If a drab unsheathed Nightblood...

[Newan]

Nightblood consumes investiture when drawn.  First he will eat up all your extra breaths, then he will eat your divine breath (if you have one), and finally he will consume the investiture that makes up your soul.  Then you will be dead.  

 

But the thing is, drabs don't have innate investiture.  So if a drab held Nightblood, what would happen?  Would the drab survive?  Would Nightblood run out of batteries and fall asleep? Or would something weirder happen?

[killersquirrel59]

Well Nightblood clearly can continue to exist without draining investiture constantly as he is still quite conscious and annoying when Vivenna finds him after Vasher loses him. I'd suspect then that Nightblood only drains Investiture to power its special abilities, not its awakened nature. Therefore, if a Drab were to draw him I'd say that he would simply be unable to use his weird black smoke ability but would still be an annoying talking sword.

 

EDIT: This also creates some interesting questions for Stones Unhallowed about...

 

...just how Szeth will wield this terrible weapon.

Edited October 1, 2014 by killersquirrel59

[Moogle]

The WoBs on Drabs are conflicting.
 

Brandon Sanderson
Yes, for instance, the Godking, at the end, with all of those Breaths. Pushing on something inside of him? Getting through all that? Gonna be REAL hard. Average person on Scadrial? You’ve seen how hard that is. A drab? Much easier.

Herowannabe
That was actually going to be my next one- No, sorry, not a drab, a Lifeless.

Brandon Sanderson
A Lifeless. Lifeless are kinda weird, because they’ve had their soul leave, but then they’ve had a replacement stuck in, in the form of Breath, which puts them in a really weird position compared to a Drab, which has had part of their investiture ripped away, but the majority of it remains. So anyway, I’m going to give you one more. Pick your favorite.

 

Question
Do all the humans have innate Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson
I believe that they all do. I don't think that you've seen anyone without innate Investiture yet. [Drabs] do not have innate Investiture. And on Scadrial they have the pieces of Ruin and Preservation in them. And they do have it on Roshar.

 

I'm of the opinion that they do have Investiture, but it's not from a Shard. My current headcanon is that it's the same Investiture that everything living gets (and what you store when you put an attribute into a metalmind in Feruchemy), and a lot of humans are lucky enough to get some additional Investiture from a Shard. This conflicts with Preservation needing to imbue mankind with his essence to make them sentient, however.

 

Hemalurgy steals a part of the soul, and stores it in a spike. This is Investiture. If Drabs don't have Investiture, they can't have a spiritweb, or so my train of thought goes.

 

Issue is, if you think a Drab still has some Investiture, then why can't they be detected via Breath-sense? is there a difference between Breath and your actual soul-Investiture?.

 

Only thing I'm confident on: I expect a Drab wielding Nightblood to die quickly. Otherwise, regular people would just get their Breath sucked up and get turned into Drabs, then they'd be safe. Nightblood is not so kind.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Moogle

[Oudeis]

The WoBs on Drabs are conflicting.

 

Issue is, if you think a Drab still has some Investiture, then why can't they be detected via Breath-sense? is there a difference between Breath and your actual soul-Investiture?

 

Agree; WoB's are very odd, and conflicting.

 

I've never really stopped to wonder at this, but you're right, it's very odd. Vasher can sense rusting GRASS with his lifesense; surely a sentient human, however Drab, still has more Investiture than grass. I wonder, perhaps what's really happening is different than we've always believed?

 

I think you're right, that Breath is a part of Innate Investiture, but not all of it, and that Mr. Sanderson was being inexact in the quote above, the one where he said they have none. It happens to the best of us, as evidenced by the fact that it seems to have happened to Mr. Sanderson, whom I personally consider to be "the best of us."

 

But then... Lifesense cannot be sensing just the bit that is Breath, unless we try to make the case that on Nalthis, even grass is Endowed with Breath. Technically possible, but I would be surprised.

 

Perhaps something else is happening? Maybe the act of giving away the portion of your spiritweb we call Breath has an ancillary effect on the rest of it. Maybe it closes it off somehow, recursions it, in a stealthy way that prevents lifesense from detecting what's left.

[Moogle]

But then... Lifesense cannot be sensing just the bit that is Breath, unless we try to make the case that on Nalthis, even grass is Endowed with Breath. Technically possible, but I would be surprised.

 

Most Awakeners cannot detect Breath when it is placed in an object (it requires a ridiculously high Heightening to do that), which definitely suggests that the Lifesense you get from Breath is not detecting Breath. And yet, Drabs get rid of their Breath and become undetectable. It's puzzling. Your idea on giving away part of your spiritweb could very well be right. Adding extra spiritweb (Hemalurgy) makes your spirit vulnerable to outside influence. Giving away your spiritweb might strengthen you, in a manner of speaking. Or... it might not, because it could cause a similar 'hole' in your spiritweb.

 

A question for Brandon: would a Drab be more or less vulnerable to Emotional Allomancy than a regular human? (I almost feel like he's answered this for some reason...)

 

As to grass having Breath: I wouldn't be surprised. Brandon's described Shards as permeating everything when they Invest on a planet. It's possible to convert food to Stormlight, which suggests food is composed of, or at least imbued with, Stormlight on Roshar. Similarly, you might be able to convert grass to Breath.

 

Edit: Actual WoB on this:

Q:  If someone--Vasher says that Nightblood would kill him, is that just because he has this big deific Breath? Would it kill an ordinary person, like a drab?

A:  It would suck the Breath from anybody, and if they were unable to feed it he would feed on their soul.

Q:  So they would die.

A:  Yes. Anybody wielding Nightblood, he will suck their soul. For too long, he will eventually, if you draw him, he will suck your soul.

 

Also relevant:

Q:  Do you have to be a willing subject to be Soulforged?

A:  You do not.  Working with the soul is really hard though.  You have to be a supreme expert in what you're doing, because soul is Investiture

Edited October 2, 2014 by Moogle

[killersquirrel59]

I'm of the opinion that they do have Investiture, but it's not from a Shard. My current headcanon is that it's the same Investiture that everything living gets (and what you store when you put an attribute into a metalmind in Feruchemy), and a lot of humans are lucky enough to get some additional Investiture from a Shard. This conflicts with Preservation needing to imbue mankind with his essence to make them sentient, however.

 

Not necessarily conflicting. Scadrial is the only planet we've seen thus far with two diametrically opposed Shards. Preservation needing to imbue mankind with his essence for sentience could have been due to his need to overcome Ruin's power and allow him to create. Seeing how Ruin and Vin interacted while she held the Preservation, this could very easily be the form that the bargain between Leras and Ati took. Perhaps that bargain wasn't so much something actually agreed on as much as Preservation simply putting more power into this creation than Ruin was willing to risk countering, thus letting Ruin know that in the long run he would have more power and thus be able to destroy unopposed. 

[Newan]

I haven't read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell yet, but I heard that the people on Threnody don't have innate investiture.  Is this true?

[TheOneKEA]

Someone should ask Brandon if a Drab on Scadrial is more likely to Snap and gain allomantic powers.

[gjustice99]

I haven't read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell yet, but I heard that the people on Threnody don't have innate investiture.  Is this true?

I'm not sure whether or not that is true, but if it is then it is likely related to the fact that Threnody doesn't have a shard.

 

 

 

A question for Brandon: would a Drab be more or less vulnerable to Emotional Allomancy than a regular human? (I almost feel like he's answered this for some reason.

 

If he has then it isn't on the Theoryland database. 

 

Also, to answer the question proposed in the title of this thread, Nightblood would (probably) consume the spiritual identity of that person.

Edited January 6, 2015 by gjustice99

[The Mad Reader]

Someone should ask Brandon if a Drab on Scadrial is more likely to Snap and gain allomantic powers.

 

I'm pretty sure that only someone from Scadrial has the spiritual DNA required for allomantic powers. So you'd need someone from Scadrial to become a Drab first, if that's even possible. I've actually been wondering for a while if someone from another planet could give up a Breath on Nalthis, or if you'd need to be from Nalthis originally to use Breaths. 

 

And I agree that Nightblood would kill a drab who unsheathed him, probably faster than he'd kill a regular person since he wouldn't have a breath to use up first.

[ccstat]

So you'd need someone from Scadrial to become a Drab first, if that's even possible.

 

This WoB pertains, at least to creating these imagined scenarios. Not so much to the underlying questions.

 

Q "If a native of Sel or another Shardworld travelled to Nalthis, would they be a drab?"

A "No, they would not be a drab. But, no one would be able to take their breath."

Q "If such a person died on Nalthis, could they Return?"

A "No, they cannot Return."

Q"If such a person received breath, could they use BioChroma?"

A "Yes."

[gjustice99]

I'm pretty sure that only someone from Scadrial has the spiritual DNA required for allomantic powers. So you'd need someone from Scadrial to become a Drab first, if that's even possible. I've actually been wondering for a while if someone from another planet could give up a Breath on Nalthis, or if you'd need to be from Nalthis originally to use Breaths. 

 

And I agree that Nightblood would kill a drab who unsheathed him, probably faster than he'd kill a regular person since he wouldn't have a breath to use up first.

Someone from Scadrial cannot give up their bit of investure

[Bort]

 

 

... this terrible weapon.

 

Terrible weapon? Terrible weapon??? Nightblood is one of the greatest characters in the cosmere 

[ecohansen]

This conflicts with Preservation needing to imbue mankind with his essence to make them sentient, however.

 

Not necessarily conflicting. Scadrial is the only planet we've seen thus far with two diametrically opposed Shards

 

 

I thought that Preservation had to imbue because, while the other shards only preserve human life that originated on Yolen, Preservation had to re-create human life in the image of Yolen life.

Edited June 11, 2015 by ecohansen

[VindicationKnight]

I tend to the theory that the Breath is only a part of a person's soul/Innate Investiture not the whole, so drabs can have less Innate Investiture than normal people but still have some (enough to have a soul and sentience for example). Getting Brandon to clarify on this would be helpful though.