A Nightmare of a Nightblood theory

[Dawnshard]

So we know Nightblood is full of Investiture. It is so full it bleeds black smoke. It is more invested than an Honorblade, can kill vessels of shards, and was made by awakening. Nightblood was based on shardblade design maybe even honorblade design. It seems to me that the 5 scholars at the height of awakening scholarship traveled to Roshar. They were impressed by the shard blades. The sleepless were tasked with guarding the dawnshards. One way to protect a dawnshard from Odium is to make it harder to reach.

They gave it to shashara who created nightblood. She got the dawnshard Destroy. They decided the best way to safetly use it was if it was comomanded only to destroy evil. They figured that would make the dawnshard safer. Rsyan was commanded to not bind a spren because using the dawnshard in conjunction with magic is dangerous. Ie creating Nightblood with awakening. 

A shardblade so powerful because the dawnshard (similar to having the 5th heightening) was used as the force to awaken it, maybe with additional breaths. What do you think an awakened solider with the Destroy Dawnshard looks like?

[Chinkoln]

We don’t necessarily know if Destroy is a Dawnshard. I thing the only one we have confirmed is Change.

Nightblood is so powerful because it keeps absorbing more and more investiture. More and more, it gets investiture from everything it cuts.

[Zoey]

As Chinkoln said, Nightblood is so powerful due to all the Investiture it keeps pulling in, and in how its destructive capacity is far less focused than that of a Shardblade, it wreaks far more havoc. If Shardblades are a focused blade, Nightblood is a nuclear explosion.

Also, according to Brandon, and by looking at the time in which the creation of Nightblood would fall, which is still far past Aharietiam (Should fall ~400 years before the True Desolation), makes it most likely to be based on Shardblades. It is called Third Generation after all, Honorblades are 1st, Shardblades and 2nd, and Nightblood is 3rd. 

[Medium]

4 minutes ago, Zoey said:

It is called Third Generation after all, Honorblades are 1st, Shardblades and 2nd, and Nightblood is 3rd. 

Where does it say this?

[Zoey]

23 hours ago, Silasalis said:

Where does it say this?

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100/#e3623

Here, and it does fit with what we know from the books themselves. This exact classification doesn't add much, except that we know it should be based on Shardblades, not Honorblades, due to various different factors that I mentioned before

[ConfusedCow]

If nightblood is so invested how did get to Roshar. I thought heavily invested things were stuck were they came from.  Did Vasher already solve Mraize's dilemma. 

[Frustration]

3 minutes ago, ConfusedCow said:

If nightblood is so invested how did get to Roshar. I thought heavily invested things were stuck were they came from.  Did Vasher already solve Mraize's dilemma. 

No, it's Highly connected things that struggle to leave.

Also Breath are much easier to move than Stormlight

[cometaryorbit]

I agree Nightblood was probably based on dead-Spren Shardblades, though nine Honorblades *have* been continuously present on Roshar since Aharietiam.

Dawnshard creation of Nightblood makes a lot of sense though. It seems way more powerful than it should be (1000 Breaths is not *that* much, only 4th Heightening equivalent... less Investiture than one Divine Breath which is 5th Heightening equivalent).

Sure, much of that is probably due to what it's eaten since, but even at the beginning it was apparently super scary.

Destroy as a Dawnshard makes a lot of sense... or possibly Divide or Unmake, breaking things down to fundamentals. Perhaps the opposite of the Dawnshard 'known to bind all creatures voidish or mortal' from the WoR epigraph... building up/binding together vs breaking down/separating.

[Morningtide]

14 hours ago, Frustration said:

Also Breath are much easier to move than Stormlight

Is this why Vasher was able to get to Roshar? I've always been confused about that. 

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, Ookla the Theoretical said:

Is this why Vasher was able to get to Roshar? I've always been confused about that. 

No, that was him using some kind of hack.

[Morningtide]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

No, that was him using some kind of hack.

Ok. Thank you!

[cometaryorbit]

IIRC, Breath is easier to move than other Investiture due to Endowment's Intent - it is given "without strings" so doesn't come with so much Connection- but Vasher needed to do something special since he isn't just an Awakener, he's a Cognitive Shadow.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

5 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Destroy as a Dawnshard makes a lot of sense... or possibly Divide or Unmake, breaking things down to fundamentals. Perhaps the opposite of the Dawnshard 'known to bind all creatures voidish or mortal' from the WoR epigraph... building up/binding together vs breaking down/separating.

[Mistborn]

Spoiler

That's mostly what Ruin is, and in Secret History it describes itself in terms very similar to the way the Change Dawnshard seems to be talked about, so I feel like that's already counted under that one instead of being its own Dawnshard Command.

[cometaryorbit]

That's totally possible too. But...

If the Shards are meant to be set up like an Allomantic table in quadrants, there should be only 4 Shards per Dawnshard. But under that interpretation I see 5 to 7 Shards that should fall under that... Cultivation, Ruin, Invention, Odium, Endowment, & likely Ambition and Whimsy.

So I think it works better with one Dawnshard for transformational or creative change (Cultivation, Invention, Ambition, Whimsy) and one for unbinding/dividing things (Endowment, Odium, Ruin)

However this probably deserves its own theory thread.