Nightblood's Hunger

[senick67]

It has been confirmed by Brandon Sanderson that Nightblood will consume your soul like a shardblade severe's it. What are your thoughts.

[Stormgate]

Nightblood is a vampire sword. Very useful, but it's one of the only weapons potentially more dangerous to your enemies when they have it.

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

Is that when you are hit by Nightblood, or when you are the one using Nightblood?

 

Could you link a source?

[Yata]

Until now we know only that Nightblood feed of Owner's Investiture and that cut whatever the Blade touch on all the three realm.

The Soul is made of Investuture and therefore if there isn't any "source of investiture" in the Holder the blade will feed of his soul.

[.S.A.M.K.M]

I wonder if you need aluminum sword, as that metal has some anti magic uses, to combat this sword.

I have this random idea, what if this sword is the thing to kill Odium in the end? It is made to destroy evil, and he is the big bad. This guy killed gods, and knows so many secrets, they need something that can take him out.

[Stormgate]

But Odium is about as evil as Ruin is/was. Hatred is not evil, it simply resembles it when taken out of context.

I used to think the same thing about Nightblood.

[Yata]

I wonder if you need aluminum sword, as that metal has some anti magic uses, to combat this sword.

An Allumin Sword would be useless I suppose, it can be cut without problems in the Spiritual Realm and In the Physical Realm. We know that quite for sure.

[King's Twit]

But Odium is about as evil as Ruin is/was. Hatred is not evil, it simply resembles it when taken out of context.

I used to think the same thing about Nightblood.

But when you live in a world of moral absolutes, like Nightblood, Odium seems like he would be on the side of evil. Unless he somehow wasn't tempted by the sword, then Nightblood might leave him be.

That'd be an interesting plot twist for a later book, actually. The protagonists position the sword so that it'll destroy Odium, or Rayse, and Nightblood just sits there.

Edited December 23, 2015 by King's Twit

[natc]

There's actually little reason Odium would need or want a sword actually . . . he could probably replicate it somehow if he tried hard enough. It's just a shardblade on crack.

Edited December 23, 2015 by natc

[King's Twit]

There's actually little reason Odium would need or want a sword actually . . . he could probably replicate it somehow if he tried hard enough. It's just a shardblade on crack.

 

If it can consume investiture on a larger scale than we've seen so far, it could be a useful tool to him in his battle against the other Shards. Weaken them enough to put him at an advantage, then do whatever he does to splinter them.

[KaIadin]

But Odium is about as evil as Ruin is/was. Hatred is not evil, it simply resembles it when taken out of context.

I used to think the same thing about Nightblood.

I don't think it is the Shard that is evil, but the holder who is evil. Although, Ruin did twist Ati into an evil (don't know a better word) person so maybe the intent of the Shard is evil.

[natc]

Ruin wasn't evil really. Ruin was an inevitability, a force of nature, trying to fulfill itself as quickly as possible. And it hijacked Ati's mind and sapience to help make that happen. Even if the Shard did not exist the world would end with everyone dead. Ruin was only evil from the perspective of the cast because he was making an effort to infringe on people's right to life while in a personified form people can project moral judgments and blame on. People are "killed" by time itself all the, well, time (no pun intended), but nobody says anything because it's pointless to bother.

It's not Ati that is "evil" here, it's not even the intent of Ruining; it's the prematurity of the end they wanted. Adonalsium is 1/16 Ruin, so surely he/she/it destroyed, but it likely had reasons for any of it's actions. Ruin by itself tries to destroy for destruction's sake, and wants it now for lack if better things to do. With a complete disregard for morality basically out of apathy.

(Ruin confirmed Epic ).

If Ruin was weak and Preservation was strong Scadrial would have been a very different but equally miserable place to live.

[Stormgate]

Ruin wasn't evil really. Ruin was an inevitability, a force of nature, trying to fulfill itself as quickly as possible. And it hijacked Ati's mind and sapience to help make that happen. Even if the Shard did not exist the world would end with everyone dead. Ruin was only evil from the perspective of the cast because he was making an effort to infringe on people's right to life while in a personified form people can project moral judgments and blame on. People are "killed" by time itself all the, well, time (no pun intended), but nobody says anything because it's pointless to bother.

It's not Ati that is "evil" here, it's not even the intent of Ruining; it's the prematurity of the end they wanted. Adonalsium is 1/16 Ruin, so surely he/she/it destroyed, but it likely had reasons for any of it's actions. Ruin by itself tries to destroy for destruction's sake, and wants it now for lack if better things to do. With a complete disregard for morality basically out of apathy.

(Ruin confirmed Epic ).

If Ruin was weak and Preservation was strong Scadrial would have been a very different but equally miserable place to live.

RECKONERS IS NOT COSMERE!!!

I agree, though. Ruin was actually never destroyed. Simply given better perspective. A world with full Preservation would be crap, too. Basically, nobody dies, nothing breaks. Nobody is sad.

So nobody can be happy.

[King's Twit]

Ruin wasn't evil really. Ruin was an inevitability, a force of nature, trying to fulfill itself as quickly as possible. And it hijacked Ati's mind and sapience to help make that happen. Even if the Shard did not exist the world would end with everyone dead. Ruin was only evil from the perspective of the cast because he was making an effort to infringe on people's right to life while in a personified form people can project moral judgments and blame on. People are "killed" by time itself all the, well, time (no pun intended), but nobody says anything because it's pointless to bother.

It's not Ati that is "evil" here, it's not even the intent of Ruining; it's the prematurity of the end they wanted. Adonalsium is 1/16 Ruin, so surely he/she/it destroyed, but it likely had reasons for any of it's actions. Ruin by itself tries to destroy for destruction's sake, and wants it now for lack if better things to do. With a complete disregard for morality basically out of apathy.

(Ruin confirmed Epic ).

If Ruin was weak and Preservation was strong Scadrial would have been a very different but equally miserable place to live.

I agree that perspective is important and it is nearly impossible to say that something or someone is objectively evil, but the perverse, almost sexual pleasure that Ruin seemed to get from killing and destroying says a lot.

I can't really fault Ruin for fulfilling his intent, but unless we are saying that there is no such thing as evil, Ruin (held by Ati) might be the closest thing we've seen so far in the whole Cosmere (since we haven't really met Odium).

Edited December 24, 2015 by King's Twit

[Stormgate]

That...got weird.

[King's Twit]

That...got weird.

I realized that I phrased things so that near-sexual nature of the pleasure Ruin got from killing was what was evil, which was not my intent. I meant that the happiness he got from killing was obviously very potent, which is reflected in how that pleasure is shown on the page.

[natc]

I think it's bringing up sex at all that's weirding him out, because that is a strange adjective for this situation.

[King's Twit]

I think it's bringing up sex at all that's weirding him out, because that is a strange adjective for this situation.

Is it? Reading through the scenes where Ruin takes direct control of Marsh, and so completely impresses his mindset on Marsh, it seems as good a comparison as any, if not better than most. It is called bloodlust for a reason.

 

EDIT: I remember an annotation or a WoB where Brandon said something to the effect of a psychologist having a field day with the phallic imagery of Ruin's spikes and his use of the Ashmounts.

 

But all that being said, I apologize if my comments made anyone uncomfortable. I stand by my original opinion, but there is plenty of room to disagree.

Edited December 24, 2015 by King's Twit

[Stormgate]

I think it's bringing up sex at all that's weirding him out, because that is a strange adjective for this situation.

Yes that's exactly it.

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

Ookaaay... so Ruin has non-sexual destructiongasms, moving on...

 

I think it's important here to separate Ruin-as-Ati and Ruin-the-Shard. Ati used to be a kind man who got warped by his Shard's intent, the final result might have be evil, but neither of the components were evil in and of themselves.

 

In Odium's case on the other hand, even if we assume that Odium-the-Shard isn't inherently evil (which I don't, by the way), it's pretty clear from 'the letter' that Odium-as-Rayse was evil, even before picking up the Shard.

 

According to Nightbloods definition (evil people are the ones who would want to use Nightblood to kill or for some other selfish purpose), both Ruin and Odium would probably count as evil, since I doubt either could resist the temptation of the destruction/chaos Nightblood's abilities offer.

[SmurfAquamarineBodies]

If Ruin was weak and Preservation was strong Scadrial would have been a very different but equally miserable place to live.

 

I have a quasi theory that the reason The Lord Ruler was so brutal was because he was compelled by Preservation to create an unchanging society. So he worked to create an empire that he thought would last then was forced to preserve it.

[Yata]

Rashek wasn't so much altered by Preservation.

 

Probably He simply choose an unchanging society because without that much of control his "godship" was impossible.

Every action he took, was to avoid menace to himself.

Edited December 28, 2015 by Yata

[happyman]

I have a quasi theory that the reason The Lord Ruler was so brutal was because he was compelled by Preservation to create an unchanging society. So he worked to create an empire that he thought would last then was forced to preserve it.

 

I have a strong hunch that you are absolutely right.  Ruin whispering in his ear certainly didn't help, but it certainly seems like Rashek was acting from Preservation's perspective when he ruled.

 

In the annotations to tFE, Brandon says that Rashek wore black and white to represent that he was of both Ruin and Preservation---but that that symbolism was a lie; he had only touched one of the powers (Preservation), and only partially (the well).  I feel like the Lord Ruler's final empire is exactly the kind of world Preservation would create---near-perfect stasis of the place it had been when he had conquered it, with damage caused mostly by inexperience.