried the Nightblood experiment.

Source (and: thread)
 
So, Nightblood owes his existence, at least partially, to some odd events. Perhaps Nightblood's journey to Roshar started at his birth (600 some years before Words of Radiance), and the Scholars struct a deal or they figured out how to worldhop/gained knowledge of Roshar and things through a worldhopper of some sort (as has been suggested already). It seems a little odd, though, considering that there shouldn't have been any KR (I think, I want to say that the Day of Recreance was a thousand or so years before WoR, but I don't recall if we know exactly how long it's been) and the Harolds haven't left Roshar, I would peg it on some of the Scholars getting into things and acting like good, old fashioned mad scientists.  :D

Edited by Mistdork
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Relevant:

Source (and: thread)

So, Nightblood owes his existence, at least partially, to some odd events. Perhaps Nightblood's journey to Roshar started at his birth (600 some years before Words of Radiance), and the Scholars struct a deal or they figured out how to worldhop/gained knowledge of Roshar and things through a worldhopper of some sort (as has been suggested already). It seems a little odd, though, considering that there shouldn't have been any KR (I think, I want to say that the Day of Recreance was a thousand or so years before WoR, but I don't recall if we know exactly how long it's been) and the Harolds haven't left Roshar, I would peg it on some of the Scholars getting into things and acting like good, old fashioned mad scientists. :D

Or perhaps . . . well I doubt the shardblade phenomenon would be this skewed towards one planet if it's established to be possible to form one with the investiture from others. Has one of the Scholars encountered yet another type of shardblade before?

It's still interesting to know the implications of one of them in the experiment knowing about those things beforehand. The Returned must be Nalthian, so who made contact with this person?

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