A bunch of questions about NIghtblood

[TheManKnownAsHoid]

Can Nightblood be affected by Surges or Allomancy?

Does Nightblood have a spren?

When Nightblood was Awakened, is the voice Nightblood, or did the Awakening just allow Nightblood's spren to become sentient ant communicate on the Physical plane?

[Weltall]

3 hours ago, TheManKnownAsHoid said:

Can Nightblood be affected by Surges or Allomancy?

Nightblood is about the hardest thing in the Cosmere to affect with Investiture and way harder than even a Shardblade, which is already very hard to affect. He also eats Investiture which makes things like Lashings that require direct application of Investiture effectively impossible to use on him as he'd nom the Investiture very quickly.

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Does Nightblood have a spren?

Nightblood doesn't 'have' a spren, he is the spren. 'Spren' is the Rosharan term for sapient Investiture and Nightblood is thus kind of a spren or would be percieved as one at any rate. He isn't exactly the same thing insofar as his origins are different from the spren of Roshar but you can think of him as a spren. Per Brandon, a native Rosharan would call a Shard or even Adonalsium a spren. If you want to get technical, both spren and Nightblood are what's called Splinters, Investiture that has become self-aware. As mentioned, Shashara and Vasher created Nightblood in deliberate imitation of a Shardblade.

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When Nightblood was Awakened, is the voice Nightblood, or did the Awakening just allow Nightblood's spren to become sentient ant communicate on the Physical plane?

The Awakening condensed enough Investiture in one place to make it sapient. This is something that Investiture will do if left alone and how much Investiture there is affects how readily this happens and how close to human-level intelligence the result is.

That said, there are lots of mysteries about Nightblood that we don't have the answers to. For example, he's described as being vastly more powerful than the amount of Investiture that went into his creation would indicate and we don't understand how or why.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Weltall

[Scion of the Mists]

Nightblood is one of the most heavily invested objects in the entire Cosmere.  Any invested object (but especially Nightblood) will strongly resist being affected by the various magic systems.  

Nightblood could be considered a spren, kind of.  

Anything about the specifics of Nightblood's creation is basically RAFO.  

[Nathrangking]

It should also be noted that there is at least one WoB which states that Nightblood was created in an attempt to mimic a shardblade.

Edited July 16, 2018 by Nathrangking

[CrazyRioter]

Brandon has described Nightblood as a "robot spren".

[Quantus]

On 7/16/2018 at 4:07 PM, Weltall said:

That said, there are lots of mysteries about Nightblood that we don't have the answers to. For example, he's described as being vastly more powerful than the amount of Investiture that went into his creation would indicate and we don't understand how or why.

You dont have a link to that WOB offhand do you?  Ive heard that a bunch of times before and wanted to see the context first hand.  Im starting to come around to the theory that his Command forged a connection to another Shard for fuel, (Ruin in his case). 

[Weltall]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

You dont have a link to that WOB offhand do you?  Ive heard that a bunch of times before and wanted to see the context first hand.  Im starting to come around to the theory that his Command forged a connection to another Shard for fuel, (Ruin in his case). 

Here's one, check out linked image too beceause he wrote a response that's not captured by Arcanum but is relevant. In it he says that another object with a thousand Breaths would not be as Invested as Nightblood.

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yulerule

*Written:* So somewhere it says that the number of Breaths doesn't determine the power of the object. But are the number of Breaths directly tied to how much Investiture is in an object? You're repeatedly said that Nightblood is ridiculously heavily Invested, more so than Shardblades, Honorblades, or the Bands of Mourning. But it only has a thousand Breaths, which doesn't seem all that much from the point of view of the God King--Tenth Heightening, over 50,000.

Brandon Sanderson

So this is a RAFO, but you're starting to ask the right questions there. Okay?

*Writes:* RAFO

Footnote: Needs image attached to entry 4067. Click here.
source

 

[MasterK-Bob]

I'd say, what happens to the investiture Nightblood consumes? Does it cease to exist, or is it added to Nightblood and Nightblood's power? If the latter, he would have been very powerful and heavily invested at first, but would have gotten way more powerful over time. Perhaps he was more powerful than the amount of breaths used to create him at first, but became one of the most heavily invested things in the cosmere through use and guzzling down investiture in a manner even the Lord Ruler or Kelsier or whatever could never have had time to do.

[Weltall]

3 hours ago, MasterK-Bob said:

I'd say, what happens to the investiture Nightblood consumes? Does it cease to exist, or is it added to Nightblood and Nightblood's power?

The Investiture is not annihilated but Nightblood also doesn't seem to absorb it for long, because that black smoke is Investiture leaking away from him.

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Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Does Nightblood annihilate Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Investiture cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change forms. But, anything more than that is a RAFO.

source

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Brandon Sanderson

Anyway, Nightblood is named for the smoke he leaks, and he originally had a different name when he was created. Vasher himself dubbed the sword Nightblood after he had used it to kill the woman he loved. The blackness that leaks out is actually corrupted and consumed Breaths, the ones that Nightblood leeches off anyone who draws him.

source

 

[MasterK-Bob]

3 hours ago, Weltall said:

The Investiture is not annihilated but Nightblood also doesn't seem to absorb it for long, because that black smoke is Investiture leaking away from him.

 

Do we know for sure that that is one for one though? Like, the black smoke could be the byproduct of whatever Nightblood does to incorporate the breaths, or whatever other investiture, he consumes. I'm not convinced Nightblood isn't getting progressively more invested every time he is drawn.

[Scion of the Mists]

On 8/6/2018 at 7:03 PM, MasterK-Bob said:

On 8/6/2018 at 3:19 PM, Weltall said:

The Investiture is not annihilated but Nightblood also doesn't seem to absorb it for long, because that black smoke is Investiture leaking away from him.

Do we know for sure that that is one for one though? Like, the black smoke could be the byproduct of whatever Nightblood does to incorporate the breaths, or whatever other investiture, he consumes. I'm not convinced Nightblood isn't getting progressively more invested every time he is drawn.

If you finish reading Weltall's post, you'll see that he included a quote from Brandon that's definitive: 

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Brandon Sanderson

Anyway, Nightblood is named for the smoke he leaks, and he originally had a different name when he was created. Vasher himself dubbed the sword Nightblood after he had used it to kill the woman he loved. The blackness that leaks out is actually corrupted and consumed Breaths, the ones that Nightblood leeches off anyone who draws him.

[Weltall]

On 8/6/2018 at 4:03 PM, MasterK-Bob said:

Do we know for sure that that is one for one though? Like, the black smoke could be the byproduct of whatever Nightblood does to incorporate the breaths, or whatever other investiture, he consumes. I'm not convinced Nightblood isn't getting progressively more invested every time he is drawn.

In addition to what @Scion of the Mists already said, have another WoB:

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JHTheHurricane

Would the metal an Allomancer burns if he was charging Nightblood with investiture effect the relative power of Nightblood, say if you are buying Duralumin or Atium Nightblood would be more powerful than if you were burning Bronze or Zinc?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question, actually!

Nightblood, as I've written him now and as I intend to keep him, feeds of the investiture--but isn't really strengthened by it. Meaning, it doesn't matter to him what the food is, it's all just food to him.

source

He eats Investiture but it doesn't make him stronger and he doesn't care what form it takes. Whether it's Investiture from the wielder in any form or the innate Investiture of something he's destroyed and fed off, it's all the same to him.