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So, I have this crazy idea. Powers you need to have to make it work: copper Feruchemy copper Allomancy aluminium Feruchemy duraluminium Feruchemy Awakening and at least Ninth Heightening Assumption: Compounding copper lets you multiply stored memories (so you end up with 10 copies of the burned memory). That way you can both remember everything and at the same time have it stored. First, you make a sword out of copper, aluminium and duraluminium. It doesn't have to be sword, but let's say it is. You store copper, aluminium and duraluminium 100% and Compound copper to have your memories back and still have a full coppermind. Then you Awaken the sword (I'm still figuring out the Command). Since the metalminds are yours, the Breaths take the path of least resistance and model the sentience after the metalminds. That way you should have an Awakened sword with your mind (as in the process of Awakening it drains your Identity, your Connections and all of your memories). Maybe you also need to throw in nicrosil, I'm not sure. Your thoughts?

Do all kinds of Investitures follow the Balance? The Breath Investiture from Warbreaker is a little sketchy. If someone dies, their Breath dies with them. So, when someone is born, where does their Breath come from?

Greetings and Salutations. I'm new to the forums (obviously), so this is my first post. Feel free to ignore this, I just needed to say it someone who would understand my vision, and my friends are not yet Followers of the great Sanderson... So I'm listening to Warbreaker, yet again, and was struck with inspiration for a GREAT kids' cartoon: Imagine Syl, Pattern and Nightblood (and their bond mates, as supporting characters) fighting to save Roshar from the Voidbringer-of-the-week. The magic! The prosaic good v evil conflict! The side-splitting deadpan commentary!!! I seriously think it would be a hit. On that note: Brandon, if Warbreaker 2 is AT ALL written from Nightblood's PoV, it would really make my decade. "Oh, alright. You can admire me a little bit longer, if you must."

This probably has been said before but I could not find a topic on it. So we know that When I was reading the interlude of Lift I came across a intriguing passage. Sorry for quoting such a long passage. Your thoughts?

Rather than continue to derail this thread, I'm posting my hypothesis here. Thesis statement: Mr. Sanderson created Nightblood for the express purpose of having him eventually take up the Shard of Odium. My thoughts on the matter: Per WoB, we know Nightblood was made for Roshar, and Warbreaker was made as a way to introduce him, as an origin story. This implies he's really, really important. I would daresay it's appropriate to assume he'll prove pivotal. Nightblood eats Investiture. He can eat Breath, Stormlight, and apparently the Mists of Scadrial. His hunger is not to be underestimated. Much is made of Nightblood, and his lack of capacity to make moral judgements. His mind was expanded from "I am a sword" to sentience with a thousand Breaths, and he was Commanded to decide what is and is not evil. The problem arose because, expanded mind or not, he simply didn't have the equipment to decide for himself what is evil. This entire concept, while interesting, doesn't actually impact the book very much. Nightblood would be a terrible and powerful weapon even without this issue, so it doesn't do much to impact what happened to Shasharra or what might happen with Yesteel. I believe this will prove pivotal. An issue with Odium, per the Letter, is its Intent. He mentions that Ati was once nice, but the Intent of Ruin perverted him into something horribly dangerous, and suggests that the Intent of Odium is, if anything, worse. It seems that simply letting someone else take up the Shard is a short-term solution, at best. Combining it with another Intent might work better, but that's already been done. Per the notion of Chekhov's gun, don't put in something you don't intend to use. So, to what use could Nightblood's inability to understand "evil" come in? I propose that one day, he will take up Odium. I think his endless hunger for Investiture will eventually lead him to somehow be connected to something vital to Odium (I have a few ideas how this might happen) and that he will consume it all, until he is Odium and Rayse isn't. And then, I think he will have exactly as much capacity to understand Hatred as he currently does Evil. I also have one last point to make, though I'm basing less on this. We know that some of the people involved in Nightblood's creation knew of Shardblades and were deliberately trying to mimic one. This is very unclear, but it's just about possible that even in-universe, it's actually someone's intention to craft a weapon capable of taking a Shard by force from its holder. It does harken to Preservation's long-game. Let me re-state that this point is even more speculative than the rest of my thoughts, and I'm including it out of a sense of completeness. If this is proven wrong, specifically, I still stil my hypothesis can be thought of as possible. EDIT: We now have much-more-recent WoB that Vasher worldhopped as a young man. While it's still possible this minor aspect of my hypothesis has some basis, it seems presumptive that it does not. As stated initially, this should not impact the larger hypothesis. (Having trouble getting to the actual source on the AMA, but this link references the relevant quote) Before I get into the arguments people have made against my theory, I'm going to clarify something that seems to keep getting confused. I'm not saying that Nightblood will want to destroy Odium because he will see Odium as Evil. I bring up Nightblood's Command not for the content of the Command itself, but to point out that Nightblood is inherently incapable of understanding abstract concepts of morality. The specific Command itself, or for that matter Odium's specific Intent, are irrelevant. Please do not reply saying something along the lines of, "Nightblood won't kill Odium because Odium isn't evil." Nightblood killed a wall once. I'm pretty sure the wall wasn't evil, either. On the other thread there have been a few disagreements with my hypothesis, which I fully admit is so speculative it might as well be head!canon (to be clear, I'm not convinced myself that this will happen. It's just something I wonder about). The main one seems to be an assumption that the expansion of consciousness one gets from being a Shard will be enough for Nightblood to understand hatred. I disagree. First, Nightblood's mind was already expanded. He started, presumably, with the cognitive aspect of "I am a sword" and a thousand Breaths and a Command expanded his consciousness to that of a reasonably intelligent adult. The Command was even specifically crafted, by two people who presumably do understand evil, towards evil-centric things. And, being a sword, he simply doesn't have the capacity to understand the concept. We have seen two people fully Ascend, and from their perspective seen the past of another man who at least partially Ascended, and we have a glimpse into what this expanded consciousness means. It is not omniscience. It's a knowledge of the history of the power, it's an ability to think about many things at once, to experience incalculable grief and guilt while having enough processing power left over to dissect subtle implications. It did not help Rashek know where to place a planet to make it habitable... even though he himself moved the planet from its proper orbit in the first place. It would not have been enough to let Sazed adjust the biology of mankind... even though he saw exactly how Rashek had changed them in the first place. Vin and Elend trick Ruin, and later Elend checkmates him, specifically because he's lost too much of his humanity and no longer understands love, or the strength Vin and Elend can find in their bond, even after death. Being a Shard, if anything, made it harder for Ati to comprehend human emotions. For all of these reasons, I question the assumption that a second expansion of Nightblood's consciousness will do what the first one couldn't. Of course, if anyone can provide a suggestion from text or WoB to the contrary, I will accept the flaw in my hypothesis. There was briefly a suggestion that Nightblood is incapable of taking up a Shard because he lacks hands, but I believe this is not a widely-held belief. It has been said it won't happen because Nightblood is too interesting, and making him a Shard will make him less interesting, to which I have two rebuttals. Many main charcters die or fade into the background; it's rare for someone to be SUCH a good character they can survive the spotlight forever. I do not agree that anything about Nightblood as a character means he cannot ever fade into the background. Also, I do not think Sazed became any less interesting of a character for having Ascended. Compare, for example, Ham, who impacts Alloy of Law far less, and is far less interesting in Era 2. I'm going to close with an additional thought: We, as a group, know practically nothing about Shards, or Adonalsium, or Divine Intents, or really anything related to the Spiritual Realm. Therefore, my certainty stems not so much from anything mechanical or realmatic, but more from an idea of narrative causality. The author has set up certain elements in the books, and I see them pointing to a certain conclusion. To be frank, I will be suspicious of anyone who claims that we know enough about Shards to say my hypothesis doesn't hold water; we know so little about Shards that right now, almost anything is possible. I would be much more likely to revise my certainty if someone points out a narrative reason why this is extremely unlikely. Or, of course, if further books or W's-o-B reveal things about Shards that are not now apparent.

Hey, I wasn't really sure what to do with this, but I have a new WoB on Awakening and Nightblood. I figured this might be the best place for it. I figure that this has two possible implications. Either stone reacts differently to Investiture than metal by virtue of being a different material (as in this would be true for any two different materials), or metal actually does interact with Investiture, or at least with Breath, in a unique way because of the properties of metals. Thoughts?

I realize that by naming this topic, I have attracted the attention of the entire Dark Alley. Hold your cookies, please. Anyway, on to the topic. In the Ars Arcenum of Shadows of Self, it says on the topic of Hemalurgy that (doesn't really spoil much, if anything, but whatever) Come to think of it, it might be a WoB, but anyway, yeah. Hemalurgy basically involves ripping a piece off of someone's Spiritweb and stapling it to yourself. This is actually fairly similar to Nalthis' magic system, where people give up their Breath-a piece of their soul-to someone else. These stolen Breaths were used to create Nightblood, a weapon that can override Realmatic Thermodynamics and actually destroy Investiture, albeit slowly. This is the danger of Hemalurgy. Using a similar magic system resulted in the most destructive weapon in the Cosmere, with the potential to make it grind to a halt. My imagination can't think of anything potentially worse than Nightblood, perhaps others can think of why Sanderson put this in.

The State of the Sanderson is coming... For those who haven't seen Brandon's latest blog post, he has stated that he intends to do a State of the Sanderson post for his birthday. So far as we know, he is roughly 1/3 of the way through Stormlight 3. He has said after that that it will be either Mistborn 7 (a.k.a. The Lost Metal) or the second Rithmatist (a.k.a. the Aztlanian). We might be able to get a pin-down on that. Although, he has warned that Stormlight 3 might turn into a 2017 release. Anyway, on to shameless advertising. After his last State of the Sanderson, he made a great list of things about what he'd like to get done. I made a flow chart of the whole lot - in addition to a loose timeline - here. I will update this after the next State of the Sanderson. (I'll probably also post here, to be double sure.) So, thoughts? Anything you'd particularly like Brandon to turn around and start writing after Stormlight 3?

I almost feel silly starting a thread for one small observation...but what the heck...it's a free internet isn't it? While poking around pondering the nature of the unmade, corrupted investiture, nightblood, etc, something from one of the lines from the diagram stood out to me... "Powered by the spark of death itself" is the thing that really caught my attention. I've spend hours pouring over quotes and other info trying to puzzle out what the deal is with the unmade, but this is the first time that this particular line ever caught my interest. Could this have some correspondence with all the discussion about Black or Corrupted stormlight (investiture). What I mean is...sapient life is possible because ALL sapient life is in some small way invested...so...could the unmade be fueled by the negation or corruption of that life...death (specifically the death of an intelligent being) or even just the pain and suffering of one. to broaden the topic of conversation a bit...could this have something to do with how Odium goes about splintering a shard? We know that it's time consuming, we know that it's very taxing for him. Could it be that Odium has used Unmade like splinters to do his dirty work on other worlds before? The name Svrakiss springs to mind...The Svrakiss were the souls of men barred from entrance into heaven for hating Jaddeth in life,[1] and so were condemned to wander Sel, bitterly cursing their fate and preying on the living.[2] The Derethi believed that they had the ability to take of the bodies of living men and control their actions.[1] When someone who followed Shu-Dereth had bad luck or a difficult time, they believed that the Svrakiss were to blame.[3][4] The Svrakiss were considered to be a representation of absolute evil. Re-Shephir, the Midnight Mother, giving birth to abominations with her essence so dark, so terrible, so consuming. She is here! She watches me die! Let me no longer hurt! Let me no longer weep! Dai-gonarthis! The Black Fisher holds my sorrow and consumes it! Though all of them have some relevance to precognition, Moelach is one of the most powerful in this regard. His touch seeps into a soul as it breaks apart from the body, creating manifestations powered by the spark of death itself. Well...have at it 17th shard...I know there are holes (feel free to point them out) but don't be afraid to run with the idea a little either!

This is NightBloodTheWorldHopper's first post!

So I don't really have much time, and I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but is Nightblood the spren that bonded with szeth to make him a Skybreaker? Because Nightblood doesn't really seem the highspren type. I mean, "destroy evil" doesn't really sound like you'll be following the cold hard law most of the time. Just tell me what the deal is here.

My first theory post, be kind lol. After reading Warbreaker and the SA books, two things came to mind. 1. I think there is some significance to Nightblood, a sword from a world of color and was awakened with 1000 breaths and Szeth the assassin in white who was controlled by an oath stone, that stone was also black and shared visual attributes to Nightblood. Its interesting that Sanderson explains over and over the visual of Szeth as always in White and wears nothing else. Then at the end of WOR he gets the all black blade of Nightblood. I feel like I'm reading to deep into this. 2. I also think Yesteel is the obvious cause of Vasher/Zahel to split from Nightblood and Vasher/Zahel chased Yesteel to Roshar to get it. Do you think Yesteel is in Roshar? I would love to know what you think

Theory: Nightblood exists enough in the cognitive realm to act as a spren and facilitate a Nahel bond. It sounds a bit out there but I want to see peoples thoughts on this.

Nightblood consumes investiture when drawn. First he will eat up all your extra breaths, then he will eat your divine breath (if you have one), and finally he will consume the investiture that makes up your soul. Then you will be dead. But the thing is, drabs don't have innate investiture. So if a drab held Nightblood, what would happen? Would the drab survive? Would Nightblood run out of batteries and fall asleep? Or would something weirder happen?

I apologize if these question have already been answered, just link me to them if they have . So I have been reading some other threads and people keep talking about the Skybreakers and how Szeth is one of them and will get their surges eventually after bonding with Nightblood and saying the oaths and whatnot. I have a few points of confusion regarding this that I would love to have cleared up; first of all, Nightblood may count as a shardblade but it is not one from a spren related to honor, so how would Szeth be able to bond it and gain skybreaker surges? Does being on a different planet change the fundamental mechanics of Nightblood? Does it make him into a Skybreaker spren? Would a spren that creates the Skybreaker bond even choose Szeth whiel he is wielding Nightblood? Second, are the Skydreakers featured in WoR even the actual Skybreakers? None of them displayed the ability to use surges, I'm pretty sure Nale was using a regular dead-spren shardblade and not his Honorblade. I was under the impression that it was simply a group named after the Skybreakers who went around killing protoradiants to try and stop the desolations from returning. Lots of questions, but everyone seems to take these for granted and I'm sitting here like "whhaaaaa???"

Seeings as Hoid never weilded it, did Naln get it from Vasher?

I was pretty excited when Nightblood showed up at the end of Words of Radiance. I've read almost all of Brandon's books, and this was the first obvious crossover between different series. (The second, if you count Hoid as obvious.) This leads me to wonder how different magic systems of the 'cosmere' are going to interact. The Szeth question in the header is kind of representative of that more general question, but the conversation doesn't need to be restricted to Szeth. The members of this forum seem to have sources of information beyond the books, so please enlighten a fan who doesn't. From Warbreaker, it seems that when Nightblood is unsheathed, it will continuously drain BioChromatic Breaths from its wielder, and kill any wielder who doesn't have Breath. But there doesn't seem to be a steady source of Breaths on Roshar for Szeth to use. Or maybe there is? Can Breath on Roshar be transferred from one person to another by saying the words (My life to yours, ...)? Maybe it's just never been tried? Alternatively, could Nightblood be powered by Stormlight instead? Are Breath and Stormlight (and metals, and whatever powers Aeons, ...) really the same thing? Cheers!

So I just noticed that there may be a similarity between the orb that Gavilar gives Szeth at the beginning of WoK and Szeth's description of Nightblood at the end of WoR. I saw this and thought that perhaps there was a connection between whatever is in the black orb, and what comes off Nightblood after he has stolen investiture. I've seen it theorized that the black orb is related to Odium's magic, so perhaps whatever comes off Nightblood is related to the nature of Odium's magic system. I'm not too familiar with Warbreaker or Nalthis in general. Thoughts?

So, we know that Szeth hears voices in his head, specifically the voices of people that he killed. However, we don't know what causes them. For quite a long time, I advocated the Yelig-nar theory, but WoB - "Hmm... Szeth has no more of a connection with Yelig-nar than anyone else does." - seems to disprove that. However, I have a super weird theory that might actually fit with what we know about the magic systems in the Cosmere. Basically, I was thinking that it might be Jezrien's Honorblade that is causing Szeth to hear the voices. It's a weird idea, definitely. To look at how that might work, consider Nightblood. Nightblood is, for all intents and purposes, a shardblade made out of endowment splinters (as opposed to Honor splinters), but is partially broken. He - and Syl, for that matter - exhibits the ability to communicate telepathically over fairly decent distances (not sure about distance for Syl in sprenblade form). We also know that when he kills somebody, he absorbs their breaths. That's key. My idea is that the damaging of the oathpact broke, or at least damaged, the 9 herald's honorblades. Szeth hears the voices of the people that he killed because Jezrien's Honorblade has been absorbing their souls, or at least parts of them. That's why Szeth hears the voices. I know that a big hole in the theory is that Szeth doesn't have the honorblade anymore. However, Nightblood can communicate over a fairly large distance, and certain spren and sprenlike creatures can communicate or exert influence over very large areas. For example, unmade have incredible radii of influence, if Nergaoul and the thrill are any indication. And bonds with honorblades are less straightforward than typical spren and shardblades, so he might still be partially tied to it, for all we know. What do you guys think?

Just a question. I know that Nightblood is an optimistic killing sword, but I haven't read THAT much of Warbreaker. So no spoilers please.

Hi there. Long time lurker, first time poster. Is there any concerns with a possible future showdown between Kaladin and Szeth where Nightblood consumes Investiture? Could Syl be at risk?

So, I realize side series/story might not be the best name for this sense they all probably play an important part in some capacity overall even if it's just behind the scenes. But what I mean is that Brandon has never been shy in saying that the "Main Sequence" of the Cosmere constitutes Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive and Dragonsteel. There his Babies, the Big Three, the Headliners, the Golden Trio, the Three Amigos, the Breadwinners, the reason you probably bought the tickets. They alone will consist of up to AT LEAST 26 books between the three. (13 Mist, 10 SA and 3-5 DS) and make up the majority of the Cosmere's overall content. Sense there the most important also, they are the one's we can be most assured to get and the one's who will receive the most attention to overall. So what I'm asking is what are you most looking forward to among the rest, outside the Big Three and why? Who among there smaller cousins are you most excited for? Me personally? Elantris Sequels: I am mostly looking forward to learning more about Wyrn and maybe what happened to Dominion and Devotion. Nightblood: Might be what I'm most excited for overall. Can't wait to see more of Vasher, Vivi and Nightblood and also maybe what happened to separate them. White Sand: Probably what I'm most excited for right now, if only because we know it's coming out relatively soon in either this year or next and it'll be the first new major Shard world opened to us sense we came to Roshar in 2010. Dark One: The concept sounds super interesting as does the world and Brandon's YA so far has been just top notch. The Silence Divine: It's on the lower end of the list but that could easily change when I read it like it did with Emperor's Soul Skyward: I just don't know enough about it to really get excited yet. (Or if it even still exists) Also really curious about the two unnamed one's but that's a long way off. Anyway, What about you guys?

I was thinking about the connections between Warbreaker and The Stormlight Archive and I stumbled on an interesting fact. We have WoB that Nightblood will kill its wielder by consuming the wielder's Innate Investiture, which can include the wielder's Spiritual aspect (in whole or in part). We also have textev that Honorblades consume dangerous amounts of Stormlight. This suggests to me that if an Honorblade is wielded in the same way that Nightblood can be, it will eventually kill its wielder. Does anyone think this is plausible?

http://store.brandonsanderson.com/8-bit-szeth-t-shirt/ I NEED IT!

I had this (probably crazy) idea today and posted it on Tumblr and it was suggested I bring it here as well. I tried to search to see if it was already here somewhere and didn't find anything - I apologize in advance if my searching-fu was lacking and I'm creating a repeat topic. Theory: At the very end of WoR, Nin gives Szeth a black Shardblade that lives in a metal sheath and asks in a cheerful voice "Would you like to destroy some evil today?" It is fairly clear that this is Nightblood from Warbreaker. We know that Nightblood was Awakened by Vasher and Shashara. However, even accounting for the sheer number of breaths involved in Awakening steel, Nightblood is odd for an Awakened object. We don't see any other Awakened objects that actively draw the breath from their users or leak black smoke. Here's my crazy idea: What if Nightblood was not originally from Nalthis? What if Nin is returning Nightblood to its native Roshar? We know Vashar was involved in awakening it, but I can't remember or find any mention of where the sword came from before it was Awakened. What if Nightblood was originally a dead-spren shardblade? The thing that got me thinking about this was noticing how well Nightblood's attempts at understanding what evil actually is in a human context parallel conversations we get involving Pattern and Syl trying to understand human concepts. Syl tells us that the dead-spren shardblades are partially revived when they are summoned. Awakening seems like it could be brute forced into reviving a dead-spren shardblade, though without a proper human/spren bond things would be wonky. This could explain Nightblood's odd mental ability. Like the spren in the Stormlight Archive, Nightblood is able to slowly learn to understand human concepts. However, unlike Pattern and Syl, Nightblood lacks a proper human-spren bond and thus is proving to have a much, much slower ability to learn. Spren lose their sentience if they loose their bond with their human (we see this with Syl and Kaladin in addition to being told about it). It would be reasonable for a dead-spren Shardblade Nightblood to require frequent replenishment of breath - just like the Returned require a regular supply of breath to remain "alive". This could provide an explanation for Nightblood's breath draining property. We know that black is a powerful color for fueling Awakening. If Nightblood is originally from Roshar rather than Nalthis, then the BioChromatic breath is not actually the right power source. It would want Stormlight which, as far as I can tell, is white. The process of converting Breath into power the spren-based sword can use could plausibly involve filtering out the color resulting in the black color of the blade and then the excess being released as the signature "black smoke." So, yeah. There's my idea. I'm fluctuating between thinking it is completely insane and thinking it is just the kind of crazy that might actually have a chance. On the off chance there is any truth to it, the power implications for an Awakened Shardblade seem like they would be off the charts... Regardless, I have found it interesting to think about and would be happy to hear other people's thoughts :-)