Will Nightblood die?

[Toaster Retribution he/him]

I don't know if we have considered this before, or speculated much about its future? Can Nightblood die? What will happen to him? We mostly discuss his magic, but this is for his development and future story.

[Yata he/him]

Nightblood is an artificial Splinter so he could die in the same way a Spren does...His mind could be destroyed or the Investiture that compose his being could be split apart/consumed

[Velvet Thunder he/him]

If you have enough investiture don't you become a cognitive shadow?

I'm assuming with the amount of investiture Nightblood has he would qualify for that? 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

24 minutes ago, Velvet Thunder said:

If you have enough investiture don't you become a cognitive shadow?

You become a Cognitive Shadow upon death regardless of Investiture Levels. Investiture Exposure during your life determines how long you can stay as a Shadow before being pulled into the Beyond.

26 minutes ago, Velvet Thunder said:

I'm assuming with the amount of investiture Nightblood has he would qualify for that? 

NB is something similar to a "Robot Spren." I don't know how Spren fit into the whole Cognitive Shadow spectrum.

[Calderis he/him]

2 hours ago, Velvet Thunder said:

I'm assuming with the amount of investiture Nightblood has he would qualify for that? 

I doubt it. Nightblood can't "die" in the mortal sense. It will either have its personality destroyed and remain whole, or be split up, both of which aren't the same as a mortal dying and remaining as a shadow in the Cognitive Realm. 

When Spren die they are kind of the opposite of a Cognitive Shadow. Their mind has been destroyed, and they are locked into a stable physical form, persistent but without consciousness. I imagine that Nightblood "dying" would be effectively the same. He'd just turn into a heavy sword that is more destructive than it should be, but his mind and additional powers would disappear. 

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

If you managed to break Nightblood, would this be sufficient enough to "kill" him? I was thinking yes, since if we go by the "Nightblood is similar to a spren idea" after the sword is broken it can no longer be considered a sword, and as a result "Nightblood" cognitively would be dead.

Or I could be wrong, I'm just throwing out ideas.

As for whether he will, I don't think so, since he seems like one of the characters that will have an impact of events later in the Cosmere.

[Yata he/him]

8 hours ago, Velvet Thunder said:

If you have enough investiture don't you become a cognitive shadow?

I'm assuming with the amount of investiture Nightblood has he would qualify for that? 

The Cognitive Shadow stuff is something related to mortals (or three aspects beings) Upon Death.

If they had enough Investiture infused their Soul...they could remain for a (arbitrary) while as some kind of poor Humanspren.

CS and Splinters (Spren) are mainly the same thing with different origin and amount of Investiture. Asking for a Splinter's CS is almost like asking for a Cs' CS.

[Velvet Thunder he/him]

@Yata @Calderis @The One Who Connects Thanks for clearing that up for me!

In this case then, I assume something similar to Calderis’ suggestion. Unsure of exactly how it would work as I don’t think it will mimic the ‘dead’ shardblades identically, but something similar none the less.

Now I’m going to go off on a very uninformed trail of thought. Literally sat here eating toast and free thinking. So stay with me, correct me where I’m wrong and be awed by my brilliant ignorance!

Warbreaker spoilers so not sure if Im supposed to hide them. So lets hide them.

Spoiler

With how you would kill him.. without knowing a lot about him it’s a really hard question. I still wonder what a dead shardblades looks like in the CR. Is it a weapon that can harm the spren? Probably not, but in the CR where the spren are more substantial, I would say there is more likely to be a way of harming them. So based of what little I know, it would need to be done in the CR using a method we haven’t seen yet.

Rosharian spren seem to be alive in the CR before they bond with a mortal and transfer into the PR. But if you break the oaths they die? Does this mean they are still alive in the CR or are now ‘dead’ in both? I think dead in both. So they risk coming over knowin they could possibly die, or in patterns case he believes he will die.

Nightblood is different. From what I’m aware he didn’t create a bond and choose to come over. He was created and spren call it an abomination, yet Branson confirms he is a shardblade. He has sentience. He eats investiture to survive.. So he’s some kind of spren Frankenstein? Made from breath. Breath gives temporary ‘life’ to something, to do as you command. They used inanimate objects before so perhaps in its creation, after they learnt of shardblades and spren (creatures of thought and emotions) they gave breath to their own thought, desire. They learnt of odium and gave breath and commanded their thought of “weapon to fight a shard” to combat him or something along those lines. They only had a small amount of breath so that created Nightblood. An abomination style spren that eats investiture, partially to survive and partially to do what it was intended to. How do you kill spren Frankenstein? You command breath back, but she’s dead so unlikely of that happening.. otherwise I think you need to starve him. In a place with no investiture. Probably buried in shinovar or something. When he becomes weaker from starvation, he may become more vulnerable to other stuff or just eventually die. I’m running out of useless thought brain power.. need more toast. Nom nom nom.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Velvet Thunder

[Yata he/him]

@Velvet Thunder Many of the spoiler part isn't real Spoiler for this subforum, anyway:

22 minutes ago, Velvet Thunder said:

With how you would kill him.. without knowing a lot about him it’s a really hard question. I still wonder what a dead shardblades looks like in the CR. Is it a weapon that can harm the spren? Probably not, but in the CR where the spren are more substantial, I would say there is more likely to be a way of harming them. So based of what little I know, it would need to be done in the CR using a method we haven’t seen yet.

We don't know how a dead Shardblade looks if you see it from the CR but I assume you could not carry a Blade into the Cognitive Realm (not sure fact, only speculation) as the Blade itself is something possible only because the Spren is deeply dragged into the Physical.

There are ways of harming Cognitive Entities, one if hurting their Soul (for example a Shardblade or some Magic Systems could be fine for this) the other is hurting/destroying their minds (in this case we know really less ways to performe this, for example Nightblood is one of them or...the Oathbreak is another).

28 minutes ago, Velvet Thunder said:

Rosharian spren seem to be alive in the CR before they bond with a mortal and transfer into the PR. But if you break the oaths they die? Does this mean they are still alive in the CR or are now ‘dead’ in both? I think dead in both. So they risk coming over knowin they could possibly die, or in patterns case he believes he will die.

Radiant Spren are alive and sapient before they jump into the Physical Realm. In the physical Realm they need a Bond to mantain their sapience but they are still alive and sentient.

When you broke the Oaths you damage the Spren's Mind (to be more accurate you rip away a piece of his mind). What I believe you don't understand is what the Spren call "death".

It's not like our concept of Death, the Spren's Concept of Death is quite "have the Mind destroyed", The DeadBlades are not stricly dead...Simply "comatose" (it's a bit of strench but I assume you could understand better the metaphor in this way) after losing a great amount of their Minds. You could see this as the Deadblade are still vaguely capable of feeling and by the fact that a former Radiant could restore a Radiant Spren's mind simply reSwearing the Oaths (therefore returning to the Spren the missing part) as you saw with Kal and Syl at WoR's ending (yeah by the way, Kaladin killed Syl there, She didn't pop up as Deadblade just because Kal didn't progressed enough with the Oaths to allow her to materializate as Blade yet).

Returning to your actual question, the Spren has not multiple istance of himself. If he is broken, he is broken in physical and in the Cognitive.

On Nightblood's topic, Nightblood is a manmade Splinter (Spren are Splinters, or to be more precise Spren is a local term for what the Cosmere aware people will call Splinter).

Their creators managed to packed together enough Investiture and the right circumstances to craft for a bunch of Kinetic Investiture a Splinter. They indeed tried to create A shardblade with their magic, this task was inspired by Rosharan SprenBlade but has not a specific purpose rather the accademic one.

Nightblood is actually a Shardblade, this is true becase Shardblade is a term used to refer to object with some kind of caratteristics. The Roshar SprenBlades and Honorblades are just two istances of Shardblade possible. But as Nightblood showed us, it's possible to craft similar item also with other Shardworlds' magics.

About "killing Nightblood" I have to use spoiler tag as there are some specific element not related to SA:

Spoiler

So other than "destroying his mind" already pointed before. Nightblood is leaking Investiture (his cover serves both the purpose of sealing his powers and stopping the leaking.

So probably if you leave Nightblood without his cover on for enough the Blade will lose so many Investiture to be unable to sustain his own being

 

[Ciridae]

The difficult thing with Nightblood is that he's a spren that was forced into a form in the physical realm. But it's not his own PR form, it's more like a body he inhabits. The investiture was crammed into a sword, and is contained in it. I see Nightblood as something similar to a spren trapped in a gemstone, investiture inhabiting an object in the PR.

I'd really like to know if you can separate the investiture from the sword and 'free' him.