Nightblood*allomancy??????

[chipofIsharsblade He/Him]

I know that this is is highly unlikely, considering the fact that NIghtblood is practically all-powerful, but if a bit of Nightblood chipped off, and was burned by an Allomancer, what would happen? 

I thought of a few possibilities.

1:  The chip has no powers, and burning it just has the same effect as burning whatever metal Nightblood was made of before awakening.

2: Burning the chip grants Nightblood like powers to the Allomancer, temporarily or permanently.

3: Burning the chip destroys the user/gets the user consumed because Nightblood is too destructive.

4: I don't know enough about the Cosmere and it turns out that this is completely infeasible even if Nightblood were to be chipped.

 

Also side note, if the chip were big enough do you think it would also be sentient?

 

I think that 1 or 3 is the most likely but 2 would be the coolest.

PS this is my first post. and I haven't read the entire Cosmere so I'm kind-of ignorant.

[Adonalsium Will Return He/him]

Welcome to the Shard! Please consider an Intro Post to let us know what you have or have not read (whichever list is shorter). Also, please consider checking out the Sharder FAQ for some useful forum info and tips. 

I think that, first, we would have to consider how it could possibly be chipped- after all, 

spoiler for Rhythm of War-

Spoiler

He chipped an honor blade, which is literally a piece of a shard!

so I’m not sure how it would possibly work, but if it somehow was chipped, I would think that 3 would happen; it might not even need to be burned. 

[PanLin they/he]

I'm going to answer your message in a wonky order to hopefully make the concepts flow better. Also, to start, some relevant WoBs:

Spoiler

Questioner

What would happen if an Allomancer burned Awakened metal?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh boy, we start right with the really hard ones. So, it would be very difficult to do, and other than that it's going to depend on who the Breaths are keyed to with Identity.

Footnote: followed-up by this
Warsaw signing (March 18, 2017)

Spoiler

Questioner (paraphrased)

What would happen if Allomancer was also an Awakener and Awakened metal he'd burn?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If he did that, he’d get Allomantic power and also get back the Breaths used in Awakening the metal.

Footnote: Supposedly it was around half an hour into the signing line; has not been found on the record although we may have started it after it was asked already; follow-up to this
Warsaw signing (March 18, 2017)

Spoiler

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)

 

25 minutes ago, chipofIsharsblade said:

4: I don't know enough about the Cosmere and it turns out that this is completely infeasible even if Nightblood were to be chipped.

I mean, not exactly infeasible, but it's a similar issue to trying to burn someone else's metalmind, or a shardblade, or a Seon; anything with its own Investiture that either isn't keyed to your Identity, doesn't have a Connection to you, or has an Identity of its own, is extremely difficult to allomantically burn or otherwise incorporate into your sDNA.

If you could bypass the Investiture/Identity restriction, then probably either:

- your first suggestion: same as steel, the material originally used to forge the blade that became Nightblood (possibly either also granting some Breaths, or turning the allomantic effect into a Compounded feruchemical effect thanks to the extra Investiture and Connection to a Shard)

- same as Edglium, Endowment's god metal, whatever that may be (possibly including a side effect that's similar to becoming a Returned)

 

Personally, I think, assuming you managed to bypass the Identity/Investiture restrictions and weren't immediately consumed by Nightblood when trying to burn the chip, something akin to burning Edglium would be the most likely outcome.

 

41 minutes ago, chipofIsharsblade said:

2: Burning the chip grants Nightblood like powers to the Allomancer, temporarily or permanently.

I'm going to answer this a few times as I'm not sure whether you mean their normal 'destroy evil' Command, their new ability to grant Surgebinding, or their general destructive capabilities. Either way though, probably not (at least, not in a useful way).

On destroying evil: like the WoBs said, burning an Awakened metal will just return the Breaths to you. The Command to destroy evil was part of the Awakening, but the Breaths themselves are just little bitesize chunks of Endowment. They'll make you more powerful, but it'll be in the form of gaining higher levels of Heightening.

On Surgebinding: even the Heralds could only access Surgebinding via their Honorblades (or before that, presumably some sort of agreement with Odium that is no longer in place). Just containing more Investiture, and Investiture not even related to Honor or Roshar, wouldn't grant those abilities.

On general destruction: again, the Command was specific to Nightblood's creation so likely wouldn't transfer like that. They also need a HUGE amount of Investiture to do their thing, so if you don't have that readily available to sacrifice, you'd likely get consumed immediately on trying it anyway, like your third point.

 

58 minutes ago, chipofIsharsblade said:

Also side note, if the chip were big enough do you think it would also be sentient?

Eventually, yeah! You mentioned not knowing much about the Cosmere so I won't give specific examples (although this forum allows for most spoilers, so be careful!), but there are multiple examples throughout the Cosmere of concentrated Investiture spontaneously developing its own Identity.

We even saw it in Stormlight with the child-like form of Honor.

In this case, either the Investiture would consider itself completely separate from Nightblood and eventually just sort of 'wake up' as a new entity, or enough of Nightblood would remain in it that the new Identity would be sort of like their child, similar to the relationship between spren and Shards.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, chipofIsharsblade said:

I know that this is is highly unlikely, considering the fact that NIghtblood is practically all-powerful, but if a bit of Nightblood chipped off, and was burned by an Allomancer, what would happen? 

Chipping off a piece of Nightblood seems like an impossible task because he is the most invested object in Cosmere and to chip him off, you would need to have something more invested, which doesn't exist. But assuming you can somehow do it, I believe it would be similar to burning a Shardblade - which you can't do because a spren manifesting as a god metal is alive and it is no longer considered as a metal by the system. Nightblood is alive, he's the closest to being a spren, thus I suspect you won't be able to burn him for the same reasons (plus that piece of Nightblood might still be driven by his Command and might try to eat you instead).

Brandon also said that Awakening turned the steel of his sword into what some can argue is Endowment's god metal - Edglium. We don't know what burning Edglium does so it's hard to speculate. However, it's the Breaths themselves (that became his soul) that turned his steel into this halfway state, and if you were to strip life away from the metal itself to make it burnable, you won't be left with pure Edglium. You would need to remove those Breaths from it and thus you would be left with just normal steel. 

In short, you can't burn a piece of Nightblood unless you remove his Breaths, which make him alive and turn him back into a boring steel.

Spoiler

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)

 

Spoiler

Shadow Guardian

Nightblood, being a sentient object, could he give away his Breath? 

Brandon Sanderson

Ah, Nightblood...could not give away his Breath. It's a good question. It's because that Breath is making him...like something weird has happened to him where the metal is Invested almost to a Hemalurgic or Feruchemical way, right? Like it's no longer just an object with a bunch of Breath. It's become permeating the whole thing. So it's more like the soul of a person, the part of the Breath they can't give away. Like when you give away your Breath, you retain some of your Investiture, you can't give that part away. It's the same thing. 

Shadow Guardian

Cuz I imagine it would be kind of like a Lifeless where that Breath is probably stuck so close that it would not be removable by an Awakener at least.?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, Yep. It's stuck in there, yep. I mean there are ways to get the Investiture out, but it's not the simple "We give it away" thing. Yeah, he can't just give it away. 

Shadow Guardian

<inaudible> corrupted or? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that is part of it, that is part of what that means. 

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

 

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)

 

Spoiler

NeedsToShutUp

What would happen if Hoid tried to burn the shard that came off Ishar's Honorblade?

Brandon Sanderson

If you were able to get a hold of that piece and burn it, it would act like burning... You would be burning a very pure form of a God Metal, and those have some very interesting effects. RAFO.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 3 (Dec. 16, 2021)

 

1 hour ago, chipofIsharsblade said:

Also side note, if the chip were big enough do you think it would also be sentient?

Not at first but maybe after thousands of years it would become sentient. 

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)

 

[Willshaper42 He/Him]

What if you go into the spiritual realm and travel back to the time before the shattering and have Adonalsium attempt to chip Nightblood?

[PanLin they/he]

Just now, Willshaper42 said:

what if you go into the spiritual realm and travel back to the time before the shattering and have Adonalsium attempt to chip Nightblood?

Well, Sanderson has all but confirmed that time travel to affect the past isn't possible in the Cosmere.

Even then, that's only the first hurdle, and everything in my post above still applies.

[Frustration]

10 minutes ago, Willshaper42 said:

What if you go into the spiritual realm and travel back to the time before the shattering and have Adonalsium attempt to chip Nightblood?

You can't go back in time, only forward

[Qianweilian He/him]

1 hour ago, PanLin said:

Well, Sanderson has all but confirmed that time travel to affect the past isn't possible in the Cosmere.

Even then, that's only the first hurdle, and everything in my post above still applies.

The Spiritual Realm isn't time travel to the past, it's a recreation. (You can see when Hoid breaks down)

[PanLin they/he]

29 minutes ago, Qianweilian said:

The Spiritual Realm isn't time travel to the past, it's a recreation. (You can see when Hoid breaks down)

I know, I didn't say it was

[Qianweilian He/him]

1 hour ago, PanLin said:

I know, I didn't say it was

Oh, my mistake. Sorry.