A Way To Avoid Being Consumed By Nightblood?

[Trusk'our he/him]

When Nightblood destroys something or someone, it basically consumes everything that they are made of, physically, cognitively, and spiritually, and converts it into Investiture that acts as more of Nightblood itself, hence the reason it's so powerful. 

But what if someone could trick Nightblood into thinking that they were already a part of it?

Nightblood is so Invested that it cannot hold all of the Investiture that it has consumed, so it constantly leaks when unsheathed. So what you would want to do is use Raysium to capture some of this cast off power. Then, you create a blanked Aluminummind. Next, you create a Hybrid Investiture that uses Nightblood's Investiture and the Investiture from your blanked Aluminummind and store the resulting Investiture back inside the Aluminummind. Finally, when you draw Nightblood next, you would blank your own Identity while tapping the Identity from the "Nightmind", and hopefully that would make Nightblood consider you a part of itself enough to not consume you.

Anyway, hopefully this would work and not leave you like Rayse, which would be terribly unfortunate.

[Rg2045]

Isn’t nightblood anti investiture? Couldn’t you actually get hurt by this method 

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Rg2045 said:

Isn’t nightblood anti investiture? Couldn’t you actually get hurt by this method 

I don't believe that Nightblood is anti-Investiture, no.

[Ixthos he/him]

That sounds like a plausible and cool method to try to get around being consumed. I don't know if it would work and I don't know if most people would be willing to risk it to try the method, but if it could be done I would enjoy seeing this done in the books, or at least attempted. What would also be interesting would be to see if, once you are connected to Nightblood in such a way, any Investiture Nightblood consumes would also flow into you, that while Nightblood absorbs Investiture if it suffuses everything that Nightblood considers to be a part of it.

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

Oh that'd be neat! It would be cool to create a special glove or something you can use to wield nightblood. It has a nice feel to it, really gets across the "Cursed evil Superweapon" deal nightblood has going on, that you need a special glove to wield it well. (Even though I know that's not exactly what Nightblood is but it's still the vibe)

[Casual Ati Enjoyer she/her]

I had to read this post like six times to make it click in my head. But wow, that could work. 

[Frustration he/him]

On 7/2/2022 at 4:38 PM, Trusk'our said:

Nightblood is so Invested that it cannot hold all of the Investiture that it has consumed, so it constantly leaks when unsheathed. So what you would want to do is use Raysium to capture some of this cast off power. Then, you create a blanked Aluminummind. Next, you create a Hybrid Investiture that uses Nightblood's Investiture and the Investiture from your blanked Aluminummind and store the resulting Investiture back inside the Aluminummind. Finally, when you draw Nightblood next, you would blank your own Identity while tapping the Identity from the "Nightmind", and hopefully that would make Nightblood consider you a part of itself enough to not consume you.

Well there are a few technical problems with this, the first being that the only thing you could get off of Nightblood is Investiture, not Identity, so you couldn't get any of his Identity to tap.

The second is the question of if you can even tap aluminum at all.

[Duxredux he/him]

... this seems like a fantastic way to accidentally kill a city. If you replace your Identity with DESTROY EVIL and Nightblood himself starts to consider you part of himself... well, you might still be consumed but not by being converted to Investiture. Even just by blanking your own Identity you would be far more susceptible to Nightblood's influence, and even normal people can become puppets to his Command. How exactly were you planning to remain in control with this method? The result that I see most likely is that this would give an unchained Nightblood a body to use that may not burn itself out as fast. I doubt Nightblood unsheathed would remember to let go of the puppet, feed it, water it, or let it sleep.

But wait, there's more! Looking back, @Ixthos mentioned this too. When Ishar Connected Sigzil and the other Windrunners to the ground, their Stormlight drained into Roshar as they tried to infuse themselves. If Nightblood still makes a Connection with you while you have a similar Identity, what are the odds that you would get flooded with the corrupted Investiture that fills Nightblood? Would Nightblood simply eat the kinetic Investiture as you attempt to tap your Nightmind and then overwhelm you as you blank Identity? Absolute worst case scenario, and it's rather improbable, but you somehow become one with Nightblood, get flooded with power and your soul changes from the massive influx of Investiture. Somehow you survive and change to become more like Nightblood, and begin persisting like a Cognitive Shadow. This new being becomes known as Nightblood, superseding the original sword, as this shadowy entity mindlessly wanders the Cosmere to DESTROY EVIL. Best case scenario, tapping the Nightmind makes it so that Nightblood can't form a Connection with the wielder and doesn't go active when drawn. 

What I quote next is tongue in cheek, considering I came up with a Hemalurgic nose and asked about a week ago what would happen if you tried to draw Nightblood while wearing Aluminum plate armor. Hopefully no one takes this too seriously.

Quote

“I don’t know, Denth,” Tonk Fah said. “I kind of think we should keep it. It could be very useful. . . .” The beginnings of the lust began to show in his eyes, the desire to draw Nightblood, to use the sword. To destroy evil. Or, really, just to destroy.

Denth stood and snatched the bundle away. Then he smacked Tonk Fah on the back of the head.

“Ow!” Tonk Fah said.

Denth rolled his eyes. “Stop whining; I just saved your life. Go check on the queen and then clean up that mess. I’ll take care of the sword myself.”

But seriously, this is a really, really bad idea and if you blank your Identity, I'm betting you only have one try to get it perfectly right or you and possibly everyone around you ends up dead.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Duxredux
added another thought

[Staenbridge]

Bear in mind we still don't know if aluminium Feruchemy "works" like normal feruchemy; that is, whether or not you store Identity in an aluminummind, or are dumping Identity in the metalmind (cf. this wob in which Brandon RAFOs Paleo about this question).

This is contentious because aluminium in basically every other magic we've seen it is something of an investiture black hole, sucking in and blocking use of Investiture but not being able to provide anything itself. So it's really out of character to imagine being able to place Investiture into an aluminium metalmind and have it still be there to retrieve at a later date — that's not what happens with Allomancy, nor with Hemalurgy, Surgebinding, SoulForging, Awakening, or Fabrial-ing. 

So IMO the most parsimonious explanation, Realmatically speaking, seems to be that aluminium would be the sole exception to the store-tap principle of Feruchemy, in which case you wouldn't be able to overrule your Identity with a regular aluminummind. Now, you could probably still pull off that trick like you suggest, but it would be hard to do this in a way that actually works for Nightblood. Like, suppose you try to Connect yourself with Nightblood like how Ishar connects the Radiants to Roshar; well, Connections are made of Investiture so you've just attached a tasty string of food to Nightblood, which I'm sure it'll promptly eat. SoulForging? Same problem, Nightblood eats the stamp, unless you try to stamp yourself to be like Nightblood? But that would be really weird, and I'm not sure how you could get a stamp to take which would convince a person's spiritweb that they're a sentient sword.

[cometaryorbit]

I still kind of think tapping aluminum ought to work since burning aluminum works (and apparently is not actually 100% useless once other cosmere effects come into play) but that's a valid theory.