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Nightblood Soulstamping


Hoidolasium

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I realized rereading the Emperor's Soul that Soulstamping basically has an unlimited reserve of Investiture to use, as long as the change in the Stamped object is believable. That got me thinking about how Soulstamping would effect Investiture-infused objects. For example, if you Soulstamped a gem to say it was left out in a Highstorm recently, would it suddenly be filled with Stormlight? What if you drew out the light and then restamped it?

Lifeless could be mass-produced as you could write a Stamp that went through the preservation and Awakening process. Any of the crystal structures remaining in the Pits could be stamped to have produced one last bead of Atium right before the world was reshaped. A cistern of water on Dayside could be Stamped to have been filled, emptied, then Stamped again.

Finally, any sword that could have been a potential candidate for Nightblood could have been stamped to believe that it was the one that was filled with 10,000 breaths!

Overall this raises the possibility of overstepping many of the limitations of nearly all the magic systems in the Cosmere, as long as they are practiced on Sel.

Edit: I said soulcasting a bunch, that's fixed

Edited by Hoidolasium
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So the main weakness of the swords would be the seal of the Stamp. 

Also, you keep mentioning Soulcasting which is different. Soulstamping, maybe?

So: 

Quote

DTF_20170515

Why refrigerate food when you can just stamp spoiled food so that it was stored properly before?

Aurora_Fatalis

You'll have to ask Brandon how that'd interact with gastric acid breaking down the stamp. Or how porous/loose material interacts with stamps in the first place.

Come to think of it... There's a WoB saying the Nightwatcher could change your species, but have a hard time making a spren bond to you. So... could the Nightwatcher turn you Scadrian and make you eligible for Allomantic powers? Or does the Nightwatcher's boons operate on soulstamp principles?

Hell, let's say you bought a vial of the wrong metal on your field trip to Sel. Could you pay a Forger to stamp the vial into being a vial of the right metal (it's believable that you would check before such an important trip) and then drink the metal contained in the vial to fuel your Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

All right, all right. Let's see... /u/Aurora_Fatalis, changing metals around with other forms of Investiture is generally going to work, according to how I view the magic right now. The power is there, you just need to align the matter the right way. So forging new metals: not too difficult. This is because Allomancy isn't actually using Investiture in the metals, but using it as a key to get power from somewhere else.

Forging a sword to be a Shardblade, however, would be very, very difficult for multiple reasons. The most obvious one is that the Investiture required would be enormous. A Shardblade is a highly-Invested object, with its own self-aware soul.

If you could overcome the initial resistance invested objects have to being influenced by other magics (something that Forgery is particularly good at doing anyway) you'd theoretically be able to change Shardblade/spren's personality like you could a person's.

Fooling the magic via Connection and Identity is not so hard, under the right circumstances, so making a Forger into an Elantrian (or an Allomancer) for a short time is plausible. Making yourself into a Radiant, however, would be more difficult--because the limitations placed on that magic have to do with persuading a sapient being you are worth the bond.

Aurora_Fatalis

How about regular food? If I stamp a pineapple pizza into a pepperoni pizza and eat it, what nutrients do I end up with?

Brandon Sanderson

The way I have it working now, I believe (though I'd have to do some double-checking, as it's been a while since I've been working on Sel) soulstamps are more fragile than things like Aons, and it would be very hard to eat something with one without breaking it. But assuming you could, you'd get nutrients from what it had become--but those would change back once the stamp broke or ran out.

It is possible to go so far down this rabbit hole, however, that the chemistry of Forging (like the physics of Allomancy) it just can't make sense any more. So be aware.

Oversleep

With things like Stamping metals for Allomancy, you have said that it'd be possible for short time, but then burning it would break the Seal and metal would revert back.

I guess it would be similar with food, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's the big problem with Forging. Getting the stamp to stay in place once you start to change the object that has been stamped.

General Reddit 2018 (Aug. 27, 2018)

You would need a massive amount of energy to make more Nightbloods, which could potentially drain the storm from the Cognitive realm on Sel... 

Edited by GoWibble
better WoB
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On 6/27/2020 at 0:19 PM, GoWibble said:

So the main weakness of the swords would be the seal of the Stamp. 

Also, you keep mentioning Soulcasting which is different. Soulstamping, maybe?

So: 

You would need a massive amount of energy to make more Nightbloods, which could potentially drain the storm from the Cognitive realm on Sel... 

i mean, eventually, if you made enough.  nightblood only takes something like a few thousand breaths, which isnt even really a dent in the level of investiture coming from one shard, let alone 2.  as long as the stamp is able to channel that much investiture then you should be fine.

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6 hours ago, Dunkum said:

i mean, eventually, if you made enough.  nightblood only takes something like a few thousand breaths, which isnt even really a dent in the level of investiture coming from one shard, let alone 2.  as long as the stamp is able to channel that much investiture then you should be fine.

So it is at least 1000 breaths to awaken steel to sentience, but trying to follow the Command might take extra investiture

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57 minutes ago, GoWibble said:

So it is at least 1000 breaths to awaken steel to sentience, but trying to follow the Command might take extra investiture

sure, and we don't necessarily have a clear idea of how much investiture the forging itself takes, but I don't think the selish investiture storm is going anywhere because af a few copies of nightblood floating around

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1 hour ago, Dunkum said:

sure, and we don't necessarily have a clear idea of how much investiture the forging itself takes, but I don't think the selish investiture storm is going anywhere because af a few copies of nightblood floating around

Maybe not from making them, but once they get wielded, then they will start sapping aons and the like

Quote

Just another guyn

If an Elantrian were to get a hold of Nightblood and draw it, how would Nightblood react to that-- What kind of power would be unleashed?

Brandon Sanderson

So Nightblood needs kinetic Investiture to feed upon. The Elantrian would have to be able to get a conduit to the Dor to feed Nightblood or Nightblood would just eat their soul.

Just another guyn

So if they used AonDor to fuel Nightblood--

Brandon Sanderson

There are some types of AonDor that would work, and there are others that would not.

Just another guyn

And would Nightblood just keep going until either the Aon was--

Brandon Sanderson

He would dissolve the Aon as he drew the power from it.

Just another guyn

So it wouldn't just empty the Dor?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it would not empty the Dor.

BYU Writing Class Wrap-up 2017 (April 25, 2017)

Which reminded me of:

Quote

DTF_20170515

Why refrigerate food when you can just stamp spoiled food so that it was stored properly before?

Aurora_Fatalis

You'll have to ask Brandon how that'd interact with gastric acid breaking down the stamp. Or how porous/loose material interacts with stamps in the first place.

Come to think of it... There's a WoB saying the Nightwatcher could change your species, but have a hard time making a spren bond to you. So... could the Nightwatcher turn you Scadrian and make you eligible for Allomantic powers? Or does the Nightwatcher's boons operate on soulstamp principles?

Hell, let's say you bought a vial of the wrong metal on your field trip to Sel. Could you pay a Forger to stamp the vial into being a vial of the right metal (it's believable that you would check before such an important trip) and then drink the metal contained in the vial to fuel your Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

All right, all right. Let's see... /u/Aurora_Fatalis, changing metals around with other forms of Investiture is generally going to work, according to how I view the magic right now. The power is there, you just need to align the matter the right way. So forging new metals: not too difficult. This is because Allomancy isn't actually using Investiture in the metals, but using it as a key to get power from somewhere else.

Forging a sword to be a Shardblade, however, would be very, very difficult for multiple reasons. The most obvious one is that the Investiture required would be enormous. A Shardblade is a highly-Invested object, with its own self-aware soul.

If you could overcome the initial resistance invested objects have to being influenced by other magics (something that Forgery is particularly good at doing anyway) you'd theoretically be able to change Shardblade/spren's personality like you could a person's.

Fooling the magic via Connection and Identity is not so hard, under the right circumstances, so making a Forger into an Elantrian (or an Allomancer) for a short time is plausible. Making yourself into a Radiant, however, would be more difficult--because the limitations placed on that magic have to do with persuading a sapient being you are worth the bond.

Aurora_Fatalis

How about regular food? If I stamp a pineapple pizza into a pepperoni pizza and eat it, what nutrients do I end up with?

Brandon Sanderson

The way I have it working now, I believe (though I'd have to do some double-checking, as it's been a while since I've been working on Sel) soulstamps are more fragile than things like Aons, and it would be very hard to eat something with one without breaking it. But assuming you could, you'd get nutrients from what it had become--but those would change back once the stamp broke or ran out.

It is possible to go so far down this rabbit hole, however, that the chemistry of Forging (like the physics of Allomancy) it just can't make sense any more. So be aware.

Oversleep

With things like Stamping metals for Allomancy, you have said that it'd be possible for short time, but then burning it would break the Seal and metal would revert back.

I guess it would be similar with food, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's the big problem with Forging. Getting the stamp to stay in place once you start to change the object that has been stamped.

General Reddit 2018 (Aug. 27, 2018)

Which might just mean that the newly made NBs would eat their own stamp and then stop being a copy of NB

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There are some practical limits on how far you can take Forgery. Setting aside some of your specific ideas (which have problems associated with them) Brandon has told us that there's a general limitation on using Forgery with things that would require large amounts of Investiture.

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)

Would it be possible to use a soulstamp to give or take Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Not under normal circumstances. The amount of Investiture required to do so would effectively short-circuit the stamp.

American Fork High School Signing (Dec. 12, 2019)

So it really doesn't matter how little Investiture a stamp is using relative to the total power of a Shard, if you're trying to use too much of it, you're simply going to break your soulstamp.

So for some of your specific ideas, let's start with Awakened weapons. I think it's safe to say that even if you had a sword that could plausibly have been Awakened a la Nightblood and you could use Forgery on it to rewrite its history so it was picked instead (and bear in mind that something else happened with Nightblood so it's not just 'a sword with a thousand Breaths') the amount of Investiture that you'd need to make that kind of Forgery work would be far in excess of the stamp's ability to channel it.

We know you can't Soulcast atium and lerasium so it's vanishingly unlikely that you could cheat your way into more by stamping an atium geode, even assuming you could learn enough of the mechanics of how atium was produced to make a stamp with the right 'programming'.

Trying to create a Lifeless via soulstamp would require the plausibility that someone made that corpse a Lifeless, which would be really hard unless you had a source of Breath on hand to actually make one properly, in which case why wouldn't you just do that and not worry about a stamp that can fade? And stamps on living people don't last long and a Lifeless is (despite the name) probably 'alive' enough that a stamp can't hold to them forever; we know they're more aware than most people in Hallandren think and Brandon has said that what we'd learn in the Warbreaker sequel about the Returned and Lifeless would help us understand Ashravan's stuation in The Emperor's Soul; he needed to restamp himself daily.

Edited by Weltall
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That all makes a lot of sense, my idea was mostly sparked because I didn't realize there was an Investiture cap on a Soulstamp.

I think if the crystals still think of themselves as a separate geological formation, they could theoretically be Stamped, but if the density of Atium is anything like the density of an average metal compared to water, you would still get some short-circuiting.

The idea for the Lifeless was to Awaken one, then Stamp it after to say that it had gone through the preservation process (the one idea of mine that didn't require a Stamp to fill an object with extra Investiture). You're right, they might have to stamp themselves every day, but we see that they still have to "exercise", so they're never inactive long enough for the Stamp to fall off. Also, the Emperor's Soul is a little bit of a weird case, since she was essentially making a "code" that contained the entire history and personality of a person.

I forgot how weird Nightblood is when making this theory, now that I think about it, it would be a bad idea to hook up Nightblood directly to a big source of Investiture, even if it was possible. Not related to this theory, I've been wondering what happens when Nightblood consumes Investiture (aren't we all), but specifically whether it's being destroyed or being stored somewhere. Is there a WoB on that that I can't find or do we just not know?

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2 hours ago, Hoidolasium said:

I forgot how weird Nightblood is when making this theory, now that I think about it, it would be a bad idea to hook up Nightblood directly to a big source of Investiture, even if it was possible. Not related to this theory, I've been wondering what happens when Nightblood consumes Investiture (aren't we all), but specifically whether it's being destroyed or being stored somewhere. Is there a WoB on that that I can't find or do we just not know?

Since I forgot to mention it earlier, welcome to the Shard!

On what happens to the Investiture consumed by Nightblood, this WoB suggests that it's not destroyed.

Quote

Questioner

Does Nightblood annihilate Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Investiture cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change forms. But, anything more than that is a RAFO.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

The general consensus seems to be that whatever Nightblood eats will eventually get leaked back out as the the black 'smoke' we sometimes see and that will return back to the Shard(s) it came from, but by the time that happens the Investiture has been so changed that what it once was has been effectively 'destroyed' even if the Investiture itself hasn't been annihilated. Kinda like the Cosmere equivalent to Hawking radiation for black holes.

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4 hours ago, Weltall said:

Since I forgot to mention it earlier, welcome to the Shard!

On what happens to the Investiture consumed by Nightblood, this WoB suggests that it's not destroyed.

The general consensus seems to be that whatever Nightblood eats will eventually get leaked back out as the the black 'smoke' we sometimes see and that will return back to the Shard(s) it came from, but by the time that happens the Investiture has been so changed that what it once was has been effectively 'destroyed' even if the Investiture itself hasn't been annihilated. Kinda like the Cosmere equivalent to Hawking radiation for black holes.

That's generally how I think of Nightblood; a black hole for the Spiritual Realm rather than the Physical Realm.

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