Burn a Shardblade Slicing Through?

[strmblsd he/him]

So I had this random thought. where exactly does the metal have to be for a mistborn to burn it? is it just if it is inside the body or does it need to be in the stomach? 

ok I'll get to the point now, if a radiant swung a Shardblade through the front and through say the stomach of the mistborn could the mistborn use duralumin to burn the entire Shardblade before it reached their spine and killed them? it would likely still kill the mistborn but could it completely get rid of the Shardblade while it was in the middle of passing through them?

[PanLin they/he]

4 minutes ago, strmblsd said:

where exactly does the metal have to be for a mistborn to burn it? is it just if it is inside the body or does it need to be in the stomach? 

Within reason, it's essentially "wherever the Mistborn perceives to be inside them".

6 minutes ago, strmblsd said:

could the mistborn use duralumin to burn the entire Shardblade before it reached their spine and killed them?

Probably not. If the blade were just a lump of Godmetal, maybe, but Shardblades are living spren currently taking physical form using Godmetal (even Deadeyes used to be alive and kind of still are, which has the same end effect for this purpose). A Mistborn would have similar difficulty burning that as they would a Hemalurgic spike or someone else's metalmind.

[Frustration]

34 minutes ago, strmblsd said:

So I had this random thought. where exactly does the metal have to be for a mistborn to burn it? is it just if it is inside the body or does it need to be in the stomach? 

Inside the body is fine. They could be injected, inhaled, or even piercings technically.

Spoiler

Questioner

Several of my friends play the [Mistborn] tabletop game, and we have a question, so, if you want to burn a metal Allomantically do you actually have to ingest it, or can it just be in your bloodstream, or-?

Brandon Sanderson

If it gets in there somehow, you can use it.

Questioner

So you can inhale something, or inject something ... what about spikes? Could you like burn a spike that was-?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you could, but not if it's Hemalurgically placed or Hemalurgically charged. But otherwise yes. If it gets in you-- I almost wrote a scene where someone got stabbed through the chest and they burned it. The problem is your metal also has to be of the right allomantic alloy.

Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing (March 21, 2014)

 

40 minutes ago, strmblsd said:

ok I'll get to the point now, if a radiant swung a Shardblade through the front and through say the stomach of the mistborn could the mistborn use duralumin to burn the entire Shardblade before it reached their spine and killed them? it would likely still kill the mistborn but could it completely get rid of the Shardblade while it was in the middle of passing through them?

Well they could if they could burn shardblades

Spoiler

Questioner

If a Mistborn were to burn a piece of a Shardblade, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

This would be hard to make happen, but it would be possible. A Shardblade is going to act as, basically, an alloy of the god metal of Honor and so  what would it do? RAFO, but it is possible and it would do something. It would not be inert. It would be Allomanticaly viable.

Footnote: This question was also addressed here.
Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

word_thief

What would happen if a Mistborn ingested the metal of a Shardblade/Plate?

Brandon Sanderson

A Shardblade is Invested. A Mistborn isn't likely to have a tie to that type of Investiture. So probably nothing would happen…

General Twitter 2013 (Oct. 24, 2013)

 

[DoctaDajman]

4 hours ago, strmblsd said:

So I had this random thought. where exactly does the metal have to be for a mistborn to burn it? is it just if it is inside the body or does it need to be in the stomach? 

ok I'll get to the point now, if a radiant swung a Shardblade through the front and through say the stomach of the mistborn could the mistborn use duralumin to burn the entire Shardblade before it reached their spine and killed them? it would likely still kill the mistborn but could it completely get rid of the Shardblade while it was in the middle of passing through them?

I dont know what duralumin would do for a shardblade cut because we dont know what that metal would do... 

Definately if anyone wanted to be a shardblade killing machine I think an aluminum Gnat takes the cake. 

[Xanpheon]

9 hours ago, DoctaDajman said:

I dont know what duralumin would do for a shardblade cut because we dont know what that metal would do... 

Definately if anyone wanted to be a shardblade killing machine I think an aluminum Gnat takes the cake. 

Not convinced about this, to be honest. Sure, there's an element of that, but the Shardblade can exist without needing investiture to "fuel" it. Deadeye shardblades exist without any stormlight to fuel them - they only "bond" when gems are placed in them, sure, but they can still exist without it. An aluminium gnat would burn out the investiture reserves but I'm not convinced they would stop the shardblade existing in it's already sharp state, even if it loses the soul-burning properties.

[Duxredux he/him]

Actually... this is a substantially different question than if a Shardblade can be burned at all because the properties of a Shardblade change specifically while it is cutting through living tissue. The Blade fuzzes and becomes intangible on the PR and only cuts the soul, remember? My current guess is that it cannot be burned because it it severing/vaporizing the soul into Investiture on contact and may not be in a format that the Allomancer's Spiritweb can interface with, for lack of a better term.

 

Tangentially related WoB:

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

[deleted]

Given Brandon's answer to a block of Cheese stopping a shardblade, how does the last clap work?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I'll admit, I've been considering the cheese question since it was asked.

I'm not sure if it has to be cheese. But any object that is sufficiently thick but also sufficiently pliable that it's going to press down on the blade while it's cutting IS going to create drag on the blade.

The Blade does, by necessity of my understanding of the relevant physics, need to be able to vaporize a tiny bit of matter into Investiture while cutting, in order to create space for the Blade to continue to slide through. This is related to why it doesn't cut things with souls.

At the same time, I'm not convinced that this is relevant to the actual question being asked. I think that I have to relent that, with a sufficiently large block of cheese and a Shardbearer trying to cut lengthwise through it, the drag produced on the flat of the blade is going to tire the Shardbearer. Making cheese legitimately more difficult to cut through than stone or metal. And a big enough block of cheese might stop the slice straight up, because the weight placed on the blade will be pretty heavy.

That said, the top replies to this thread are pretty relevant, and are correctly explaining the mechanics of the situation. There is this little "shield of vaporization" around a Blade while it cuts, so a thinner Blade (like Szeth's Honorblade) might not have this drawback at all. It depends on how far back the shield of vaporization extends, and how thick the blade is.

My current instinct says that wider blades would be stopped by this, and so those of you planning to make ten-foot-thick walls of cheese to stop an invading Shardbearer can continue in your...endeavors.

Remember, kids, keep your Shardblade thin for actual combat (for multiple reasons.) Only make the big showy forms when you're trying to look intimidating. (With a nod to the fact that a thick blade does tend to be better for getting through Shardplate, giving you more mass to hit with. Choose Adolin's Blade for Shardplate Duels. Szeth/Jezrien's Honorblade for cheese.)

General Reddit 2022 (March 

 

Spoiler

Questioner

If you were a Leecher, could you destroy a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO that for now, let's just say that it would be incredibly difficult if it were possible, and I'm not going to even say if it is. But that kind of power... 

Questioner

Let's just say they were burning duralumin as well.

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that the Investiture in a Shardblade is much greater than your average Allomancer, but... This type of thing is not unheard of in the Cosmere. The larkin, the Leechers, and Nightblood all have a similar sort of thing going on. Destroying a Shardblade would be really hard. And Investiture resists other forms of Investiture, so.

Calamity Austin signing (Feb. 25, 2016)

 

 

[therunner he/him]

More recent WoB is rather clear that metal that is body of living spren cannot be burned.
So Allomancer couldn't burn Shardblade at all 
 

Quote

Questioner

What would happen if a person from Scadrial were to try to burn a manifested metal from Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

So you're meaning they're in Shadesmar, they manifest it, and they try to burn it, right?

Questioner

Say a Spren of a Radiant manifests as a bead of metal instead of a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

You're not going to be able to burn that if it's something that's coming from a spren, because that's not going to be treated as a metal in your body. Like, those are God Metals, and that one is actually alive and awake and it's just not gonna work. There are ways, though, that you could make that work. So it's totally possible, but you're gonna need something that's not an alive spren that's manifest like that. You're gonna need some way to get access to some tanavastium or something like that that's not, like, some living being.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

 

[DoctaDajman]

3 hours ago, therunner said:

More recent WoB is rather clear that metal that is body of living spren cannot be burned.
So Allomancer couldn't burn Shardblade at all 
 

 

Good WoB. So no to shardblade. More of an honorblade thing.  

Although what is living?  What is not?  

Is nightblood living in a similar way to honorblades?  Didn't they sort of teach him or something?  (Spoilers welcome as far as im concerned but I didnt read the last 2 stormlight).  

[Mist Wraith Attack/Helicopter]

On 2/24/2026 at 9:33 AM, strmblsd said:

So I had this random thought. where exactly does the metal have to be for a mistborn to burn it? is it just if it is inside the body or does it need to be in the stomach? 

ok I'll get to the point now, if a radiant swung a Shardblade through the front and through say the stomach of the mistborn could the mistborn use duralumin to burn the entire Shardblade before it reached their spine and killed them? it would likely still kill the mistborn but could it completely get rid of the Shardblade while it was in the middle of passing through them?

I think yes they could burn the entire blade if it was an Allomantic metal.