Dawnshards and Nightblood

[therunner he/him]

So from Sunlit Man we learn that Dawnshard, when used, will consume any source of Investiture to power itself.
That is what killed Aux, when Nomad unconsciously used his Dawnshard, it consumed nearly the entire spren in moments.

As far as I know, there is only one other object/being in the entire Cosmere that can consume the very soul of beings. And indeed must consume Investiture to manifest its greatest power. Nightblood of course. So I posit that Nightblood holds Dawnshard, most likely 'Destroy' Dawnshard. It would explain his frankly insane abilities, how he can consume even souls, and his so overwhelming Intent.

We know that Endowment was involved in Nightblood's creation, and I think the involvement was that she used Nightblood as a vessel to hold Dawnshard and to allow someone to wield that Dawnshard without being twisted by its Intent. The Intent of Nightblood the being 'Destroy evil' serves as a 'modifier' to the Dawnshard Intent 'Destroy', so that under most circumstances the Dawnshard does not just destroy anything around it.

If the above is true, than Nalthian Shardblades will never reach anything even approaching the power of Nightblood.

Edit: And after Dragonsteel 2023 we know this is not true, and Nightblood is not Dawnshard.
 

Spoiler

Forger (paraphrased)

Is Nightblood a Dawnshard?

Brandon (paraphrased)

He is not.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by therunner

[Crvz]

While I like the connection you made, my memory was that Vasher killed Shashara because she was going to reveal the method used to create Nightblood. If there could be more than 1 awakened sword with the power of Nightblood, as implied by Vasher’s drastic action, then that undermines your theory. 

[NameIess]

14 minutes ago, Crvz said:

While I like the connection you made, my memory was that Vasher killed Shashara because she was going to reveal the method used to create Nightblood. If there could be more than 1 awakened sword with the power of Nightblood, as implied by Vasher’s drastic action, then that undermines your theory. 

I think Vasher was wrong. He thought that making another awakened blade would result in more Nightbloods, but he never made a second one to test that theory, at least not until Vivenna's.

[therunner he/him]

I agree with @Nameless* , I think Vasher was wrong (which makes it doubly tragic). At that point they did it only one time, so it makes sense why he would think other Awakened Blades would be on the same level, but he did not know Endowment involved herself in Nightblood's creation.

We saw Vivenna's Blade, and it does not seem to be anywhere near what Nightblood can do. Which could be down to Intent, however Nightblood is simply too powerful to account for being replicable creation. He can kill Vessels. That is faaar from any other weapon we have seen, only Dawnshards are on that level.

[drunkenbotanist]

Vivenna's weapon is still an extremely dangerous murder machine on the level of a dead shard blade 

[therunner he/him]

9 minutes ago, drunkenbotanist said:

Vivenna's weapon is still an extremely dangerous murder machine on the level of a dead shard blade 

True, but that is still 'just' a Dead Shardblade level. Living Shardblades are quite more versatile with their shapeshifting, especially if what we saw in Sunlit Man holds for other Radiants as well (e.g. provide Spren with enough Investiture and they can grow quite large).

And Nightblood is in league of its own, far beyond all other Shardblades. And that fact suggests that there is something more going on.

Edited October 2, 2023 by therunner

[+Oltux72 he/him]

34 minutes ago, therunner said:

True, but that is still 'just' a Dead Shardblade level. Living Shardblades are quite more versatile with their shapeshifting, especially if what we saw in Sunlit Man holds for other Radiants as well (e.g. provide Spren with enough Investiture and they can grow quite large).

And Nightblood is in league of its own, far beyond all other Shardblades. And that fact suggests that there is something more going on.

Vivenna's blade may be weaker on purpose. Wielding Nightblood is dangerous to the user. That is not desirable.

[therunner he/him]

21 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Vivenna's blade may be weaker on purpose. Wielding Nightblood is dangerous to the user. That is not desirable.

True, that could also be the case.

But based on the limitations being of interest to Sanderson in his magic systems, I doubt anything as powerful as Nightblood is replicable feat. If it was, why is there no mention of anything like that in Sunlit Man? Nightbloods, even if a bit weaker would be incredibly desirable weapons. And with the relative abundance of Investiture, making dozens/hundreds of them should be viable.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

1 minute ago, therunner said:

Nightbloods, even if a bit weaker would be incredibly desirable weapons. And with the relative abundance of Investiture, making dozens/hundreds of them should be viable.

Compared to the bomb we have seen in Lost Metal? Or Antiinvestiture weapons? Or nuclear weapons? Nightblood is an incredibly powerful weapon if you can bring it to bear.
If ...

It still is a sword and has the range limit inherent in that shape.

[therunner he/him]

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Compared to the bomb we have seen in Lost Metal? Or Antiinvestiture weapons? Or nuclear weapons? Nightblood is an incredibly powerful weapon if you can bring it to bear.
If ...

It still is a sword and has the range limit inherent in that shape.

Yes compared to those, it is more powerful..

The bomb won't kill Vessel, neither will anti-Investiture weapon, nor nukes.

The bomb or nukes won't destroy Thunderclast or Fused permanently.

Anti-Investiture weapons will work on only one kind of being at a time.

Nightblood is more destructive, it straight up annihilates on all three realms, and it does that to anything.
And its more target destruction, a scalpel to the club of nukes.

Shards won't be afraid of nukes, bombs or anti-Investiture. But they are afraid of Nightblood.

Edited October 2, 2023 by therunner

[drunkenbotanist]

5 hours ago, therunner said:

True, but that is still 'just' a Dead Shardblade level. Living Shardblades are quite more versatile with their shapeshifting, especially if what we saw in Sunlit Man holds for other Radiants as well (e.g. provide Spren with enough Investiture and they can grow quite large).

And Nightblood is in league of its own, far beyond all other Shardblades. And that fact suggests that there is something more going on.

I just mean that Vivenna's blade is very dangerous and one could assume that having awakening that even reliably makes weapons as dangerous as a shard blade is scary and could maybe justify Vasher's actions even if Nightblood specifically is unique

[Serack he/him]

On 10/1/2023 at 10:14 PM, Nameless* said:

I think Vasher was wrong. He thought that making another awakened blade would result in more Nightbloods, but he never made a second one to test that theory, at least not until Vivenna's.

I'm just going to point out that I think it's much more likely that Vivenna's blade was made by Yesteel

Also, very interesting theory OP

[NameIess]

Just now, Serack said:

I'm just going to point out that I think it's much more likely that Vivenna's blade was made by Yesteel

Also, very interesting theory OP

That’s possible. Or maybe Vivenna made it herself.

[+Bzhydack he/him]

On 2.10.2023 at 0:33 PM, Oltux72 said:

Compared to the bomb we have seen in Lost Metal? Or Antiinvestiture weapons? Or nuclear weapons? Nightblood is an incredibly powerful weapon if you can bring it to bear.
If ...

It still is a sword and has the range limit inherent in that shape.

But shape of weapon can be changed. Why not missiles? Imagine cruise missile with Nightblood-like warhead. Its unstopable bunkerbuster, and universal anti-everything weapon.

But we know nothing about weapons like this.

[apepi]

I mean... Didn't the machine just consume people's souls?

[therunner he/him]

30 minutes ago, apepi said:

I mean... Didn't the machine just consume people's souls?

Good point, let me see if I can find arguments to defend my assertion.
 

Yumi spoilers:

Spoiler

So, while it did kill all of them by drawing upon their soul, that was only possible because of Virtuosity Investiture in the machine and in the people plus the fact that Virtuosity was splintered, see WoB below.

What Father Machine did is more similar to what Cinder King is doing with other people, by using the 'heat' transfer to suck out the soul.
Pre-Connected Investitures of the same kind/Intent drawing upon one another.

 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I had to let... This is going to be a pretty special circumstance for this book. But yes. It is pretty broken. You wouldn't want this to be... this could be very dangerous in the wrong hands. Don't expect this to be very commonly used in the Cosmere.

Argent

Was that a side effect of the magic system that was used to Awaken the machine, or was there something else going on?

Brandon Sanderson

This is a side effect of what Virtuosity did and the bit of Virtuosity in all the people allowing the Machine to have enough of a plausible Connection to them to draw upon them.

Shardcast Interview (July 30, 2023)

So all of these do follow similar mechanism, as I would guess Dawnshards have to follow some fundamental rules.

But the destructiveness of Nightblood, how overwhelmed with Intent he becomes, how restricting him from Investiture weakens his destructive abilities (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/509/#e16019), the fact that Endowment was involved in its creation and the fact it killed a Vessel (something I doubt other similar tools could accomplish), all suggest to me that while underlying principles might be the same, Nightblood behaves more closely as a Dawnshard than 'regular' soul sucking.

Edited October 6, 2023 by therunner

[apepi]

I have always personally headcannoned that he has a wierd divine breath that sucks out investiture out of people, and it is much more... Aggressive than normal Returned.

[Duxredux he/him]

For discussion purposes, let's assume that all Dawnshards give the threshold boosts based on Investiture level that Nomad had and that Nightblood indeed has similar effects in play. That might explain a few things regarding Nightblood.

• Physical Enhancement / durability / healing
  • Nightblood is way more durable than Steel should account for. Yes, there's Investiture density at play, and yes, Investiture resist's Investiture, and yes, most things that contact him get consumed, but this seems plausible. He blocked and damaged an Honorblade as we all know.
• Enhancement of Connection
  • Nightblood can communicate to everyone he's in close proximity if he so chooses.  Language is no barrier to him.  Azure talks as if her blade can communicate, but I'm not sure if we've seen anyone other than Azure confirm this to be the case. I'm not really counting spren communicating with Azure's Blade, because Syl has conversed with Kaladin's spears and pointed out his limited understanding on the gender of his weaponry.
• Augmentation of external abilities (I'm iffy on whether or not all Radiants can augment the size of their Shardblade using Investiture, or if that's a Dawnshard boost)
  • Again, tenuous, but Nightblood can even augment his Aluminum sheath to be weaponized, allowing the blunt metal to cut through skin and bone. That's weird. I guess fabrials can augment metal into Halfshards, but almost certainly not with Aluminum.
• Ability to use any Investiture (apparently Nomad could drain souls, so he now fits Lift's definition of a Voidbringer)
  • Nightblood's hallmark. Interestingly this process can exceed his natural carrying capacity putting him in a supersaturated state.
• Skipping
  • Haven't seen it yet, but... a teleporting Nightblood would be terrifying if he figured it out. He's definitely past this threshold in terms of raw Investiture.

Not saying that this is at all definitive, but mapping out Nomad's Dawnshard threshold boosts onto Nightblood's known abilities isn't that difficult. From Nomad and Aux's discussion it seemed like Nomad's Oaths were workarounds for his Torment, so perhaps Nightblood's Command similarly could override similar restrictions (who knows). For that matter, Nightblood could "freeze up" and no one would know. Basically, it may be premature to assume that Nightblood is a specific Dawnshard, though presumably no one has figured out how to extract the thing so it's almost certainly not the Change Dawnshard or the one that Hoid and Nomad held.

Edited October 6, 2023 by Duxredux
added thought

[Firesong she/her]

On 10/6/2023 at 0:39 PM, Duxredux said:

 

• Skipping
  • Haven't seen it yet, but... a teleporting Nightblood would be terrifying if he figured it out. He's definitely past this threshold in terms of raw Investiture.

 

I think that Skipping is unique to Hoid/Sig's Dawnshard, as we know one Dawnshard is different from the rest, and I feel it makes sense for this to be Hoid's. It would just make sense to me. 

So, I don't think Skipping would be a generic Dawnshard ability. iirc, not even Hoid had the ability to Skip. So it might even be something unique to Sigzil, maybe the result of a combination of the Dawnshard with Radiant abilities. Or maybe Hoid was holding it when he became a Lightweaver, and it took Lightweaver's limited teleportation ability, and modified it as it connected it to the Connection of the Dawnshard, and made it more Spiritual in nature. And this was able to be transferred to Sig, giving him that capacity. But that is just be spitballing.  

[+Harrycrapper]

34 minutes ago, Firesong said:

I think that Skipping is unique to Hoid/Sig's Dawnshard, as we know one Dawnshard is different from the rest, and I feel it makes sense for this to be Hoid's. It would just make sense to me. 

So, I don't think Skipping would be a generic Dawnshard ability. iirc, not even Hoid had the ability to Skip. So it might even be something unique to Sigzil, maybe the result of a combination of the Dawnshard with Radiant abilities. Or maybe Hoid was holding it when he became a Lightweaver, and it took Lightweaver's limited teleportation ability, and modified it as it connected it to the Connection of the Dawnshard, and made it more Spiritual in nature. And this was able to be transferred to Sig, giving him that capacity. But that is just be spitballing.  

Unless I'm mistaken, Lightweavers don't have a limited teleportation ability? It's just the Willshapers and Elsecallers that have access to the Transportation Surge? 

[Firesong she/her]

1 minute ago, Harrycrapper said:

Unless I'm mistaken, Lightweavers don't have a limited teleportation ability? It's just the Willshapers and Elsecallers that have access to the Transportation Surge? 

They are capable to bringing themselves into Shadesmar. It is required for Transformation. Transformation and Transportation are very closely connected Surges. 

[+Harrycrapper]

2 minutes ago, Firesong said:

They are capable to bringing themselves into Shadesmar. It is required for Transformation. Transformation and Transportation are very closely connected Surges. 

Ok, I figured that's what you were referencing. They can see into Shadesmar, not full on transport there. They are there for some intents and purposes, otherwise it wouldn't be dangerous, but they are not physically there. 

[A Simple Pilgrim he/him]

If Nightblood contains a dawnshard (presumably destroy), wouldn't that mean that Roshar had at least 3 dawn shards on it during the events of SA? At that point I'd be looking out for the 4th.

[therunner he/him]

20 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

Ok, I figured that's what you were referencing. They can see into Shadesmar, not full on transport there. They are there for some intents and purposes, otherwise it wouldn't be dangerous, but they are not physically there. 

No Lightweavers can transport themselves into Shadesmar, it is mentioned in RoW (chapter 22)
They can slip there themselves, but they cannot bring anyone with, nor can they get back.

So on its own not very useful except as emergency escape.

Edited October 10, 2023 by therunner

[+Harrycrapper]

2 hours ago, therunner said:

No Lightweavers can transport themselves into Shadesmar, it is mentioned in RoW (chapter 22)
They can slip there themselves, but they cannot bring anyone with, nor can they get back.

So on its own not very useful except as emergency escape.

I saw that in the coppermind immediately after I commented and didn't believe it. Did you actually go verify that in RoW? Lightweavers obviously need to see into shadesmar to make their power works, but it seems like a weird overlap with Transportation to be able to actually go there.