Shardblades across the Cosmere

[Seeker861]

Hi all, this is my first post here so I apologize in advance for not knowing how to post WoBs and any other mistakes I make in the post. Today I was thinking if it would be possible to make Shardblades on the various worlds of the Cosmere with each worlds form of Investiture. We know from a WoB that Rosharan shardblades are made of the body of a god and that enough Breath can be used to make a shardblade. This made me wonder what would happen if someone made an Atium sword and filled it with massive amount of youth. I think it would begin to function like a shardblade. I haven't thought of any ways to make a shardblade on Sel or Taldain though. What are everyone's thoughts on this?

[The One Who Connects he/him]

I do not fully remember what Brandon said, but I do remember something along the lines of a metalmind with enough investiture could potentially block a shardblade. I doubt something as simple as a sword shaped metalmind would function like shardblades/Nightblood though. Atium perhaps... I don't actually know, it could work.

Sel: People have theorized that (with some tinkering) you could mimic a spren bonded Blade with your bonded Seon. On a slightly simpler idea, you could take a normal sword and boost it with the proper Aons. Might need some tools to draw them small enough to fit on the sword without messing up the lines. Edit: I don't think Aon-boosted would work like a Shardblade either...

Taldain: I have no idea.

Edited September 12, 2016 by The One Who Connects

[Spoolofwhool]

WoB that the term shardblade can be more roughly defined as "a heavily invested magical weapon". We have, however, predominantly seen these as shardblades, however, this does not preclude other systems from developing shardblade-type weapons of their own. Nightblood is, of course, an example. However, at the same time, Nightblood is a bit rougher than how awakening could naturally develop a shardblade, as it was an attempt to mimic a shardblade from another system. You could probably create a shardblade using awakening that doesn't require more investiture to function.

Regarding metalminds and shardblades. Here's a WoB that it is possible that a charged metalmind could block or resist a shardblade. However, just because it could resist as a result of being supremely invested, doesn't mean that it would actually be able to termed as a shardblade, by virtue that it isn't a weapon. In the first WoB I posted above, a person does ask whether the Bands o Mourning could be a shardblade, but it is said that they aren't invested enough. I think a main point about shardblades isn't simple the amount of investiture, but rather how the investiture is shaped within object. For instance, you could invest 1000 breaths into an object without awakening it, and it would be, more or less, as invested as Nightblood, but it wouldn't be a shardblade. I'm thinking maybe a weapon with ettmetal built into the handle, so when wielded by an allomancer burning metal, the investiture from Preservation is channeled into the weapon and used? Not many ideas here.

Sel, I don't really know. AonDor would probably be your best bet. Compose a specific sequence of aons together and inscribe them on an object for a continuous flow of the Dor which would give the object an invested effect. Forgery could possibly work, except it doesn't invest a lot of investiture into an object, so I don't think it's worth considering. Same with bloodsealing. Other methods on Sel haven't been seen to affect non-living objects so they're not really worth considering. 

Taldain, nothing really.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Djarskublar he/him]

Maybe you could use a regular steel sword, and then fill it with compounding. Not really a Shardblade, but it does qualify as a weapon, right? It fills both requirements. It is a weapon, and it is invested. The two just aren't related directly.

On that note, I could totally see AonDor being able to make a flaming sword. That would be pretty fun, and probably relatively easy, honestly. Or invert the Aon effect (however that works) to make a frostbrand. I bet that with some very specialized Aons, you could make a sword that ate Investiture. Another powerful sword would be one that shocked on contact with an opponent, rendering metal armor obsolete.

You could maybe use some nasty fabrial science to make a vampiric sword. Where even a small cut on your opponent sucks out their blood. (Like at the battle of Narak, where Navani said she was concerned the moisture gathering fabrial might suck the blood of everyone nearby.)

[The One Who Connects he/him]

8 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

I bet that with some very specialized Aons, you could make a sword that ate Investiture.

If you could jury-rig Aons to get powered by other forms of Investiture when off-world, you could basically have an Aonic Nightblood. It could consume the Investiture of who/whatever it came into contact with. Might still have to kill like a normal sword, but we could call it "Drabmaker" I'm very clearly reaching here.

11 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

You could maybe use some nasty fabrial science to make a vampiric sword. Where even a small cut on your opponent sucks out their blood. (Like at the battle of Narak, where Navani said she was concerned the moisture gathering fabrial might suck the blood of everyone nearby.)

Not sure whether to refer you to the Artifabrian Weapon-smith or to keep you away from the spare fabrials laying around

[Spoolofwhool]

16 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

Maybe you could use a regular steel sword, and then fill it with compounding. Not really a Shardblade, but it does qualify as a weapon, right? It fills both requirements. It is a weapon, and it is invested. The two just aren't related directly.

By that logic, any object with a thousand breaths in it is a shardblade on the same level of power as Nightblood. Since I doubt this is the case, it probably takes a bit more manipulation of investiture than just putting directly putting investiture into a weapon. Also, in the first WoB I linked in my above post, someone asked whether the Bands of Mourning, an object we know to be supremely invested, could be considered a shardblade, and the answer was that it didn't have enough investiture. 

I'm assuming you're referring to my quote of "a heavily invested magical object". While you're right that filling a steel sword with feruchemy would qualify it as heavily invested and an object, I don't think it would count as magical. My thoughts are that "magical" means the investiture is shaped to a specific form so it achieves more of an effect. As such, I don't consider metalminds to be magical as they are just a storage for investiture. I would consider hemalurgic spikes to be more magical as they do more with the investiture within them. 

18 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

On that note, I could totally see AonDor being able to make a flaming sword. That would be pretty fun, and probably relatively easy, honestly. Or invert the Aon effect (however that works) to make a frostbrand. I bet that with some very specialized Aons, you could make a sword that ate Investiture. Another powerful sword would be one that shocked on contact with an opponent, rendering metal armor obsolete.

Questionable really whether have aons to give a sword a fiery or frosty aura would be considering really investing into the sword, or would just be causing investiture to surround the sword. Same with most of your suggestions. I think a shardblade is really looking at moving the investiture into the object and changing its base properties through investiture and magic. Really good ideas though for weapons in general. 

16 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

You could maybe use some nasty fabrial science to make a vampiric sword. Where even a small cut on your opponent sucks out their blood. (Like at the battle of Narak, where Navani said she was concerned the moisture gathering fabrial might suck the blood of everyone nearby.)

Probably a bad idea unless you could control whose blood is being sucked. Otherwise it would just kill the wielder if they got wounded, along with any allies. Interesting ideas surrounding it though. 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Djarskublar he/him]

Just now, The One Who Connects said:

If you could jury-rig Aons to get powered by other forms of Investiture when off-world, you could basically have an Aonic Nightblood. It could consume the Investiture of who/whatever it came into contact with. Might still have to kill like a normal sword, but we could call it "Drabmaker" I'm very clearly reaching here.

Not sure whether to refer you to the Artifabrian Weapon-smith or to keep you away from the spare fabrials laying around

Well, when I was coming up with these, I was literally just thinking about the list of magic swords in the AD&D 1st ed DM's guide... That was one of the swords.

6 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

By that logic, any object with a thousand breaths in it is a shardblade on the same level of power as Nightblood. Since I doubt this is the case, it probably takes a bit more manipulation of investiture than just putting directly putting investiture into a weapon. Also, in the first WoB I linked in my above post, someone asked whether the Bands of Mourning, an object we know to be supremely invested, could be considered a shardblade, and the answer was that it didn't have enough investiture. 

I'm assuming you're referring to my quote of "a heavily invested magical object". While you're right that filling a steel sword with feruchemy would qualify it as heavily invested and an object, I don't think it would count as magical. My thoughts are that "magical" means the investiture is shaped to a specific form so it achieves more of an effect. As such, I don't consider metalminds to be magical as they are just a storage for investiture. I would consider hemalurgic spikes to be more magical as they do more with the investiture within them. 

 

Well, one problem with the Bands is that they really aren't all that large. Just the size of large metalminds. That doesn't sound like very high capacity to me. As we have seen with Forgery, level of Investiture doesn't equate to power, so I am not concerned whether something has 1000 breath equivalent, but the Bands would need a LOT of Investiture to resist a Blade. A claymore filled to the brim with speed would be much more Invested for the purpose of resistance.

I also disagree with your perspective that the weapon has to do something. Being able to fight a Shardbearer sounds good enough to me. Just because you have a magic sword doesn't mean the magic has to actually do anything. Your definition of a Shardblade is apparently a weapon that is Invested, and has some sort of magic effect (apparently external to any other magic effect it could have). It could be argued that Rosharan Shardblades don't actually have a special effect, at least, dead ones don't. They are just really cool swords. They don't shoot lasers or something. Assuming you take off the gem that allows them to be desummoned/summoned, what difference is there really between a Shardblade and a regular sword? Just the things it cuts. That WoB suggests to me that a Shardblade is just a really invested weapon. A steel claymore that has been filled up with speed sounds like it fits.

[Spoolofwhool]

The thing is, I don't think the size of a metalmind impacts the investiture density, which is probably what determines how it can resist other invested objects like shardblades. You could take a 1 mL metalmind and a 1 L metalmind and fill them with the same amount of investiture, and I imagine the smaller metalmind would resist a shardblade more easily. This is because the investiture would be equally distributed and each piece of the metalmind would have more investiture. As such, the Bands can probably be considered one of the most invested metalminds we've seen, and would be just as invested as a fully charged sword. 

Your point about simply being able to fight a shardbearer isn't the point. We're talking about making a shardblade, not defending against one. Yeah, defending against them isn't hard. As we've seen, people have made half-shards on Roshar which defends against a shardblade. However, this does not make them shardblades. As such, I think my point that shardblades need to be heavily invested with a magical effect still stands. Nightblood, spren blades and honorblades all have effects. They can cut through realms past the physical and honorblades give surgebinding capabilities, among other things. I don't think these are effects which are inherent to shardblades. They're just based off the original Honorblades which could do that. As you say. the difference is just the thing it cuts, but a fairly significant difference in my opinion. Effects don't have to be flashy or obvious, but they still need to be a step up than just a sword with raw kinetic investiture in it.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Djarskublar he/him]

Ahhh, but the WoB was specifically talking about the Bands. Those aren't a sword, they are a metalmind. It directly said that they were close to qualifying as a Shardblade, but that there simply wasn't enough Investiture. That is where your argument falls apart. If the Bands had been larger (assuming they were at max capacity), or more fully charged, then they would have qualified. This means that his definition is extremely broad. The hunk of metal that makes up the Bands doesn't exactly conduct itself well as a weapon. Either way, his definition is that it is a heavily Invested object that can be used as a weapon. How it qualifies as a weapon is clearly highly subjective, so just a generic heavily Invested sword should count.

On that note, would it be possible to create a sentient object with Feruchemy? Maybe compound a whole crapload of Identity or Connection or something. Maybe store it in a Hemalurgic spike? Hmmm... can you even store stuff in a spike?

[The One Who Connects he/him]

5 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

Maybe store it in a Hemalurgic spike? Hmmm... can you even store stuff in a spike?

I don't see myself as knowledgeable to comment on the rest, but Brandon has said that the Inquisitors that gained Feruchemy in HoA used their spikes as their metalminds, so yes you can.

[Spoolofwhool]

10 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

Ahhh, but the WoB was specifically talking about the Bands. Those aren't a sword, they are a metalmind. It directly said that they were close to qualifying as a Shardblade, but that there simply wasn't enough Investiture. That is where your argument falls apart. If the Bands had been larger (assuming they were at max capacity), or more fully charged, then they would have qualified. This means that his definition is extremely broad. The hunk of metal that makes up the Bands doesn't exactly conduct itself well as a weapon. Either way, his definition is that it is a heavily Invested object that can be used as a weapon. How it qualifies as a weapon is clearly highly subjective, so just a generic heavily Invested sword should count.

I addressed this.

1 hour ago, Spoolofwhool said:

The thing is, I don't think the size of a metalmind impacts the investiture density, which is probably what determines how it can resist other invested objects like shardblades. You could take a 1 mL metalmind and a 1 L metalmind and fill them with the same amount of investiture, and I imagine the smaller metalmind would resist a shardblade more easily. This is because the investiture would be equally distributed and each piece of the metalmind would have more investiture. As such, the Bands can probably be considered one of the most invested metalminds we've seen, and would be just as invested as a fully charged sword. 

I'm talking about the investiture of each infinitesimally small component. I think how an object is considered invested is by the amount of investiture in it compared to its maximum limit. Also, you forget the fact that the object also has to be magical. I do not think that "invested = magical". Magic implies that there has to be some shape to the investiture, so it performs some effect. The magical effect of the bands is that they could be used by anyone, not just a soulbearer ferring. 

15 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

On that note, would it be possible to create a sentient object with Feruchemy? Maybe compound a whole crapload of Identity or Connection or something. Maybe store it in a Hemalurgic spike? Hmmm... can you even store stuff in a spike?

Possibly. You can invest into a hemalurgic spike, as the hemalurgic charge is just a bit of investiture. Invested objects can be invested with different forms of investiture as long as you don't hit the limit for the object. There could probably be a way to manipulate stored identity, connection and memories to actually render a metalmind, or intertwined set of metalminds, sentient. Would be interesting.

[Djarskublar he/him]

3 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I'm talking about the investiture of each infinitesimally small component. I think how an object is considered invested is by the amount of investiture in it compared to its maximum limit. Also, you forget the fact that the object also has to be magical. I do not think that "invested = magical". Magic implies that there has to be some shape to the investiture, so it performs some effect. The magical effect of the bands is that they could be used by anyone, not just a soulbearer ferring. 

Yes, this is partially true, but it only matters when the item is broken in regards to how the Investiture is distributed to the new pieces. If it were as you say, then a metalmind would never be able to resist a Shardblade, but it is theoretically possible IIRC (searched for a WoB for a while, but turned up nothing). This suggests to me that the Identity of the object matters in this case. The full force of it's Investiture is brought to bear to defend itself from being damaged. Even if it takes a thousand pounds of fully Invested metal (a very high estimate), it is possible to resist Shardblades with a metalmind.

On your point about the Bands having some special effect... No they don't. They are just an unkeyed metalmind that has all the powers of a Fullborn stored in it. They are the same as any medallion, any metalmind, even, just with more stuff. The magical effect of the Bands is that they have large stores of Investiture that can be tapped in them. Said stores just aren't large enough for it to qualify as a Shardblade.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 minute ago, Djarskublar said:

Yes, this is partially true, but it only matters when the item is broken in regards to how the Investiture is distributed to the new pieces. If it were as you say, then a metalmind would never be able to resist a Shardblade, but it is theoretically possible IIRC (searched for a WoB for a while, but turned up nothing). This suggests to me that the Identity of the object matters in this case. The full force of it's Investiture is brought to bear to defend itself from being damaged. Even if it takes a thousand pounds of fully Invested metal (a very high estimate), it is possible to resist Shardblades with a metalmind.

On your point about the Bands having some special effect... No they don't. They are just an unkeyed metalmind that has all the powers of a Fullborn stored in it. They are the same as any medallion, any metalmind, even, just with more stuff. The magical effect of the Bands is that they have large stores of Investiture that can be tapped in them. Said stores just aren't large enough for it to qualify as a Shardblade.

First point, we don't actually have anything which indicates either way. The WoB in question was just in response to whether a fully charged metalmind could resist a shardblade. It said nothing about the size of the metalmind or the total sum of investiture in it. In addition, that lends more credence to the fact that it has to do more with the investiture/volume ratio than the total investiture. 

Second point, you're wrong on that count unfortunately. The Bands, along with the medallions of the Southern Scandrians are not normal metalminds, at least the nicrosil portions are not. They have been altered so that non-soulbearer ferrings can tap them and gain the abilities stored within. WoB

[The One Who Connects he/him]

So this is a bit late in terms of the original topic, but I was reading some of the other WoB's from Spool's link and found this: 50 with some emphasis added

Quote

rani

Any kind of Investiture to make a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

Not any but there are multiple methods. Some work better than others.

rani

Can you Forge a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

Um… *sighs* To Forge a Shardblade, meaning make a regular sword through Forgery into a shardblade, would require so much Investiture it’s like asking if we can make lead into gold using a particle accelerator. Yes but it's horribly, horribly, horribly inefficient.

 

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, The One Who Connects said:

So this is a bit late in terms of the original topic, but I was reading some of the other WoB's from Spool's link and found this: 50 with some emphasis added

 

Forgery probably wouldn't work well since it doesn't add much investiture to an object. The inefficiency is probably due to the amount of forgery you would have to apply to the sword to make it gain enough investiture to be treated as a shardblade.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Djarskublar he/him]

I have been trying to think of a good way to buff up a Forgery for a while. My best guess would be to cover it with modified AonRaos. Forgery is obviously not the answer if you haven't hacked the magic. Now I want to see a Breath fueled Forgery.

On the other hand, if a Radiant went to Sel, a Forgery could probably change what order they belong to.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

50 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

a Forgery could probably change what order they belong to.

Given that (Honorspren at the very least) are drawn to people who act a certain way, that might be a rather complex forgery

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, Djarskublar said:

On the other hand, if a Radiant went to Sel, a Forgery could probably change what order they belong to.

Change what order they could potentially belong to. You could use a soul essence to modify their values and everything so that they would be a match for another spren. Unless of course you're suggesting that you use the essence mark to change the spren by extension through the Nahel Bond as well. Problem with that that I can see is that you would somehow have to determine the qualities of the current spren and the spren you want it to change into. I suppose if you quizzed radiants enough it would be possible.

An extension of that idea would be to use forgery to change normal people to fit the requirements for a spren to form a nahel bond so they'll have a higher chance of becoming a radiant. You would need to figure out a way to fuel forgeries on Roshar though. 

[Seeker861]

Wow this has spawned way more discussion that I thought it would. Definitely a lot of stuff to consider. I really like the idea of being able to turn a seon into a shardblade as I've always thought spren and seons to be the same thing on different worlds. And I really like the idea of a sentient metalmind!

[PantsForSquares he/him]

4 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Change what order they could potentially belong to. You could use a soul essence to modify their values and everything so that they would be a match for another spren. Unless of course you're suggesting that you use the essence mark to change the spren by extension through the Nahel Bond as well. Problem with that that I can see is that you would somehow have to determine the qualities of the current spren and the spren you want it to change into. I suppose if you quizzed radiants enough it would be possible.

An extension of that idea would be to use forgery to change normal people to fit the requirements for a spren to form a nahel bond so they'll have a higher chance of becoming a radiant. You would need to figure out a way to fuel forgeries on Roshar though. 

The problem, however, lies with the fact that Forgery is extremely limited outside of MaiPon, and straight up wouldn't work on another Shardworld. All forms of Selish Investiture share this same flaw, which is problematic when it comes to trying to create effects; even Elantris, with its city-wide Aon Rao+Aon Ela combo isn't enough to give Galladon hints of his Elantrian appearance on Roshar. You could probably Soulstamp a Radiant/Rosharan who was in MaiPon, but I'm not sure how stable the stamp's effects would be once they left MaiPon or hopped to another Shardworld.

But, the only other Shardworld we've seen with something even remotely similar to spren is Sel, with the Seons and Skaze. I'm curious to see what it would take to convince a Seon to take the form of a Shardblade, but the Seon/Skaze-blades should be functionally similar to their Rosharan equivalent. There's bound to be some geographical limitation, though, which is shared by all forms of Selish Investiture that we've seen.

However, I'd say that the Nahel spren of Roshar are best suited for becomes Shardweapons by a long shot. I suspect that this is either an intentional design by H&C, or an unintended consequence of whatever capacity allows them to form the Nahel bond in the first place. As for other systems, Awakening seems to be the only one that can really come close, but that's  due to the incredibly mutable nature of Breath. Feruchemy and Allomancy are more versatile, but it's going to take a lot of hacking to even come close to building something with the Investiture density that spren or other heavily-Invested objects have. Even the Bands, the most Invested object we've seen on Scadrial, doesn't even come close to something like Nightblood.

[Spoolofwhool]

20 minutes ago, PantsForSquares said:

The problem, however, lies with the fact that Forgery is extremely limited outside of MaiPon, and straight up wouldn't work on another Shardworld. All forms of Selish Investiture share this same flaw, which is problematic when it comes to trying to create effects; even Elantris, with its city-wide Aon Rao+Aon Ela combo isn't enough to give Galladon hints of his Elantrian appearance on Roshar. You could probably Soulstamp a Radiant/Rosharan who was in MaiPon, but I'm not sure how stable the stamp's effects would be once they left MaiPon or hopped to another Shardworld.

But, the only other Shardworld we've seen with something even remotely similar to spren is Sel, with the Seons and Skaze. I'm curious to see what it would take to convince a Seon to take the form of a Shardblade, but the Seon/Skaze-blades should be functionally similar to their Rosharan equivalent. There's bound to be some geographical limitation, though, which is shared by all forms of Selish Investiture that we've seen.

However, I'd say that the Nahel spren of Roshar are best suited for becomes Shardweapons by a long shot. I suspect that this is either an intentional design by H&C, or an unintended consequence of whatever capacity allows them to form the Nahel bond in the first place. As for other systems, Awakening seems to be the only one that can really come close, but that's  due to the incredibly mutable nature of Breath. Feruchemy and Allomancy are more versatile, but it's going to take a lot of hacking to even come close to building something with the Investiture density that spren or other heavily-Invested objects have. Even the Bands, the most Invested object we've seen on Scadrial, doesn't even come close to something like Nightblood.

I did state that you would need to somehow hack forgery to make it viable off-Sel. I have no doubt it's possible, it would just be tricky to figure out how and would probably be more inefficient. Something I can think of on the spot is taking a breath-infused object to Sel and using forgery on it. You would then somehow hack it so the forgery uses the breath instead. Question then would be whether the breath could indefinitely sustain the forgery as breath seems to never run out when used in awakening. (Exception: Nightblood, but it doesn't really use it for awakening)

Moving on, you seem to have missed the definition of a shardblade which Brandon provided, which was stated earlier: "a heavily invested magical weapon" It doesn't necessarily have to be related to a splinter. We know this because the Honorblades are shardblades and they aren't splinters or containing splinters. (So far seems to be implied as such. I did find a WoB which was vague on the matter.) In any case, while you could possibly change a seon or a skaze into a physical object to act as a shardblade, it isn't the only method, just as using spren isn't the only method either. You could probably create a fabrial-based shardblade as well, something stronger than half-shards. Though, fabrials do use spren so maybe you do need something approximative of a splinter to create of shardblade... interesting thoughts about honorblades then.

In any case, I do agree that Roshar, so far, is the most suitable for creating shardblades. This is mainly because they have spren everywhere which can be used as bases for them. There is, of course, also the extremely significant fact that Roshar had help devising the first shardblades. Honor gave them the honorblades which every known shardblade is based off of. Without a shard to show them what is possible and let them have an example to copy, it's probably a lot harder for someone to devise a method of creating a shardblade on their own. Not to mention that Roshar is probably the most invested world we've seen. Sel is heavily invested but a mess, Scadrial is low invested, and Nalthis is probably in-between.

 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

20 minutes ago, PantsForSquares said:

Even the Bands, the most Invested object we've seen on Scadrial, doesn't even come close to something like Nightblood.

Nothing will, as Brandon has said that Nightblood is the most heavily invested non-shard thing in the cosmere, but I see your point.

1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Honor gave them the honorblades which every known shardblade is based off of. Without a shard to show them what is possible and let them have an example to copy, it's probably a lot harder for someone to devise a method of creating a shardblade on their own.

Speaking of devising it on their own: Semi-relevant WoBs

Quote

Question

I was wondering, is Nightblood a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood is an attempt by someone who didn’t know how Shardblades were made to create a Shardblade using a different magic system.

Question

If Nightblood feeds on Breath, but Szeth doesn’t have it, will it feed on Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

Nightblood can feed off Stormlight, but Szeth can't draw in Stormlight right now. So Szeth better not draw that sword, for a while at least.

Quote

zas678

Did Vasher visit Roshar before or after the Recreance? I ask because he probably had to have seen a live Shardblade to model Nightblood after, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Vasher didn't have to have seen a live Shardblade. He could've heard stories and modeled Nightblood after those.

Bit of emphasis added. These also give strange vibes about when Vasher showed up the first time

[PantsForSquares he/him]

22 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Moving on, you seem to have missed the definition of a shardblade which Brandon provided, which was stated earlier: "a heavily invested magical weapon" It doesn't necessarily have to be related to a splinter. We know this because the Honorblades are shardblades and they aren't splinters or containing splinters. (So far seems to be implied as such. I did find a WoB which was vague on the matter.) In any case, while you could possibly change a seon or a skaze into a physical object to act as a shardblade, it isn't the only method, just as using spren isn't the only method either. You could probably create a fabrial-based shardblade as well, something stronger than half-shards. Though, fabrials do use spren so maybe you do need something approximative of a splinter to create of shardblade... interesting thoughts about honorblades then.

I was actually trying to point out that using Splinters as a starting point for a Shardblade is more constructive than trying to just dump a ton of Investiture into them. It's the difference between starting with an ingot of metal when metalworking, as opposed to having to mine a shaft, find ore, and smelt enough to get an ingot. You could technically make a sword or whatever with just the mined ore, but using the ingot skips several steps. The same principle is what I'm applying when I'm talking about using a Splinter: They're usually going to have the requisite amount of Investiture anyways, so it's probably the best starting step compared to almost anything else.

I should have probably elaborated that point, but bleh.

[Argel he/him]

14 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Bit of emphasis added. These also give strange vibes about when Vasher showed up the first time

Actually, it has been confirmed that Vasher visited Roshar before creating Nightblood during the JordanCon RAFOlympics 2016:

Quote

[1:22:43]

Q: So is Vasher - [lady?] who was part of the process creating Nightblood a worldhopper, then?

A: Vasher had been to Roshar before he created Nightblood, yeah.

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J43km7wrrZnOuM2WJe2DpBsk_C0E6yLJ8bDxqfen-P4/view

[Djarskublar he/him]

2 hours ago, Argel said:

Actually, it has been confirmed that Vasher visited Roshar before creating Nightblood during the JordanCon RAFOlympics 2016:

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J43km7wrrZnOuM2WJe2DpBsk_C0E6yLJ8bDxqfen-P4/view

That wasn't the issue. It was about when on Roshar's timeline he showed up-- before or after the Recreance.