Nightblood and Shardblades

[Batemenace]

On Nalthis, Nightblood was fueled by breaths. Brandon has stated that Breath and surgebinding are similar investitures, and that there is a ratio of breaths to stormlight and that it’s easy to use the two magic systems interchangeably in some situations.

 

So, it’s pretty much set in stone that Nightblood can run off of stormlight and will be able to function pretty much as he did on Nalthis now that he’s on Roshar, though I am curious if there are going to have to be any tweaks to what he’s capable of. As a newly minted Skybreaker, Szeth should be able to feed stormlight to Nightblood just like Vasher fed Nightblood breath. Due to stormlight being easier to acquire than breaths (at least for a Radiant), I’m betting that one unit of stormlight is far less potent than one unit of breath.

It’s likely that in the coming books, we’re going to see some Nightblood on Shardblade/Honorblade action, which is where I think things start to get really interesting.

 

Nightblood was essentially made in the “image” of shardblades, though Brandon has stated that Nightblood is orders of magnitude more powerful than a shardblade. Whether Brandon was also including living shardblades or honorblades is unknown to me, but we can still get an idea that giving Szeth Nightblood was like giving an F-22 to a velociraptor, terrifying. Brandon has also stated that Nightblood is essentially a “mechanical” spren.

 

            This raises some questions about the nature of shardblades. Is Nightblood so powerful because of his unique nature, or is it simply because when he was being created someone misread with the stormlight-to-breath conversion scales and created a weapon with a much faster metabolism than shardblades were ever meant to have?

 

            Another thought I had was about Nightblood’s bonding abilities on Roshar. Somewhere I read that Brandon said shardblades will slightly alter their appearance over time in response to whoever wields them (I’m assuming he was talking about dead shardblades). Will Nightblood change in appearance as a result of being bonded to Szeth? Normally I’d think not, as I don’t think he made any changes while he was in the possession of Vasher, but it’s really hard to tell when you start involving the possibility of Nahel bonds, and spren friendly environments, and if Nightblood had to be slightly tweaked to run off stormlight instead of breaths before he was given to Szeth.

         

   My last thought was about Nightblood in combat. On Nalthis, Nightblood sucked the breaths out of his victims, and then vented them, though in a “twisted” and “fouled” form. If used on a non-Radiant human on Roshar, would he simply suck out the “spark of life”, and vent it as stormlight or something else?  What about a Radiant full of stormlight? What would happen if another Radiant was nearby and sucked up the vented stormlight? I doubt it would be healthy. I also wonder how much control Radiant have over selecting what stormlight they draw in. It might be Szeth’s new strategy when attacking multiple Radiants to simply kill one, and let the rest draw in the poisoned stormlight.  

 

           

 

[Yata]

Nightblood feed of any form of Kinetic Investiture. The sure source that Nightblood may feed are:
- Breath
- Stormlight

- Attribute Stored inside a Metalmind

- Allomantic power while burning metal

Therefore Nightblood is a versatile weapon on most Shardworld and in the hands of many Magic-User.

 

But there is somethings you need to think about. First of all at the moment Szeth isn't a Surgebinder and unless the Nightblood's Bond on Roshar give him the ability to absorm Stormlight. He can't do this and if he try to extract Nightblood He will die in seconds.

Another is that NightBlood seems to feed only of its Owner's Investiture. The victims of Nightblood are horrible (quite sure fataly) hurt but Nightblood doesn't feed of Them.

[WindrunnerRadiant]

1. First, when talking about Nightblood versus what you might calla "normal shardblade" (as in a dead spren) it would be wrong to assume they are the same thing. Nightblood is fundamentally different from Rosharan Shardblades. The idea of making a heavily invested Awakened blade might have come from Shardblades as it has been confirmed that Vashar did some worldhopping when he was younger. However, there are some key differences. Nightblood is a sword, always was a sword, and was never anything else. Rosharan Shardblades are spren in a weapon form, their basic state is not an invested weapon. That said, this is just something to keep in mind when discussing things. 

 

2. As for the statement that Stormlight might not be as potent as Breaths, I'm not so sure. That would make Nightblood a suicidal weapon to use. He sucked Breaths extremely quickly, and if he consumes stormlight even more quickly, his wielder would die in seconds. On the contrary, I think stormlight would be a more efficient source of investiture for him. Part of this is that if stormlight was that much less potent, Vasher would have truly struggled to live on Roshar. I don't think he wouldn't manage, but it would be tough. The other side of this is that stormlight is much more free, not quite as bound to its containers, and possibly a purer form of investiture. Breaths stay were they are put, stormlight leeks. This might make it easier for Nightblood to use.

 

3. I don't think the ratio was misread in making Nightblood. I think it is much more likely that that was the number of Breaths needed to create him. An awakening of that magnitude would need an incredible amount of Breaths. The Five Scholars spent a considerable amount of time researching as well, so such a mistake doesn't make sense to me. 

 

4. Yes, he was talking about dead shardblades. We have seen Syl changing her shape plenty. Also, spren don't really have a set physical form, whereas Nightblood does, so I doubt he will change shape at all.

 

5. Is Nightblood able to form such a bond? It seems over time after feeding many hundreds of Breath to him, Vasher had some sort of spiritweb bond to him that reduced the sick feeling and made the transfer of Breaths more efficient so Vasher didn't get drained as quickly as the average person, but I don't think he would form a bond that would allow Szeth to take in stormlight.

 

6. Nightblood would have the same effect on a normal person on Roshar as he would a Drab. The spark of life would get sucked up. As for the vented investiture, I doubt a Surgebinder would be able to use it, and if they are able to, I would assume it would be very bad indeed. Side effects may include but are not limited to: erratic behavior, wonky surgebinding, sickly spren, and in many cases, death. 

[Yata]

 

 

3. I don't think the ratio was misread in making Nightblood. I think it is much more likely that that was the number of Breaths needed to create him. An awakening of that magnitude would need an incredible amount of Breaths. The Five Scholars spent a considerable amount of time researching as well, so such a mistake doesn't make sense to me. 

 

One explanation of the Magnitude may be that the "Average Radiant Spren" are made by less Investiture than 1000 Breath.

 

Another point maybe was that the Five Scholar chose to use the hard combination of "materal, command,eccc...." for their Sentience Object to make sure It will suck a lot of Breaths and give him a better chance to develop a Mind.

If this didn't work they could retrive the Breaths from the Object

Edited October 28, 2015 by Yata

[Batemenace]

 

But there is somethings you need to think about. First of all at the moment Szeth isn't a Surgebinder and unless the Nightblood's Bond on Roshar give him the ability to absorm Stormlight. He can't do this and if he try to extract Nightblood He will die in seconds.

Another is that NightBlood seems to feed only of its Owner's Investiture. The victims of Nightblood are horrible (quite sure fataly) hurt but Nightblood doesn't feed of Them.

My thoughts are that it would be pretty silly of Nale to give Szeth Nightblood unless Nale had prepared Szeth to be able to use Nightblood. I know that things got changed up a bit at the end of WoR with Brandon's revision, but I think Nale could have easily modified Szeth with his fabriel in some way to work with Nightblood. I also wouldn't say that Nightblood fed off the breaths of his victims, but he certainly processed them in some way, even if he didn't absorb any power from them.

[Rockbud]

As is pretty typical with me; this is slightly off topic: has anyone mused about what night blood looks like in the Cognitive/spiritual realm? Spren have different appearances based on the realmatic attunement of the viewer. Eg. Lift.

[Yata]

My thoughts are that it would be pretty silly of Nale to give Szeth Nightblood unless Nale had prepared Szeth to be able to use Nightblood. I know that things got changed up a bit at the end of WoR with Brandon's revision, but I think Nale could have easily modified Szeth with his fabriel in some way to work with Nightblood. I also wouldn't say that Nightblood fed off the breaths of his victims, but he certainly processed them in some way, even if he didn't absorb any power from them.

Well I had a theory about how the Bond are powered on Roshar. It was created with the "wrong" case of the relationship Divine Breath-Returned but it's the same things using "Nightblood-Average Guy". http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/45011-theory-returned-that-feed-of-stormlight/?view=findpost&p=329683.

The Core Idea was that the Bond on Roshar had 2 effect:

1) Giving some kind of Splinter-Relate Powers

2) Giving the ability to use the Local Investiture (Stormlight) to use the powers of the point 1

[WindrunnerRadiant]

As is pretty typical with me; this is slightly off topic: has anyone mused about what night blood looks like in the Cognitive/spiritual realm? Spren have different appearances based on the realmatic attunement of the viewer. Eg. Lift.

 

You really ought to start a topic on that... I would, but its your idea.

[Shardbearer]

WoB says that Szeth cannot draw in stormlight, at least not yet.

[Batemenace]

I wonder what would happen if Szeth swallowed infused gemstones and drew Nightblood, would Nightblood even care about the stormlight or just go straight for Szeth's spark of life? Even if Szeth can't access the stormlight, Nightblood might be able to. Biochromatic breath is much more difficult to extract from someone than stormlight, and Nightblood seemed to have no trouble siphoning off one's breath.

 

I'm pretty sure down the road Szeth will be able to use stormlight again sometime down the line, he's a Skybreaker, he's been paired off with a spren (albeit an artificial one), and he's a main character.

[Rockbud]

You really ought to start a topic on that... I would, but its your idea.

Go for it, man. I'm more a lurker, so I'll be happy just reading theories from the shadows.

[WindrunnerRadiant]

Is it plausible for Nightblood to simply draw from gems Szeth carries with him rather than from Szeth himself, then switch over if he runs out? Perhaps with Breaths this isn't possible because for any Breaths to transfer from one person to the next they have to be in physical contact, but stormlight has been seen pulled from a distance, albeit a very small one. 

[Batemenace]

Is it plausible for Nightblood to simply draw from gems Szeth carries with him rather than from Szeth himself, then switch over if he runs out? Perhaps with Breaths this isn't possible because for any Breaths to transfer from one person to the next they have to be in physical contact, but stormlight has been seen pulled from a distance, albeit a very small one. 

 

That's what I was wondering about. Is Nightblood able to be fueled by magic that's close by, or does the investiture have to be, well, invested in someone, like stormlight in a radiant or biochromatic breath in a person. 

[Batemenace]

Not to go necro-ing my own thread, but I just stumbled across this
QUESTION
If Nightblood were on Roshar would he be a Shardblade?

 

BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes, they are exactly the same thing. He is a Shardblade that is twisted and is a lot more powerful than normal.

It's official, Nightblood is a Shardblade.
aannnddddd it might explain a few things, and muddy the water at the same time.
The artifabrians have been trying for a long while to recreate Shardplate and Shardblades. Recently, they developed Half-shards, and we're hearing rumours that they're suddenly very close to creating shardblades. This all happens at roughly the same time Nightblood, the only known Shardblade created through human craftsmanship in the cosmere shows up in Roshar, and no longer in the possession of his previous holder, who, just happens to operating under the guise of an ardent. Someone started looking under Nightblood's hood and we're starting to see the results

Edited November 15, 2015 by Batemenace

[Shardbearer]

But Naln has Nightblood, not the scholars who are trying to create new Shardblades. And those scholars wouldn't have access to Awakening.

 

And Nightblood is a Shardblade, but by WoB Szeth still can't draw in Stormlight even though he has Nightblood. So he doesn't grant the same powers as other Shardblades.

 

Although you could be right about something. Vasher is posing as an Alethi Ardent, and the rumors were that Alethi Scholars were close to creating Shardblades... So depending on whether Vasher lost Nightblood before or after he got to Roshar it's possible those rumors are based on Nightblood....

[Yata]

Mr. Sanderson often uses words that point in a direction to surprise us.

For example:
If a Nightblood bond on Roshar give the ability to drawn in Stormlight, but Szeth at the moment had no bond with Nightblood.

"Szeth cannot drawn in Stormlight, at the moment" but when he will bond with Nightblood he became capable of doing it.
This is just an example of course but remember. Mr. Sanderson may twist his own words.

[Batemenace]

But Naln has Nightblood, not the scholars who are trying to create new Shardblades. And those scholars wouldn't have access to Awakening.

 

And Nightblood is a Shardblade, but by WoB Szeth still can't draw in Stormlight even though he has Nightblood. So he doesn't grant the same powers as other Shardblades.

 

Although you could be right about something. Vasher is posing as an Alethi Ardent, and the rumors were that Alethi Scholars were close to creating Shardblades... So depending on whether Vasher lost Nightblood before or after he got to Roshar it's possible those rumors are based on Nightblood....

We aren't sure how Naln got Nightblood to begin with. It might be that the scholars were in the middle of figuring out Nightblood's inner working when they lost him. You also have to remember that Nightblood was created with awakening because that was what was available on Nalthis, it's absolutely possible for the scholars to reverse engineer Roshar-style shardblades from Nightblood, after all, Nightblood is a reverse engineering of Rosharan shardblades to begin with. The reason Nightblood would be so essential to the creation of new shardblades is that the scholars would be able to figure out how certain design issues were overcome by people with the same "mortal" limitations. It would be like looking over someone else's homework to see how they solved a problem that has you stumped.

 

Here's the question: Did Vasher show up on Roshar and get mugged, or did Nightblood get kidnapped by worldhoppers and  delivered to the artifabrians, with Vasher in hot pursuit?

 

I'm leaning towards the second one. I can totally see the Ghostbloods, or a similar organization stealing Nightblood, and Vasher arriving on Roshar and trying to infiltrate the academic community in an attempt to get close to Nightblood. If nothing else, Vasher is responsible for Nightblood, and for trying to curtail the damage wrought by Nightblood's misuse.

 

And in regard to Nightblood not granting powers like other shardblades, it's possible that a nahel bond will take time, if one is able to be formed at all. Honorblades grant surgebinding, living shardblades grant powers because of their spren, but dead shardblades don't grant power. While Nightblood isn't dead per se, He's not really "living" either, given his mechanical nature, so he probably won't grant power in the same way living blades do. Naln seems to be up to date and proficient on fabriels, baring all else, I'm betting if Szeth isn't able to bond with Nightblood, he's going to be given some fabriels to facilitate using Nightblood.