Argenti he/him Posted April 29, 2023 Posted April 29, 2023 11 minutes ago, HSuperLee said: I just need to point out there are two separate conversations going on here. How big is Nightblood's stomach and how big is Nightblood's mouth. Is Nightblood's stomach big enough to hold an entire shardblade? I'd be in disbelief if it wasn't. Is Nightblood's mouth big enough to swallow a shardblade whole? I'd be surprised if it was, but I'm open to the possibility. That is all I am saying. And I'm not trying to undersell Nightblood, I'm trying to hype up shardblades. I think shardblades are one of the most Invested things we've seen in the Cosmere. As far as I understand it, they're basically godmetals. Kaladin described Syl in shardplate form as being like an already full cup, that is my point. Other than exceptions like Nightblood, who seems to be undergoing some of the ballooning experienced by vessels, I think shardblades represent something close to the limit of Investiture able to put into physical materials. In other words, shardblades are dangerous. You are completely right! While Nightblood could probably eat a Shardblade if it was on it for a minute, an instant touch wouldn't destroy it, probably just cause the spren pain.
alder24 Posted April 29, 2023 Posted April 29, 2023 11 hours ago, HSuperLee said: I just need to point out there are two separate conversations going on here. How big is Nightblood's stomach and how big is Nightblood's mouth. Is Nightblood's stomach big enough to hold an entire shardblade? I'd be in disbelief if it wasn't. Is Nightblood's mouth big enough to swallow a shardblade whole? I'd be surprised if it was, but I'm open to the possibility. That is all I am saying. And I'm not trying to undersell Nightblood, I'm trying to hype up shardblades. I think shardblades are one of the most Invested things we've seen in the Cosmere. As far as I understand it, they're basically godmetals. Kaladin described Syl in shardplate form as being like an already full cup, that is my point. Other than exceptions like Nightblood, who seems to be undergoing some of the ballooning experienced by vessels, I think shardblades represent something close to the limit of Investiture able to put into physical materials. In other words, shardblades are dangerous. Like I said, a Shardblade would resist Nightblood. But not a spren. Even if it takes a few seconds, a spren would be consumed by him, because when Nightbloods starts doing this, what can you even do when your soul is ripped into pieces and destroyed? Even if spren manages to escape, it will be damaged and likely turned into a Deadeye, as now a large portion of his soul is missing. Nightblood "mouth" was big enough to drain more investiture than perpendicularity could provide and that happened in the matter of a few seconds. Nightblood devoured a thunderclast with a single cut, and that's spren as well. And yes, Shardblades are god metals, they are likely one of the most invested objects in Cosmere, but not as invested as Nightblood. And if it's the amount of investiture that determines how well an object can resist a Shardblade's cut, then a Shardblade will behave like a Shardplate or a Halfshard in contact with Nightblood, because Nightblood is so much more invested. Nightblood is the limit of how much investiture can you fit in a given space, as WoBs describe that he is full, supersaturated with investiture and can't fit much more in him (that's why he's leaking investiture). But because investiture is another form of matter and energy, I believe there isn’t really a limit of how much investiture can fit in a small space. Just like you can compress more and more matter, which will get hotter and denser, until it forms a black holes, the same is with energy, put more and it will collapse into a black hole - the same with investiture, you can put more and more until it collapse into a black hole, after which you can put even more, to make black hole bigger. God metals are already described sometimes like a black holes, as existing in all three realms at once. But you can invest them - Atium is one example, use it as a Hemalurgic spike or a metalmind and you have more invested objects. Which in my mind proves there is no real limit, if you have enough energy/investiture you can push more investiture into an already invested god metal. Which is something that Brandon sometimes says to questions like "can you Awaken a Shardblade" - yes if you have enormous amounts of Breaths everything can be Awakened. Theoretically possible, but in practice not so much. Spoiler Chaos Is atium Invested? Brandon Sanderson Is atium Invested? Atium is Investiture distilled into the Physical Realm, right? So is electricity electric? Or is it-- Chaos Well I think the question Sharders had was if it's Invested, how can people Push and Pull on it. That was the struggle. Brandon Sanderson Atium breaks a lot of rules, in the same way that you will see other things break rules. Atium plays weirdly. When you get distilled Investiture, you're starting like-- My kind of rule for myself is it's kind of like when you start going on the quantum level, the rules just start playing weirdly. Because it's like, what Realm does atium exist in-- is another thing. Because-- Pure Investiture like that is like a mini black hole, right? It's like existing in three Realms at once. Kind of, and things like that... There's lots of weirdness. The writerly answer is there is lots of weirdness because when I built atium, I didn't have the rest of the cosmere built, right? And so it breaks a lot of rules that I later set up that everything else has to follow, right? So the writerly answer is we just have to accept that atium and lerasium and some of these other distilled Investiture things are going to play very weirdly with the magic systems. But that's okay. Nightblood will too, and some of these things that were built even after the cosmere was coming together. Salt Lake City signing (Dec. 16, 2017) Spoiler Questioner Could you Awaken a Shardblade? Brandon Sanderson Uhhhhhh yes but it would reeeeeaaaalllllllyyyyy hard. Theoretically possible. Holiday signing (Dec. 12, 2015)
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