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Nightblood and Divine Breaths


jamesgrey

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So, while the recent Shardcast podcast was discussing how Nightblood was created the idea that divine breaths were involved was brought up. The team rightly brought up that 1,000 divine breaths would be a lot (maybe even beyond the "very hard" requirements that are discussed). Yet I think there is something to the divine breath theory.

For some reason this drew me back to the idea that Vasher had to kill Shashara to stop the creation of any additional weapons. I've always considered the divine breath to be a Endowment-invested version of someone's cognitive or spiritual essence (basically a souped up version of their soul). As such, I consider the divine breath to be the vehicle by which the Returned continue to exist and also the vehicle for their sentience (which is living on borrowed time and would otherwise be drawn to the Beyond). I'm also, maybe faultily assuming that the group of Scholars (Vasher, Yesteel, Denth, Shashara) were all returned. We certainly know that's true for 2 of them at a minimum.

Now consider that when Awakeners invest objects the amount of breaths needed is dependent on the command. Over time they may learn that "protect me" to a cloak takes X number of breaths but it doesn't seem like that's obvious without experimentation. So, perhaps Shashara didn't know that it took 1000 breaths to create Nightblood until she did it since it was the first of its kind. And perhaps in addition to the 1000 regular breaths she told Vasher about, she didn't notice that it also took her divine breath. That would explain why Nightblood is so invested (has a divine breath which is a direct investiture from Endowment). It also might explain whatever unexplained change of heart that made Shashara so committed to making more weapons that Vasher had to kill his lover. It seems unlikely that he would have killed her just to 'kill the knowledge' unless she clearly had the intent of making more. What if, by inadvertently investing her Divine Breath in Nightblood, she lost the part of her that made her "her" and became less willing to listen and be tempered by Vasher.

 

My two cents (and first post)

Edited by jamesgrey
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You are correct that all 5 of the Scholars were Returned. I disagree however with the idea that a divine breath was used in the creation of Nightblood. 

I don't see how Shashara could've used a divine breath and somehow survived. The divine breath is what powers Returned and returns them to life. Without it, they're dead again. Therefore, the theory is, in my opinion, paradoxical. I also don't think that in general, a divine breath is used to power Nightblood, as there is a WoB that no lives were lost in its making, and as I just stated, using a divine breath in any capacity would require killing the Returned. 

I also don't see why a change of heart would've been necessary for Shashara to create another Type IV awakened object. She was clearly a researcher, and it seems logical that once she created one, she would do so again, to verify the process and/or refine, even without some other motivation to do so. Therefore, Vasher logic in killing her to prevent the creation of more objects is understandable. Also, the knowledge itself is quite dangerous, letting it be known would be quite dangerous, so I don't see why just killing her to prevent the knowledge from spreading isn't likely.

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I think part of my struggle with Vasher her killing her "purely to stop the knowledge" is that that colors Shashara as such a one-dimensional character. Someone that Vasher could fall in love with seems unlikely to be someone that couldn't see reason, greater good, etc. Brandon rarely writes such simple characters.

We've seen no evidence that a sufficient quantity of regular breaths couldn't keep a Returned going without their Divine Breath (yay theory). And in fact, a Divine Breath only takes you to an intermediate heightening automatically. With substantially more than that via breaths, which Shashara clearly had, I wouldn't be shocked to discover that her own pool of investiture (those breaths) could similarly take sentience and keep her moving even if her Divine Breath was lost. This also speaks to the parallels between Honor Blades and Nightblood. We know that Honor Blades are splinters which implies a level of Shard investiture that is very explicit. A Divine breath would accomplish that.

I'm not 100% on this theory, but I think it has legs. Every other Returned we know of who gave up their divine breath only had their one-a-week ration aside from that. We don't really know what would happen if a returned with 20,000 breaths lost their divine breath. That's ALOT of investiture to just vanish.

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22 minutes ago, jamesgrey said:

So, while the recent Shardcast podcast was discussing how Nightblood was created the idea that divine breaths were involved was brought up. The team rightly brought up that 1,000 divine breaths would be a lot (maybe even beyond the "very hard" requirements that are discussed). Yet I think there is something to the divine breath theory.

For some reason this drew me back to the idea that Vasher had to kill Shashara to stop the creation of any additional weapons. I've always considered the divine breath to be a Endowment-invested version of someone's cognitive or spiritual essence (basically a souped up version of their soul). As such, I consider the divine breath to be the vehicle by which the Returned continue to exist and also the vehicle for their sentience (which is living on borrowed time and would otherwise be drawn to the Beyond). I'm also, maybe faultily assuming that the group of Scholars (Vasher, Yesteel, Denth, Shashara) were all returned. We certainly know that's true for 2 of them at a minimum.

Now consider that when Awakeners invest objects the amount of breaths needed is dependent on the command. Over time they may learn that "protect me" to a cloak takes X number of breaths but it doesn't seem like that's obvious without experimentation. So, perhaps Shashara didn't know that it took 1000 breaths to create Nightblood until she did it since it was the first of its kind. And perhaps in addition to the 1000 regular breaths she told Vasher about, she didn't notice that it also took her divine breath. That would explain why Nightblood is so invested (has a divine breath which is a direct investiture from Endowment). It also might explain whatever unexplained change of heart that made Shashara so committed to making more weapons that Vasher had to kill his lover. It seems unlikely that he would have killed her just to 'kill the knowledge' unless she clearly had the intent of making more. What if, by inadvertently investing her Divine Breath in Nightblood, she lost the part of her that made her "her" and became less willing to listen and be tempered by Vasher.

 

My two cents (and first post)

Gratz on first post. Welcome to the non-lurking portion of the Shard. If you are new here, one piece of advice: avoid the baked goods offered you. Using Divine Breath has been discussed before (mostly by me :D), but we simply don't know enough to say without more WoB or another book.

A point about it, though: it isn't 'this object takes 100 breaths to awaken for this command,' it is 'this will take a level of Investiture that will require about 100 breaths to attain.' This means you can't make Nightblood with 1000 Divine Breaths, you can make him with one. No other Breath is required.

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We know that holding a large amount of Breath does have postmortem effects, as Clod retains more Cognitive functionality than a normal Lifeless because of the amount of Breath that Arsteel had when he died, per WoB. However, that doesn't say anything about being able to survive when you give away the Divine Breath. I mean, maybe if you had enough extra Breaths to reach the Fifth Heightening on your own you could somehow trick your body into thinking you weren't aging but if the Divine Breath is what's keeping your spiritweb going in the first place I doubt that would actually work, and it would go against Brandon's concept for the entire Returned system, of a one-shot healing miracle that requires you to sacrifice your life to do it. Also, a Divine Breath isn't 'just' two thousand or so normal Breaths in one, it's a deliberately crafted Splinter of Endowment so it's got properties that are (so far as we know) utterly unique. Not to say such a thing is completely impossible because there's so much about BioChroma that's still unknown but my instinct is that it's unlikely.

As far as looking at the personalities of Shashara and Vasher go, remember that Manywar-era Vasher isn't the same person that we know, three centuries later. It's basically stated that Vasher started the Manywar and only had a change of heart after seeing Nightblood in action. He doesn't see himself as a hero even now and back when Nightblood was created, he definitely wasn't one.

Oh, and welcome to the Shard. xD

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I still disagree on the premise of being able to survive without a divine breath. I'll break down why, as well as the reason why you saying they can survive with extra breath conflicts with your theory. 

First of all, a theory I hold to is that the splinter which is a divine breath is the personality of the Returned. After the Nalthian dies and Endowment offers them a chance to return, if they accept, then their soul goes forth to the Beyond, and a divine breath is inserted into their body. This is why they have no memories of themselves before their deaths, and the only imprints they have is from remnants of the original cognitive of the person in the physical body. As such, giving up the the divine breath means they die, because they are essentially giving up their soul.

Secondly, you said that Shashara accidentally used up her divine breath as well because she didn't know how many breaths he would take. That implies that she is therefore using up all her other breaths, and her divine breath, leaving her with none. Or you're implying that it requires 3000 breath equivalents, and that she had less than 3000 on her, so it took 1000 then the divine breath. I'm guessing you're not suggesting the former, because then she'd be dead, but the latter doesn't seem to work out either, since you just said that you think that she has a large number, around 20000. 

29 minutes ago, jamesgrey said:

I think part of my struggle with Vasher her killing her "purely to stop the knowledge" is that that colors Shashara as such a one-dimensional character. Someone that Vasher could fall in love with seems unlikely to be someone that couldn't see reason, greater good, etc. Brandon rarely writes such simple characters.

This is possibly true. However, it possible that Vasher just couldn't stand the risk. Also, Shashara seems to already have a precedent of letting dangerous knowledge spread, such at the creation of one-breath lifeless, Still fairly faulty, I know, but I'm hoping Nightblood will go into details on this. 

29 minutes ago, jamesgrey said:

With substantially more than that via breaths, which Shashara clearly had, I wouldn't be shocked to discover that her own pool of investiture (those breaths) could similarly take sentience and keep her moving even if her Divine Breath was lost.

This wouldn't happen though, since investiture only gains its own sentience when otherwise unguided by a cognitive mind. Since the breaths she is holding have a cognitive mind, they wouldn't develop their own.

29 minutes ago, jamesgrey said:

We know that Honor Blades are splinters which implies a level of Shard investiture that is very explicit. A Divine breath would accomplish that.

Please point me to your source, as I haven't seen this confirmed anywhere.

19 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

A point about it, though: it isn't 'this object takes 100 breaths to awaken for this command,' it is 'this will take a level of Investiture that will require about 100 breaths to attain.' This means you can't make Nightblood with 1000 Divine Breaths, you can make him with one. No other Breath is required.

He's saying that it actually takes 3000 breaths to make Nightblood, so Shashara's 1000 + 2000 equivalent from the divine breath.

 

Edited by Spoolofwhool
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16 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

He's saying that it actually takes 3000 breaths to make Nightblood, so Shashara's 1000 + 2000 equivalent from the divine breath.

Okay. Firstly, it actually took 1000 standard Breaths, which I am fairly sure you know, but he might not. Second, how it would fill assuming you have 999 normal Breaths and 1 Divine Breath (assuming it would take 1000 normal Breaths, so the Divine one is required to successfully awaken the item) depends on one thing: do they act as an ordered or unordered list?

I have discussed this in the past, but this is a better way of putting it. Do you give Breaths to an object in some particular order until you meet the requirement? Or do you give it whatever Breaths it needs in no particular order to meet the requirement? If it is the first, you can overfill the item by ordering your Breath such that the first 999 go in, then the Divine Breath. You can also order it to make it so only the Divine Breath goes in. Depends on what you are doing and if you know this will happen. If, on the other hand, it acts as an unordered list, it will likely only take the Divine Breath because the other Breaths combined aren't enough. It might also just grab random Breaths until the Divine one is chosen.

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1 minute ago, Djarskublar said:

Okay. Firstly, it actually took 1000 standard Breaths, which I am fairly sure you know, but he might not. Second, how it would fill assuming you have 999 normal Breaths and 1 Divine Breath (assuming it would take 1000 normal Breaths, so the Divine one is required to successfully awaken the item) depends on one thing: do they act as an ordered or unordered list?

You're misunderstanding. He's saying that Vasher is saying that it only took 1000 breaths because that is what Shashara noticed was missing from her stash after the awakening. At the same time though, he's saying that it also took her divine breath. So according to his theory, what actually awakened Nightblood was 1000 normal breaths, plus the divine breath. The divine breath is not being counted. I don't agree with this at all.

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1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

You're misunderstanding. He's saying that Vasher is saying that it only took 1000 breaths because that is what Shashara noticed was missing from her stash after the awakening. At the same time though, he's saying that it also took her divine breath. So according to his theory, what actually awakened Nightblood was 1000 normal breaths, plus the divine breath. The divine breath is not being counted. I don't agree with this at all.

Oh... Yeah I'm totally with you on that one.

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I never thought about that, but who knows, maybe it's true. 

I agree, Shashara would have died when using her Divine Breath to awaken something.

But, what if the didn't know then, how to hold / hide their Divine Breath, and it was an accident, and she died of that? Do we really know that Vasher killed her, or only from what Denth (and maybe Vasher himself) are telling. Maybe it really was just an accident, or Vasher somehow forced her to do it.

It's just kind of strange to me, that Nightblood should be that powerful with "only" 1000 Breaths. Of course, 1000 are a lot, but compared to what Susebron has it's almost nothing.

And still, he's really powerful.

Honestly, I think it's more likely it's not like I just wrote down. But who knows? Might be possible in my opinion

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The main issues with the idea is that Shahara had no more Breath and to fuel the Awekening she had to use also her divine Breath....She was in the ninthHeightening (to awaken Metal) at least with 20k of Breah...There is no way she would "expend all of them".

And in the quite unlikely that this happened (with the exception of "all thousands of Breath kept her alive")...There is no risk of a widespread of Nightblood-like being, if you need a Divine Breath to each of them.

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1 hour ago, Thunder_93 said:

I never thought about that, but who knows, maybe it's true. 

I agree, Shashara would have died when using her Divine Breath to awaken something.

But, what if the didn't know then, how to hold / hide their Divine Breath, and it was an accident, and she died of that? Do we really know that Vasher killed her, or only from what Denth (and maybe Vasher himself) are telling. Maybe it really was just an accident, or Vasher somehow forced her to do it.

It's just kind of strange to me, that Nightblood should be that powerful with "only" 1000 Breaths. Of course, 1000 are a lot, but compared to what Susebron has it's almost nothing.

And still, he's really powerful.

Honestly, I think it's more likely it's not like I just wrote down. But who knows? Might be possible in my opinion

The reason for it being stupidly powerful is because of its Investiture consumption. When it eats through several souls a second, it had better be storming buff! It has less to do with its personal level of Investiture. That just makes it so when it is channeling its power, it doesn't have enough Investiture to also maintain sapience.

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