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Could Nightblood become a Vessel?


Cosmoriente

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Hello, everyone!

 I apologize if the topic has already been discussed. :)

I've been pondering on the possibility of Nightblood becoming a Vessel. He is a sapient being with a desire to KILL ALL EVIL and can Connect. If he were to access more Investiture and was put under the appropriate circumstances, I feel he could Ascend. Nightblood is one of my favorite characters and it troubles me that he might become something even more threatening to the Cosmere.

Edited by Cosmoriente
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Brandon once said Nightblood is comparable to a spren:

Quote

Boogalyhu34

Can Nightblood be considered a Splinter and does it function like a spren realmatically, are there distinct differences is what I'm asking.

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood is kind of his own strange thing. He's an attempt to use one magic to replicate something in another. He's closest to a spren, but kind of like a...robot spren, for lack of better words to use.

/r/books AMA 2015 (July 25, 2015)

He also said spren cannot become vessels for Shards:

Quote

Questioner

What happens when a... spren picks up a Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

What do you mean picks up a Shard? Shardblade or Shard of Adonalsium?

Questioner

Picks up a Shard of Adonalsium.

Brandon Sanderson

A spren is a Shard of Adonalsium so it just--

Questioner

Picks up one of the big ones like could a spren do the same thing that Kelsier's spirit did after he--

Brandon Sanderson

*hesitantly* It's like you're asking if electricity can gain a charge of electricity and get electrified. Does that make sense? I mean-- It's a question that doesn't make a lot of sense.

If a Shard were to somehow-- They would just combine into a bigger Shard and get larger-- if that makes sense?

Questioner

The foundation of that question was I thought that maybe the Stormfather spren was basically doing what Kelsier's spirit did.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, um *sighs* Not really... It's really a not really There's some similarities but it's a not really. It's not quite a RAFO though. more of a--

Questioner

More of a "doesn't quite work that way".

Brandon Sanderson

--doesn't quite work that way but you're thinking along the right lines?

Bands of Mourning release party (Jan. 25, 2016)

Going by these, the answer is most likely no.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In the Cosmere, people seem to have something innatley different about them. That thing allows them to pick up shards, but it also makes them invested (i.e. can't Push metals in people's stomachs). I wonder what it is that makes them different from simply sapient things like spren and splinters.

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I commented this on another thread a while back. I interpreted Brandon's response to mean that spren are already investiture. Just like when people ask about awakening a shardblade, it is already invested to the hilt, so awakening it would be beyond difficult. Picking up a shard means investing yourself with its power. If you are already investiture, it is kind of hard to invest investiture. So I believe that is why Brandon is saying spren cannot. The Stormfather is unique because of him merging with Tanavast's cognitive shadow. Even then the stormfather isn't exactly acting as a vessel to a shard. He was expanded from the merging, but the stormfather isn't Honor. At least that was my understanding of it. 

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12 hours ago, Gderu said:

In the Cosmere, people seem to have something innatley different about them. That thing allows them to pick up shards, but it also makes them invested (i.e. can't Push metals in people's stomachs). I wonder what it is that makes them different from simply sapient things like spren and splinters.

A Shard needs a sapient mind to direct it and will either accept a Vessel who can provide it that mind or (if sufficiently intact and left alone for enough time) will develop a mind of its own. Splinters (of which spren are a subset) are already made of Investiture and even though they have minds, they can't Ascend in the same way that a mortal Vessel can. Brandon's analogy of 'electrifying electricity' doesn't exactly tell us what makes a sapient spren different from a sapient mortal but we can guess from the context that some of it might have to do with how connected the latter is to all three Realms, while splinters seem to be largely Spiritual/Cognitive entities that require special circumstances to have a full connection to the Physical Realm. Mistborn Secret History:

Spoiler

Kelsier had two issues becoming a temporary Vessel to Preservation (one of which was that he was more connected to Ruin so the power rejected him) but a major issue he had to struggle with was that as a Cognitive Shadow he lacked a connection to the Physical Realm and even after Ascending, he was much weaker than Vin was when she later Ascended.

The thing that prevents someone from pushing/pulling metals inside the body (which can be overcome with enough strength) isn't related to the ability to Ascend per se, it's the innate Investiture in the person interfering with the external source of Investiture. We see the same thing happen with some other magic systems.

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On 2/4/2020 at 7:19 AM, Gderu said:

In the Cosmere, people seem to have something innatley different about them. That thing allows them to pick up shards, but it also makes them invested (i.e. can't Push metals in people's stomachs). I wonder what it is that makes them different from simply sapient things like spren and splinters.

It's probably something Spiritual; a soul, if you will, which has innate Investiture.

In Mistborn: Secret History, Ruin makes fun of Kelsier taking up the Shard of Preservation from the Cognitive Realm, saying it could not serve him fully because he's "only the memory of a man" (a Cognitive Shadow) and how it would never be as potent as if taken up by a man "with ties to all three Realms". He's only got two, Spiritual and Cognitive. Yet the Stormfather, also a kind of Cognitive Shadow, even post-Honor, is said to be unable to Ascend, with Cognitive and Physical ties. He has a large piece of Honor's Cognitive Shadow and Shardic Investiture, but nothing Spiritual, is how I would read it.

It is probably related to why spren cannot do magic on their own, only grant it or channel it, even in the Cognitive Realm where they "live". Kaladin can fly and Shallan can Lightweave in Shadesmar, and Pattern and Syl have forms and bodies equal to them in Shadesmar, and Surgebinding is something born of their Cognitive (oath-based) bonds to their respective Radiants... But Pattern and Syl cannot manipulate Surges, not on Roshar and not in Shadesmar.

Nightblood is somewhat unique in that he can sever in the Spiritual Realm ("vaporizing and destroying on all three realms"), which would imply he must have a presence in that Realm to do it? So if even Nightblood cannot Ascend, it's not just that, it's a quality thing not a "presence" thing.

Edited by robardin
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1 hour ago, robardin said:

It is probably related to why spren cannot do magic on their own, only grant it or channel it, even in the Cognitive Realm where they "live". Kaladin can fly and Shallan can Lightweave in Shadesmar, and Pattern and Syl have forms and bodies equal to them in Shadesmar, and Surgebinding is something born of their Cognitive (oath-based) bonds to their respective Radiants... But Pattern and Syl cannot manipulate Surges, not on Roshar and not in Shadesmar.

To be fair, windspren and honorspren like to stick things together in the PR. So therefore, they have at least some form of Adhesion or spren-equivalent.

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4 hours ago, robardin said:

It's probably something Spiritual; a soul, if you will, which has innate Investiture.

In Mistborn: Secret History, Ruin makes fun of Kelsier taking up the Shard of Preservation from the Cognitive Realm, saying it could not serve him fully because he's "only the memory of a man" (a Cognitive Shadow) and how it would never be as potent as if taken up by a man "with ties to all three Realms". He's only got two, Spiritual and Cognitive. Yet the Stormfather, also a kind of Cognitive Shadow, even post-Honor, is said to be unable to Ascend, with Cognitive and Physical ties. He has a large piece of Honor's Cognitive Shadow and Shardic Investiture, but nothing Spiritual, is how I would read it.

It is probably related to why spren cannot do magic on their own, only grant it or channel it, even in the Cognitive Realm where they "live". Kaladin can fly and Shallan can Lightweave in Shadesmar, and Pattern and Syl have forms and bodies equal to them in Shadesmar, and Surgebinding is something born of their Cognitive (oath-based) bonds to their respective Radiants... But Pattern and Syl cannot manipulate Surges, not on Roshar and not in Shadesmar.

Nightblood is somewhat unique in that he can sever in the Spiritual Realm ("vaporizing and destroying on all three realms"), which would imply he must have a presence in that Realm to do it? So if even Nightblood cannot Ascend, it's not just that, it's a quality thing not a "presence" thing.

But if there's an innate investiture in people, where does that investiture come from? Remember, investiture is never created.

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22 minutes ago, Gderu said:

But if there's an innate investiture in people, where does that investiture come from? Remember, investiture is never created.

Well, the "innate investiture" here is the "Spark of Life", as per the Coppermind entry:

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All living creatures on some level have Investiture. This is called the Spark of Life. All sentient creatures have a slightly greater amount of Investiture than non-intelligent ones. The Spark of Life or soul of a person creates a kind of interference when working with other forms of Investiture. This interference is the reason that metal inside of a person's body is highly resistant to Allomantic steel or iron. To affect something like metal inside a person's body takes a much greater degree of Investiture than most humans are capable of wielding. This is of note because a human's soul does not count as a highly Invested object and a person is not even counted as being innately Invested if they only have the Spark of Life.

Which for the most part predates the Shattering, as do most populations of humans and other sentient species (the exception being the people on Scadrial, who were created ex nihilo by the concerted efforts of Preservation and Ruin, with Preservation putting a tad more of his power into the humans than Ruin did).

The bold part is what I found curious in the Coppermind entry, because it cites this WoB from 2014, which states that Drabs on Nalthis, whose native-born people start out with slightly more Investiture than other Cosmere denizens, having that one Breath from Endowment and who have given away that Breath yet still have the Spark of Life; implying that that would be the baseline form of a human with no (other) innate Investiture. And that the people do have "innate Investiture" (beyond a Drab level) on Roshar, and that "I don't think you've seen any worlds where they don't (have innate Investiture)."

Something "extra" is in the people on Roshar. And elsewhere, as of 2014 (which date would include every other Cosmere world we know of in canon right now, except for White Sand).

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