I might know what's wrong with Nightblood

[Oudeis he/him]

Ironically it might be a lack of killing people.

 

Nightblood is compared, by Vasher, to the Returned. But he's not. He's got a powerful mass of Breath, he's got self-awareness.

 

But Returned don't jumpstart self-awareness from scratch. They have the procedural memory and some of the base personality of the people they once were. Could this be what Nightblood is lacking?

 

On the chart of Types, Nightblood is supposed to be opposite Lifeless. The two metrics are human body/not human, and sentient/not. Type IV and Type II are directly opposed in both. You make a Lifeless by taking a body after the rest of the person has gone away and animating it with Breath.

 

What if the opposite process is what it would take to make a functioning Nightblood? One that wasn't stunted and insane? What if the trick to a Type IV entity is to kill someone and bind a cognitive and spiritual part of them to the new Object?

 

So here's a question. If you could choose to die in order to be Awakened as an immortal, non-human Object with a single Command that would provide an eternal compulsion for you, most of your own personality, and almost none of your own memories, what would it be?

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

Hmm, the killing someone then binding of cognitive/spiritual reminds me a little of Haemalurgy. Maybe it could perhaps be achieved by doing so or maybe even in conjunction with

the other or a blend of the metallic arts (or just feruchemy)

 

A few possibilities;

 

A lamp (In the spirit of Endowment, Grant Wishes to those Who Ask?)

A Carpet (Hover/Fly and support me)

A pogostick (Never fall down when someone climbs on)

A Kite (Always stay afloat)

Deck of Cards (Be razor sharp)

 

Some may work, most likely not though. would be interesting to see

[natc]

If we spike everything out of one person, reforge all the spikes into different portions of a sword, then awaken it with 1000 breaths? What now?

Maybe engrave it with Aons for added hilarity and to make it able to generate fireballs on Sel.

If only we had a way to stop decay while melting it down.

[Oudeis he/him]

First: spoilers, people. This is the Warbreaker forum.

 

Second: WoB is that if different systems do the same thing, they might end up doing it in similar ways. Maybe there's an aspect of Awakening that is a bit like the other thing.

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

So here's a question. If you could choose to die in order to be Awakened as an immortal, non-human Object with a single Command that would provide an eternal compulsion for you, most of your own personality, and almost none of your own memories, what would it be?

 

Can I just point out that this sounds exactly like a Shard holder "writ small" as it were? 

 

Interesting topic!

[greenelisha]

A problem with your method of awakening hemalurgic spikes is that an item can only hold so much investiture, and that may make hemalurgic spikes much harder to awaken because of the investiture they already hold.

[natc]

Depends on how much investiture that chunk you spiked out is worth I guess?

It's probably less than Nightblood himself for sure.

[CarrotInquisitor]

If only we had a way to stop decay while melting it down.

Maybe you could temper it in blood...

[sh3nahz]

lol was that a lightbringer reference CarrotInquisitor  

[natc]

Except keeping it in blood actually works.

But won't it risk ruining the purity and expell the charge anyway?

[Three1415]

I don't think we know enough about Realmatics to reasonably postulate why Nightblood is "broken," much less about how he could be fixed. Nonetheless, I will posit the following procedure:

 

1: Get a bunch of atium spikes, and basically steal your volunteer/victim's entire Spiritweb with them in the moments before their death.

 

2: Awaken some human blood with the command (and I have no idea whether or not this will work) "Do not evaporate/boil and coat these spikes."

 

3: The spikes should now be coated in this protective layer of human blood; now, melt the spikes down and make a sword out of them (brings a whole new meaning to "forged with the blood of one's enemies," doesn't it?). The charges should not decay as a result of the blood, and you now have a Spiritweb-containing sword.

 

4: Now, here's where we really don't have enough information to go forward with any real degree of confidence. What we have now is a complete Spiritweb (the spikes) and a physical form (the sword), and we need to staple them together with a Cognitive aspect. This is even harder than

Kelsier's problem in M:SH--stapling his cognitive/Spiritual components onto a physical form

, so I'm not really sure how it would work. Nightblood's existence seems to imply that Breath can, by itself, provide a cognitive aspect, so in the end it would boil down to Awakening the sword with the right command; perhaps something like "Become [insert name of victim here]'s mind and think that which you must."

 

Really, while we're at it, we might as well go full Alphonse Elric mode and just forge a suit of armor ("Become [insert name of victim here]'s body and move as you are commanded")  or something, then use the same procedure--Realmatic automaton, anyone? 

Edited April 3, 2016 by Three1415