Shardblades and that critical 10 heartbeats

[DoctaDajman]

As I have been thinking about using allomancy to create a buzzsaw... or fuzzsaw of death... I started thinking of other, less cumbersome ways to turn a shardblade into a ranged weapon. 

Of course throwing it is the most immediate thought but then I have to question how to best suppliment that with the requirement of 10 heartbeats before resummoning it. 

Time dilation must be the fastest answer. Even knowing that a bendalloy bubble will pop when it is touched by the shardblade, 10 heartbeats worth of a bendalloy bubble to resummon a blade would not be very likely to burn through bendalloy too wastefully and in those 10 heartbeats you can already assess the new situation after your last throw and be swinging for the fences at the most critical enemies again.  

Of course steel feruchemy would probably be a solid choice as well, allowing you to speed everything up but it may eat through your reserves a lot faster that way.  

On the other hand, I actually think something like F gold and A pewter would slow down the summoning time as I envision them both as keeping the heart rate well leveled out. 

There is always the option to summon and throw, raining death from above while dancing over the enemy with steel or any other form of flying but I dont see it ever increasing the rate with which you could launch out the attacks. 

Any other thoughts and ideas for ways to ramp up the rate of fire for slingin shardblades? Or any thoughts on preferred shardblade designs for use as a throwing weapon?  Single vs double edged blades and such other thoughts. 

 

My current thought is that, for a ranged shardblade slinger the best load out not needing to alter the blade after summoning is probably going to involve A bendalloy. 

[Quantus he/him]

I mean, cocaine... 

 

Technically, if you can change the shape then it means it's a Radiant Blade, so the heartbeats limitation isnt really a factor anymore, and if it's a deadeye blade it's going to be a sword. 

But for the sake of argument, either way my answer is some version of a Bow.  If I m a radiant and can change it's shape, Id use a Shard arrow and a mundane but massive spring-steel bow with my plate.  If, on the other end of the spectrum it's a group of complete normies with a randomly shaped shardblade but no training or Plate or anything, I'd make a size-appropriate Ballista in more of a Siege-weapon scenario.  Strap a short spear with oversized fletching on it to the back of the blade to make it fly more like a dart, launch, resummon, repeat while the rest of your crew re-cranks the ballista itself.  

[DoctaDajman]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

I mean, cocaine... 

 

Technically, if you can change the shape then it means it's a Radiant Blade, so the heartbeats limitation isnt really a factor anymore, and if it's a deadeye blade it's going to be a sword. 

But for the sake of argument, either way my answer is some version of a Bow.  If I m a radiant and can change it's shape, Id use a Shard arrow and a mundane but massive spring-steel bow with my plate.  If, on the other end of the spectrum it's a group of complete normies with a randomly shaped shardblade but no training or Plate or anything, I'd make a size-appropriate Ballista in more of a Siege-weapon scenario.  Strap a short spear with oversized fletching on it to the back of the blade to make it fly more like a dart, launch, resummon, repeat while the rest of your crew re-cranks the ballista itself.  

Yeah. I was meaning deadeye. The shape choice was simply if there was a deadeye in the most ideal shape what would it be.  

I have watched entirely too many Elden Ring videos recently and and the thrown weapons and spinning weapons have made my mind start wandering for sure. The idea of hucking it out there and then resummoning it as someone who is not a radiant just seems like a heck of a power set... staying alive for the 10 heartbeats in-between was the Trick. 

I'm pretty well sold on the bendalloy bubbles safety for resummoning as being the most ideal pairing for throwing specifically. 

Getting the shardblade oriented to be the most effective it can be is my concern now. Throwing it like a spear might work but I am curious about how well it would pass through multiple targets that way. 

Does the entire weapon fuzz once it starts cutting?  I was thinking of spears and the fact that the whole shaft would have to fuzz if you wanted a piercing weapon to be truly effective.  

 

There is some amount of warping and shape shifting even deadeye blades can do given they themselves changed shapes to accept and mount the gemstone. I imagine that overtime even a deadeye that is thrown primarily would start to change shape to accommodate it's use.  

[Duxredux he/him]

If you're equipped with Plate, an obvious response is to hurl the Blade and just jump/run after it to start punching the defenses after the panic and disarray a thrown Shardblade would cause. If you have a second Blade or any other weapon including fallen armored enemies, use those as well. Pick up the Blade, repeat. If someone survives and picks it up, dismiss it right before they try swinging it at you before punching their face in. You'd have to maintain momentum, but this seems like a pretty direct strategy that would work well for the Blackthorn.

In general though, as I look into it, using a Dead Shardblade is risky. If the gemstone is removed or damaged, it no longer can be summoned or dismissed. If you're relying on summoning it for retrieval, a misaligned hit or a rotation to strike with the pommel might make it irretrievable, particularly against a prepared enemy. Having the Blade dismiss if it leaves your hand is one of the better ways to not have the gemstone damaged. Of course if you have a living Blade, both the solution and the problem are moot anyway.

[DoctaDajman]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

In general though, as I look into it, using a Dead Shardblade is risky. If the gemstone is removed or damaged, it no longer can be summoned or dismissed. If you're relying on summoning it for retrieval, a misaligned hit or a rotation to strike with the pommel might make it irretrievable, particularly against a prepared enemy. Having the Blade dismiss if it leaves your hand is one of the better ways to not have the gemstone damaged. Of course if you have a living Blade, both the solution and the problem are moot anyway.

Is it that easy to dislodge a gemstone from a shardblade?  I always imagined the metal that the shardblades are made of as being indestructible and unmoveable.  If the blade itself grew to accept the gem and the gem is now set into the blades hilt then I would imagine it being impossible to remove unless the deadeye somehow allowed it to be removed. 

Of course a shardbearer breaking it might be more plausible... although I wonder what gemstone was in Dalinars blade as I feel that even shardplate wouldn't be able to destroy certain stones and gems in the manner he was shown to do it. 

I think the Gemstones being removed or destroyed is likely far easier said than done. 

[Quantus he/him]

 

3 hours ago, Duxredux said:

If you're equipped with Plate, an obvious response is to hurl the Blade and just jump/run after it to start punching the defenses after the panic and disarray a thrown Shardblade would cause. If you have a second Blade or any other weapon including fallen armored enemies, use those as well. Pick up the Blade, repeat. If someone survives and picks it up, dismiss it right before they try swinging it at you before punching their face in. You'd have to maintain momentum, but this seems like a pretty direct strategy that would work well for the Blackthorn.

In general though, as I look into it, using a Dead Shardblade is risky. If the gemstone is removed or damaged, it no longer can be summoned or dismissed. If you're relying on summoning it for retrieval, a misaligned hit or a rotation to strike with the pommel might make it irretrievable, particularly against a prepared enemy. Having the Blade dismiss if it leaves your hand is one of the better ways to not have the gemstone damaged. Of course if you have a living Blade, both the solution and the problem are moot anyway.

2 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

Is it that easy to dislodge a gemstone from a shardblade?  I always imagined the metal that the shardblades are made of as being indestructible and unmoveable.  If the blade itself grew to accept the gem and the gem is now set into the blades hilt then I would imagine it being impossible to remove unless the deadeye somehow allowed it to be removed. 

Of course a shardbearer breaking it might be more plausible... although I wonder what gemstone was in Dalinars blade as I feel that even shardplate wouldn't be able to destroy certain stones and gems in the manner he was shown to do it. 

I think the Gemstones being removed or destroyed is likely far easier said than done. 

Just to clarify, shattering the gem would prevent them from resummoning it after the throw, but you dont risk actually loosing it.  He specifically removed the mechanics that would have made shattering the Gem a means of breaking the Bond and taking the weapon.  It's required for the bond to form to a deadeye blade, but if shattering it wont break the bond then it's pretty likely you only need to to establish the bond and can summon it freely after that, even if the gem were destroyed. 

 

Quote

 

Adontis

I've always wondered, how do you determine where the line between "Word of Brandon" and "Read and Find Out" is? Has it ever caused issues where you've said something, but later that thing changed when it went into a book making your first statement now false?

Thanks so much for writing as much as you do, I'm looking forward to all your upcoming books, keep up the great work!

Brandon Sanderson

Boy, this one is an art, not a science.

I've several times said something that I later decided to change in a book. I've always got this idea in the back of my head that the books are canon, and things I say at signing aren't 100% canon. This is part because of a habit I have of falling back on things I decided years ago, then revised in notes after I realized they didn't work. My off-the-cuff instinct is still to go with what I had in my head for years, even when it's no longer canon.

An example of this are Shardblades. In the first draft of TWoK in 2002, I had the mechanics of the weapons work in a specific way. (If you wanted to steal one from someone, you knock off the bonding gemstone, and it breaks the bond.) I later decided it was more dramatic if you couldn't steal a Shardblade that way--you had to kill the person or force them to relinquish the bond. It worked far better.

But in Oathbringer, Peter had to remind me of that change, as I just kind of nonchalantly wrote into a scene a comment about knocking off a gemstone to steal a Shardblade. These things leak back in, as you might expect for a series I've been working on for some twenty years now--with lore being revised all along.

So...short answer...yes, I've contradicted myself a number of times. I try very, very hard to let the books be the canon however. So you can default to them.

As for what I answer and what I RAFO...it depends on how much I want to reveal at the moment, if I'm trying to preserve specific surprises, or if I just want people to focus on other things at the moment. Like I said, art and not science.

damenleeturks

In WoR, Navani muses to Dalinar about how the gemstones in the Blades could be the focus that allows the bond with the Blade to exist. If this theory is correct, it would follow that someone could damage that gemstone and thus be able to steal the Blade with it then having no intact bonding mechanism, right?

I guess I'm having trouble seeing how the example you describe isn't possible.

Peter Ahlstrom

The gemstone is needed to create the bond and operate the bond's functions. If you remove the gemstone, the person the sword is bonded to can't summon it or dismiss it to mist. But neither can anyone else. If they eventually pop another gemstone in and try to bond it themselves, they will fail, and the original person can then resummon their Blade. The bond is with the dead spren of the Blade, not with the gemstone. The stone facilitates the bond.

So, you can haul around a de-gemstoned Blade with you all the time and successfully steal it that way. But this makes it very easy to steal back. You'd have to kill the holder of the bond in order to rebond it. Which is no different from usual.

And in general, if you can get close enough to a Shardbearer to steal their Blade, you are also close enough to kill them anyway.

Phantine

So that scene where Dalinar crushes the gemstone and hands the Shardblade over, he's also doing some sort of mystical de-bonding?

Or is it just 'if you WANT to give it up, you gave it up'?

Peter Ahlstrom

Yes, if you want to give it up, you gave it up.

Phantine

If nobody is currently bonded to it, does the attuning still take a week?

Otherwise it seems weird people would figure out putting a gemstone in hilt lets you summon it, since nothing would happen without a week of bonding time.

ricree

Not that weird. One of the books (WoK, I think) mentions that many years passed before the gemstone bonding was discovered. Shardblades were still really valuable, though, and even more vulnerable to theft, so it makes sense that people would have kept them close at hand long enough for the bonding process.

Other than that, all you need is someone to accidentally decorate the blade correctly, which is something that took a long time to happen, but was probably bound to happen eventually considering how key infused gemstones are to the world.

Peter Ahlstrom

Well said.

/r/fantasy AMA 2017 (Feb. 10, 2017)

 

  Edited February 27, 2025 by Quantus

[Duxredux he/him]

2 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

Is it that easy to dislodge a gemstone from a shardblade?  I always imagined the metal that the shardblades are made of as being indestructible and unmoveable.  If the blade itself grew to accept the gem and the gem is now set into the blades hilt then I would imagine it being impossible to remove unless the deadeye somehow allowed it to be removed. 

Of course a shardbearer breaking it might be more plausible... although I wonder what gemstone was in Dalinars blade as I feel that even shardplate wouldn't be able to destroy certain stones and gems in the manner he was shown to do it. 

I think the Gemstones being removed or destroyed is likely far easier said than done. 

No idea on the details. Again, because the Blade is automatically dismissed as soon as it leaves the Shardbearer's hand, it would very, very rarely even be in a position to be damaged. I would expect the usual outcome would be the hand or arm holding the Blade to be destroyed or damaged resulting in a dropped and dismissed Blade rather than a successful hit on the gem. A broken gem preventing dismissal has happened through presumably "normal" combat (very loosely normal) off camera when Dalinar was ambushed by Rathalas soldiers. After the ambush, he had to carry Oathbringer back to camp with him because the cracked stone interfered with the process (Oathbringer ch 75).

Polestone durability is also not a consistent quality as some gems are brittle enough to crack when dropped while others can handle more abuse. 

Really though, what we're talking about here is a Plate-assisted throw to get any range at all, which means a lot of force. Get the rotation wrong or have the Blade impact with anything other the cutting edge and it will bounce around. If this is combat, it will be bouncing around among fortifications, armor, weaponry, and generally hard stuff meant to take a beating. The exception might be if you're tossing your Blade at squishy unarmored opponents who are relying on evasion or boosted healing to survive, at which point the backstop begins to matter.

Now it might not happen all that frequently, but even if it's 1 in 100 throws or even 1 in 1000 that has it land wrong, it still isn't what you would want as your primary form of combat. Especially as the premise was figuring out how to spam thrown Shardblades. If you really want to spam them, find a living Spren.

Edited February 27, 2025 by Duxredux