+honorblades he/him Posted April 9, 2022 Posted April 9, 2022 Would it be possible to manufacture an item that worked identically to any given Honorblade? Let’s try to figure it out. Any sufficiently Invested piece of metal is supernaturally sharp. Whether it is a Godmetal (Honorblades, Shardblades, Seon blade), or an infused physical material (Nightblood, Vivenna’s blade). It's likely that there are at least a few more methods to craft a Shardblade than we know of currently. Rosharan Fabrials can replicate Surges, but do not grant the ability to Surgebind. I wanted to mention this just so it doesn't seem like I intentionally overlooked it. Scandrian medallion tech can grant abilities. Specifically, Nicrosil can grant the ability to use Feruchemy, and also the Feruchemical ability to use Surges. Ok, now we have an object that looks like an Honorblade, cuts like an Honorblade, and grants the ability to Surgebind… But only while you are physically touching it. How can we rectify this? Bondsmithing I am not even going to expand on this one. I'm pretty sure an Unchained Bondsmith could do anything. Aonic Connection I believe it would be possible to 'program' a Blade using Aons to artificially Bond it to the wielder, making it able to be dismissed & summoned again. There is no direct evidence for this, I am merely speculating. Physical Link Some sort of 'bungee cord' that keeps the wielder touching the Blade even if it's knocked from their grasp? The biggest flaw with this system is that it does not grant powers unless making physical contact with the skin of the user. If the wielder is using Gravitation to fly and the Blade is knocked from their grasp, they instantly stop flying (or.. falling the wrong way). The odds of recovering the Blade whilst falling seem pretty low to me. Seems like an easy counter, though not insurmountable. We are close, but not quite there yet. All my solutions are pretty bad. Does anyone have any ideas, or something I've overlooked? 6
+honorblades he/him Posted April 9, 2022 Author Posted April 9, 2022 This post has been long overdue. I have to live up to my namesake, after all.
clowncarcrash Posted April 23, 2022 Posted April 23, 2022 Yeah, the only thing really missing is some sort of tether to your spirit web with Connection that might be solved with Scandrian medallion tech.
Duxredux he/him Posted May 14, 2022 Posted May 14, 2022 (edited) On 4/8/2022 at 11:04 PM, honorblades said: Would it be possible to manufacture an item that worked identically to any given Honorblade? Let’s try to figure it out. Any sufficiently Invested piece of metal is supernaturally sharp. Whether it is a Godmetal (Honorblades, Shardblades, Seon blade), or an infused physical material (Nightblood, Vivenna’s blade). It's likely that there are at least a few more methods to craft a Shardblade than we know of currently. Rosharan Fabrials can replicate Surges, but do not grant the ability to Surgebind. I wanted to mention this just so it doesn't seem like I intentionally overlooked it. Scandrian medallion tech can grant abilities. Specifically, Nicrosil can grant the ability to use Feruchemy, and also the Feruchemical ability to use Surges. Ok, now we have an object that looks like an Honorblade, cuts like an Honorblade, and grants the ability to Surgebind… But only while you are physically touching it. How can we rectify this? Bondsmithing I am not even going to expand on this one. I'm pretty sure an Unchained Bondsmith could do anything. Aonic Connection I believe it would be possible to 'program' a Blade using Aons to artificially Bond it to the wielder, making it able to be dismissed & summoned again. There is no direct evidence for this, I am merely speculating. Physical Link Some sort of 'bungee cord' that keeps the wielder touching the Blade even if it's knocked from their grasp? The biggest flaw with this system is that it does not grant powers unless making physical contact with the skin of the user. If the wielder is using Gravitation to fly and the Blade is knocked from their grasp, they instantly stop flying (or.. falling the wrong way). The odds of recovering the Blade whilst falling seem pretty low to me. Seems like an easy counter, though not insurmountable. We are close, but not quite there yet. All my solutions are pretty bad. Does anyone have any ideas, or something I've overlooked? This is clever and what you've described seems sound. I'll add one more element to consider and that's security. Honorblades have security in three ways, being able to key it and its ability granting to the user, being able to summon and dismiss the blade at will, and being able to kill people threatening you. Right now we only have the third, but you want at least the first. You really don't want people to knock the Honorblade that you've worked really hard to create out of your hands and then fly off with it or nuke you with their ill-gotten powers. If we can't figure this out, owning one of these becomes extremely dangerous. Nightblood's security is that he requires a huge amount of Investiture to use, will kill a user that considers themself evil, and is too dangerous for most sane people to want to own or use. Probably not what we want to copy. There is a very small informational lock in that if you don't know if something is a Southern Scadrian medallion and how those work, you won't intuitively know it can be used like one. That's not a great security system though. Not sure what the solutions are. The physical link problem, if you could dismiss it at will and summon it to your hand that could solve that issue mostly. It depends on if you suddenly lose your Stormlight reserve when you lose contact with the Honorblade. Edit: I'm reading the WoBs and Honorblades are ridiculously dangerous to have. Their default state is not dismissed and anyone that holds one can access the powers if they know it grants it. Who designed the security on these things!? Okay, sure, they're prototypes compared to Shardblades but still... you probably want better security than the original Honorblades. Edited May 14, 2022 by Duxredux Added another thought
+ShardlessVessel Posted May 14, 2022 Posted May 14, 2022 (edited) On 09/04/2022 at 2:04 AM, honorblades said: Physical Link Some sort of 'bungee cord' that keeps the wielder touching the Blade even if it's knocked from their grasp? The biggest flaw with this system is that it does not grant powers unless making physical contact with the skin of the user. If the wielder is using Gravitation to fly and the Blade is knocked from their grasp, they instantly stop flying (or.. falling the wrong way). The odds of recovering the Blade whilst falling seem pretty low to me. Seems like an easy counter, though not insurmountable. Grab a silver chain, attach it to the Blade on one end, say "Coil when pulled" (the exact command may be different) and stick a stupidly large number of Breaths into the chain to Awaken it. This should create a tether that will resist Shardblades and will bring the Blade back to you when tugged. A bracelet on the other end of the chain would be nice to prevent the user from dropping the chain itself. Combine that with a shorter chain, and you don't need to actually awaken it - have a compounder fill it instead*, for example. That should be safer, in fact. I've chosen silver because it is not a viable allomantic metal and thus we should not have... issues... like happened with Nightblood. It's not a perfect choice, though, as silver is relevant in other magic systems (e.g. Threnody), but I'm not certain that organic material, however Invested, would be capable of blocking a Shardblade. If it could, then a simple rope should do the job. This doesn't solve the issue of losing the power when you drop the Blade, though. Perhaps an unsealed duraluminmind can be made such that it automatically Connects its user to the Blade, rather than Connecting them to the land. EDIT: *Obviously, a compounder can't fill a silver chain. Use a different metal, like steel, if you're not going to Awaken it. Edited May 14, 2022 by ShardlessVessel editing oversight
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