Nightblood's corruption

[Djarskublar he/him]

Something I wondered about offhand while mentioning how NB is the only thing we know of that changes the Intent of Investiture in a different thread has me curious.

1. Shards are, at the most fundamental level, a large chunk of Investiture with the same Intent.

2. Nightblood steals Investiture and corrupts its Intent into something it (he?) can use. That is my understanding of the mechanic anyway, regardless, it ends up with a different intent.

3. Presumably, NB corrupts any Investiture, and corrupts it into the same type of Investiture.

Does this mean that eventually if Nightblood consumes a Shards worth of Investiture, will that Investiture coalesce into a new Shard with some unknown intent? Maybe Avarice or some such. I only see two things as necessary for this to eventually happen, assuming NB isn't destroyed or put in a museum for all eternity.

One: the Investiture it corrupts needs to have the same new intent. I don't think that is an unreasonable assumption. It always bleeds off black, after all. The only caveat to this I can see at the moment would be that the Investiture may have traces of its old Intent that would make it incompatible with other corrupted Investiture. Basically, the requirement is that #3 above needs to hold true, and it doesn't necessarily do that. On the other hand, you could just have it corrupt all of one Shard.

Two: the Investiture would have to actually coalesce. I would bet on it doing so once it reaches some critical mass. It should end up in the Spiritual Realm anyway, and space isn't a thing there, so the Investiture would already be together anyway... I think. I don't really see any reason for it to not get it together and form a Shard.

You can yell at me now, Spool.

I can see some alternative where the Investiture pools into some sort of splinter and slowly grows until it becomes Shard-level powerful. The next question I have is, if it does become a Shard, will it just develop sentience on its own, or will it find a Vessel?

[Modal Seoul he/him]

Whatever it does, it's gonna destroy a heck of a lot of evil.

[Yata he/him]

This is an idea I proposed in the forum for at least an year. So I could see the weak points quite fast (are the same I found months ago)

1) We saw only a Breath fueled Nightblood.

It could feed of Every Kinetic Investiture but we don't know if his leaking is consistent among the different good.

2) as extension of (1) we don't know if the "corruption" happens for a Nightblood's inner mechanics or if It is a Breath's inner mechanic.

To say It's possible Breath become "corrupted" because you steal It. So It is not really Nightblood the Corrupted to make the damage but Nightblood the Stealer.

Random example: Maybe the Breath Will be similar Corrupted if a Larkin siphons them for you (under the hypotesis a Larkin May did It).

3)The main problem about my old (an your actually) idea is about what Brandon told us about "Corruption". It is in the end only "Investiture mixing".

So whatever Nightblood adds or remove from the Investiture It eats. From different source you will have different outcome. So an etherogeneus amount of leaked Investiture

 

Some of this doubts Will be no more once we Will see someone feeding Nightblood with Stormlight....Maybe already in Oathbringer.

Edited March 15, 2017 by Yata

[Pattern he/him]

Actually, Nightblood consumes Investiture, any form of Investiture - and while doing that, reduces the amount of Investiture in the Cosmere at a very slow rate.

Quote

Interview: Dec 12th, 2015

Barnes & Noble Orem

Question

So, is Nightblood reducing the amount of Investiture in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. At a very slow rate, but yes.

Edit: I found another WoB contradicting this one, so we are left with some uncertainty: (Spoiler tags for length)

Spoiler

Quote

Interview: Mar 12th, 2015

Brandon Sanderson - /r/books AMA March 2015 (Verbatim)

trevorade (Reddit)

It has been explained that all things exists between three realms: Physical, Spiritual, and Cognitive.

I have surmised that different things "exist more" in a certain realm than another though all things have some presence in the three. Humans appear to "exist more" in the Physical realm. Spren appear to "exist more" in the Cognitive realm (Shadesmar in SA). Investiture appears to have various forms in the Physical Realm (e.g., alomantic metals, mist, stormlight).

Question 1: Does investiture have a consistent form (regardless of magic system and its Physical form) in one of the other realms?

Question 2: Vasher has shown us that he can substitue his need for Breath with another investiture (presumably Stormlight). To what extent is investiture interchangeable between magic systems?

Question 3: Is investiture finite? Hemalurgy and a Return's need to consume breath seems to show us that it can be destroyed. If it is finite, is the Cosmere's magic source doomed to the law of entropy?

Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

1. It's consistent in the Spiritual Realm. Location isn't particularly important there.
2. Very interchangeable, but not always simple to apply.
3. Investiture can not be created or destroyed. It follows it's own version of the laws of Thermodynamics.

Joe_____ (Reddit)

So what happens to the investiture that is lost when a person is spiked and the spike isn't set in the new person immediately? Does it return to the big pool of investiture in the sky like the power from wheel of time where if its not actively being used it returns to the source?

Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

What happens to someone's body when it's not being used by a particular person? The system is built to work like that.

 

 

Edited March 15, 2017 by Pattern

[Stark he/him]

So if Investiture follows thermodynamics, being neither created or destroyed, and Nightblood is slowly reducing the mount of Investiture in the Cosmere, that implies some fun things.  

 

For one, this is not necessarily contradictory.  To be able to use investiture, you need the right identity and connection to access it, whether it be breaths, Selish geolocation or a nahel bond, you need something to connect you to the investiture to use it.  Now, if Nightblood is taking in Investiture, and transforming it to another type of Investiture (corrupted), then the total Investiture of the Cosmere is unchanged, but the total accessible Investiture of the Cosmere goes down.

 

A good example of this would be fire wood.  Fire wood is full of potential energy, much of it in the form of organic compounds that would have sustained the tree that was.  But, if you apply flame(Nightblood) to the wood, it is consumed, and the energy is released, being converted to heat, light and sound.  No matter what you do, that heat, light and sound will never convert back to wood on its own.  There are other natural processes that will use the new energy to convert other energy into useable forms for new trees to grow, but you need the other organisms to balance that equation.

 

The cosmere does not have that.  Nightblood is the invasive species with no natural predator. It will consume and consume and consume until nothing is left, and there is nothing to convert the "corrupted" Investiture back to a useable form.  If Nightblood eventually consumes shard level amounts of investiture, then interesting things may start to happen, given what we know investiture does on its own.  But until then, It is a drain on the system because there is no balance to the equation.

So Both WoB are valid.  Investiture is neither created or destroyed.  Nightblood is reducing the total available Investiture of the Cosmere by coverting/corrupting it to a currently unuseable format, but not actually destroying it.

 

Give Nightblood a couple of milenia on Roshar consuming stormlight, or let it eat a shard, and then we should start to see some really interesting things as Nightblood changes the intent of what it consumes to something new...

[Djarskublar he/him]

8 hours ago, Yata said:

This is an idea I proposed in the forum for at least an year. So I could see the weak points quite fast (are the same I found months ago)

1) We saw only a Breath fueled Nightblood.

It could feed of Every Kinetic Investiture but we don't know if his leaking is consistent among the different good.

2) as extension of (1) we don't know if the "corruption" happens for a Nightblood's inner mechanics or if It is a Breath's inner mechanic.

To say It's possible Breath become "corrupted" because you steal It. So It is not really Nightblood the Corrupted to make the damage but Nightblood the Stealer.

Random example: Maybe the Breath Will be similar Corrupted if a Larkin siphons them for you (under the hypotesis a Larkin May did It).

3)The main problem about my old (an your actually) idea is about what Brandon told us about "Corruption". It is in the end only "Investiture mixing".

So whatever Nightblood adds or remove from the Investiture It eats. From different source you will have different outcome. So an etherogeneus amount of leaked Investiture

 

Some of this doubts Will be no more once we Will see someone feeding Nightblood with Stormlight....Maybe already in Oathbringer.

Hmmm, so I'm not being original, then? Oh well. To answer your points:

1) At the end of WoR, we see NB, and it leaks a black smoke when partially unsheathed, just like always, That is by no means conclusive, but a good start.

2) This is true, and I touched on it somewhat in the OP, though I didn't state it this explicitly. In the end, it doesn't matter, the Intent is corrupted. If you just have to eat all of Endowment, so be it. Taking from multiple Shards would be interesting, though, since then there could actually be a 17th Shard.

3) I also listed this as a potential issue in the OP, and again, you may just have to have Nightblood eat all of Endowment instead of sampling from all of the Shards. One thing though, what Intent is being mixed in? I highly doubt it is the same Intent as one of the other Shards. NB isn't evil, it destroys evil. I don't think it is likely that there is a Shard of "Destroy Evil." I suppose there could be something similar, but I think a new Intent is being created by NB and mixed into the Investiture. This is why the Investiture in the Cosmere is reduced. If it just converted it to, say, Ruinous Intent, then Ruin could probably claim it, and Sazed would be unhappy at having a worse power imbalance to mitigate.

Regardless, if we just assume that NB eats Endowment, almost all issues with this go away. So, would a new Shard form from the body of the old?

[CaptainRyan he/him]

Perhaps there is evidence to dispute this idea but I always just assumed that, eventually, the Investiture Nightblood "corrupts" simply goes back to whichever Shard it belongs to. E.g. I believe we know that Nightblood's "corruption" is actually just the mixing of Investiture so my head-canon is that the Investiture would eventually separate back out - think water/oil in a recently shaken jar. Another analogy would be how, eventually, if given enough time, even plastic or styrofoam break down.

Furthermore, I, personally, believe that part of the reason Nightblood "corrupts" any Investiture that is taken in is because Nightblood itself was built using Investiture from multiple shards. Vasher did travel to Roshar before making Nightblood after all. If Endowment's Investiture (Breaths) were the only component of Nightblood then how would it "corrupt" (or mix) those nom-nom'd Breaths with another form of Investiture to mix with?

[Djarskublar he/him]

There is also that WoB that Nightblood is much more Invested than we would assume from it having 1k breaths. Where is that extra stuff coming from? I kinda just assumed it was a bonus from Endowment, but the more I think about that, the less sure I am of that assumption.

@CaptainRyan, I actually hadn't even considered that the Investitures might separate. That makes a lot of sense too. Ugh, I'm just going to have to ask Brandon about this. Guess I may as well make a Twitter account, even if only to ask for WoB

[CaptainRyan he/him]

5 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

There is also that WoB that Nightblood is much more Invested than we would assume from it having 1k breaths. Where is that extra stuff coming from? I kinda just assumed it was a bonus from Endowment, but the more I think about that, the less sure I am of that assumption.

@CaptainRyan, I actually hadn't even considered that the Investitures might separate. That makes a lot of sense too. Ugh, I'm just going to have to ask Brandon about this. Guess I may as well make a Twitter account, even if only to ask for WoB

Here is a WoB I had in my word doc on questions I want to ask Brandon haha. I apologize for not having a link to the original source; this doc was only meant for my personal reference so I did not track where I found each WoB (emphasis mine).

Quote

Questioner: How does corrupted investiture work, like Nightblood.

Brandon: Oh, Nightblood. Again, this is a definition of what somebody feels is a corruption. For instance, there are spren people would feel are corrupted. But that is corruption where the mixing of different shards has changed things, and I think a lot of times when people say corruption, people are meaning the mixing of shards powers.

Questioner: So is there a mixing of shards power with Nightblood?

Brandon: *smirks* RAFO. That's the natural question, I'm glad you asked it.

 

[Pattern he/him]

Lets assume Nightblood is a dead shardblade awakened with 1000 breaths. That would give it much more Investiture than just the breath needed to awaken it. It would not be awakened steel but awakened godmetal - so the awakener would still need the 9th hightening.

Being of two different shards could result in a mixing and therefore corruption of Investiture when Nightblood is drawn.

Against this assumption speaks the fact that Yesteel is able to create more swords like Nightblood and that Nightblood was created to imitate a shardblade in the first place...

But somewhere the excess Investiture has to come from.

 

Edited March 18, 2017 by Pattern

[Farnsworth]

I think that the definition of a Shard is something that came from  adonalsium. There are also many more attributes to a Shard than simply having a lot of investiture. For example it needs a Focus, and either a Vessel, or no self-awareness whatsoever. Nightblood has no focus, and is self-aware on his own.