Nightwielder's other weakness

[MathEpic]

The canonical weakness of Nightwielder is UV light.  If you shine it at him he will turn corporal enough to shoot him with your gun of choice.

 

I have to wonder though, is there another way.

 

Nightwielder probably still needs to breathe.  I suspect when he inhales he turns the air he breaths incorporeal and the oxygen is then absorbed into his body, and air he exhales becomes corporeal again as soon at it leaves his body.  That would also explain how he can talk in his "soft, errie voice" when most physical forces don't affect him at all.

 

Unless his incorporeal powers can be fine tuned at a molecular level he can be killed with poison gas.

 

Carbon Monoxide is easy enough to produce, but he might notice the symptoms of poisoning and rabbit when he knows that something is going on.  It would be hard to stop him from leaving whatever trap you have set up.  There are other, weapons grade, gasses that would kill him off within a minute, but these are more difficult to get.

 

A hit on Nightwielder would still be difficult to pull off, especially since poisonous gasses are a very imprecise weapon, and the Reckoners would have to go to great lengths to avoid collateral damage.  However, I think they could pull it off.

 

Thoughts?

[name_here]

I guess it's worth a shot, but I'm dubious. He flies through solid objects pretty readily. He might very well hold his breath while inside them, but Davis didn't mention any reports of him coming up for air. And Steelheart is immune to suffocation (Apparently at least one of his opponents was a man after my own heart), so there is precedent for Epics who speak without needing to breathe. Plus, since we know many types of matter cannot affect him, it is reasonably likely his intangibility can selectively permit specific gases.

 

A more robust yet more difficult version of gassing him is removing all molecular oxygen from an area, possibly via a really big fire. That way he'd suffocate even if he only interacts with oxygen.

[happyman]

It's entirely possible he doesn't need to breath at all.  That sounds like a useful secondary power for somebody who is intangible.  After all, that would be the least of the impossibilities of his power set.

[Swimmingly]

If you can suffocate Nightwielder, then you can find some workaround for Steelheart too - and they tried everything.

[name_here]

Uh, not necessarily. Nightwielder was invincible by virtue of not being solid, while Steelheart was invincible by virtue of being invincible. This means that any avenue of attack that does not depend on physical interaction of some form is likely able to harm Nightwielder, but without disabling his powers you could only harm Steelheart with a method that does not depend on inflicting harm and thus is logically impossible.

 

Now, Nightwielder may also not need to breathe, but if he does he would die if there was no oxygen for him to breathe. Of course, any incorporeal Epic either does not need to breathe, is capable of interacting with oxygen, or died very quickly. So there's a roughly 50-50 chance that removing all oxygen from the entire area he could travel to within four minutes from his location would be fatal. But since he can fly at a good clip through solid objects, that's pretty much egregiously impossible unless an Epic with teleportation powers was able to forcibly relocate him to Luna.

 

As Fortuity demonstrates, Epics with Prime Invincibility can be killed without activating their weakness.  In general, I'd say an Epic has Prime Invincibility if killing them requires something beyond simply having overwhelming force of some description. Now, powerful illusionists and precogs can likely be killed by large-scale explosions or batteries of machine guns, but if you delivered the same amount of energy with a high-powered laser instead that wouldn't work.

Edited November 9, 2013 by name_here