awakening Awakening Shardblades

[That1GuySpencer]

Shardblades are dead spren, so can you awaken them? You awaken things that were once alive, so I think it would be possible.

Vivenna says that she isn't a radiant, but her "shardblade" might be an awakened spren, though it's more likely an awakened piece of metal like Nightblood.

[Quantus he/him]

14 minutes ago, TheBlueTaco said:

Shardblades are dead spren, so can you awaken them? You awaken things that were once alive, so I think it would be possible.

Vivenna says that she isn't a radiant, but her "shardblade" might be an awakened spren, though it's more likely an awakened piece of metal like Nightblood.

Setting aside the wonkiness of the Shardblades deadeye appearance, Shardsblades likely too invested to be affected by Awakening since they are made out of a godmetal.  Metal in general takes a crazy high store of Breaths to be able to Awaken in the best of circumstances, and godmetals are notoriously difficult to affect with other investiture effects.  

[Dunkum he/him]

13 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Setting aside the wonkiness of the Shardblades deadeye appearance, Shardsblades likely too invested to be affected by Awakening since they are made out of a godmetal.  Metal in general takes a crazy high store of Breaths to be able to Awaken in the best of circumstances, and godmetals are notoriously difficult to affect with other investiture effects.  

you might be able to do it with the god-kings stash of breaths, but even that might not be enough.  in this case, because they are formerly sort of living, I'm not sure the difficulty of awakening metal is quite as relevant.  but that still leaves you trying to awaken one of the most massively invested things in the cosmere, which is going to be difficult.

[Quantus he/him]

2 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

you might be able to do it with the god-kings stash of breaths, but even that might not be enough.  in this case, because they are formerly sort of living, I'm not sure the difficulty of awakening metal is quite as relevant.  but that still leaves you trying to awaken one of the most massively invested things in the cosmere, which is going to be difficult.

It also probably makes a difference where you are trying it.  If Spren are only vulnerable to Hemalurgy in the Cognitive Realm, perhaps in the cognitive realm you'd just be making a spren-Lifeless (no metal barrier involved).

[Wander89 he/him]

There's a WOB for everything!

Quote

Aug. 6, 2015

Rawrzorzz

I expect just a RAFO for this, but would we see any interesting effects if someone were to Awaken a Shardblade? Because I am honestly starting to think that might be close to what Nightblood is.

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on the type of Shardblade you're trying to Awaken.

 

[Zapata]

19 minutes ago, Quantus said:

It also probably makes a difference where you are trying it.  If Spren are only vulnerable to Hemalurgy in the Cognitive Realm, perhaps in the cognitive realm you'd just be making a spren-Lifeless (no metal barrier involved).

Remember, deadeyes are only mostly dead. You can't "kill" (in the traditional sense of the word) spren by breaking the bond.

[Dunkum he/him]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

It also probably makes a difference where you are trying it.  If Spren are only vulnerable to Hemalurgy in the Cognitive Realm, perhaps in the cognitive realm you'd just be making a spren-Lifeless (no metal barrier involved).

actually, i also wonder if the command might matter more here?  could you awaken an honor-spren-blade with a command like "break your oaths" (ok thats a super weird command, and probably wouldnt work to begin with, but you get the point)?  I'd think a command that is in opposition to the spren's nature might be more likely to fail.

[Quantus he/him]

10 minutes ago, Bearer of Agonies said:

Remember, deadeyes are only mostly dead. You can't "kill" (in the traditional sense of the word) spren by breaking the bond.

True, it also likely would require spren-specific Commands and probably cost more like Lifeless used to before they discovered that super-efficient Single-Breath Command.  But accessing their flesh-analog, I could buy that the injection of supplemental Investiture that is the Breath might be enough outside intervention to heal the spren's condition.  Assuming it's possible at all, I do think it would work significantly better-easier if you did it in the Cognitive realm to bypass all the metal (and God-metal) Awakening limitations.   

Edited September 26, 2019 by Quantus

[Zapata]

11 minutes ago, Quantus said:

True, it also likely would require spren-specific Commands and probably cost more like Lifeless used to before they discovered that super-efficient Single-Breath Command.  But accessing their flesh-analog, I could buy that the injection of supplemental Investiture that is the Breath might be enough outside intervention to heal the spren's condition.  Assuming it's possible at all, I do think it would work significantly better-easier if you did it in the Cognitive realm to bypass all the metal (and God-metal) Awakening limitations.   

Breath might actually work to heal a Deadeye. According to Lifeless theory, the Breath works as an artificial soul for the body. Could Breath fit into a Deadeye's investiture and repair what the broken bond ripped off? Stormlight obviously doesn't do that.

[RShara she/her]

Here's another WoB

Quote

Questioner

If you were to try and Awaken a dead Shardblade with Awakening, like you can with a metal sword, would that be possible, or what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

That would probably not work. Not probably. That would just not work.

Orem signing (Dec. 21, 2017)

 

[Zapata]

24 minutes ago, RShara said:

Here's another WoB

 

But that's just the Physical Realm. It doesn't address Deadeyes.

[RShara she/her]

2 minutes ago, Bearer of Agonies said:

But that's just the Physical Realm. It doesn't address Deadeyes.

Eh? It says you can't Awaken a dead Shardblade, which is a deadeye.

Edited September 26, 2019 by RShara

[Zapata]

That WoB only addresses Shardblades. It doesn't address giving Breaths to a Deadeye in the Cognitive Realm. 

[RShara she/her]

1 minute ago, Bearer of Agonies said:

That WoB only addresses Shardblades. It doesn't address giving Breaths to a Deadeye in the Cognitive Realm. 

That seems to be a different subject than what the OP is asking about.

[Zapata]

1 minute ago, RShara said:

That seems to be a different subject than what the OP is asking about.

@Quantus was theorizing about if you could Awaken a Deadeye in the CR to get past the metal restriction of a Shardblade.