To kill Nightblood

[Frustration]

Yes yes here we go again.

Well, I've been thinking about Nightblood lately, and he's kind of OP. I mean imagine a weapon that one shots everything, and can give its user the surges of Division, Abrasion, Progression, Illumination, Transportation, Cohesion, and Tension, at least. Whoever holds this sword is an army unto themselves.

Your mission: The Wielder of Nightblood has established themselves on Taldain due to the large amounts of ambient investiture there. Autonomy and the governments of Taldain have authorized you to do whatever it takes to remove them. How do you do it?

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

10 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Yes yes here we go again.

Well, I've been thinking about Nightblood lately, and he's kind of OP. I mean imagine a weapon that one shots everything, and can give its user the surges of Division, Abrasion, Progression, Illumination, Transportation, Cohesion, and Tension, at least. Whoever holds this sword is an army unto themselves.

Your mission: The Wielder of Nightblood has established themselves on Taldain due to the large amounts of ambient investiture there. Autonomy and the governments of Taldain have authorized you to do whatever it takes to remove them. How do you do it?

Shoot him and sheath Nightblood. The bearer isn't immortal or omnipotent.

[Qianweilian He/him]

31 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Yes yes here we go again.

Honestly, this is a really interesting prompt style though.

32 minutes ago, Frustration said:

he surges of Division, Abrasion, Progression, Illumination, Transportation, Cohesion, and Tension, at least.

Nightblood has all the surges.

Quote

Questioner

Does Nightblood grant Szeth all the Surges?

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood found a way to replicate Surges, yes he did. Letting him sit and chat with Honorblades was a fun thing.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 7 (Dec. 19, 2025)

34 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Autonomy and the governments of Taldain

Am I allowed to ask Autonomy to smite the wielder?

34 minutes ago, Frustration said:

How do you do it?

Autonomy/Taldain has missiles that can reach hundreds of miles. Assuming that 350 miles is approximately a good maximum range, that’s the distance from Istanbul to Athens.

Quote

“Poor Tobal’s job was to research chemical propellants,” Maraga replied. At their confused stares, she continued. “These people, they’re trying to develop self-propelled shells. Weapons that could fire themselves and fly miles. Or even hundreds of miles. Before hitting and detonating.”

Spoiler

Considering how op this wielder is going to be, I think the best approach is to bombard them with missiles. While, yes, the Nightbloodman will have Gravitation, missiles go really fast, probably too fast to react.

[Frustration]

6 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

Nightblood has all the surges.

He doesn't say he can do all the surges, and Nightblood never got to speak with the Bondsmith, WIndrunner, or Skybreaker blades.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Yes yes here we go again.

Well, I've been thinking about Nightblood lately, and he's kind of OP. I mean imagine a weapon that one shots everything, and can give its user the surges of Division, Abrasion, Progression, Illumination, Transportation, Cohesion, and Tension, at least. Whoever holds this sword is an army unto themselves.

Your mission: The Wielder of Nightblood has established themselves on Taldain due to the large amounts of ambient investiture there. Autonomy and the governments of Taldain have authorized you to do whatever it takes to remove them. How do you do it?

Now, hold on a minute- who am I in this scenario? Am I just some schmuck that lives on Taldain? Do I have knowledge of the Cosmere and other worlds? Do I have any resources from Auto, or am I purely on my own?

[Frustration]

6 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Now, hold on a minute- who am I in this scenario? Am I just some schmuck that lives on Taldain? Do I have knowledge of the Cosmere and other worlds? Do I have any resources from Auto, or am I purely on my own?

You can be whoever you wish to be.

Let's say there's a bounty on his head for crimes against the Cosmere. Anyone who kills him can claim it.

[Trusk'our he/him]

7 minutes ago, Frustration said:

You can be whoever you wish to be.

Let's say there's a bounty on his head for crimes against the Cosmere. Anyone who kills him can claim it.

So, the goal isn't to kill Nightblood, but the wielder (let's say Szeth, since he's the last user and has competence with most of the Surges).

Regardless, I don't think this is actually that difficult, at least compared to killing Nergaoul or a Herald. The user is mostly just an Honorbearer, but with an instant-kill Blade if they happen to touch you, but said Blade is draining their Investiture at an exponential rate until it consumes the wielder too.

 

Even with White Sand all around them, I'm pretty sure it's less Investiture dense than gemstones or Breaths. That's just a hunch, but even if that isn't the case the exponential greed of Nightblood will very quickly make using the artifact impossible- you'd need to keep moving to new patches of sand until it drained the Investiture too fast to keep up with.

The Blade can be largely countered with large amounts of aluminum armor and firearms. Swords are a lot less effective when they can't hit you.

The Surges themselves are probably a lot more dangerous to you and your hired muscle, especially in the hands of someone competent. However, aluminum can help block the most directly dangerous types, like Soulcasting or Releasing, and again, using those Surges will only quicken the rate at which they deplete their available Investiture.

 

I think the situation is similar to that of killing a Mistborn- the user is a glass canon, and can dish out a lot of damage, but realistically cannot take a lot. They even have an additional weakness in their instability and rapid Investiture consumption. They're definitely more dangerous up close, but aluminum is a really great shield against that.

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

Hmm, not seeing a way to actually accomplish this, so here's a bunch of wrong answers.

-puts on Wrongliroz hat-

Spoiler

Well, seeing as how I don't know what I'm doing and am probably not going to succeed, I can at least achieve disappointment by confirming in what way things don't work like I think they ought to.

So, Nightblood is partly a ruin-thing, because the verb in "Destroy Evil" is Destroy, which is a ruin-verb.  Nightblood also partly an Endowment thing, having been made on Nalthis.

If things worked the way I think they ought to, Nightblood should have absolutely fascinating interactions with any material from Scadrial (given that everything on Scadrial except the humans is perfectly half-ruin and half-preservation, and preservation is the opposite of ruin).  So, Nightblood is more similar to material and humans of Scadrial than to anything not made of Endowment.

Fascinatingly, the humans of Scadrial are made of Preservation and Ruin, but more Preservation, making them the only mainly-preservation things.  If I was the evil jerk in charge of Cosmere lore, that would actually matter and Nightblood wouldn't be able to destroy a Scadrian human's soul like how Nightblood can destroy other souls, because I don't think Nightblood is mostly Ruin, and so you should need a mostly-ruin thing to destroy a mostly-preservation soul.  In the spiritual sense, if things worked the way I would assume (my assumptions are never right), Nightblood would logically be a spiritual cousin to every Scadrian human.

This is relevant because I don't think Nightblood can be destroyed.  I think the best that can be done is to exploit Preservation-Ruin opposite-ness to somehow counteract the "destroy" part of "Destroy Evil".  Maybe make Vasher create some equally Invested opposite object with a Preservation-verb as the verb in its command.

In practical terms, I really don't want to destroy Nightblood, because that blade is one of the only remaining things that stands any chance of giving anyone from Not-Roshar a W against a Rosharan.  I mean, without Nightblood, I have almost no chance of destroying the Navani-crystal to free The Sibling, delivering an appropriate justice to the notorious band of war criminals and slavers known as Bridge Four, stabbing Bavadin (not that mister Sanderson would let this work, there's probably some nonsense with the avatars that means you'd have to stab every single iteration of Autonomy at once) to nonexistence, killing Sja-anat and thus undoing the Enlightenment of the Enlightened spren (mister Sanderson won't let this work, either, but a doofus can dream), deleting Moash from reality, or anything like that.

Also surges are disgusting and respectable people don't use them, so even if the surges could be used to destroy Nightblood, we're not doing that because that's embarrassing, immoral, unsanitary, illegal, and very impolite.

As always, the obvious answer is to get a Windrunner to talk to the problem until the problem is convinced to not be a problem.  In this case, we'll just need the Windrunner to convince Nightblood that Nightblood is evil, so Nightblood will destroy Nightblood.

Spoiler-ed for being wrong, because none of that actually works in that way.

Edited February 12 by Aliroz-The-Confused

[Myst He/Him]

7 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Hmm, not seeing a way to actually accomplish this, so here's a bunch of wrong answers.

-puts on Wrongliroz hat-

  Hide contents

Well, seeing as how I don't know what I'm doing and am probably not going to succeed, I can at least achieve disappointment by confirming in what way things don't work like I think they ought to.

So, Nightblood is partly a ruin-thing, because the verb in "Destroy Evil" is Destroy, which is a ruin-verb.  Nightblood also partly an Endowment thing, having been made on Nalthis.

If things worked the way I think they ought to, Nightblood should have absolutely fascinating interactions with any material from Scadrial (given that everything on Scadrial except the humans is perfectly half-ruin and half-preservation, and preservation is the opposite of ruin).  So, Nightblood is more similar to material and humans of Scadrial than to anything not made of Endowment.

Fascinatingly, the humans of Scadrial are made of Preservation and Ruin, but more Preservation, making them the only mainly-preservation things.  If I was the evil jerk in charge of Cosmere lore, that would actually matter and Nightblood wouldn't be able to destroy a Scadrian human's soul like how Nightblood can destroy other souls, because I don't think Nightblood is mostly Ruin, and so you should need a mostly-ruin thing to destroy a mostly-preservation soul.  In the spiritual sense, if things worked the way I would assume (my assumptions are never right), Nightblood would logically be a spiritual cousin to every Scadrian human.

This is relevant because I don't think Nightblood can be destroyed.  I think the best that can be done is to exploit Preservation-Ruin opposite-ness to somehow counteract the "destroy" part of "Destroy Evil".  Maybe make Vasher create some equally Invested opposite object with a Preservation-verb as the verb in its command.

In practical terms, I really don't want to destroy Nightblood, because that blade is one of the only remaining things that stands any chance of giving anyone from Not-Roshar a W against a Rosharan.  I mean, without Nightblood, I have almost no chance of destroying the Navani-crystal to free The Sibling, delivering an appropriate justice to the notorious band of war criminals and slavers known as Bridge Four, stabbing Bavadin (not that mister Sanderson would let this work, there's probably some nonsense with the avatars that means you'd have to stab every single iteration of Autonomy at once) to nonexistence, killing Sja-anat and thus undoing the Enlightenment of the Enlightened spren (mister Sanderson won't let this work, either, but a doofus can dream), deleting Moash from reality, or anything like that.

Also surges are disgusting and respectable people don't use them, so even if the surges could be used to destroy Nightblood, we're not doing that because that's embarrassing, immoral, unsanitary, illegal, and very impolite.

As always, the obvious answer is to get a Windrunner to talk to the problem until the problem is convinced to not be a problem.  In this case, we'll just need the Windrunner to convince Nightblood that Nightblood is evil, so Nightblood will destroy Nightblood.

Spoiler-ed for being wrong, because none of that actually works in that way.

Adding on to stuff that would definitely not work

Spoiler

Nightblood is sentient, and counts as a thing. Wanna know what affect things? Rioting and soothing! So, since it’s an awakened object, it might have similar holes in it’s spirit web like the Koloss, and so you just have a mistborn take over Nightblood, take the powers away, and then force Nightblood to consume the user.

option 2, convince Nightblood that The welder is evil, (soothing and rioting might help with this)

 

[Aliroz-The-Confused]

1 minute ago, Mistfallen Soldier said:

Adding on to stuff that would definitely not work

  Hide contents

Nightblood is sentient, and counts as a thing. Wanna know what affect things? Rioting and soothing! So, since it’s an awakened object, it might have similar holes in it’s spirit web like the Koloss, and so you just have a mistborn take over Nightblood, take the powers away, and then force Nightblood to consume the user.

option 2, convince Nightblood that The welder is evil, (soothing and rioting might help with this)

 

That would be so freaking awesome.  Good job, Wrongfallen Soldier.  If only canon could handle such things.

[Myst He/Him]

3 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

That would be so freaking awesome.  Good job, Wrongfallen Soldier.  If only canon could handle such things.

lol, this is what fanfiction is for, all the cool stuff that doesn’t work, but would be so awesome to read if it did. 

[Frustration]

17 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Hmm, not seeing a way to actually accomplish this, so here's a bunch of wrong answers.

-puts on Wrongliroz hat-

  Hide contents

Well, seeing as how I don't know what I'm doing and am probably not going to succeed, I can at least achieve disappointment by confirming in what way things don't work like I think they ought to.

So, Nightblood is partly a ruin-thing, because the verb in "Destroy Evil" is Destroy, which is a ruin-verb.  Nightblood also partly an Endowment thing, having been made on Nalthis.

If things worked the way I think they ought to, Nightblood should have absolutely fascinating interactions with any material from Scadrial (given that everything on Scadrial except the humans is perfectly half-ruin and half-preservation, and preservation is the opposite of ruin).  So, Nightblood is more similar to material and humans of Scadrial than to anything not made of Endowment.

Fascinatingly, the humans of Scadrial are made of Preservation and Ruin, but more Preservation, making them the only mainly-preservation things.  If I was the evil jerk in charge of Cosmere lore, that would actually matter and Nightblood wouldn't be able to destroy a Scadrian human's soul like how Nightblood can destroy other souls, because I don't think Nightblood is mostly Ruin, and so you should need a mostly-ruin thing to destroy a mostly-preservation soul.  In the spiritual sense, if things worked the way I would assume (my assumptions are never right), Nightblood would logically be a spiritual cousin to every Scadrian human.

This is relevant because I don't think Nightblood can be destroyed.  I think the best that can be done is to exploit Preservation-Ruin opposite-ness to somehow counteract the "destroy" part of "Destroy Evil".  Maybe make Vasher create some equally Invested opposite object with a Preservation-verb as the verb in its command.

In practical terms, I really don't want to destroy Nightblood, because that blade is one of the only remaining things that stands any chance of giving anyone from Not-Roshar a W against a Rosharan.  I mean, without Nightblood, I have almost no chance of destroying the Navani-crystal to free The Sibling, delivering an appropriate justice to the notorious band of war criminals and slavers known as Bridge Four, stabbing Bavadin (not that mister Sanderson would let this work, there's probably some nonsense with the avatars that means you'd have to stab every single iteration of Autonomy at once) to nonexistence, killing Sja-anat and thus undoing the Enlightenment of the Enlightened spren (mister Sanderson won't let this work, either, but a doofus can dream), deleting Moash from reality, or anything like that.

Also surges are disgusting and respectable people don't use them, so even if the surges could be used to destroy Nightblood, we're not doing that because that's embarrassing, immoral, unsanitary, illegal, and very impolite.

As always, the obvious answer is to get a Windrunner to talk to the problem until the problem is convinced to not be a problem.  In this case, we'll just need the Windrunner to convince Nightblood that Nightblood is evil, so Nightblood will destroy Nightblood.

Spoiler-ed for being wrong, because none of that actually works in that way.

This is way funnier than anything I had planned 

[Oranjejuicemonki He/Him]

53 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said:

Hmm, not seeing a way to actually accomplish this, so here's a bunch of wrong answers.

-puts on Wrongliroz hat-

  Hide contents

Well, seeing as how I don't know what I'm doing and am probably not going to succeed, I can at least achieve disappointment by confirming in what way things don't work like I think they ought to.

So, Nightblood is partly a ruin-thing, because the verb in "Destroy Evil" is Destroy, which is a ruin-verb.  Nightblood also partly an Endowment thing, having been made on Nalthis.

If things worked the way I think they ought to, Nightblood should have absolutely fascinating interactions with any material from Scadrial (given that everything on Scadrial except the humans is perfectly half-ruin and half-preservation, and preservation is the opposite of ruin).  So, Nightblood is more similar to material and humans of Scadrial than to anything not made of Endowment.

Fascinatingly, the humans of Scadrial are made of Preservation and Ruin, but more Preservation, making them the only mainly-preservation things.  If I was the evil jerk in charge of Cosmere lore, that would actually matter and Nightblood wouldn't be able to destroy a Scadrian human's soul like how Nightblood can destroy other souls, because I don't think Nightblood is mostly Ruin, and so you should need a mostly-ruin thing to destroy a mostly-preservation soul.  In the spiritual sense, if things worked the way I would assume (my assumptions are never right), Nightblood would logically be a spiritual cousin to every Scadrian human.

This is relevant because I don't think Nightblood can be destroyed.  I think the best that can be done is to exploit Preservation-Ruin opposite-ness to somehow counteract the "destroy" part of "Destroy Evil".  Maybe make Vasher create some equally Invested opposite object with a Preservation-verb as the verb in its command.

In practical terms, I really don't want to destroy Nightblood, because that blade is one of the only remaining things that stands any chance of giving anyone from Not-Roshar a W against a Rosharan.  I mean, without Nightblood, I have almost no chance of destroying the Navani-crystal to free The Sibling, delivering an appropriate justice to the notorious band of war criminals and slavers known as Bridge Four, stabbing Bavadin (not that mister Sanderson would let this work, there's probably some nonsense with the avatars that means you'd have to stab every single iteration of Autonomy at once) to nonexistence, killing Sja-anat and thus undoing the Enlightenment of the Enlightened spren (mister Sanderson won't let this work, either, but a doofus can dream), deleting Moash from reality, or anything like that.

Also surges are disgusting and respectable people don't use them, so even if the surges could be used to destroy Nightblood, we're not doing that because that's embarrassing, immoral, unsanitary, illegal, and very impolite.

As always, the obvious answer is to get a Windrunner to talk to the problem until the problem is convinced to not be a problem.  In this case, we'll just need the Windrunner to convince Nightblood that Nightblood is evil, so Nightblood will destroy Nightblood.

Spoiler-ed for being wrong, because none of that actually works in that way.

Spiritual cousin is the most amazing term I've ever heard, it reminds me of The Lopen and makes me happy

[Jult]

On 2/11/2026 at 5:22 PM, Frustration said:

He doesn't say he can do all the surges, and Nightblood never got to speak with the Bondsmith, WIndrunner, or Skybreaker blades.

Actually, we know he can use Lashings. Which I think implies he has access to at least Gravitation and probably Adhesion too:

Spoiler

Quote

"Sword-nimi," he whispered. "You have created a bond to Kaladin. Does this mean you have been learning Surges from the Honorblades? Can you return to me my Lashings?"

Yes, the sword said. I can restore your Lashings. Those are easy. Even a spren can give those.

-WaT Chapter 140.

From the context, it sounds like he just picked them up via Kaladin and Syl. So, he didn't need the Windrunner Honorblade.

Personally, I do hope there's some special tip he's missing from the Bondsmith blade that prevents him from doing Bondsmith-type things even if he does have access to Tension and Adhesion.

[Frustration]

4 hours ago, Jult said:

Actually, we know he can use Lashings. Which I think implies he has access to at least Gravitation and probably Adhesion too:

  Hide contents

 

From the context, it sounds like he just picked them up via Kaladin and Syl. So, he didn't need the Windrunner Honorblade.

Personally, I do hope there's some special tip he's missing from the Bondsmith blade that prevents him from doing Bondsmith-type things even if he does have access to Tension and Adhesion.

Well I hope so too. If he can make you a bondsmith on top of that he's easily the most powerful Sword I can think of.

[Qianweilian He/him]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Well I hope so too. If he can make you a bondsmith on top of that he's easily the most powerful Sword I can think of.

The only swords that might be in contention would be Callandor or other plot devices disguised as swords.

[Brgst13]

Put them in a slow time bubble and wait. Within the bubble Nightblood consumes investiture at regular pace but outside its over in seconds.

[buzzbuzz she/her]

would nightblood be affected by anti-investiture on a giant scale?

iote spoilers:

Spoiler

maybe on the scale of the dakwara?

 

[Nitpicking]

Hemalurgy works everywhere in the Cosmere, and on anyone.

Stab Nightblood with an aluminum spike, which removes all its powers. Poof! I mean, why do you think Brandon named it "blood", anyway? Heme=Greek word for blood. He even gave us a hint!

(Note: this would actually work, assuming you could get the aluminum to penetrate whatever Nightblood is made of. I can think of ways.)