Nightblood Can Speak to Insane People Easier

[Kidpen]

This is a very short theory I wanted to put out there when I thought of it. There is a scene in Warbreaker where Nightblood is at the bottom of the ocean and is only brought up by communicating with a fisherman with a net. It is made very clear that this fisherman is slightly unhinged, as he talks about how the ocean sometimes talks to him and tells him where to fish. We also see in Secret History (If I remember correctly) that Kelsier with Preservation's power could only influence and speak to people who were at least a little insane. I don't remember where I saw this, but I think that was because it means they have cracks in their soul which allows him to just barely get through. We don't know if their is a limit to how close Nightblood has to be to speak to someone, but we can assume that it has some kind of limit, considering how often it might be useful to talk to someone miles away. My theory is that when someone is insane, it allows Nightblood to speak to them from farther away. I don't know what this would imply, but it might show him making a Connection to insane people easier, assuming that's how he does his telepathy. I fully expect this theory to be torn apart, so please feel free!

[Weltall]

Welcome to the Shard!

Brandon has confirmed that Nightblood does have an easier time communicating with the insane. It's in the annotations.

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I love having random little viewpoints like these in books. I don’t do them often, usually just once or twice a book. But I was excited to write this one, as Chaps has a very interesting way of thinking. Dance, dance, dance. I didn’t plan him into the book specifically; I simply wrote this scene as it arrived and I knew someone had to fetch Nightblood. I’m always pleased when a little glimpse like this gives us such a distinctive feel and flavor for a character, though.

Nightblood is better at communicating with people who are mentally unhinged. He can influence them more easily. Really, Denth, you should have known to toss Nightblood someplace far deeper than the shallow bay.

Some form of Connection-manipulation seems like a good culprit for the underlying telepathy mechanism, given that Brandon has talked about Nightblood forming a connection with people who he's fed on and it sounds a bit like what we know of Connection's application in feruchemy.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Weltall

[Yata]

Yeah Insane people are more exposed (or to be more precise, their soul is more exposed) to outside influences.

[Numenorean]

This seems to be a recurring theme with investiture tending to more easily influence/be channeled by people who have been through traumatic events or who are "unhinged." I'd guess it has something to do with damage to the spiritweb, as we know that trauma or mental brokenness creates cracks in the spiritweb that create room for a nahel bond to form. Hemalurgic spikes warp the spiritweb and allow scadrial's shards to more easily influence people similarly to the mentally unhinged. Allomancers must "snap" due to traumatic events, etc. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the same was true of nightblood, a very invested object.

[Wandering Investor]

I would like to propose another interpretation on the WoB, which is that Nightblood is better able to communicate with/influence them, as in they'll pay more heed to him, not that he can reach out to them any easier. In other words, the effort to reach them is the same, but once spoken to they are more easily influenced to to weaker minds. Not saying that interpretation is correct, that's just what came to mind when I read the annotations, without a pov from Nightblood it is hard to say any more.

That said, Secret History showed that people with cracked souls, insane or otherwise, can hear things from the cognitive realm. Depending on how Nightbloods telepathy works, cognitive being my guess, it would be sense that NB would have an easier time making initial contact.

As I'm typing, it occurs to me that I don't remember any instance where Nightblood was able to communicate with a person unless they had touched him first, the sole exception being the possibly insane fisher.

[Calderis]

3 hours ago, Wandering Investor said:

As I'm typing, it occurs to me that I don't remember any instance where Nightblood was able to communicate with a person unless they had touched him first, the sole exception being the possibly insane fisher.

As far as I'm aware, outside of the circumstances of a mentally unhinged person, he can't. 

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Argent (paraphrased)

How is it that Nightblood, who is merely a near-sentient awakened object, was able to read minds, something a Shard like Ruin was unable to do?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It requires bonding (with the person whose mind is to be read) to read minds.

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I know that that WoB is speaking in relation to him hearing the thoughts of others, but the manner in which Nightblood speaks is telepathic... Which is basically just forcing someone else to read your thoughts.