BoM or Nightblood

[Cosmer]

Couple questions about the two objects...

1. I know Brandon has mentioned that the BoM are less Invested than even a normal Shardblade, but I don't really understand how that's possible given how powerful they are? 
2. Is this lack of Investiture why they have not become sentient?
3. Is there a WoB about which of the two weapons is more powerful?

WaT Spoiler:

Spoiler

Nightblood being able to grant surges at end of WaT by being around the Honorblades makes me wonder if he could do something similar by being around the BoM?

 

[Treamayne]

43 minutes ago, Cosmer said:

1. I know Brandon has mentioned that the BoM are less Invested than even a normal Shardblade, but I don't really understand how that's possible given how powerful they are? 
2. Is this lack of Investiture why they have not become sentient?
3. Is there a WoB about which of the two weapons is more powerful?

1. Power and level of investiture are not the same. Like Vasher explains in Warbreaker - Awaken an Napkin or a cloth cut into human shape and they will do the exact same thing - but the square napkin will require about 4x more Breaths to make work. Law of BioChromatic Parallelism
2. Keep in mind there are at least two different mechanisms that reach this result, but they are not similar amounts of Investiture
   • Large amounts of Investiture, left alone and without a vesel will seek Sentience or Sapience. This is seen in Spren and Seons, etc. The fact that they are entirely investiture does not equate to how powerful an entity they are.
   • Awakening creates a fake soul for an object - that's how it functions. So Nightblood is Sapient and would be even with less investiture (at creation he only had the original 1000 breaths and was already Sapient. This ties in to why he can't remember being drawn (WoB Below)
   • We do not yet know how Awakened Metalminds are made - and if they are using a Feruchemy process, Excisors, or some non-Scadrial Process. 
3. There is. . . ish. It discusses the Bands - as a non-Sapient object (and not as a comparison to Nightblood)

Spoiler

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Anyway, a lot of important things happen here. Note that Nightblood doesn't remember being drawn. When he was created, the Breaths gave him sentience as planned. (That was a big part of the goal in making him—to prove the existence of Type Four BioChromatic entities.) However, once he is drawn, his Command takes force and he acts much more like a regular Awakened object—but one with very strange abilities and powers. During this time, his Breath is diverted to creating the powers, and his mind goes fuzzy.

Warbreaker Annotations (July 25, 2011)

Quote

Bradley Culvert

If you could be given one object from your books and brought into the real world, what would it be? And why?

Brandon Sanderson

The Bands of Mourning would be pretty handy. They might be the single most powerful object that is an actual object. Unless you count, like, the Well of Ascension. I don't know; the Well of Ascension's, like, less an object. The Bands of Mourning might be it, though I'd be hard-pressed not to pick a living Shardblade, assuming that they could turn back into the spren. If having a living Shardblade meant that the spren came through and could bond with me and I could have my own cool spren and Shardblade, that would be pretty awesome, even if I couldn't get a hold of Stormlight to power it, that would be pretty cool.

Adam Horne

You wouldn't bring Nightblood?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't think I would bring Nightblood here, no. I do not think that I would bring Nightblood here.

YouTube Livestream 27 (Feb. 3, 2021)

 

Hope that helps

[alder24]

17 hours ago, Cosmer said:

• I know Brandon has mentioned that the BoM are less Invested than even a normal Shardblade, but I don't really understand how that's possible given how powerful they are? 

The Band of Mourning grants all Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities and yes, that is powerful on Scadrial. However, they are still just a normal, physical metals in which someone stored a lot of investiture. That's it. Shardblades on the other hand are not made out of physical material, they are pure investiture condensed into its physical form - a god metal. Because Shardblade are a god metal and BoM are not, they are vastly more invested as they literally are pure investiture turned physical. BoM are still just normal metalminds with a bunch of investiture stored in them. They are not comparable.

Moreover, Shardblade have sapience attached to them. This is because they are living spren manifesting as a physical matter and their mind, their sapience, spirit web and identity makes them more invested than a normal god metal would be. Although the Band also have some living force and identity of their own attached to them, they are not alive, they are not sentient. They are a little machine with enough mind to give Metallic Arts to those who hold them, but that's not sapience or even sentience. In my opinion that is a little more similar to type 3 Awakened objects.

Spoiler

Chaos

Is atium Invested?

Brandon Sanderson

Is atium Invested? Atium is Investiture distilled into the Physical Realm, right? So is electricity electric? Or is it--

Chaos

Well I think the question Sharders had was if it's Invested, how can people Push and Pull on it. That was the struggle.

Brandon Sanderson

Atium breaks a lot of rules, in the same way that you will see other things break rules. Atium plays weirdly. When you get distilled Investiture, you're starting like-- My kind of rule for myself is it's kind of like when you start going on the quantum level, the rules just start playing weirdly. Because it's like, what Realm does atium exist in-- is another thing. Because-- Pure Investiture like that is like a mini black hole, right? It's like existing in three Realms at once. Kind of, and things like that... There's lots of weirdness.

The writerly answer is there is lots of weirdness because when I built atium, I didn't have the rest of the cosmere built, right? And so it breaks a lot of rules that I later set up that everything else has to follow, right? So the writerly answer is we just have to accept that atium and lerasium and some of these other distilled Investiture things are going to play very weirdly with the magic systems. But that's okay. Nightblood will too, and some of these things that were built even after the cosmere was coming together.

Salt Lake City signing (Dec. 16, 2017)

 

Spoiler

Raddatatta

In Era 1, Sazed says the only thing you can Feruchemically store while sleeping is wakefulness, but in Era 2 they have the sky ships that require everyone to be storing weight to fly and they don't land while people sleep. Was Sazed just wrong, or is that a difference between normal Feruchemy and using the unsealed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Unsealed metalminds, I am moving toward complete—you probably already guessed this—mechanical uses of Investiture, and this indeed is a step toward that. And so we are stepping toward having a little machine that gives you powers. That's what the world wants to try to find. And this is—this being mechanical—we'll just say that the medallions and the things that they're building have more of a life-force, more of an Identity of their own than a traditional metalmind does, even though they're unkeyed and all of this stuff.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

17 hours ago, Cosmer said:

• Is this lack of Investiture why they have not become sentient?

I don't think so. Spren were created by Adonalsium himself and they were made sentient. The intelligent spren were made by Honor and Cultivation directly and that's why they are sapient. Shards were directly involved in making Splinters on Roshar and that's why they are sentient. However, it is possible for investiture to gain sentience and sapience on their own, the more invested something is the faster it happens, yet we're still talking about this happening over thousands of years. The Bands were not only created deliberately not to be sentient, but also are not that much invested and they haven't existed for long enough to become sentient on their own. 

Spoiler

Questioner

If someone were to create a human shape, with full articulations, made out of the four Feruchemical Spiritual metals and copper and do like a full dump into them, would it be able to-- I mean, Investiture attains sapience on its own. And then with-- If those were mixed with the memories in the copper would it be able to effectively become an android of the person who created it?

Brandon Sanderson

So we got a couple of issues you have to overcome in creating this. Number one, the memories are not going to attune to the Investiture itself, they're going to be attuned to you. The Investiture as it attains sapience is gonna create its own Identity, which is then going to be a mismatch for those memories. So you would have to find a way to get those memories to work for that creation.

Questioner

It wouldn't tie with the Identity that was stored in the aluminum?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it would not... The other thing you were getting at there though, is that just Investing it alone, you would have to leave it alone for a long time, naturally, for it to start developing anything. And so we're looking at thousands of years, probably. There are ways to speed that process along, but just doing that and leaving it, it's gonna take a while.

Skyward San Diego signing (Nov. 7, 2018)

 

17 hours ago, Cosmer said:

1. Is there a WoB about which of the two weapons is more powerful?

Nightblood is the most invested object in Cosmere. He's an unholy amalgamation of spren and invested physical objects. His body is made from a normal physical steel, which was stuffed with a bunch of Breaths and Awakened into sentience. Then he started to consume so much investiture, that he became supersaturated with it. to the point when he can't hold any more investiture (and that's why it leaks from him). The Bands of Mourning are not even close to this point. They hold a lot of investiture, but not even close to being overfilled with it like Nightblood is. Nightblood is so invested that he can now be considered as a god metal, he's not just a simple steel anymore. 

Spoiler

Questioner

Are the Bands of Mourning...would they be like similarly invested as Nightblood?

Brandon Sanderson

Not quite to the extent of Nightblood. In fact not remotely close to the extent of Nightblood.

Calamity Philadelphia signing (Feb. 20, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Mason Wheeler

Nightblood is the most ridiculously over-Invested thing in the cosmere, second only to the Shards?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Mason Wheeler

Was this true from the moment of its creation, or did it grow in power over time.

Brandon Sanderson

Grew in power over time. Kind of answers a question that people have been wondering. But, yes.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

 

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)

 

Spoiler

Kael_the_Adventurer

Did Nightblood's Awakening transform it into a God Metal?

Brandon Sanderson

*hesitant* Yes, you could say that.

Adam Horne

Was that a permanent change, or was that just while...

Brandon Sanderson

You can argue that Nightblood is a God Metal. Is he? You could argue otherwise as well. How about that?

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

Here's a WoB comparing many different objects in terms of their investiture. The Bands are similarly invested to a full metalmind, Shardblades are way more invested than that, Nightblood is ruling over them both. 

Spoiler

Questioner

I've got a list of various Cosmere bits of metal and I was wondering if you would rank them from like one to ten or just easy to difficult on how hard it would be to steelpush on them. So with one being just a regular coin, ten being like when the Lord Ruler was moving bits of glass on the floor, so like metal inside a person's body.

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on how strong the Investiture in them is.

Questioner

Is that gonna be the answer for all of these?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably!

Questioner

How about a spike charged with Hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson

A spike charged with Hemalurgy... that depends on...

Questioner

Not in a person.

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on how strong, yeah, a spike is moderately, (in the realm of these kinds of things) moderately easy to push on because a spike does not rip off very much Investiture. Only enough to short circuit the soul, and less it over time. I would put that at the bottom, with the top being very hard, to be one of the easier things.

Questioner

How about a metalmind that is full?

Brandon Sanderson

That is full? That is going to be middle of the realm of the, yeah. Generally easier than, for instance, a Shardblade which is going to be very hard.

Questioner #2

A Shardblade is [inaudible] actually metal? [metal]-ish?

Brandon Sanderson

Ish. Is Lerasium a metal? Yeah.

Questioner

So that'd be the same for Shardplate too?

Brandon Sanderson

Shardplate and Blade are very hard. Blade is probably gonna be a little harder.

Questioner

A Half-shard?

Brandon Sanderson

A Half-shard shield? That's gonna be moderate.

Questioner

Nightblood? I imagine that being hard.

Brandon Sanderson

Hard, of all the things you've listed, that is going to be the hardest. Far beyond even a Sharblade.

Questioner

Far beyond metal inside a person? 

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, yes. Depending on how invested the person is.

Questioner

If somebody was invested as much as Nightblood?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, for instance the God King, right. At the end with all those Breaths. Pushing something inside of him, getting through all of that? Gonna be real hard. Average person on Scadrial? You've seen how hard that is. A drab? Much easier.

Questioner

That was my next one, or no, sorry not a drab. A lifeless?

Brandon Sanderson

A Lifeless, yeah. Even... yeah. Lifeless are kind of weird because they've had their soul leave but then they've had a replacement stuck in in the form of Breath which leaves them in a very weird position compared to a drab which has had part of their Investiture ripped away but a majority remains, so, anyways. I'm going to give you one more. Pick your favorite.

Questioner

A soulstamped piece of metal?

Brandon Sanderson

A soulstamped piece of metal is going to be on the lower, easier side. Not a lot of Investiture going on in a soulstamp.

Salt Lake City signing (March 29, 2014)

 

WaT spoilers:

Spoiler

17 hours ago, Cosmer said:

Spoiler

Nightblood being able to grant surges at end of WaT by being around the Honorblades makes me wonder if he could do something similar by being around the BoM?

 

I believe this would be possible. Unsealed metalminds and Honorblades are comparable, they are more or less the same thing created via different magic systems, they both work by the same rules. Honorblades are self-aware, but I am not sure they are fully sapient like spren are. Metalminds per WoB above do have some life force and identity in them so this might be enough to allow them to talk to Nightblood, even though they are not fully sapient or sentient. 

Spoiler

Questioner

Do Honorblades bestow their abilities similar to an Identity-free nicrosilmind with other Metalborn abilities?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, these are working on similar principles. Same principle, divergent applications by the magic system, but yeah, I would say, they come back to the same principles.

Orem signing (March 10, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Fluffy (paraphrased)

When the Five Scholars traveled to Roshar, this happened post Recreance, so most Shardblades would have been dead, how did Nightblood gain sapience?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Shardblades weren’t the only Blades around that were active, there were Honorblades. Honorblades are self-aware, but do not manifest a spren in the Cognitive Realm.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 15, 2022)

 

 

[Cosmer]

@alder24 & @Treamayne y'all rock, thank you. I figured someone had asked similar things to Brandon before...