The Nighblood Machine

[Cocoa he/him]

For the first big chunk of Yumi, I'd been imagining the Shroud as something more like Midnight Essence; not exactly the same, but there's some noteworthy similarities. But when I got to Hoid's explanation about what exactly the Father Machine was and did, I actually froze in my seat for a second and said, "Oh rust, they made a Nightblood," because an inky black haze of corrupted investiture suddenly comes off as eerily familiar when put in the context of a soul-devouring Awakened machine. Obviously there's some major differences in the Commands used, and Nightblood is still significantly more sapient and more invested, but I can't help but feel we're looking at the same class of object here. Did anyone else come to a similar conclusion, and if so, how can we use this to speculate about Nightblood's nature and capabilities, as well as the probability of other Awakenings of Mass Destruction cropping up in the future?

[Lightspine]

I was trying to cook up a theory along these lines of thought, but I couldn't quite connect everything together. First, what I think are the established facts:

Black smoke seems to be the form that investiture takes when it is "consumed" by Nightblood or the Machine. However, the nature of the investiture in these two cases might be slightly different:

Quote

“Imagine it like…the tar that decomposed bodies sometimes turn into over many years of incredible pressure. The shroud is that, except souls, left as refuse from the machine’s initial activation.
A soul cannot be destroyed; it can only change forms. The machine, then, didn’t use people up so much as transform them. They lingered as this blackness, a churning soup made of tens of thousands of souls ”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 39. 

The Shroud created by the machine are souls (probably synonymous with spiritwebs, which Design confirms in this book are the part of somebody made of pure investiture) that have been consumed and spat back out. My first thought after reading this was that Nightblood's smoke was also the refuse of consumed souls, but there's this WoB from 2011, which says it's the leftovers of Breaths instead:

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Anyway, Nightblood is named for the smoke he leaks, and he originally had a different name when he was created. Vasher himself dubbed the sword Nightblood after he had used it to kill the woman he loved. The blackness that leaks out is actually corrupted and consumed Breaths, the ones that Nightblood leeches off anyone who draws him.

Warbreaker Annotations (April 25, 2011)

That said, there's still room for these to be the same. Souls on Nalthis are invested differently than elsewhere—since a drab has less investiture than a normal human from a different planet. It is possible that Breaths contain the investiture of the spiritweb on Nalthis or something like that which makes Breaths and "souls" somewhat synonymous. There's also the fact that this is a Wob from over 12 years ago, and it's entirely possible that Branderson has changed his mind since then.

In summary: the Shroud and Nightblood smoke are at the very least extremely similar, but may or may not be identical phenomenon.

Now, about the Midnight Essence stuff. I've found one quote from the book and one WoB which seem relevant here:

Quote

“Anyway, raw Investiture,” Design said, “responds to thoughts. Emotions. Especially the thoughts and emotions of heavily Invested beings. Painter, when you paint nightmares, it’s your thought—your perception of them—that causes them to transform. It’s not the actual painting. They can literally become anything, and because of that they have a weakness. Through concentration, you can force them to become what you envision.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 32. 

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ArgentSun

The way Painter transforms nightmares into other things is reminiscent of the way spren are affected by perception - only much more extreme. Is perception (and the way the world is set up) the only important factor here, or is Painter using Investiture too somehow?

Brandon Sanderson

What's going on here is not Painter using Investiture really. It's the fact that the nightmares have less control over them from another source. Spren have an oversight from Honor, Cultivation, and Odium, and this is kind of leaving them less at the whims of other people's perception. The nightmares do not have that. I'm not going to say they don't have it at all, but Painter is not using Investiture, but the nightmares are specifically more susceptible to what's going on. So for instance, a good way to answer this is if he went and did this for a spren he would not have the same level of power.

Secret Project #3 Reveal and Livestream (March 22, 2022)

Both of these quotes seem to point towards one idea: what's happening here isn't unique to the source of investiture. Design says any "raw investiture" would respond this way to the painting, and Branderson acknowledges that Honor/Cultivation/Odium's investiture also has this response, just to a lesser degree due to "oversight". Unfortunately for the conspiracy-board-connection-making, this means that Re-Shephir, Midnight Aether, and Nightmares do not necessarily have to be related directly. Rather, they are just all manifestations of "raw investiture" that responds in this way to human thought.

That said, they are still united in their dark smokey appearance (and oily black when given more form) so it's very possible that Re-Shephir and Midnight Aether are also some type of chewed-up soul. I just don't think this can be confidently asserted yet.

Anyway, that's all of the facts and more well-grounded speculation I was able to scrounge up about this. I was trying to connect these ideas by making a theory about the "entropy" of investiture but it didn't quite fit together.

(If you're curious, the gist of it is sort of complicating the investiture --> energy conversion. The Machine and Nightblood are able to "consume" investiture without destroying it. In physics terms, this means they were able to extract useful work (or "free energy") from the investiture by stripping it of Identity and whatnot. In real-life physics, free energy can be extracted by a process that increases total entropy. Therefore, I think the Shroud/Nightblood smoke is investiture in a high-entropy state and somehow more "raw" and manipulatable, and that any investiture—not just souls—could be converted into this state. There's some interesting quotes in SP3 about the spirits admiring art because it creates "order from disorder" which sort of maybe fits this idea? But I couldn't find enough evidence for it to make it a formal theory)

[drunkenbotanist]

In ROW when 

Spoiler

Fused

Are killed by

Spoiler

Anti-voidlight

They also release black smoke in a way that taken all together seems like good speculate as involving investiture being "destroyed" 

(Not literally possible but maybe it's Intent/identity being destroyed as opposed to corrupted which makes it red?)

[Stormtide_Leviathan]

My assumption for a bit has been that Nightblood's black smoke color is because the command "destroy evil" combined with the unprecedented amount of investiture aligns it with ruin, and black is ruins color. I hadn't noticed what @drunkenbotanist pointed out about fused turning to black smoke when killed with antivoidlight (do we see this with phendora too?), and that furthers that idea. The nightmare machine definitely seems like it's doing the same thing as nightblood, that the shroud is the same as the smoke, whatever that is, so if it is actually ruinous, that's interesting, since the machine *wasn't* meant to destroy. But it certainly did, i suppose

[Lennon]

I didn't get any mention to the Father Machine using a Command (Dawnshard), but it sure would be more compatible with the future of cosmere. I'll explain.

If anyone can make a device that can transform all souls of a planet in an instant, this would be the strongest weapon on the cosmere, and it could be the reason why so many shards are paranoid of humanity being left to it's own devices.

But if one of the four Commands (Dawnshard) is necessary for the development of the Father Machine, it would make sense with how Dawnshard are linked in the Shattering of Adonalsium and why they are hidden and protected.

[drunkenbotanist]

18 hours ago, Lennon said:

I didn't get any mention to the Father Machine using a Command (Dawnshard), but it sure would be more compatible with the future of cosmere. I'll explain.

If anyone can make a device that can transform all souls of a planet in an instant, this would be the strongest weapon on the cosmere, and it could be the reason why so many shards are paranoid of humanity being left to it's own devices.

But if one of the four Commands (Dawnshard) is necessary for the development of the Father Machine, it would make sense with how Dawnshard are linked in the Shattering of Adonalsium and why they are hidden and protected.

Virtuosity could have splintered herself with a Dawnshard. And the sleepless who is on the planet may have made the assumption that there is one here and is investigating.

 

 

Edit: I made a separate Post about this just now

Edited July 20, 2023 by drunkenbotanist