Ruinous History of Nightblood

[Fatikis]

I believe that Nightblood is an Awakened Atium Hemalurgic spike.

There are many theories discussing Nightblood could be an awakened Hemalurgic spike.  This to me seems to fit very well.  Not only is Nightblood extremely ruinous, but it also steals investiture.  So far hemalurgic spikes are the only thing we have seen that can steal anything like this.

Nightblood is said to be awakened steel however I believe that it is actually composed of Atium.  Atium being a catch all Hemalurgicaly speaking it should be able to absorb investiture where steel wouldn't be able to do this.  They may call it steel on Nalthis because they wouldn't have knowledge of Atium.

It has been theorized that Sazed/Harmony would need to remove a portion of Ruin in order to create balance.  This is due to the Preservation deficient with the creation of humans.  I suggest that pre-awakening Nightblood is this piece.  A direct piece of Ruin therefor a huge chunk of Atium. 

Can anyone think of any reason this could not be the case?

Edit: Removed incorrect information.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Fatikis

[Spoolofwhool]

Vasher, in an internal monologue, said that Nightblood was made by awakening steel. I doubt he would've mistaken them.

Quote

That was the great crux of the problem, the issue that had dominated most of Vasher’s life. A thousand Breaths. That was what it took to Awaken an object of steel and give it sentience. Even Shashara hadn’t fully understood the process, though she had first devised it.

- Warbreaker, Chapter 51

 

[Weltall]

Atium does not look like steel, Vasher would have noticed the visual differences, to say nothing of likely being able to sense that the metal was already Invested. At the Seventh Heightening you can detect when an object has been Invested with Breath; that likely works on other forms of Investiture as well.

And making a sword would have required far more atium than actually exists, given that Marsh only has a bag of the stuff, the rest was burned away by Elend and the mistfallen at the end of Hero of Ages and Sazed isn't making any more of it.

[Fatikis]

What Vasher said is that awakening steel took 1000 breaths.  He even does not know the process for creating Nightblood.  Shashara doesn't understand the process fully.  Meaning the awakening may have used an awakening for something other than steel but similar.

Atium looks quite like steel in the description given in Mistborn.  I would say it looks more like silver than steel, but if polished even steel and silver look very similar.  Who is to say Vasher didn't already know the metal was invested?  If they are trying to replicate Shardblades they would most likely use a God metal.  Any god metal would show as invested.

If Sazed needs to remove a piece of Ruin to balance himself as Harmony I would say a significant chunk would be needed.  Humans existing unbalanced the power between Ruin and Preservation to a fairly extreme level.  So the extra power could possibly enough to forge a smallish sword.

We know that Shashara learned some of the things for creating Nightblood elsewhere.  If she were to get the knowledge from another planet Scadrial is the most likely.  We've been told Scadrial is the easiest planet to reach.  Who better to teach about metal than a Mistborn?

The blade is copying Shardblades so it is more than likely created from a God metal.  The blade could be made out of Edglitium, but it appears that the physical manifestation of Edgli is Tears of Edgli.  Given the incredibly destructive nature of Nightblood it would be very fitting for it to be made from Atium.  Nightblood destroys on all levels.  While not evil it is strongly filling ruinous intent.

From what we know of Awakening awakened steel even if sentient should not be able to vaporize anyone.  Awakening just doesn't have this kind of power.  It wouldn't make sense realmatically for this unless there is something else about the sword.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Fatikis

[King Cole]

33 minutes ago, Fatikis said:

The blade is copying Shardblades so it is more than likely created from a God metal.  The blade could be made out of Edglitium, but it appears that the physical manifestation of Edgi is Tears of Edgli.  Given the incredibly destructive nature of Nightblood it would be very fitting for it to be made from Atium.  Nightblood doesn't but it destroys on all levels.  While not evil it is strongly filling ruinous intent.

I think that Nightblood is an awoken shardblade

[Fatikis]

4 minutes ago, King Cole said:

I think that Nightblood is an awoken shardblade

The problem with this is we've been told that Nightblood was an attempt to create a shardblade with different systems.  This means it couldn't have been made from a shardblade.  Shardblades are also already "awake" as they are spren.  So it wouldn't make a lot of sense to awaken it.

[Spoolofwhool]

42 minutes ago, Fatikis said:

What Vasher said is that awakening steel took 1000 breaths.  He even does not know the process for creating Nightblood.  Shashara doesn't understand the process fully.  Meaning the awakening may have used an awakening for something other than steel but similar.

He was talking about Nightblood at that point. Here's a bit more context where he specifically says so. Either way, not understanding how or why the procedure worked doesn't mean that you don't know what material was used. 

Spoilered the quote for size. 

Spoiler

That was the great crux of the problem, the issue that had dominated most of Vasher’s life. A thousand Breaths. That was what it took to Awaken an object of steel and give it sentience. Even Shashara hadn’t fully understood the process, though she had first devised it.

It took a person who had reached the Ninth Heightening to Awaken stone or steel. Even then, this process shouldn’t have worked. It should have created an Awakened object with no more of a mind than the tassels on his cloak.

Nightblood should not be alive. And yet he was. Shashara had always been the most talented of them, far more capable than Vasher himself, who had used tricks—like encasing bones in steel or stone—to make his creations. Shashara had been spurred on by the knowledge that she’d been shown up by Yesteel and the development of ichor-alcohol. She had studied, experimented, practiced. And she’d done it. She’d learned to forge the Breath of a thousand people into a piece of steel, Awaken it to sentience, and give it a Command. That single Command took on immense power, providing a foundation for the personality of the object Awakened.

- Warbreaker, Chapter 51

 

 

12 minutes ago, King Cole said:

I think that Nightblood is an awoken shardblade

Sprenblades are so invested already, it's unlikely they could be awoken to anywhere near the same level. Either way, they are already sapient, so there is no reason that the awakening of Nightblood would've made it sapient. 

[Fatikis]

1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

He was talking about Nightblood at that point. Here's a bit more context where he specifically says so. Either way, not understanding how or why the procedure worked doesn't mean that you don't know what material was used. 

Spoilered the quote for size. 

  Hide contents

That was the great crux of the problem, the issue that had dominated most of Vasher’s life. A thousand Breaths. That was what it took to Awaken an object of steel and give it sentience. Even Shashara hadn’t fully understood the process, though she had first devised it.

It took a person who had reached the Ninth Heightening to Awaken stone or steel. Even then, this process shouldn’t have worked. It should have created an Awakened object with no more of a mind than the tassels on his cloak.

Nightblood should not be alive. And yet he was. Shashara had always been the most talented of them, far more capable than Vasher himself, who had used tricks—like encasing bones in steel or stone—to make his creations. Shashara had been spurred on by the knowledge that she’d been shown up by Yesteel and the development of ichor-alcohol. She had studied, experimented, practiced. And she’d done it. She’d learned to forge the Breath of a thousand people into a piece of steel, Awaken it to sentience, and give it a Command. That single Command took on immense power, providing a foundation for the personality of the object Awakened.

- Warbreaker, Chapter 51

 

Again we are getting a flawed characters viewpoint.  A character that admits he not only does he not understand the process, but says it should not have worked.

[Fezzik]

15 hours ago, Fatikis said:

We've also been told that by the time Kelsier goes offworld he basically has a spren.  Brandon Sanderson did not say he had a spren.  He basically has one

We have? 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/36-arcanum-unbounded-chicago-signing/#e1474

This one says Kelsier basically is a spren, not has a spren.

[Fatikis]

6 minutes ago, John203 said:

We have? 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/36-arcanum-unbounded-chicago-signing/#e1474

This one says Kelsier basically is a spren, not has a spren.

Wow, I completely misread that part.  Thanks for pointing that out.  So that does not fit.  However, I still very much think Nightblood being actually made of Atium makes more sense than being made of steel.

[Spoolofwhool]

40 minutes ago, Fatikis said:

Again we are getting a flawed characters viewpoint.  A character that admits he not only does he not understand the process, but says it should not have worked.

Maybe he didn't understand why it worked how it did, but that doesn't mean he doesnt know what base components went into it. I see no reason to doubt his words.

[Fatikis]

8 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Maybe he didn't understand why it worked how it did, but that doesn't mean he doesnt know what base components went into it. I see no reason to doubt his words.

Because Vasher is an expert on awakening.  We should trust in his words that it should not have worked.  Meaning there was something else in play.  Something that Vasher does not understand.  I would say this heavily implies another system was in play.  Something that cannot be either found or learned on Nalthis.

As atium was essentially a piece of Ruin awakening it could have awakened spiritual fragments that already existed in the metal.  This could explain why Nightblood has far more sentience than normal awakening.  

Edited January 4, 2018 by Fatikis

[+Trellium]

Nightblood being made out of Atium simply doesn't make any sense.

 

Atium is the condensed physical form of the pure investiture that makes up Ruin. A shardblade is the condensed physical form of the pure sentient investiture that are Spren. 

Nightblood was an effort to recreate a shardblade. Nightblood has been referred to as an artificial shardblade, a zombie spren. We know his creation was a secret Vasher killed his wife to protect, and that is required 1000 breaths. There is no danger in a planet full of Awakeners learning that they too can create Type 4 Biochromatic Entities of awesome power if they first acquire Ruin's God Metal. It is clear that the risk involves the use of awakening and resources present on Nalthis. If we are looking to figure out how to imitate physically condensed investiture in the form of metal using awakening, a system of placing quanta of investiture, called breaths, inside physical objects, and we know the starting ingredients include an unknown metal as well as significant sticky investiture, why leap to assuming the metal was pre-invested? 

To me, the hard part of Nightblood isn't solving how Awakening + Metal + Breaths = invested metal, but how the intent and command are utilized to give the invested object spontaneous sentience.

[Fatikis]

22 minutes ago, Trellium said:

Nightblood being made out of Atium simply doesn't make any sense.

 

Atium is the condensed physical form of the pure investiture that makes up Ruin. A shardblade is the condensed physical form of the pure sentient investiture that are Spren. 

Nightblood was an effort to recreate a shardblade. Nightblood has been referred to as an artificial shardblade, a zombie spren. We know his creation was a secret Vasher killed his wife to protect, and that is required 1000 breaths. There is no danger in a planet full of Awakeners learning that they too can create Type 4 Biochromatic Entities of awesome power if they first acquire Ruin's God Metal. It is clear that the risk involves the use of awakening and resources present on Nalthis. If we are looking to figure out how to imitate physically condensed investiture in the form of metal using awakening, a system of placing quanta of investiture, called breaths, inside physical objects, and we know the starting ingredients include an unknown metal as well as significant sticky investiture, why leap to assuming the metal was pre-invested? 

To me, the hard part of Nightblood isn't solving how Awakening + Metal + Breaths = invested metal, but how the intent and command are utilized to give the invested object spontaneous sentience.

Nightblood would still be an artificial shardblade as it was not created with a spren.  I wouldn't call it a zombie spren.  If anything normal shardblades with dead spren are zombie spren.  Nightblood is a robot spren.  Vasher did not understand the full process.  It is possible that Vasher was not aware of the atium used.  It may have never been the danger that Vasher thought making this very tragic.

I also believe there is more to the story.  I don't think Vasher simply killed her.  I think she may have already been tainted by ruin when he killed her.

I very much doubt that humans would have the power to create something to imitate a solid piece of investiture themselves.  Preinvested metal makes far more sense to create something of this power.  Nightblood is far more powerful than a mere Shardblade.  Implying that a lot more power was used to create it.  I find it difficult to believe humans managed to gather enough investiture to do this.  Starting with a God metal is far more likely to create something like Nightblood.

Awakening so far cannot come anywhere close to creating sentience.  It is my belief that as it has not ever been shown to be able to do this alone that it cannot.  Implying there is something behind the scenes.  The physical piece of a god may already contain a fragment of their spirit.  Awakening combined with the order then giving the blade sentience that normal awakening could not.

There is clearly something else at play here than Awakening.  And an unknown metal sure sounds like a god metal.  

Edited January 4, 2018 by Fatikis

[Weltall]

3 hours ago, Fatikis said:

If Sazed needs to remove a piece of Ruin to balance himself as Harmony I would say a significant chunk would be needed.  Humans existing unbalanced the power between Ruin and Preservation to a fairly extreme level.  So the extra power could possibly enough to forge a smallish sword.

Sadly, this contradicts what Brandon says in the Warbreaker annotations. Had the coup in Warbreaker not been stopped, Yesteel would have used his knowledge of how to create more Awakened swords and it would have led to a new Manywar. That doesn't make sense if you not only require the godmetal of another Shard but a huge amount of it, per sword. Unless you also want to argue that Nalthis somehow has a massive stockpile of the stuff just waiting on hand that Yesteel could have put his hands on.

Also, Brandon has said more recently that aside from what already existed in the world, there is no more atium. Harmony isn't making more. If he wants to siphon off his 'extra Ruin' into a metal, he could put more Ruin into harmonium. Which might help explain why it has that little propery of 'explodes violently if it gets wet'.

6 minutes ago, Fatikis said:

Awakening so far cannot come anywhere close to creating sentience.  It is my belief that as it has not ever been shown to be able to do this alone that it cannot.

The Lifeless squirrel that Vasher creates, which is able to interpret extremely complex Commands even though this shouldn't be possible, suggests otherwise. This is due to the skill of the Awakener. It can make the completely mindless able to carry out intelligent actions autonomously (see Vasher's 'fetch keys' dolls for example) and it can increase intelligence in things that already have minds. Creating a complete mind out of nothingness is just a combination of things we already know that the magic system can do.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Weltall

[+Harrycrapper]

While I don't disagree that something odd happened in Nightblood's creation, I don't think Atium is involved. I can understand how its ability to destroy and the black smoke would give that impression, I don't believe that connects it back to ruin. We don't have as much knowledge and examples to work with when it comes to the magic system on Nalthis as we do elsewhere, so I apoligize if I get something wrong in my assumptions. The way it seems to work is everyone has a Breath, which is really just Investiture. When someone "endows" something that doesn't have a living soul attached(i.e humans, animals, plants) they also "endow" an intent and purpose to that thing. The strength and viability of that "endowment" is determined by the amount of Investiture and the person who preforms the endowment. So, I think Nightblood's traits are more indicative of something odd about Shashara than the material it was made of or the Breath used to power it.  

Edited January 4, 2018 by Harrycrapper

[Spoolofwhool]

2 hours ago, Fatikis said:

Because Vasher is an expert on awakening.  We should trust in his words that it should not have worked.  Meaning there was something else in play.  Something that Vasher does not understand.  I would say this heavily implies another system was in play.  Something that cannot be either found or learned on Nalthis.
 

He and the other Scholars were the closest Nalthis had to experts on awakening. Nonetheless, what they were attempting with Nightblood was to create a prototype of a theoretical idea, of a purely theoretical branch of an incompletely understood science. 

Generally, things will go wrong in that case. When they do, you usually blame a misunderstanding of the mechanics behind it, not the base materials, which can be easily quality controlled. 

By the sounds of it, Vasher was very involved in the process of creating Nightblood, though Shashara was the one who performed the actual awakening. While he may believe that what they had devised wouldn't have worked, he likely still doesn't know what specifically Shashara visualized when she said the command. 

Lifeless are sentient. They possess the awareness to understand, interpret, and execute commands without visualization. Even basic awakened objects can be granted a startlingly high amount of awareness, such as what Vasher has created in Warbreaker, dolls capable of finding keys in other rooms and locating hidden tunnels. 

42 minutes ago, Fatikis said:

Awakening so far cannot come anywhere close to creating sentience.

[Fatikis]

There is another way to look at this.  Awakening is end neutral.  Nightblood is extremely end negative.  It burns through investiture.  That makes it is unlikely awakening alone could not have created this.  Nightblood needs something else to create end negative results.

It doesn't necessarily have to be of Ruin.  The entropic result to me suggests of Ruin, but it could be made of Raysesium.  The metal does appear to be black which would not be the color for atium.  It is possible that the blade is a spike of Nicrosil.  Nicrosil feruchemically stores investiture.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, Fatikis said:

There is another way to look at this.  Awakening is end neutral.  Nightblood is extremely end negative.  It burns through investiture.  That makes it is unlikely awakening alone could not have created this.  Nightblood needs something else to create end negative results.

End-X nomenclature is just that, nomenclature, based on people's observations on how manifestations of investitures work, in an effort to create patterns. It isn't actually a defining mechanic of systems. Also, we still know so little about awakening, it's hard to say. For instance, it appears that awakening can be used to modify people's memories, which also doesn't fit the basic understanding we've been shown in Warbreaker.

1 hour ago, Fatikis said:

It doesn't necessarily have to be of Ruin.  The entropic result to me suggests of Ruin, but it could be made of Raysesium.  The metal does appear to be black which would not be the color for atium.  It is possible that the blade is a spike of Nicrosil.  Nicrosil feruchemically stores investiture.

None of this circumvents the fact that Vasher, who was involved in the creation of Nightblood, states that it was made from steel. 

 

[Inquisitor #5]

1) Investiture resists Investiture, were it made of atium (or any god-metal for that matter) it would be harder to Awaken than, say, plain old steel.

2) The blade is presumably black from the Investment, very colour-heavy.

3) Type I BioChromatic entities (aka Returned) already consume Investiture, just like Nightblood (albeit on a smaller scale), presumably without any overt connection to Ruin.

4) We know Nightblood is somehow special, there might have been more to its creation than we know (1000 Breaths seems an oddly small number for instance), but I would not think a god-metal was involved (other than maybe edglium).

5) Nightblood seems to be a unique entity, on that scale we only know of it, so it's hard to generalise from that single data point.

[Fatikis]

1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

None of this circumvents the fact that Vasher, who was involved in the creation of Nightblood, states that it was made from steel. 

 

You keep stating this.  As observed Vasher is a flawed perspective. He doesn't know how it worked.  He says it should not have worked.  Vasher clearly does not know everything or even much about how Nightblood works.

[Fatikis]

2 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

1) Investiture resists Investiture, were it made of atium (or any god-metal for that matter) it would be harder to Awaken than, say, plain old steel.

2) The blade is presumably black from the Investment, very colour-heavy.

3) Type I BioChromatic entities (aka Returned) already consume Investiture, just like Nightblood (albeit on a smaller scale), presumably without any overt connection to Ruin.

4) We know Nightblood is somehow special, there might have been more to its creation than we know (1000 Breaths seems an oddly small number for instance), but I would not think a god-metal was involved (other than maybe edglium).

5) Nightblood seems to be a unique entity, on that scale we only know of it, so it's hard to generalise from that single data point.

1) Investiture does resist investiture.  That does not mean it is not possible.  It would most likely just be extremely difficult.
2)I agree with this.  Which would mean the color of the blade means very little.
3)This is a fair point I had not considered.  
4)The problem here is Edgli's physical manifestation appears to be Tears of Edgli. 
5)Nightblood is for sure unique.  So much so that it makes more sense for it to be a hybrid of magic types.  If Nightblood was of a single type it would be much easier to understand.

[Spoolofwhool]

Just now, Fatikis said:

You keep stating this.  As observed Vasher is a flawed perspective. He doesn't know how it worked.  He says it should not have worked.  Vasher clearly does not know everything or even much about how Nightblood works.

Yes, because I think it's more likely that he didn't understand the mechanics behind a highly theoretical branch of a lightly research science, than Shashara swapped the metals on him without telling him, something which doesn't even match her personality, according to Vasher.

Also I did some more digging and found something in the Warbreaker annotations.

Quote

It's because of her insistence on using the sword in battle, and on giving away the secret to creating more, that Vasher and she fought. He ended up killing her with Nightblood, which they'd created together during the days they were in love—he married her a short time before their falling out. That marriage ended with him slaying his own wife to keep her from creating more abominations like Nightblood and loosing them upon the world.

- Warbreaker Annotations, Chapter 26

I would think that if it had reached this point, where Shashara was going to give away the knowledge on how to create them so they could be used in the war, that she would've told him everything that she knew about the process, which would've involved the fact that it was made out of steel, as Vasher currently believes. 

As an addendum too:

2 hours ago, Fatikis said:

The metal does appear to be black which would not be the color for atium.

The metal wasn't originally black.

Quote

Comatose [PENDING REVIEW]

Was Nightblood black before being awakened by Shashara?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

No.

[Source]

 

[Inquisitor #5]

1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I would think that if it had reached this point, where Shashara was going to give away the knowledge on how to create them so they could be used in the war, that she would've told him everything that she knew about the process, which would've involved the fact that it was made out of steel, as Vasher currently believes.

To add to this, Vasher would have had perfect colour recognition when Nightblood was made, so he should have been able to tell if the metal looked even slightly off.

[Weltall]

Nightblood already is a hybrid of magic types, in a sense. It's the result of two people using Magic System A to try to replicate something from Magic System B, when the two systems function on very different rules and have different fundamental applications. Which nicely explains why the end result is weird without needing to posit additional details that require multiple completely unproven assumptions. Occam's Shardrazor is perfectly applicable to this situation.

And would you please address the repeatedly raised point that the danger of Shashara releasing the secret of how to make more swords like Nightblood (and Yesteel in the present) could possibly be a serious threat if it requires huge amounts of a godmetal? Which, I must again point out, requires more atium than actually exists in the post-Catacendre world.