The Great Beyond

[Argel he/him]

8 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

I would appreciate it if we treated each other with respect and, preferably, kindness.

Imagine what this forum would be like if every time someone posted a theory half the responses were "I do not agree with your theory but that is just my personal opinion" with nothing else? Not even an "I think Brandon mean X when he said Y. Just, "but that's my personal opinion". How is that not insulting?

[CaptainRyan he/him]

38 minutes ago, Argel said:

Imagine what this forum would be like if every time someone posted a theory half the responses were "I do not agree with your theory but that is just my personal opinion" with nothing else? Not even an "I think Brandon mean X when he said Y. Just, "but that's my personal opinion". How is that not insulting?

Well, I imagine it would be another post that we could just scroll past. Or, if we wanted clarification, we could ask, no?

I'm sorry you felt like I was derailing your thread and insulting you. I realize now that my post was lacking in explanation and I will try to be more thorough in the future. I did feel, however, that your response was somewhat aggressive and belittling. Surely we, as a forum community, can do better than that, eh?

Either way, I hope my next post clarified my position further. I was trying to highlight the idea that it is a bit of an assumption, as far as I know, to claim that Nightblood's Investiture corruption is permanent. And, if it is not permanent, then that means it probably is not disappearing to the Beyond.

[Argel he/him]

Sorry, there have been a lot of weak posts and weak threads lately, so my tolerance level has dropped. 

Yeah, you could be right. so, take out the "permanent" part. So, what if Nightblood is trapping (somehow) Invesiture in the Beyond. If even the shards have trouble accessing the Beyond then that could explain why it's unavailable. There may still be a way to access it -- e.g. maybe the powwer level of a pre-shattering Adonalsium could tap into it somehow. If not there, then it has to be going somewhere.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

3 minutes ago, Argel said:

Sorry, there have been a lot of weak posts and weak threads lately, so my tolerance level has dropped. 

Yeah, you could be right. so, take out the "permanent" part. So, what if Nightblood is trapping (somehow) Invesiture in the Beyond. If even the shards have trouble accessing the Beyond then that could explain why it's unavailable. There may still be a way to access it -- e.g. maybe the powwer level of a pre-shattering Adonalsium could tap into it somehow. If not there, then it has to be going somewhere.

No worries. I can understand being frustrated by that and, as you helped me realize, my response was definitely weak.

Hmmm, there is one idea that an earlier post of yours just sparked in my mind. You wrote that mixed Investiture is black tinged, right? What if Nightblood isn't made with 100% Endowment Investiture? What if the reason all (some?) of the Investiture he absorbs turns to black smoke is because he is a mix of Endowment and... Honor/Cultivation/Odium? We know Vasher had been to Roshar before making Nightblood and that he based Nightblood on Shardblades. Perhaps Nightblood mixes up the Investiture he consumes and then it is unusable by any single Shard because the Shards cannot separate out their Investiture from another Shard's Investiture. But! If the appropriate super-Shard (similar to Harmony) was formed perhaps that super-Shard could use the mixed Investiture if it matched? I.e. If Nightblood is, theoretically, made of Endowment and Honor and Endowment picked up Honor's Shard then this new Shard would be able to use Nightblood's "corrupted" Investiture?

[Argel he/him]

52 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

You wrote that mixed Investiture is black tinged, right?

Yeah, there's a WOB on it, though it's hard to find like most of them seem to be these days.

I like the direction you are going with the new theory. So, maybe if shards intentionally mix stuff, it works like "normal". But if some mad scientist scholar forces them to work together, then maybe that's when your theory kicks in. It's a very interesting idea.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

5 minutes ago, Argel said:

But if some mad scientist scholar forces them to work together, then maybe that's when your theory kicks in.

Exactly! If, and it is a big if, Nightblood is mixed with Endowment's and [other Shard(s)'s] Investiture then most likely Vasher, and the other scholars, would have needed to use some kind of "hack" to make it work. This "hack" is not 100% effective and causes an issue when Nightblood absorbs Investiture. 

Oh, also, we see Vasher on Roshar and we have a WoB that he is using Stormlight to feed his need for Breaths so I think that makes it even more likely that might have Vasher used Stormlight in the creation of Nightblood. Now, of course, Vasher could have discovered the Stormlight "hack" later but it is entirely possible he already had the knowledge when Nightblood was created.

[Magestar he/him]

Nice job working that out guys.  I always thought the corrupted investiture was because he was a Rosharan Design built with Nalthis tech (Shardblades Bunch of WoB's to that effect on Nightblood.), which conforms with your ideas nicely.

Also.  I think that Nightbloods massive energy intake has to do with the facts that A; He does some pretty powerful stuff, and with no holds barred.  As we've seen with Honorblades, that takes some energy.  And B; He cannot use all of the Nalthian investiture.  He discards what he cannot use, the stuff that is 'corrupted' and appears as black smoke.  There are some holes in the last bit, but

Edited July 20, 2016 by Magestar

[Yata he/him]

I always saw the Black Smoke of Nightblood as a twisting of Shard-Investiture's Mandate.

For example Nightblood is an Endowment's creature who take with force (aganist Endowment's intent/mandate) and doing it, can't keep the Investiture. This may be possible both for Nightblood be an Endowment creature or for the Breath to be taken with force.

It will be really usefull to see who the Nightblood's leaking will be when fueled with Stormlight (it will remove the Breath-taken with force-problem to help us with a new model).

8 hours ago, Magestar said:

He cannot use all of the Nalthian investiture.  He discards what he cannot use, the stuff that is 'corrupted' and appears as black smoke.  There are some holes in the last bit, but

I find this part quite strange, after all we have a lot of WoB that say "nightblood may feed all kinds of Kinetic Investiture" and we know Nightblood's hunger keep growing while used... I don't think Nightblood may drain more than he need to.
EDIT: It just come to me an Idea...Can you give some breath to Nightblood ? (willing with the Command "My life is your, My Breath became yours") it may be the perfect case to test quite all Nightblood's function.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Yata

[Magestar he/him]

Yeah, like I said, there are some holes.  But the thing is, when you burn a metal, you do not 'leak' anything. Same for holding breaths.  The only example we have of leaking is Mistpoint, and Holding too much stormlight.  With these you are literally leaking investiture, so you are 'losing' some.  I always assumed that the black smoke was also leaked investiture.  I know that it is corrupted, but I still think that when you use investiture for something, it disappears into what you used it for.  When you 'leak' investiture, you are not doing anything with it, and are losing it, not using it.  So that would imply, to me, that the investiture Nightblood leaks is unused, therefore he must draw more than strictly necessary to do the things he does.

[Argel he/him]

Given that Brandon was saying corrupted investiture was mixed investiture (I can't recall if he said that was always the case), but that would fit the above theory about mixed investiture.