[OB]Adonalsium as a Blade

[continuumg]

Hey, all!

im a fairly new cosmerenaut, but since first discovering Sanderson this past December, I’ve dove right in headfirst. I’ve just finished my first re-read of the stormlight archives and have read everything else, save Elantris.

I am now re-reading Arcanum Unbounded, and was struck suddenly by an idea. Investiture is inherently drawn to the shape of a sword or bladed weapon. Adonalsium himself may have been such a weapon, or at least on occasion took that form.

Some points to support this theory:

- Radiants, so far as we are absolutely sure, left their abandoned radiantspren only in the form of a blade. I originally assumed that some of the fancier old fabrials were once radiantspren, but now doubt it.

- We have seen Nightblood and Azure’s sword as recreations of shardblades, but no comparable version of shardplate using Breaths.

- In Secret History, when Kelsier is telling Preservation to stab Eland, we get the following quote: (Fuzz reached to his belt, and his hand shimmered. The knife appeared there. He looked down at it, the blade glistening. “Old friend…” he whispered at it.)

- In Shadows for Silence in the Forest of Hell, Silence describes her dagger as the symbol of the religion devoted to the God Beyond. A religion known across the cosmere.

I would like to propose that Adonalsium took the form of a Sword or Dagger, and that all Investiture, if gathered in a large enough magnitude, tends towards the same form. When adonalsium shattered, the investiture reformed into 16 more bladed weapons, including Preservation’s knife. These were the original forms of the shards’ power. As the vessels power diffused throughout the systems they were investing, the tendency to hold this shape may have diminished.

Did I miss anything?

[Oversleep]

Before I say anything about your theory: please hide Oathbinger spoilers and change the name of the thread to include a warning.

As for the theory: I doubt this very much.

First of all, Radiant Shards tend to default to swords because that's what the Honorblades are. If anything, this speaks about Tanavast's preference of the sword.

Nightblood builts on that: Vasher saw Shardblades (all of them swords) and then Awakened a sword. This says absolutely nothing about inherent properties of Investiture. There is no reason why Awakening an armor would not work.

Leras carried a knife before his Ascension. What is so strange about that? As far as we know, the knife has no specific relation to Adonalsium.

6 hours ago, continuumg said:

In Shadows for Silence in the Forest of Hell, Silence describes her dagger as the symbol of the religion devoted to the God Beyond. A religion known across the cosmere.

I don't remember this bit but in general weapons were made of silver. Knifes and swords tend to be quite common choice of the weapon.

Counterpoints are of course Scadrian godmetals, which take forms of nuggets, not bladed weapons.

[Overlord Jebus]

Moved to Oathbringer Spoilers and added appropriate tag

[continuumg]

Ah, yes! I forgot to mention the honorblades. I was going to posit that they were swords due to the fact that they were such large splinters of honor.

The thing about preservation’s dagger, is that Sanderson is typically very diliberate about his word choice. The way Leras personifies the knife shows to me that in the very least there’s more to that knife than we currently know.

I’m obviously not going to go around claiming this theory as fact; it was just idle thought, but I found it an interesting one. 

Apologies for the spoilers in the main board; it was a long day and I wasn’t really thinking.

[Weltall]

3 hours ago, continuumg said:

The thing about preservation’s dagger, is that Sanderson is typically very diliberate about his word choice. The way Leras personifies the knife shows to me that in the very least there’s more to that knife than we currently know.

Given that Leras is something like ten thousand years old, he's had a lot of time to work up sentimental attachments to things. Just because the knife is special to him in some way says nothing about Investiture tending towards manifesting in the form of weapons. For all we know, he loves that knife because some friend or family member gave it to him long long ago, or he made it himself and it's consequently significant to him. You could even combine that with another theory and speculate that the knife (or the blade at least) was made by Leras' will out of dragonsteel and so doubly significant to him.

Also, consider how much godmetal we've seen and how all of that only represents a tiny fraction of the power of the associated Shard(s). Adonalsium was all the Investiture everywhere in the Cosmere. That would be a very big sword indeed. Hmm, there's a philosophical connundrum for you: Can Adonalsium make a sword so large that He can't lift it?

[ScarletSabre]

If I remember rightly, we may also have a WOB on Preservation/Leras' knife just being a plain ol' knife, but I'm not sure.

Either way, an interesting theory, and I hadn't remembered that bit about Silence and the symbol of the religion! Bloody nice catch, I don't think I've seen anyone else mention it, either!

[Weltall]

@ScarletSabre I found two WoBs on Arcanum, there may be some not there yet which I'm unaware of. But what I found was a RAFO when asked if people would call his knife a Shardblade and another RAFO where someone asked about a hypothetical test that could be performed on it which I assume is a reference to the unpublished Dragonsteel Prime and my guess is it would indicate the presence of the titular metal. RAFOs being what they are though, it's entirely possible that there's nothing 'special' about the knife and Leras is just sentimentially attached to it for personal reasons. We're probably going to have to wait until Dragonsteel gets published to find out what significance it had to him.