If You Drew Nightblood at Urithiru ...

[Raven Wilder]

... what'd happen? The air there is being constantly infused with Towerlight, so Radiants there never run out on Investiture, and we even see that a Lashed object will stay Lashed long after it should've fallen back to earth. So what happens if you draw the freaky black magic sword that constantly consumes any Investiture presented to it?

Would Urithiru be the one place where you could use Nightblood in complete safety, as its hunger would be constantly satisfied by the tower? Or would it be that Urithiru's Towerlight was never meant to handle an Investiture-guzzler like Nightblood, and drawing the sword there would risk draining the whole tower?

[Sophrosyne He/any]

Well we do know from RoW that Nightblood CAN be satisfied though that was when attacking a shard. The important part is that it didn't seem to do any real damage to the shard. so somewhere before that point Night blood gets full up.
Here's the issue. we don't know how much Towerlight The Sibling can make before hurting themselves. it's never been an issue. so, there's a few options.

1. The sibling can 'easily' satisfy Nightblood's investure requirement allowing him to be safely used in Urithiru.

2. The tower strains and or gets injured trying to sustain Nightblood. (This has implications, but I think they'd recover with abit of time.)

3. Nightblood is able to consume the whole of the spren that is Urithiru. 

 

We don't have hard numbers for spren, Nightblood, or really anything to do with Investure outside of SP4 so there no telling which if an any of those is more likly.

[alder24]

17 hours ago, Raven Wilder said:

... what'd happen? The air there is being constantly infused with Towerlight, so Radiants there never run out on Investiture, and we even see that a Lashed object will stay Lashed long after it should've fallen back to earth. So what happens if you draw the freaky black magic sword that constantly consumes any Investiture presented to it?

Would Urithiru be the one place where you could use Nightblood in complete safety, as its hunger would be constantly satisfied by the tower? Or would it be that Urithiru's Towerlight was never meant to handle an Investiture-guzzler like Nightblood, and drawing the sword there would risk draining the whole tower?

Nightblood consumes exponentially larger amounts of investiture the longer he is being used. We've seen a comparable situation in RoW ch 111, when Nightblood was used in the proximity of Dalinar's perpendicularity during their confrontation with Ishar - he was feeding on Stormlight from the perpendicularity, until Szeth stuck him into it and it drew more investiture than the perpendicularity could provide, collapsing it (or it ate the Connection). Similar situation happened at the end of Oathbringer, when Nightblood consumed some Fused, serevel people and all Stormlight that Szeth and Lift had, but then Dalinar opened his perpendicularity and it looked like Nightblood fell into a food coma back then.

If the Tower can't provide enough light, then at first it would be safe to use Nightblood, but at a certain point he might start to consume more than the Tower can provide, which would end up in him consuming the soul of his wielder. But we don't know how much light can the Sibling provide at once in one specific part of the Tower. They might be able to provide enough investiture for Nightblood to fall into a food coma, thus it would be safe to use Nightblood in Urithiru. Nightblood already is nearly full and it looks like the Sibling can provide a lot of light in the Tower so I suspect they won't have much problems with satisfying Nightblood's hunger.

Spoiler

lucagreene18

If Szeth were to have drawn Nightblood immediately after he had consumed Rayse, would he still have drained Szeth's Stormlight? As it said he seemed like he had eaten as much as he could.

Brandon Sanderson

At that point, Nightblood had entered into essentially a food coma... Well, no, the food coma one came when he was drawing from the perpendicularity. I don't think he was in food coma mode at that point. I think that he could still have drawn more at that point, I'd have to go look at exactly what I wrote, if I'd put him into food coma mode or not. It is possible.

This is one of the things I wanted to answer with the book. A lot of people have been theorizing, could Nightblood eat an entire Shard? And indeed, Nightblood could not eat an entire Shard. That is not within his capability. In fact, one of the reasons that he leaks Investiture is: he's too stuffed full of it. There is more Investiture in the sword Nightblood than it can actually hold, it's supersaturated. And it leaks Investiture (that it's done some weird things to). But it is constantly hungry for more and constantly leaks it, but it definitely can get full for a time, and it could not eat an entire Shard.

I did see questions about that from people floating around, and it's something I'd been meaning to get to eventually. Nightblood is definitely relevant to things that are happening in the Cosmere, but it is not as simple as grabbing the sword, sticking it into a Shard, and defeating the Shard, unfortunately. Though, as you see in this book, there are reasons for a Shard to still be afraid of Nightblood. It didn't destroy Odium, but Rayse still really had a bad time.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 1 (Dec. 17, 2020)

 

9 hours ago, Sophrosyne said:

3. Nightblood is able to consume the whole of the spren that is Urithiru. 

The Sibling will never get hurt as long as Nightblood won't strike crystal veins and gemstones in the Tower, which are the Sibling's manifested body - he needs to contact the soul to start consuming it. Nightblood got full by consuming the Vessel of Odium and that was less investiture than an Unmade have, who is less invested than the Sibling, who is comparable to the Stormfather - even if you struck Nightblood directly into the heart of the Sibling, it wouldn't consume them all (but it would probably kill them, leaving behind some remnants).

Spoiler

Questioner

Assuming you have a way to siphon out a Vessel from a Shard, how much hemalurgic metal would be required to contain that Vessel?

Brandon Sanderson

An astronomically large amount. Oh, the Vessel? Or contain a Shard? The Vessel, just a little dude... not that much. Basically, like a decent-sized gemstone would hold an Unmade, and that's more Investiture than we're talking about.

Questioner

Can hemalurgic metal hold around the same amount of an Invested creature as a pure gemstone?

Brandon Sanderson

No, gemstones can do more.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

You've previously said that Nightblood is the most powerful non-Shardic being in the Cosmere. Is he more powerful than the Unmade or Stormfather in terms of raw Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Raw Investiture? Here's the thing, when you say powerful, it can mean lots of different things. More raw Investiture than the Stormfather... probably not. Than the Unmade, probably. I would have to look, I don't have the numbers on this. But the Stormfather is very restricted in what he can do.

Orem Signing (March 16, 2019)

[Sophrosyne He/any]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

the Vessel of Odium and that was less investiture than an Unmade have

I've seen this around before (maybe you?). Where's it from I need to educate myself!

 

Other wise you're 100% correct, I'd forgotten about the veins and just conflated the tower with The Sibling which is close to the truth but not it in actuality.

[alder24]

22 hours ago, Sophrosyne said:

I've seen this around before (maybe you?). Where's it from I need to educate myself!

Form a WoB, I attached it to my previous post in spoiler boxes.

[RefusesToElaborate]

On 1/6/2025 at 1:20 PM, Sophrosyne said:

Well we do know from RoW that Nightblood CAN be satisfied though that was when attacking a shard. The important part is that it didn't seem to do any real damage to the shard.

When you cut a countable number off a piece of infinity, there's still an infinity. Slice infinity in half, you just get two infinities.

[Schneeente]

2 hours ago, RefusesToElaborate said:

When you cut a countable number off a piece of infinity, there's still an infinity. Slice infinity in half, you just get two infinities.

man, this is so confusing and so hard to wrap my head around. 

[AlmightyGir]

7 hours ago, Schneeente said:

man, this is so confusing and so hard to wrap my head around. 

The best way to explain Infinity is to think of it more as "unknown".

Infinite, is the opposite of Finite. Finite means "has an end", or "has a definition". 5 is Finite, it is 5. Infinite being the opposite of Finite means "has no definition", "has no end", "has no beginning", "cannot be set". It is both nothing, and everything.

[Nitpicking]

13 hours ago, Schneeente said:

man, this is so confusing and so hard to wrap my head around. 

In mathematics, "infinity" is not a number. It's a statement that some sequence (of some entity) never ends. Since there is no largest counting number, the counting numbers are infinite.

By the way, you can cut a finite piece off an infinite sequence quite easily. Consider the counting numbers 1, 2, 3 ...

Now, cut off 1,2,3. That's a finite piece. The remaining piece, 4, 5, 6 ... is infinite, and of the same "size" (order) as the counting numbers. (The definition of "equal" for infinities is that you can establish a 1:1 correspondence that includes all members of both sequences. In this case 1:4, 2:5, 3:6 ... matches every member of both.)

I'm sure Eric "Chaos, and also a math teacher at the college level" Lake could explain this better. I was a science teacher, not math.

[Sophrosyne He/any]

16 hours ago, RefusesToElaborate said:

When you cut a countable number off a piece of infinity, there's still an infinity. Slice infinity in half, you just get two infinities.

This is true IRL but in the cosmere it's more complicated. Shards are NOT infante. If they were the likes of Harmony and Retribution wouldn't be any more or less concerning than Ambition and Odium. therefore the lack damage is still a useful point of reference.

Relevant portion underlined at the bottom.

Spoiler

Questioner

My question is about Ruin and Preservation creating life. Is that an example of two individuals having a super team up? Or is there some co-influence, cross-influence that let them do something that would be outside of themselves?

Brandon Sanderson

Rephrase that for me. Talk around a little bit. Let me see if I'm gonna get the right answer, okay?

Questioner

Ruin ruins, and Preservation preserves. If they're creating life, well, that takes a little of everything, right? Is that an influence, like Ruin being in proximity to Preservation and vice versa? Would their co-mingling happen... and how would that influence other dual or triple Shards?

Brandon Sanderson

I get what you're saying. Each of the Shards has certain strengths and weaknesses, and they're capable of certain things and not other things. Some of them can do what was done by Ruin and Preservation on their own. Most cannot. Most combinations of two could; some would need three. So, it really kind of depends on the situation and the Shard. Each pairing and grouping of Shards will have different sort of augmentations to what they can accomplish, and things like this, because the Shards aren't all-powerful, they're just part of something that once was, if that makes sense. (That's not how math works in infinity, but it is how infinity works in the cosmere.)

FanX 2024 (Sept. 26, 2024)

 

[Raven Wilder]

I think what Brandon's said before is that the Shards' power is infinite in the sense that it never runs out - but having an infinite supply of gas is not the same thing as having an infinitely powerful engine.

[alder24]

9 hours ago, Sophrosyne said:

This is true IRL but in the cosmere it's more complicated. Shards are NOT infante. If they were the likes of Harmony and Retribution wouldn't be any more or less concerning than Ambition and Odium. therefore the lack damage is still a useful point of reference.

Relevant portion underlined at the bottom.

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

My question is about Ruin and Preservation creating life. Is that an example of two individuals having a super team up? Or is there some co-influence, cross-influence that let them do something that would be outside of themselves?

Brandon Sanderson

Rephrase that for me. Talk around a little bit. Let me see if I'm gonna get the right answer, okay?

Questioner

Ruin ruins, and Preservation preserves. If they're creating life, well, that takes a little of everything, right? Is that an influence, like Ruin being in proximity to Preservation and vice versa? Would their co-mingling happen... and how would that influence other dual or triple Shards?

Brandon Sanderson

I get what you're saying. Each of the Shards has certain strengths and weaknesses, and they're capable of certain things and not other things. Some of them can do what was done by Ruin and Preservation on their own. Most cannot. Most combinations of two could; some would need three. So, it really kind of depends on the situation and the Shard. Each pairing and grouping of Shards will have different sort of augmentations to what they can accomplish, and things like this, because the Shards aren't all-powerful, they're just part of something that once was, if that makes sense. (That's not how math works in infinity, but it is how infinity works in the cosmere.)

FanX 2024 (Sept. 26, 2024)

 

Yes, Shards are not infinite, the Shardic power is near-infinite, but basically infinite for all intents and purposes, however that's not what limits Shards - it's the Vessel that is the limitation. The Vessel, while they have an enormously expanded mind, is not infinite thus they can't tap the infinite power of their Shard. They can only access a finite power, which is a fraction of what the Shard has to offer. I assume that holding more Shards expands your mind more than holding just one Shard, thus you can tap more power, but never all of it.

Spoiler

Very Nice Name 16

You write a lot of immortals in your books. How do you think about people living on large time frames like that and how that affects the way they think and act compared to ordinary people? And also, say, 10,000-year-old compared to a 2000-year-old to a 300-year-old?

Brandon Sanderson

This is actually something I've dedicated a lot of thought to. I think fantasy and science fiction, one of the things it does well is explore human experiences that aren't possible in contemporary or realistic fiction. And so there are a lot of people out there searching for the key to human immortality. And what would it be like? How would we deal with it? These are questions that are interesting to me, and doing a story on a 10,000-year timescale lets me play around with that. I will say that various people you've met are immortal; some are not. Some, it's more time dilation shenanigans than it is extended lifespan.

But regardless, how do I approach this? By gut and instinct, just trying different things out. No human being's experience is identical to another human being's experience, so I figure no immortal's experience will be identical to other immortals' experiences, and so I can have lots of different responses. I can base it partially on the magic system and how they were made immortal. And then that lets me play with different experiences. Like, the things the Heralds are going through, Hoid hasn't gone through. Some of the sort of degradation of what's happening with their souls is unique... not wholly unique, but individual to the experiences they're having. And I play with those differently than I play with someone who's been elevated to holding near-infinite power in one of the Shards and how their experience goes. And then you've got, just, random people who have run across things that have changed their experiences in different ways, and I will approach them in a different way. And I can't really say how exactly I'm gonna do this with everybody. It's just gonna be different for each character in each situation.

That's a very long non-answer. I've thought about it a lot; I don't have answers yet. You'll see them in the books when I write them.

YouTube Livestream 39 (Feb. 1, 2022)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

With Shards, are there any... limits? What can't they do? Besides being opposed by another Shard and their own intent?

Brandon Sanderson

It varies a lot. It varies based on experience and situation. They are not omnipotent, though the power is infinite. So that is the weird part that you get into. So, they are limited partially by their own limitations, and also the limitations imposed upon them by the situations they're in.

Questioner

Is there anything universal about all of them?

Brandon Sanderson

They all have bits of them in all of the cosmere, so that's universal. They all are bounded more by themselves than by the power itself.

Skyward Chicago signing (Nov. 16, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

For Adonalsium to create the universe, therefore he must have infinite power to create an infinitely sized universe. Therefore, infinity divided by sixteen is equal to infinity. Therefore, why don't the Shards have infinite power, which they clearly don't, because they can be killed?

Brandon Sanderson

The power can't be killed. The entity controlling the power can. Infinite power existing and being able to access the infinite power are different things, and a finite mind, even added to a very powerful sense of power, isn't necessarily able to tap all of that.

Questioner

What about Ruin and Preservation in Well of Ascension? We hear about Ruin using some of its power. Therefore, it must not have infinite power, because if you minus something from infinity, it's still infinity...

Brandon Sanderson

So, infinite power is changing forms. It's not going anywhere, right? So, the Investiture, the power, is becoming energy, which is doing work, which is being released back into the system. Nothing's growing or shrinking. It is simply changing forms, and potential energy is becoming kinetic.

Oathbringer London signing (Nov. 28, 2017)

 

Spoiler

Overlord Jebus

Is all Investiture in the cosmere associated with a Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, well, okay. So this is a complicated one. *pauses* So, Investiture predates the Shattering of Adonalsium, all Investiture was from Adonalsium, all Investiture got assigned to one of the 16 Shards when Adonalsium was Shattered. Some of the Investiture was not on Yolen but location is irrelevant. So Investiture is related to Shards even on planets where none of the Shards are inhabiting. 

Overlord Jebus

Are they aware of that Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

That's part of the whole seeing into the infinite, being beyond even the power of a Shard. So, technically you could make the argument that Harmony could feel the sense of Preservation on every world in the cosmere, right? Because the building blocks of all life and creation are these things.

Overlord Jebus

So the Shard of Preservation embodies all preservation in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes but he just can't do that, right? Like, he's not infinite. The Vessels are not, even if their minds are enormously expanded by holding a Shard, they are not infinite. The Connection is all there in the Spiritual Realm.

Oathbringer London signing (Nov. 28, 2017)

 

[RefusesToElaborate]

On 1/10/2025 at 12:30 AM, Schneeente said:

man, this is so confusing and so hard to wrap my head around. 

I don't know why I finity as a concept just makes sense to me.

Like countable infinity (ex. how many whole numbers are there: 1,2,3, etc.) and uncountable infinity (how many numbers with decimals afterwards are there, 0.0000[...]0001, etc) being equal in size. Just makes sense. Infinity is infinite, there is no stop. You can always add another digit or decimal.

The one thing I don't get about infinity is how everyone underestimates it. The explanation given to me is that infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare. My understanding is that infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters should immediately produce Shakespeare. If they don't, it's not infinite.

[Schneeente]

@AlmightyGir @Nitpicking @RefusesToElaborate

Thank you for your various explanations, I appreciate it. I might have expressed myself in an unfortunate way. What I meant to say was that it is so hard for me to wrap my head around that shards "are" supposed to be "infinite". I like the clarification from Raven Wilder but even with that... it's so hard to imagine how anything could be infinite - in reality. Not in theory. In theory, sure, not a problem, you all could come up with plenty of examples. But is there anything in reality that is infinite? I mean, not even the stupidity of us humans is infinite, at some point we are all gone. And I would expect that the shards somehow draw their power from us humans or other sentient beings, somehow. And if that were the case, they would not be infinite because that "supply of gas" could run out once there are no other living / thinking beings around? I mean, even if the infinite power doesn't stem from humans or sentient beings, from somewhere it must originate. Well, I guess except we say it's divine and then of course we can just say it's a part of God and end the discussion. Still, doesn't make it any easier for me to wrap my head around even with that explanation. 

 

[Nitpicking]

10 hours ago, RefusesToElaborate said:

The one thing I don't get about infinity is how everyone underestimates it. The explanation given to me is that infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters will eventually produce Shakespeare. My understanding is that infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters should immediately produce Shakespeare. If they don't, it's not infinite.

Given infinite monkeys typing, an infinite number of them would produce a Shakespeare play first thing. And given a finite number of searchers, you would need infinite years to find any of them. You can only check a finite number of monkey per day, or per lifetime, after all.

[Schneeente]

14 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Given infinite monkeys typing, an infinite number of them would produce a Shakespeare play first thing. And given a finite number of searchers, you would need infinite years to find any of them. You can only check a finite number of monkey per day, or per lifetime, after all.

Easy solution: You just need infinite searchers then. And those of course need infinite food and infinite houses where they live and infinite air to breath and infinite sewerages and .... 

 

So yeah, I guess that nicely shows my problem with anything infinite in reality. While for numbers that concept is easy to imagine, it's so much harder for anything that is not... imaginary/theoretical?

 

I like that Sanderson made that restriction. That their power is infinite like an always refilling-well. But you can still empty that well and then you'll have to wait for more water to appear. 

[BridgeBoi]

Going back to the original point of this thread I expect that using Nightblood at Urithiu would lead to Nightblood quickly going into a food coma as we saw when it killed Rayse.  Yes, it would have infinite light but not an infinite stomach. Plus whether Nightblood would even destroy people if it is eating infinite Light. I would expect that you could maybe  use Nightblood for maybe a minute before coma. This also explains why none of the Heralds ever used Nightblood. In this case, having infinite light is actually a disadvantage.

[Nitpicking]

54 minutes ago, BridgeBoi said:

Going back to the original point of this thread I expect that using Nightblood at Urithiu would lead to Nightblood quickly going into a food coma as we saw when it killed Rayse.  Yes, it would have infinite light but not an infinite stomach. Plus whether Nightblood would even destroy people if it is eating infinite Light. I would expect that you could maybe  use Nightblood for maybe a minute before coma. This also explains why none of the Heralds ever used Nightblood. In this case, having infinite light is actually a disadvantage.

Now that you mention it, it's interesting that Ishar knew exactly how Nightblood works.

[Schneeente]

They should really have made the handle from the same material as the sheath.

[ChillPenguin]

On 1/12/2025 at 8:15 AM, Schneeente said:

They should really have made the handle from the same material as the sheath.

I’m not sure how much that would help. I think in WaT we see this for the first time, but clearly Nightblood doesn’t have to touch someone to consume their investiture. Wow that’s terrifying.