Why shardblades don't cut each others?

[king of nowhere]

The official explanation as to why plate resist them is that plate is invested. However, plate is heavily damaged by shardblades, while in a duel bladdes can keep clashing against each other without getting a dent.

If we were to assume the investiture in each blade cancels receprocally, they would just behave like normal steel blades. And real steel blades, when subjected to the kind of fencing we see in movies (and that adolin uses when dueling), will quickly chip and dent and eventually crack. The shardblades don't get a single scratch.

How can that be?

[Azul he/him]

My guess would be that since plate is powered by infused gems that are drained and/or damaged when the armor takes damage so what we are seeing is not the plate itself be damaged but its power source drained.  Blades dont require a power source that we know of.

[Kurkistan he/him]

So far as power sources go, I tend to hold that Blades have some kind of fairly powerful self-regenerating power source, like Breath, Shards, or even just souls in general. So say that your Shardblade has an "power level" of 100. If it is capable of producing 10/s, then it can expend up to 10 units of power per second without any long or short term harm. So if normal slicing costs 1 and hitting another Blade cost 5, then we're still good because the power produced is still more than the power drained. If this is the case, then each Blade that connects is expending power against the other, it's just isn't enough to be meaningful.

 

@Azul

 

I have a whole thread (with evidence and whatnot) saying that shardplate is itself Invested, which I find fairly convincing.

Edited May 23, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Azul he/him]

I would agree that plate is likely invested.  What i was trying to suggest is perhaps the gems and stormlight are sort of a anchor for it on the physical realm.  So what is taking damage is not the plate itself but its anchor.  In Dalinar's visions its possible the plate was anchored by the knights themselves which would explain why they glowed and their helms could simply vanish and reappear.  Don't take this as some developed theory , cause I tend to suck at those    Its just a off the wall idea I had.

[Kurkistan he/him]

No no, that's actually quite interesting. I don't think it's right, since that seems to mean that a piece of plate whose gems all got depleted would vanish, but it is a novel idea that explains KR's ability to vanish their helmets.

 

Although, on that point, it just now occurs to me that KR might not actually be capable of vanishing their helmets, but instead that happening in Dalinar's vision could be a "glitch in the Matrix" where they're helmets were "off" just for dramatic effect, so far as the efficacy of the vision's ability to impart information goes. Probably not, but still...

[Azul he/him]

If it was binary, all in or all out, then yeah it would vanish.  But it could exist in both realm and need a medium to bridge the gap (if that makes any sense).  So if the gems are just removed the armor becomes inert but when taking damage that link is forcibly severed which causes pieces to crack or even explode.  

 

The glitch in the system is very plausable or the Knights could have just had much more control over the armor, able to bring more of its spiritual self into the physical (ie the glow we see) and vice versa with sending the actual physical armor to wherever.

 

And i reserve the right to call any theory i come up with as crazy talk

[king of nowhere]

the idea that shardblades do get cracked but also repairs themselves too quickly to see would explain.

However, we have no evidence in all of roshar of anything magic not needing stormlight to be powered. shardbaldes self repairing without a source of energy would be strange. Offtopic, but it makes me think that roshar needs a way to preserve stormlight through the weeping if they want to develop an advanced and widespread magitek. Think what would happen to our society if for a couple weeks per year all electrical devices ceased to work.

In fact, now that I think about it, the simple fact that blades work without stormlight makes them different from anything else, even plates. Maybe they really ARE splinters or something related. Which would also explain why they don't break.

[hoser he/him]

Or, given the way they work, they could be linked to a realm (I guess spiritual) that allows them to draw stormlight directly. 

[Galavantes]

My best guess is because shardblades are invested with Odium, and it's not in their interest to destroy each other, while shardplates are invested with Honor, and therefore Odium has no problem destroying the ever loving crap out of them.

 

Shardplates: It seems fairly obvious that these are of honor. They are powered by stormlight (which also seems to be of honor) and their function is to protect. I would be interested to see if Honor Blades are able to damage them.

Shardblades: These things kill in a pretty vicious manor. I think they have either always been of Odium, or Odium "stole" them somehow (Recreance?). As to their power source I have two thoughts, they could be purely physical manifestations of Odium. Or they are somehow recharged while they are away. It's possible that they can actually run out of power and be forced to vanish and recharge, we may simply have not yet seen them be overly taxed to that point. Sadeas might be pretty surprised when he's dueling Adolin and his blade runs out of power and vanishes on him.

 

Random tangent: Does it seem like the highstorms are almost exactly the same as the mists? They carry the pure power of honor, and it even seems like Odium might have messed with them in exactly the same way Ruin messed with the mists, "encouraging" them to be a little more active and violent. Maybe that's even where Odium got the idea...

[Phantom Monstrosity]

I think stormlight is more like the mists - holding in stormlight is VERY similar to the end scene of mistborn, with it seeping out of vin's pores.

[Galavantes]

I think stormlight is more like the mists - holding in stormlight is VERY similar to the end scene of mistborn, with it seeping out of vin's pores.

Yes I think stormlight is the pure power of honor in the way that the mists were pure preservation. The storms are likely just a delivery method so to speak.

[Nihilum he/him]

It is likely that they dont damage each other because they are all basically the same thusfar.  A weapon that can cleave stone and steel without as much as knicking a shardblade...why would they damage each other? 

 

Shardblades have little to do with damaging shardplate as it can be cracked from falling and from normal swords and spears as Kaladin proved...twice.

[Kurkistan he/him]

So far as damaging Shardplate goes, something magical is going on there. Dalinar makes specific mention of how little heft Shardblades have, telling us that, if Blades simply acted like swords when encountering Plate, they would act like exceptionally puny swords that did little damage. It takes innumerable solid hits from conventional weapons to damage Plate appreciably, with even exceptionally high falls doing comparatively little damage, suggesting an absurd threshold for physical trauma. Shadblades, however, can destroy a piece of plate after two solid hits. Something special is happening.

[Cheese Ninja he/him]

It might have to do with the slightly different nature of the Investiture in Blade compared to Plate.  Plate is more complicated, it acts as one-size-fits-all powered armor.  All the Blades really have do is cut, they do it well, across multiple Realms of existence, but nothing fancy.  Brandon has said before that Investiture tends to interfere with other Investiture.  So two things with the function of "to cut" might just cancel each other out.  Plate also takes up more physical space, so the Investiture isn't as concentrated as in the Blades, but I'm not sure that matters

[skaa he/him]

So far as damaging Shardplate goes, something magical is going on there. Dalinar makes specific mention of how little heft Shardblades have, telling us that, if Blades simply acted like swords when encountering Plate, they would act like exceptionally puny swords that did little damage.

 

You're forgetting that those swords could cut through almost anything else without a problem. The truly special thing isn't that Shardblades can damage Shardplate (a number of normal objects can damage Shardplate), but that Shardplate doesn't get sliced outright by a single Shardblade swipe.

 

I think Shardplate is just normal Rosharian metal that's been Invested. They're probably just ancient man-made artifacts (fabrials?) created by the first Knights Radiant to match their Shardblade. But I would be surprised if Shardblades were man-made. Is there any WoB that directly refutes the Sharblades are Splinters theory?

Edited May 28, 2013 by skaa

[Isomere]

Is there any WoB that directly refutes the Sharblades are Splinters theory?

Mistborn:

I haven't seen it directly shot down. I personally think the Shardblades are similar to Atium and represent raw Shardic Essence deposition from the spiritual realm.

 

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Well, nightblood is orders of magnitude more magical than a shardblade.  Nightblood is about 1000 Breath, Divine Breaths are around 2000, so shardblades are too puny to be splinters.

[Leuthie]

The only known Splinters we've seen are the Aons in Seons on Sel and Divine Breaths on Nalthis. Both are associated with sentient beings. Shardblades aren't sentient. This doesn't prove they aren't Splinters, but it is.a mark against them

[skaa he/him]

The only known Splinters we've seen are the Aons in Seons on Sel and Divine Breaths on Nalthis. Both are associated with sentient beings. Shardblades aren't sentient. This doesn't prove they aren't Splinters, but it is.a mark against them

 

Alright, so they're probably not Splinters. All we know is that Shardblades have special Realmatic properties in all three realms.

 

If we find out that there are only three types of Shardblade (we've only seen three so far), I'd probably go with Isomere's idea that Shardblades on Roshar are like God Metals on Scadrial. I'm not sure how that would fit with the Waveform theory (which I currently espouse), but we'll see.