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Shardblades and investiture


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I know that a shardblade could be stopped by a metalmind with enough investiture.  I also know that once the investiture is gone it would cut through it like butter as well...

Is the shardblade leeching in a way the investiture when this happens?   When a shardblade hits a piece of plate is it damaging this investiture source first and then the plate later or is the plate losing investiture as it gets damaged by the blade?  

If you hit Wax's full bracers would they stop hits until the investiture was drained or would the investiture drain based on the damage that the bracers were taking?  

When looking at stonewards if they turn their shirt into a ridged and hard piece of armor is it going to be able to block the blades as it has investiture being used to make it hard?   Would a whip being turned into a spear via cohesion be able to block a shardblade as well?   Would the blade damaging the material cause the material to leak investiture or would it actively attack and leech away the investiture before being able to but through the now hardened cloth armor?  

How would this work with awakened cloth?   I know that the blade itself could cut through an awakened shirt but would the shardblade be resisted and destroy the breaths in the cloth or would it just cut through and allow the awakener to retrieve those breaths assuming they survive the conflict anyway?  

Side question:

Stonewards... can they infuse and strengthen their own skin to resist blades as well?  

Stonesinew is an interesting term and nickname.  

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52 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Shardblades shouldn't drain Investiture, unless there is something about how they work we don't understand.

So if investiture isn't drained actively from them would a more traditional armor hold up for more or less strikes if it is full of a feruchemical trait?  

I have had this feeling that defending against a shardblade requires investiture to stop the magical cutting force and a material that can hold up long enough to be useful against the normal sharp blade.  

If the investiture simply leaks based on the material breaking there are many other forms that have a "stickier" investiture vs the material.  

An invested stick should block the magical portion of a blade allowing it to act on the stick as a normal blade would.  An invested block of metal should block the magical portion.   If it is only going to leak investiture I feel like a block of feruchmical steel would hold up better than a piece of shardplate.  

I see shardplate cracking and then shattering.   It seems the investiture that powers it absorbs everything until it absorbs nothing.   You don't really see steel shattering in that same way. And if the investiture used to make it resist shardblades is stickier and holds onto the metalmind better than stormlight does to plate wouldn't it require leeching to break through a thicker section of feruchemically charged steel as a normal blade wouldn't be able to crack and break through it?  

We see awakened cloth get cut through and stop functioning but it still retains most breaths so you can retrieve them later... if you had an awakened suit of armor you would have the "stickiest" investiture put into a material that doesn't really break open and crack.  In armor form it usually just bends and dents.   Not saying a blade wouldn't still hurt like crazy when it hurts you (they have those full armor full contact fights now which are all aiming for pain compliance and basically an armored game of uncle).  

I definately think shardplate protects better while it is functioning.   I just want to understand if the blade bleeds away any investiture or if it just smashes until it gets cracked.  

 

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Quick thought, as it's been a while since I've looked at the details: When a Shardblade cuts someone's arm, the arm is made useless. Like it's no longer Spiritually attached to the body. It remains Physically attached. It loses it's color. The arm can be repaired by Magical (for lack of a better word) means.

The Shardblade didn't suck out Investiture, it severed the Connection between the arm and the rest of the body. If a Connection is broken between an Invested object and its Investiture, the Investiture will just dissipate, having nothing to hold it there. Breaths, for instance, would lose their Connection to the individual, making them just free Investiture which would quickly dissipate to wherever free Investiture goes. It would seem like the Breaths were destroyed or sucked in by the Shardblade, but that wouldn't be true.

In short, I think Shardblades sever Connections. Maybe, on a much smaller scale, they perform the same act that resulted in their creation.

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I don't think they sever Connection at all. What is at work when a Shardblade cuts a living thing, is that it severs the souls directly, not Connection. 

Now, as we saw with The Lopen's arm, if you still have the arm in your Cognitive Aspect (if you still see yourself as having the arm), you can even regrow it. So maybe what happens when you Heal a severed-by-Shardblade limb is that you are only regenerating the spirit, as you already have the physical arm. 

About Invested materials stopping Shardblades, I think it depends. A Invested block of metal, like a metalmind will resist the Shardblade with a force that is proportional to how much Investiture it holds. Then, when talking about a shirt hardened by a Stoneward, I think for one part it will resist part of the magical part of the Shardblade (again, proportional to how much Investiture you use), but then it will also stop the physical part of the cut, as the shirt itself has been hardened by manipulating the axial force. 

This is so because of how Shardblades cut; they transform part of the matter they cut into Investiture. So we can guess that to stop a Shardblade we need two components: Investiture to stop the Spiritual part, and a material hard enough to stop the Physical part. So, to cut that shirt with a Shardblade you would need to syphon the Investiture that holds the axions together (only if it has too much, if not you can slice through it normally with a Shardblade). 

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15 hours ago, DresdeMBM said:

I don't think they sever Connection at all. What is at work when a Shardblade cuts a living thing, is that it severs the souls directly, not Connection. 

Now, as we saw with The Lopen's arm, if you still have the arm in your Cognitive Aspect (if you still see yourself as having the arm), you can even regrow it. So maybe what happens when you Heal a severed-by-Shardblade limb is that you are only regenerating the spirit, as you already have the physical arm. 

About Invested materials stopping Shardblades, I think it depends. A Invested block of metal, like a metalmind will resist the Shardblade with a force that is proportional to how much Investiture it holds. Then, when talking about a shirt hardened by a Stoneward, I think for one part it will resist part of the magical part of the Shardblade (again, proportional to how much Investiture you use), but then it will also stop the physical part of the cut, as the shirt itself has been hardened by manipulating the axial force. 

This is so because of how Shardblades cut; they transform part of the matter they cut into Investiture. So we can guess that to stop a Shardblade we need two components: Investiture to stop the Spiritual part, and a material hard enough to stop the Physical part. So, to cut that shirt with a Shardblade you would need to syphon the Investiture that holds the axions together (only if it has too much, if not you can slice through it normally with a Shardblade). 

So shardblade vs metalmind and shardblade vs shardplate are the same?   It is the investiture held in them that stops the magical cutting allowing the match-up to continue as a normal blade vs a normal plate or metalmind.  

The investiture leaks as the material gets broken down.  

I am not saying an inch thick fully loaded steel armor set could be reliably moved around in... likely a coffin of steel.  But stormlight is more leaky than feruchemy and shardplate cracks where the steel or other materials may be more prone to denting and bending before cracking and leaking their investiture.  

Breath leaks even less than the others... very sticky.  

Could other forms of magic replicate and even surpass dead plate for protective value vs a shardblade. 

Again I think shardplate is unique in that it augments a persons strength enough to be mobile in it.  But certain commands could theoretically exist to open up a thick suit of armor to aid in mobility or even just awaken the clothing underneath to augment strength and speed enough to overcome the heavy armor.

 

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8 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

So shardblade vs metalmind and shardblade vs shardplate are the same?   It is the investiture held in them that stops the magical cutting allowing the match-up to continue as a normal blade vs a normal plate or metalmind.  

Basically yes, I think so. But of course shardplates are something more than just an Invested armour, they are "dead" spren. This means that the regenerating property of the plate (I mean that the plate reforms when absorbing Stormlight) comes from the fact that one can never permakill a spren through normal means (which begs the question, can you destroy a Shardplate with antiinvestiture?) 

Maybe the reason reason a Shardplate increases physical strength is because it channels the Stormlight to create extra force. So in the hypothetical case one could make an armour that increases physical attributes via Awakening, it would be the same case, the Investiture aiding in doing so. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 8/5/2022 at 5:06 PM, DresdeMBM said:

I don't think they sever Connection at all. What is at work when a Shardblade cuts a living thing, is that it severs the souls directly, not Connection. 

Semantics and philosophy. The soul IS Identity and Connection. There could be some other "stuff" that makes up the soul of a person, and there also may be a "true god" in the Beyond. But it's all neither here nor there as these are things the author of the world will never speak on. And if the author never speaks on something, there's no reason to speculate in those directions.

So the soul is Identity and Connection.

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