Ruin Evil

[ForcesOfNoodles]

Nightblood has Connection to Ruin.

It has been stated by WoB that Nightblood's corruption of Breath is an effect of mixing powers.

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BLIGHTSONG

How does corrupted investiture work, like Nightblood?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Oh, Nightblood. Again, this is a definition of what somebody feels is a corruption. For instance, there are spren people would feel are corrupted. But that is corruption where the mixing of different shards has changed things, and I think a lot of times when people say corruption, people are meaning the mixing of shards powers.

BLIGHTSONG

So is there a mixing of shards power with Nightblood?

BRANDON SANDERSON

*smirks* RAFO. That's the natural question, I'm glad you asked it.

The Command used to Awaken Nightblood was "Destroy Evil".

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That was the great crux of the problem, the issue that had dominated most of Vasher’s life. A thousand Breaths. That was what it took to Awaken an object of steel and give it sentience. Even Shashara hadn’t fully understood the process, though she had first devised it.

It took a person who had reached the Ninth Heightening to Awaken stone or steel. Even then, this process shouldn’t have worked. It should have created an Awakened object with no more of a mind than the tassels on his cloak.

Nightblood should not be alive. And yet he was. Shashara had always been the most talented of them, far more capable than Vasher himself, who had used tricks—like encasing bones in steel or stone—to make his creations. Shashara had been spurred on by the knowledge that she’d been shown up by Yesteel and the development of ichor-alcohol. She had studied, experimented, practiced. And she’d done it. She’d learned to forge the Breath of a thousand people into a piece of steel, Awaken it to sentience, and give it a Command. That single Command took on immense power, providing a foundation for the personality of the object Awakened.

But Nightblood's sheer power and sentience were unexpected; the Awakening had worked better than it should have, and neither Vasher nor Shashara had understood why.

Nightblood was based off of Shardblades; the Five Scholars were Worldhoppers. What if they brought back more than just knowledge of a Shardblade, but something of Ruin too, allowing a Connection between the sword and the Shard?

"Destroy Evil" isn't a very accurate way to describe Nightblood's intent either; there seems to be more of a focus on "Destroy" than "Evil".

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That man down there, Nightblood said. The god in the palace. He holds the power to start this war. You don’t want this war to start. That’s why he’s evil.

“Why does that make him evil?”

Because he will do what you don’t want him to.

“We don’t know that for certain,” Vasher said. “Plus, who is to say that my judgment is best?”

It is, Nightblood said. Let’s go. Let’s kill him. You told me war is bad. He will start a war. He’s evil. Let’s kill him. Let’s kill him.

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“I don’t know, Denth,” Tonk Fah said. “I kind of think we should keep it. It could be very useful. . . .” The beginnings of the lust began to show in his eyes, the desire to draw Nightblood, to use the sword. To destroy evil. Or, really, just to destroy.

A connection between Ruin and Nightblood would well explain all of this, and Nightblood's personality. After all, Ati was once a "kind and generous man" before Ruin's intent changed him.

Finally, Nightblood has been described as "Orders of Magnitude stronger than a Shardblade". Spren are splinters, as are Divine BioChromatic Breath. However, a Divine BioChromatic Breath is worth 2,000 Breath, double that which is Nightblood is Invested with. He must have some source for his power of destruction.

 

 

[Thanatos]

I think if there is a mix of shardic investure with Nightbloods creation then it was created by mixing a shard blade with a dead spren and 1000 breaths. 

Thereby they reawakened the spren and the 1000 breaths made it Nightblood 

Edited September 9, 2017 by Thanatos

[ForcesOfNoodles]

I've considered this. It would explain a few things, but isn't it harder to Invest an object that's already Invested? Maybe the fact that it used to be alive would offset this. Still, Shashara planned to give away the secret of this, and Vasher killed her for it. I doubt it would be such a big problem if the process required a Shardblade to start with.

Unless Shashara also planned to give away the secret of Worldhopping...still, you'd think Vasher would have thought of that in his memories.

Edited September 9, 2017 by ForcesOfNoodles

[Thanatos]

Brandon did say Vasher and Shashara did go to Roshar and got the idea for Nightblood there.

But i dont think Nightbloods outcome was what was planned. Aka his personality and power/s.

[Yata]

2 hours ago, Thanatos said:

I think if there is a mix of shardic investure with Nightbloods creation then it was created by mixing a shard blade with a dead spren and 1000 breaths. 

Thereby they reawakened the spren and the 1000 breaths made it Nightblood 

Nightblood made from a dead Shardblade is an argument who arose periodically and has a lot of things that made it almost impossible.

1) The look doesn't fit

2) A Shardblade is defined to be so "full of Investiture" to not be usable as a Spike. Hemalurgy is a low-Investiture magic system and if some piece of S-Web could find place in a Shardblade....1000 Breath worth of Raw Investiture can't too.

3) Vasher tried to replicate a Shardblade with his Magic. It has no sense if you use a Shardblade as Awakening's target.

4) Vasher is worried to a Mass production of Nightblood-like sword, thousands of them. If for every "nightblood" you need a Shardblade, this is impossible and not an issue at all.

[Weltall]

To add to what Yata says, the look of Nightblood doesn't match a Shardblade. Remember that Rosharans are on average somewhat larger than normal humans, then remember that even they think that Shardblades are really big. People would be commenting on Nightblood being ginormous if it had used a Shardblade as a base, since the dead blades default to their oversized fantasy poster/JRPG protagonist sword size when the spren are killed.

Another thing to consider is that Shashara and Vasher were both surprised by the outcome. If they had used a Shardblade as a base or gotten their hands on some of Ruin's Investiture (ie atium) and used it as part of making Nightblood, it would have been pretty obvious to them what caused things to go screwy even if they didn't understand why. They're savvy about Investiture and could easily have figured out that whatever they were using interacted strangely with all the Breath. I think it's much safer to assume that Nightblood's unexpected sentience is a result of some quirk of BioChroma that we don't understand yet (Brandon's admitted there's a lot we haven't been told yet) without positing that it's the result of cross-system interaction.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Weltall

[Beast_c_a_t]

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1) The look doesn't fit

Shardblades vary greatly in look, and the one used for Nightblood could have been chosen to not stand out too much.

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2) A Shardblade is defined to be so "full of Investiture" to not be usable as a Spike. Hemalurgy is a low-Investiture magic system and if some piece of S-Web could find place in a Shardblade....1000 Breath worth of Raw Investiture can't too.

I don't think these two are mutually exclusive. It's like saying because a bucket is too full of water to lift, no more water can be added to it.

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3) Vasher tried to replicate a Shardblade with his Magic. It has no sense if you use a Shardblade as Awakening's target.

"Shardblade" is used for both living and dead spreen blades. They could have been trying to replicate a KR shardblade based off legend, and assumed, like the Roshrian scholars did, that the left behind shardblades where just invested artifacts.

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4) Vasher is worried to a Mass production of Nightblood-like sword, thousands of them. If for every "nightblood" you need a Shardblade, this is impossible and not an issue at all.

As per my rebuttal to 3, if Vasher didn't know shardblades are spren, but assumed that they were just magically augmented swords. His fear of mass produced awakened swords makes a lot more sense.

Given that Nightblood has been corrupted from it's creation, it had to be made with a mix of different investitures, and the most likely explanation is an awakened dead shardblade.

[Yata]

1 hour ago, Beast_c_a_t said:

Shardblades vary greatly in look, and the one used for Nightblood could have been chosen to not stand out too much.

I don't think these two are mutually exclusive. It's like saying because a bucket is too full of water to lift, no more water can be added to it.

"Shardblade" is used for both living and dead spreen blades. They could have been trying to replicate a KR shardblade based off legend, and assumed, like the Roshrian scholars did, that the left behind shardblades where just invested artifacts.

As per my rebuttal to 3, if Vasher didn't know shardblades are spren, but assumed that they were just magically augmented swords. His fear of mass produced awakened swords makes a lot more sense.

Given that Nightblood has been corrupted from it's creation, it had to be made with a mix of different investitures, and the most likely explanation is an awakened dead shardblade.

Those are really weak counterarguments.

Anyway we know by WoB that Vasher didn't need to actual see a Shardblade to make NB just stories about could be enough.

Also in the WarBreaker's annotations it's stated that if the War wasn't stopped the Naghtbloods' mass production will actually happen.

[Weltall]

7 hours ago, Beast_c_a_t said:

Shardblades vary greatly in look, and the one used for Nightblood could have been chosen to not stand out too much.

Shardblades default to zomgHUGE by Rosharan standards, picking one that doesn't have a crazily elaborate blade means nothing when it's still at least twice the size of any other sword. And again, if Vasher and Shashara grabbed one from Roshar then the fact that Nightblood developed unexpected sentience wouldn't be a case of 'we have no idea what happened' but 'we know it probably has to do with this strange sword we picked up' and they'd have a place to start with further research. And since Shashara intended to mass-produce the things, it's clear that the process doesn't involve the kind of ridiculously intensive Step One that 'worldhop to Roshar, steal a Shardblade' would require.

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I don't think these two are mutually exclusive. It's like saying because a bucket is too full of water to lift, no more water can be added to it.

1000+ Breaths is half that of a Splinter of Endowment. That's a lot of Investiture, compared to the very small amount present in a hemalurgic spike. If you can't make one of those from a Shardblade there's no way you could stuff hundreds to thousands of times more Investiture into that same limited space.

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Given that Nightblood has been corrupted from it's creation, it had to be made with a mix of different investitures, and the most likely explanation is an awakened dead shardblade.

Brandon hasn't actually confirmed that Nightblood's 'corruption' is the result of mixing powers, just that in many circumstances that's what's going on when people think of something as being corrupted. Not all RAFOs mean 'you're right but I don't want to say so'.

It's also possible the weirdness isn't literally a mixing of powers with Nightblood but the result of Shashara trying to create something that's a part of one magic system, using a completely different magic system that wasn't intended to work that way.

[Yata]

15 hours ago, Weltall said:

It's also possible the weirdness isn't literally a mixing of powers with Nightblood but the result of Shashara trying to create something that's a part of one magic system, using a completely different magic system that wasn't intended to work that way.

This is similar to one theory I proposed:

Nightblood is an artificial Endowment's Splinter crafted to fuitfull his command. But his Command is something aganist Endowment's mandate/Intent. So I thought that Nightblood itself generated a twisting in Investiture as He is a living contradiction.

[The One Who Connects]

On 9/12/2017 at 5:29 AM, Beast_c_a_t said:

As per my rebuttal to 3, if Vasher didn't know shardblades are spren, but assumed that they were just magically augmented swords. His fear of mass produced awakened swords makes a lot more sense.

His fear is legitimate.

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Bluefingers Explains That He Has to Execute Siri

Bluefingers is right when he says that there’s a good chance Idris will do better in the war than everyone assumes.

If this war were allowed to progress, Idris would be able to draw allies from across the mountains (as I mentioned earlier), and Yesteel’s ability to create swords like Nightblood would end with T’Telir falling and then the entire world being cast into chaos and destruction.

Unless you think Yesteel is the cause of all the missing Shardblades from Dalinar's vision, then all logic falls apart for Nightblood being a former Shardblade.

Edited September 13, 2017 by The One Who Connects