Nightblood - So What?

[king of nowhere]

I have an idea: nightblood reaches into the spiritual realm, right? what if it destroied not just the body, but also the soul of those slain?  that would explain why vasher sees it as something inherently evil.

[Spoolofwhool]

16 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I have an idea: nightblood reaches into the spiritual realm, right? what if it destroied not just the body, but also the soul of those slain?  that would explain why vasher sees it as something inherently evil.

It does destroy its targets on the physical, cognitive, and spiritual level. Their souls are effectively destroyed.

Edited February 7, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[Yata he/him]

25 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I have an idea: nightblood reaches into the spiritual realm, right? what if it destroied not just the body, but also the soul of those slain?  that would explain why vasher sees it as something inherently evil.

For the cosmere's afterlife mechanics...I am more worried about the "destroy the mind".

Notice for example that also regular Shardblade cuts the Soul

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Shardblade cuts physical and cognitive (and cognitive is the bit that goes to the beyond). People killed by shardblade still go to afterlife, so far as we know.

The special thing about nightblood is that it cuts in the spiritual realm. That means... Well, if you cut a radiant with a shardblade but it doesn't kill them, they can just heal it. But nightblood... I don't think you could use magic to heal it, since being hit by nightblood might actually destroy your ability to use any kind of investiture.

That's why I think nightblood is a great super-weapon to use against... Well, other super-weapons. Nightblood is probably by far the easiest way to kill a full allomancer+feruchemist like TLR.

[Spoolofwhool]

29 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

Shardblade cuts physical and cognitive (and cognitive is the bit that goes to the beyond). People killed by shardblade still go to afterlife, so far as we know.

The special thing about nightblood is that it cuts in the spiritual realm. That means... Well, if you cut a radiant with a shardblade but it doesn't kill them, they can just heal it. But nightblood... I don't think you could use magic to heal it, since being hit by nightblood might actually destroy your ability to use any kind of investiture.

That's why I think nightblood is a great super-weapon to use against... Well, other super-weapons. Nightblood is probably by far the easiest way to kill a full allomancer+feruchemist like TLR.

No. Sprenblades cut physical and spiritual. Nightblood on the other hand obliterates in all three realms. Getting killing by a sprenblade would probably impact your time before going to the Beyond, depending on how much damage you take. You could probably damage someone in such a way with a sprenblade that you damage their ability to use manifestations of investiture, but it wouldn't be easy I don't think, and Nightblood would do so a lot more easily.

 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

11 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

No. Sprenblades cut physical and spiritual. Nightblood on the other hand obliterates in all three realms. Getting killing by a sprenblade would probably impact your time before going to the Beyond, depending on how much damage you take. You could probably damage someone in such a way with a sprenblade that you damage their ability to use manifestations of investiture, but it wouldn't be easy I don't think, and Nightblood would do so a lot more easily.

There's a WoB out there that says that shardblade cuts physical and cognitive. Unless you have a more recent one that says otherwise, I'm going to trust that one.

[Spoolofwhool]

57 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

There's a WoB out there that says that shardblade cuts physical and cognitive. Unless you have a more recent one that says otherwise, I'm going to trust that one.

If you could be so kind as to provide that WoB; there's so many WoBs that talk about healing the soul after being cut by a sprenblade that the implications seem fairly clear. I don't recall any that directly state physical and spiritual, but at the same I don't recall any that say physical cognitive either.

Edit: Also, I need the WoB if I'm to find a more recent one.

Edited February 7, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[Samaldin he/him]

The WoB i found was from 2014

What if Hoid got cut by a shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson
The Shardblade cuts the soul and what Hoid does heals the soul.

so that sounds like Shardblades cut in the spiritual realm.

[Fezzik]

But is the soul cognitive or spiritual? Instinctively, I think spiritual, but MB:SH and Kelsier's experience makes me think the cognitive aspect is the soul.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

3 minutes ago, john203 said:

But is the soul cognitive or spiritual? Instinctively, I think spiritual, but MB:SH and Kelsier's experience makes me think the cognitive aspect is the soul.

Pertaining to healing, take of this how you will. Source

Quote

[–]Logic_Nuke 7 points 1 year ago 

I heard you were still answering questions, so:

1. Could decapitation kill a Gold Compounder? With a guillotine, for example?

2. Do you have a plan for a central work that would connect the different parts of the Cosmere together?

 

[–]mistborn[S] 13 points 1 year ago 

1. Most forms of extreme cosmere healing don't care much what is done to the physical body, as the person's spiritual template is in power at the time.

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/6/2017 at 4:27 AM, Tarion said:

If a God King wanted to make a set of Nightbloods, they could. If Hallandren decided to switch to human soldiers instead of Lifeless, it could amass a set of Nightbloods within a matter of years, which makes a lot of sense economically, because they've got no maintenance costs when they're not being used.

Yeah, Hallandren could amass enough Breath to make multiple Nightbloods (not an army's worth, though, unless they took thousands of years to do it). But it's an "opportunity cost" thing. How many Lifeless could you make with the same Breath quantity? We don't have numbers, IIRC, for how much Breath Nightblood drains when used - but it probably adds up really fast.

On 2/6/2017 at 2:20 AM, Yata said:

I can't honestly say for sure but Nightblood's passive boost (without Investiture needed) seems to compatible with A-Pewter. A single Lifeless with this boost may be a serious threat.

On an individual scale, sure, but one or a few Thugs don't decide battles on Scadrial. Even a full Mistborn can't fight an army (well, Vin burning duralumin came close, but as a general rule...)

And while we don't see much of it, I'd expect military tech on Nalthis to be ahead of the artificially suppressed state of Scadrial under TLR - they'd probably have crossbows, which would make a big difference in terms of the number of effective ranged attackers available.
 

On 2/6/2017 at 4:27 AM, Tarion said:

 And because you need a Nightblood style sword to counter Nightblood

Well, see, this is the part that I don't get. As far as I can tell, a crossbow counters Nightblood just fine.

Quote

Think about Shardblades on Roshar for the arms race that Nightblood would provide. 

Well, Rosharans seem to have a very low level of non-magical military capability. And even there a Shardblade alone doesn't make you that invulnerable. The Blade/Plate combo comes close, but a Full Shardbearer can still fall to a couple dozen normal soldiers if they're brave and well led -- Kaladin managed it. That's probably an exceptional case, but winning Shards in combat is a known thing on Roshar.

[Spoolofwhool]

Really, I don't see why you're so obsessed with the military strength of Nightblood. Obviously using Nightblood in large scale combat is useless. The investiture requirements would be too preventative. However, I'm sure that Shashara could've gotten around that particular flaw. Then you would have the means to producing shardblades as you see fit. One person, armed with a slightly weaker Nightblood, but no longer requires constant investiture, could take down a large number of people, if properly trained and armored. At that point you're looking at a huge return in value, as you have paid a thousand breaths, not even a thousand people, they can still do things, and you're getting in return a weapon with the potential to kill well over a thousand people in its lifetime, which may not have a limit.

Moving forward, the argument that the wielder could fall to mundane weapons is fairly moot. First of all, by that time they've probably already killed a large number of people, as the shardbearer in your example did. Additionally, it doesn't solve the problem of the fact that the weapon is still in existence and capable of killing a lot more people. Looking at shardblades as an example, someone holding them is able to be killed by mundane means, yet they're still used despite that, because you can kill a lot of people effectively in the process. You tried to make this a "super weapon beaten by a regular weapon" argument, except it isn't one. It's a "quality vs. quantity" one, and while quantity will eventually win, the Cosmere's still stuck with the weapon. Vasher wasn't concerned with making an unbeatable warrior as far as I can tell, he was concerned with creating weapons which would be used to kill a lot of people over the course of their potentially unlimited lifetime.

More so, the knowledge that those kinds of weapons can be created would cause a gigantic arms race, which could potentially result in a lot of people being hurt in order to obtain their breath, because you can "convince" someone to give you their breath using torture. There would definitely be ambitious people out there who would try to make a lot of shardblades using awakening. Additionally, once you have a number of these weapons that can be made, unlike shardblades, you would start to see a quality race, where people would try to create weapons which can trump the ones already in existence, research which would once again consume a lot of breaths. 

None of this even addresses how dangerous or powerful Type IV Awakened Entities could be once you move past direct combat applications. 

So overall, there was a definite cause for Vasher's concern. 

 

Edit: tl;dr: Vasher's issue was not that you could create an invincible warrior, but rather that inevitably, every shardblade like Nightblood which was made would result in a lot of people dying over the course of its lifetime. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[The One Who Connects he/him]

16 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

And while we don't see much of it, I'd expect military tech on Nalthis to be ahead of the artificially suppressed state of Scadrial under TLR - they'd probably have crossbows, which would make a big difference in terms of the number of effective ranged attackers available.

It's somewhere in the Warbreaker Annotations (found it, chap 51) about the Manywar.

Quote

In this scene, there are some small hints of what it was like during the Manywar—with people Awakening ropes to toss boulders and things like that. It was a pretty dramatic conflict, the first one where Lifeless and Awakeners were put to a great deal of use in battle.

Take of it how you will, but once Lifeless and Awakeners became more prevalent, I imagine that normal military style became less common. A crossbow would work pretty well against common soldiers, but against Lifeless? From the Coppermind article:

Quote

Physical damage to a Lifeless may be repaired to an extent; lacerations may be sewn shut, damaged muscles replaced^[6]

I feel that it would take a bit more than a crossbow bolt to deal with something that can survive wounds like that. But you know, my opinion vs yours and all that..

[cometaryorbit]

21 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Really, I don't see why you're so obsessed with the military strength of Nightblood.

Because the ch. 55 annotation seems to be saying Yesteel's ability to make more Nightblood-type weapons would make a new war vastly more destructive than otherwise. I'm wondering why that is.

I'm not at all arguing that Nightblood isn't terrifying on a personal scale -- it clearly is!

But " Yesteel’s ability to create swords like Nightblood would end with T’Telir falling and then the entire world being cast into chaos and destruction" seems to draw a direct connection between more Nightbloods and global "chaos and destruction".

Quote

Obviously using Nightblood in large scale combat is useless. The investiture requirements would be too preventative. However, I'm sure that Shashara could've gotten around that particular flaw. Then you would have the means to producing shardblades as you see fit.

Sure, it's totally believable that with research, they could Shardblade without Nightblood's extra powers (except that it would be fully intelligent, as Type IVs are defined as intelligent Awakened objects) that didn't continually drain Breath from the user - Rosharan Blades don't, after all.

But it would still take a lot of Breaths in the first place -- a "basic" Shardblade involves a ton of Investiture, more than the Bands of Mourning hold, per WOB -- and Breaths are very expensive in quantity. In real world pre-industrial warfare, things like horses and good armor were often quite limited in supply, and Breaths are way more expensive than that.

22 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Moving forward, the argument that the wielder could fall to mundane weapons is fairly moot. First of all, by that time they've probably already killed a large number of people, as the shardbearer in your example did.

But if you look at it from a nation's economic perspective, paying to build their military forces and supplies... that Blade won't be worth it vs. 1000 Lifeless.

And from a real world pre-industrial war perspective, the life of a couple of dozen "ordinary" soldiers (common men at arms, not knights or such) isn't terribly valuable.

And with Nalthian tech level rather than Rosharan, a Shardblade wouldn't be as advantageous - especially once they became known things and people developed countermeasures.

22 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

More so, the knowledge that those kinds of weapons can be created would cause a gigantic arms race

See, I don't think it likely would, because of the cost. One nation might do it, and be effective in the first couple battles... then their enemies would figure out what was happening and counter it, and they'd be limited-role specialty weapons after that.

8 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Take of it how you will, but once Lifeless and Awakeners became more prevalent, I imagine that normal military style became less common. A crossbow would work pretty well against common soldiers, but against Lifeless? From the Coppermind article:

I feel that it would take a bit more than a crossbow bolt to deal with something that can survive wounds like that. But you know, my opinion vs yours and all that..

Hallandren is unusually rich in the era of Warbreaker, though -- I don't think most nations can afford armies mostly composed of Lifeless. Any fighting not involving Hallandren is probably human vs human.

I agree that piercing weapons like 'standard' crossbows wouldn't likely be the best choice vs Lifeless, though. You'd want something to break legs or arms, so the Lifeless would be incapacitated even though still animated.

Nalthis probably has the level of tech to come up with a crossbow variant that would do that, though. Bullet-shooting crossbows were invented even in our world; they weren't used much beyond hunting small game, or developed very far, but that's because bladed bolts were more effective vs humans and we didn't have zombies to fight.

[Pagerunner he/him]

Hey, I haven't been following this thread that closely, but I know the general gist of it (why would Nightblood be so terrible in a war situation) and I see it's been quite the popular discussion. I ran across a WoB that seems relevant:

Quote

Q: If Nightblood were a Magic card, what would its abilities/stats be?

A: Equipment. When equipped creature does combat damage, destroy all other creatures. During your upkeep, pay WUBRG or you lose the game.

Granted, it's not the most rigorous of explanations, but Nightblood empties the battlefield, destroying all creatures. It's not just destroy equipped create, it's not like something you'd equip to opponents' creatures to kill them. Board-wipe, everything in sight gone.

Not sure if this quote has been brought up yet, but it makes me think we might not have seen Nightblood at his worst.

EDIT: You'll probably want the source on that.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Pagerunner

[cometaryorbit]

4 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

Not sure if this quote has been brought up yet, but it makes me think we might not have seen Nightblood at his worst.

Oh, probably not -- that annotation certainly implies there are effective large-scale uses, and I don't think Vasher is cold enough to have killed his wife over something that would ultimately be of little significance.

But what are those worse abilities, and how do they fit with what we have seen?

Maybe there's some way for Nightblood, or a potential "improved model" Type IV Awakened Shardblade, to produce a defensive effect that would prevent the wielder from being shot down beyond sword range.

Possibly an improved version of its enhancement of the wielder's strength/speed? The enhancement ability is a bit similar to Allomantic Pewter, and when Vin fueled Pewter burning with the Mists in HOA, it either healed her injuries or made them irrelevant. So maybe if Nightblood was "fully consuming Investiture" from some major source, he could allow the wielder to heal fast enough, or become physically tough enough, to ignore arrow wounds?

Or, maybe there's a way to expand and enhance the nausea effect of Nightblood. If there were a 1000-foot aura of nausea so powerful that people other than the wielder were unable to fight, just lying on the ground retching, that would protect the wielder from anything shorter ranged than a pretty advanced rifle (which only Scadrial might have).

 

 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

The amount of investiture nightblood consumes increases exponentially. I suspect that the destruction nightblood causes also increases exponentially the longer you wield it.

If you had a big enough pile of investiture, I would guess all of nightblood's effects would increase faster and faster. That would probably include the physical enhancement it grants, the aura, and everything else.

Earlier, I had said its a bit like a game of rock-paper-scissors. If you have a normal sized stash of investiture, that's true.

But if you have a big hoard of investiture... Nightblood is probably something close to the cosmere version of a nuke. Get a really big stockpile of energy, light it off somewhere populated, and it destroys everything. Like a nuclear weapon, merely the threat of such destruction is extremely influential.

And plus... I would guess type IV entities can do a lot of other things that even Vasher doesn't know about. All we have seen is one type of object (a sword) with one command (destroy evil). It is hard to say what other kinds of type IV could be capable of.

[cometaryorbit]

19 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

The amount of investiture nightblood consumes increases exponentially. I suspect that the destruction nightblood causes also increases exponentially the longer you wield it.
If you had a big enough pile of investiture, I would guess all of nightblood's effects would increase faster and faster. That would probably include the physical enhancement it grants, the aura, and everything else.

That's probably true, but I'm thinking there might have to be more to it than that, because very few Nalthians could survive wielding Nightblood long enough to get much out of that exponential increase -- in the modern era, probably only the God King.

Whereas the ch. 55 annotation implies that just letting that secret out, without any exceptional new source of Investiture or cross-world magic stuff (like handing Nightblood to a Nicrosil Compounder or something), would by itself lead to vast destruction.

Shashara might've been able to get to that level in the Battle of Twilight Falls, though, since she must have been at least 9th heightening to make Nightblood in the first place. So maybe that's what scared Vasher so much.

[Kaladin Zahel]

Just decided to sign up to chime in here.

I think the real threat was creating a Nightblood creature as opposed to just a sword. Imagine Nightblood wielding Nightblood. Unless Im missing a mechanic this should work, but be very chaotic and destructive.

Kalads Phantoms were not type IV because of the bone cheat. So if they had been made with rebar(inorganic/metal) instead youd have a Nightblood army but uncontrollable.

That would certainly be worth preventing at ANY cost.

Edited February 13, 2017 by Kaladin Zahel

[Spoolofwhool]

57 minutes ago, Kaladin Zahel said:

Just decided to sign up to chime in here.

I think the real threat was creating a Nightblood creature as opposed to just a sword. Imagine Nightblood wielding Nightblood. Unless Im missing a mechanic this should work, but be very chaotic and destructive.

Kalads Phantoms were not type IV because of the bone cheat. So if they had been made with rebar(inorganic/metal) instead youd have a Nightblood army but uncontrollable.

That would certainly be worth preventing at ANY cost.

Type IV isnt because of the awakened material, it's whether it's sentient after awakening or not.

[Jondesu he/him]

44 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Type IV isnt because of the awakened material, it's whether it's sentient after awakening or not.

It's actually a combination. A Type IV is a Sentient non-organic Awakened entity, i.e. something that was never alive. The bones in Kalad's Phantoms were the cheat, since they were once alive, making them a Type II entity instead of Type IV, and thus much easier to Awaken.

[Spoolofwhool]

10 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

It's actually a combination. A Type IV is a Sentient non-organic Awakened entity, i.e. something that was never alive. The bones in Kalad's Phantoms were the cheat, since they were once alive, making them a Type II entity instead of Type IV, and thus much easier to Awaken.

Hmm. Weird. I've been under the impression that the material didn't matter though the Coppermind says otherwise. Do we have an official source though that says it has to be non-organic or are we just assuming that it is because that's what Shashara and Vasher used? If the latter, I'm not seeing a reason why you can't use organic materials.

Also, I'm not getting why you're calling Kalad's Phantoms a cheat. He just made lifeless out of bones and encased them in stone to be more durable.

 

[Jondesu he/him]

10 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Hmm. Weird. I've been under the impression that the material didn't matter though the Coppermind says otherwise. Do we have an official source though that says it has to be non-organic or are we just assuming that it is because that's what Shashara and Vasher used? If the latter, I'm not seeing a reason why you can't use organic materials.

Also, I'm not getting why you're calling Kalad's Phantoms a cheat. He just made lifeless out of bones and encased them in stone to be more durable.

 

It's from Vasher explaining the types to Vivenna.  Type Two are “Mindless Manifestations in a Deceased Host”: Lifeless.  Because they were once alive, they're easier to Awaken, easier than something in the shape of a person but that was never alive.  He doesn't specifically tell her about Type Four entities (and in fact tells her not to ask again), but she fairly correctly describes it: “Is there a way to create an Awakened object with sentience? Like a Returned, but inside of something other than a human body?” 

[Spoolofwhool]

4 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

It's from Vasher explaining the types to Vivenna.  Type Two are “Mindless Manifestations in a Deceased Host”: Lifeless.  Because they were once alive, they're easier to Awaken, easier than something in the shape of a person but that was never alive.  He doesn't specifically tell her about Type Four entities (and in fact tells her not to ask again), but she fairly correctly describes it: “Is there a way to create an Awakened object with sentience? Like a Returned, but inside of something other than a human body?” 

Yes, but how does that tell anything about not being able to make a Type 4 entity out of organic materials, such as straw for example.

[Jondesu he/him]

22 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Yes, but how does that tell anything about not being able to make a Type 4 entity out of organic materials, such as straw for example.

Sorry, organic was the wrong word.  Something that was once a living body wouldn't work, though, such as a human or animal body, or it seems even just significant parts of them like the skeletons. I don't believe you'd be able to make a Nightblood squirrel, for instance, only a Lifeless squirrel like Vasher does.  Straw should work fine, I would assume.

EDIT: I guess the best classification is that Type II were once sentient and then awakened with sentience, while Type IV were never sentient, but are after they are awakened.

Edited February 13, 2017 by Jondesu