Nightblood's new radiant order

[Atlas333]

This isn't a very serious suggestion but it was a fun thought I had the other day.

We know that the current radiant orders were meant to mimic the honorblades (down to accessing surges and forming blades). You know what is also a legendary sword on roshar with magic powers? That's right Nightblood. Additionally, nightblood recently killed Rayse so I could hypothetically see some spren being impressed enough to do what they did with the heralds.

So for fun, I created a radiant order who's spren wanted to mimic Nightblood, not an honor blade.

 

Name: Evilkillers (hey, Nightblood isn't know for being subtle)

Main spren: Smoke spren

Surges: division and leeching (while not one of the 10 surges it closely matches what Nightblood does. Also, larkin can do it so why not a radiant?)

Ideal: Destroy Evil, as they progress through their oaths they'll realize how complex this concept is

2nd oath: I will destroy evil wherever I find it

3rd oath: I will destroy evil even when it appears to be good

4th oath: I accept that there are some necessary evils

 

This is mostly just for fun but I will end by saying that this is very very very unlikely but technically possible. Throw in a bondsmith without honor to stop him from binding new orders and who knows what could happen.

Quote

Questioner

Could new Orders eventually be formed?

Brandon Sanderson

This is plausibly possible but highly, highly unlikely. A lot of things are possible in the Stormlight Archive that are highly unlikely. So I rarely say "no," because I built the magic systems of the cosmere to be able to do a lot of things, 'cause I knew I was going to be writing in a lot of different worlds. Which means that very few things are completely off-limits. But there's a lot of things that are unlikely to happen.

Tor Instagram Livestream (Nov. 25, 2020)

I'd love to hear other's thoughts.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

1 hour ago, Atlas333 said:

This isn't a very serious suggestion but it was a fun thought I had the other day.

We know that the current radiant orders were meant to mimic the honorblades (down to accessing surges and forming blades). You know what is also a legendary sword on roshar with magic powers? That's right Nightblood. Additionally, nightblood recently killed Rayse so I could hypothetically see some spren being impressed enough to do what they did with the heralds.

So for fun, I created a radiant order who's spren wanted to mimic Nightblood, not an honor blade.

 

Name: Evilkillers (hey, Nightblood isn't know for being subtle)

Main spren: Smoke spren

Surges: division and leeching (while not one of the 10 surges it closely matches what Nightblood does. Also, larkin can do it so why not a radiant?)

Ideal: Destroy Evil, as they progress through their oaths they'll realize how complex this concept is

2nd oath: I will destroy evil wherever I find it

3rd oath: I will destroy evil even when it appears to be good

4th oath: I accept that there are some necessary evils

 

This is mostly just for fun but I will end by saying that this is very very very unlikely but technically possible. Throw in a bondsmith without honor to stop him from binding new orders and who knows what could happen.

I'd love to hear other's thoughts.

The big hurdle I see here is that evil is a concept which people generally find extremely difficult to align on identifying and classifying. For a spren to evolve into a bestower of the abilities of an evil-killer they would have to be persistently believed in and personified in the hearts and minds of the majority of rosharns for a sustained and meaningful period of time. If Szeth and nightblood come out of wind and truth as paragons of justice and are raised to positions of honor among all other radiants this could be "theoretically" possible. They probably wouldn't receive 5 oaths unless they were formalized and structured for them by Dalinar however since they would fundamentally exist outside the oathpact and existing magical governance framework of their respective world. This means that, if they evolved naturally and were not incorporated as a new radiant order, they might function without oaths similar to how the earliest and most primitive (but also least restricted and arguably most powerful) super early radiants functioned, IE: people who personify the feelings of a given species of spren attract the attention of one of those spren, receive and accept its blessing and friendship, and gain access to its powers without any formal swearing of loyalty or restriction. That would be...extremely dangerous, but that would sort of be the point for anyone or anything trying to emulate szeth and nightblood. Situations get weird quickly in real life when people try to emulate artificially intelligent systems in real life, but it...it can be done...

[Through The Living Grub He/Him]

1 hour ago, Atlas333 said:

Surges: division and leeching (while not one of the 10 surges it closely matches what Nightblood does. Also, larkin can do it so why not a radiant?)

 

Division seems  to match what Nightblood can do, and Adhesion might be what you are thinking of. The Coppermind leaves out the fact that Adhesion manipulates vacuums. This should have the same effect.

[Quantus he/him]

Nightblood is already considered a 3rd Generation Honorblade.  The biggest issue I see is that he's already fully present in the Physical World by virtue of being Awakened Physical Matter.  He's doesnt do Nahel Bonds because he's has no need for Realmic Anchoring, and unlike Honorblades he's not a pure investiture creation like the Honorblades since he's Awakened Steel.  I strongly suspect that his state is too far removed from Spren for them to mimic anything Useful.

But The Surges are supposedly pretty fundamental to the Cosmere realmics and not just an invention of Honor or the spren.  So if they did copy Nightblood, I think at best you'd get a different pairing of Surges from among the 30 that theoretically exists (assuming Roshar still has 3 Invested Shards to create their set of 10 Surges).  

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

3 hours ago, Quantus said:

Nightblood is already considered a 3rd Generation Honorblade.  The biggest issue I see is that he's already fully present in the Physical World by virtue of being Awakened Physical Matter.  He's doesnt do Nahel Bonds because he's has no need for Realmic Anchoring, and unlike Honorblades he's not a pure investiture creation like the Honorblades since he's Awakened Steel.  I strongly suspect that his state is too far removed from Spren for them to mimic anything Useful.

But The Surges are supposedly pretty fundamental to the Cosmere realmics and not just an invention of Honor or the spren.  So if they did copy Nightblood, I think at best you'd get a different pairing of Surges from among the 30 that theoretically exists (assuming Roshar still has 3 Invested Shards to create their set of 10 Surges).  

I think this is honestly the "correct" take to hold. Next-gen nightbloods already actively exist and are being manufactured by nalthians who do not have to bow to the vow requirements of naturally evolved rosharn spren. They used and abused nightblood in order to create them though, so it's nice to think that the cosmere might be forgiving of the horrible flaws that made him so ungodly min-maxed.