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Vasher's Divine Breath


MitchBade

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I am putting this in Cosmere Discussion rather than the Warbreaker forum because these topics and characters are not restricted to that book. If you are are looking at this and you haven't read Warbreaker and the Stormlight Archive this may contain spoilers. Also this may have already been brought up but I couldn't find anything.

I was thinking about what Vasher might use his divine breath for, as he has lived for hundreds of years and still doesn't know why he Returned, and realized that a rather poetic (and paradoxical) end for him would be to heal Nightblood. Nightblood has been described as a poor or inaccurate replica of a shardblade, as broken or opposite compared to them. The abilities and qualities of a divine breath are not fulled defined or understood, so it may be possible for one to essentially fix Nightblood to match the intent of its creation. This would be possible because divine breaths seem to heal across all three realms, as seen with Susebron; when Lightsong healed Susebron he didn't just grow back a physical tongue, but was able to speak intuitively, as if he had never been without one. If a normal person gained a tongue after living without one since birth they would need extensive speech therapy to be able to speak, and even then they may never get to baseline. The flaws with Nightblood aren't physical, they have to do with how he interacts with the cognitive and spiritual realm, so the holistic healing offered by the divine breaths could fix his inability to understand time and morality, as well as stop him from killing his wielder unintentionally after being consumed by his command. This would make him a more powerful true shardblade like Shashara and Vasher intended.

In order for this to work a divine breath would need to be able to act on a sentient splinter in the same way it does a human. Since they can act on a Returned which are splinters of Endowment it may work on Nightblood, but this could also be explained by the Returned being cognitive shadows, so who knows. It appears that Nightblood has an important role to play in the fight against Odium and maybe in a greater overarching conflict throughout the Cosmere, so it would make sense that Vasher was returned to heal Nightblood. This would be a cool paradox because it means that he was returned to fix a future problem that wouldn't come to pass if he wasn't returned. The one caveat is that it's possible that Shashara would have created Nightblood even without Vasher's involvement.

This was fun to think about, I love the character of Vasher and hope to see more of him going forward. If something like this does happen I doubt it would take place in Stormlight Archive because that would be a bit more crossover than Sanderson is probably comfortable with.

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Vasher giving up his Divine Breath for Nightblood is not a twist I saw coming when I clicked this Topic, tbh. It's pretty much a given to wonder if Vasher will heal someone at the cost of his own life given how that works but I never wondered if that someone could be Nightblood... I rather like it! 

But a Divine Breath is approx 2k Breaths, iirc, would that be enough? 

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25 minutes ago, MitchBade said:

This would be possible because divine breaths seem to heal across all three realms, as seen with Susebron; when Lightsong healed Susebron he didn't just grow back a physical tongue, but was able to speak intuitively, as if he had never been without one. If a normal person gained a tongue after living without one since birth they would need extensive speech therapy to be able to speak, and even then they may never get to baseline.

Is this due to the healing of the divine breath, or the fact that he had thousands of breath himself and the heightening (2nd heightening; approximately 200 breaths) that included perfect pitch?

Still, this is an interesting theory and it is intriguing.  A thought that I wondered as I was reading; can Vasher just recall his breath from Nightblood and the sword return to an inanimate object?  I don't know why not (maybe because Nightblood is too invested), but I'd think if this was possible Vasher would've already tried it.

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Brandon implies that Divine Breath healing restoring a Platonic ideal of health and hence Susebron being able to talk even though normal Cosmere healing wouldn't be expected to have that result is 'on the right track'. So yeah, it's likely a function of the Divine Breath and not Susebron having a lot of Breaths.

26 minutes ago, Nuatoma said:

Still, this is an interesting theory and it is intriguing.  A thought that I wondered as I was reading; can Vasher just recall his breath from Nightblood and the sword return to an inanimate object?  I don't know why not (maybe because Nightblood is too invested), but I'd think if this was possible Vasher would've already tried it.

Brandon has said that Shashara (and by extension Vasher) know of no way to recover the Breaths that went into Nightblood and while there are technically ways to get the Investiture out they're not removable by an Awakener in the normal way and Nightblood can't give them away.

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12 minutes ago, RShara said:

Are we sure Vasher doesn't know why he Returned? I don't remember any confirmation either way.

He doesn't remember his life before his return, and he says he doesn't know why people return. His naming he doesn't know if it was happenstance or him trying to live up to it. So it sounds like he doesn't know to me

 

“Yes,” she said. “Everyone calls you things. Peacegiver. Kalad. Vasher. Talaxin. Is that last one your real name, the name of the scholar?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t remember the time before I Returned.”

“Oh,” she said.

“When I came back, however, I did get a name,” he finally said. “The Cult of Returned—those who eventually founded the Hallandren Iridescent Tones—found me and kept me alive with Breaths. They gave me a name. I didn’t like it much. Didn’t seem to fit me.”

“Well?” she asked. “What was it?”

“Warbreaker the Peaceful,” he finally admitted. She raised an eyebrow. “What I can’t figure out,” he said, “is whether that was truly prophetic, or if I’m just trying to live up to it.”

“Does it matter?” she asked. He walked for a time in silence.

“No,” he finally said. “No, I guess it doesn’t. I just wish I knew if there is really something spiritual about the Returns, or if it’s all just cosmic happenstance.”

“Probably not for us to know.”

“Probably,” he agreed. Silence.

Edited by Pathfinder
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3 hours ago, Dreamer said:

Vasher giving up his Divine Breath for Nightblood is not a twist I saw coming when I clicked this Topic, tbh. It's pretty much a given to wonder if Vasher will heal someone at the cost of his own life given how that works but I never wondered if that someone could be Nightblood... I rather like it! 

But a Divine Breath is approx 2k Breaths, iirc, would that be enough? 

Thanks. A divine breath gives a Returned the benefits received from 5th heightening but it isn't comparable to having ~2k breaths across the board. It's a splinter of Endowment, a more concentrated form of investiture, and is more powerful than normal breaths in some ways. Its unique ability to heal sort of transcends the bounds of regular breath, so I think it could be enough. Can normal investiture even change Nightblood? If it could he's consumed so much by now one would think we would see a change haha.

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5 hours ago, MitchBade said:

Can normal investiture even change Nightblood? If it could he's consumed so much by now one would think we would see a change

I would assume that since the investiture would have an intent (to 'heal' Nightblood), it would have a different affect. Also, if a Divine Breath is worth 2,000 normal breaths (or its equivalent in investiture), that would be double the amount of investiture that was used to create Nightblood, and I would think it would be harder to create a sentient being than to change it.

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20 hours ago, DiePie said:

I would assume that since the investiture would have an intent (to 'heal' Nightblood), it would have a different affect. Also, if a Divine Breath is worth 2,000 normal breaths (or its equivalent in investiture), that would be double the amount of investiture that was used to create Nightblood, and I would think it would be harder to create a sentient being than to change it.

Nightnblood was made with 9,000+ breaths.

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50 minutes ago, Booknerd said:

Nightnblood was made with 9,000+ breaths.

Uhhh, no. Vasher himself says it took one thousand Breaths, singular.

Quote

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.

Quote

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.

 

Edited by Weltall
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2 hours ago, RShara said:

To clarify:
It requires the 9th Heightening to Awaken metal or stone, which is 20,000 Breaths. But Nightblood itself "only" used 1000 Breaths in its Awakening. Hope that clears things up.

Thank you I was certain there was something there.

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