Is Tien talking about color, or Color? Theory time

[Honorspring]

As I was reading Rhythm of War, Kaladin's vision of Tien caught my eye and one particular phrase raised a huge question for me. When Tien says (paraphrasing here, will add actual quote later today) "look at them Kal. Look at their colors" in reference to his Connections to others, it almost seems like a huge hint as to the significance of color in the Cosmere. And because Kaladin later found the wooden horse that was handed to him in the vision, it seems that it was a genuine Connection he had with Tien from the Beyond. Does anyone else get the feeling that this is vastly important? Or that it might be worth getting a WoB on? Also, side note to make this post super long, we have a WoB confirming that color is important in the Mistborn series and we know that Honors color is blue and Honor is the force of cohesion, that which binds and Connects things to each other. I'm assuming this is why the lines that show allomancers sources of metal, or their Connection to them, are blue. The only other reference to color in Mistborn that I know of is that Ruin is black and Preservation is white. Is it possible that Ruin was directly involved in the creation of nightblood which is why nightblood turned black upon its creation? It's command is "destroy evil" and destruction is exactly ruin

[Lunu’anaki]

These are all interesting points. The color thing with the blue lines and Honor is definitely worth a WoB, you might get Brandon to tell us something we don't know

[Ookla the Windwhisperer]

I’m pretty sure nightblood was made by ruin’s investiture.

Quote

Walin

Does Nightblood contain any of Ruin's Investiture? Like, not atium, but...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, technically; and I'm not wiggling around that, because technically, location in the Cosmere and who belongs to what gets really weird, right? Because Ruin's Investiture is everywhere--but I'm not talking that way. I'm talking the way you actually mean it. 

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

 

[Truthwatcher Artifabrian]

19 hours ago, Honorspring said:

Also, side note to make this post super long, we have a WoB confirming that color is important in the Mistborn series and we know that Honors color is blue and Honor is the force of cohesion, that which binds and Connects things to each other. I'm assuming this is why the lines that show allomancers sources of metal, or their Connection to them, are blue.

This is a GENIUS insight!

[Shob the Voidbringer]

my theory on nightbloods color is that when nightblood was given a command, due to it's sentience it now was a intent, and so it transformed the breaths into ruins investure.

so i don't think that a shard has to directly tamper with investure to provide that color, but if something using that investure has that intent of something directly relating to the shard, then it will automatically adopt those colors and change the investure

[Lunu’anaki]

14 hours ago, Shob the Voidbringer said:

so i don't think that a shard has to directly tamper with investure to provide that color, but if something using that investure has that intent of something directly relating to the shard, then it will automatically adopt those colors and change the investure

That makes a lot of sense and I like where your head's at. I still think the WoB is even more specifically pointing us to Scadrial with Nightblood's creation though.

[Honorspring]

"This is wrong," Kaladin said. "I'm supposed to hold you. Protect you."

"And you did. As I helped you." He pulled Kaladin tight. "Why do we fight, Kal? Why do we keep going?"

"I don't know," Kaladin whispered. "I've forgotten."

"It's so we can be with each other."

"They all die, Tien. Everyone dies."

"So they do, don't they?"

"That means it doesn't matter," Kaladin said. "None of it matters."

"See, that's the wrong way of looking at it." Tien held him tighter. "Since we all go to the same place in the end, the moment we spent with each other are the only things that do matter. The times we helped each other."

Kaladin trembled.

"Look at it Kal," Tien said softly. "See the colors. If you think letting Teft die is a failure - but all the times you supported him or meaningless - then no wonder it always hurts. Instead, if you think of how lucky you both were to be able to help each other when you were together, well, it looks a lot nicer, doesn't it?"

[Honorspring]

On 1/5/2021 at 11:32 AM, Honorspring said:

"look at them Kal. Look at their colors" in reference to his Connections to others, it almost seems like a huge hint as to the significance of color in the Cosmere.

My thought is that everything is Connected. Not everything directly, but like, in Shadesmar, objects/the cognitive aspect of objects manifests as a glass sphere and every person as a light. So in my mind, every object and person exists as an individual point in the Spiritual realm and throughout time, people and objects form Connections. So there's trillions upon trillions of points with a bunch of different lines Connecting to various other points and each of those Connections is colored. Like if you were friends with someone the line Connecting you would be lets say green (for Cultivation), and the lines between Dalinar and The Rift would be black (for Ruin). And since everything would have multiple Connections, everything IS Connected in a roundabout sort of way. Idk, just my visualization of the Spiritual realm

[IndigoAjah]

On 05/01/2021 at 5:32 PM, Honorspring said:

As I was reading Rhythm of War, Kaladin's vision of Tien caught my eye and one particular phrase raised a huge question for me. When Tien says (paraphrasing here, will add actual quote later today) "look at them Kal. Look at their colors" in reference to his Connections to others, it almost seems like a huge hint as to the significance of color in the Cosmere. And because Kaladin later found the wooden horse that was handed to him in the vision, it seems that it was a genuine Connection he had with Tien from the Beyond. Does anyone else get the feeling that this is vastly important? Or that it might be worth getting a WoB on? Also, side note to make this post super long, we have a WoB confirming that color is important in the Mistborn series and we know that Honors color is blue and Honor is the force of cohesion, that which binds and Connects things to each other. I'm assuming this is why the lines that show allomancers sources of metal, or their Connection to them, are blue. The only other reference to color in Mistborn that I know of is that Ruin is black and Preservation is white. Is it possible that Ruin was directly involved in the creation of nightblood which is why nightblood turned black upon its creation? It's command is "destroy evil" and destruction is exactly ruin

I agree that Colour (what is Colour but Light like Stormlight?) and Music/Tone have clear Cosmeric importance, as does Metal. 

 

I wonder if Language/patterns do too, allá Sel, and Glyphs actually have power in themselves? I think every Cosmeric world gives us a glance at a fragment of whole picture of magic as well as its own unique systems, and we are always seeing new constants. 

 

As for Tien, I don't know but I think it's possible as we know he had a Spren attracted to him.

 

As for NB, we've had some hints that Ruin is vaguely involved, but I think NB borrows from all Investiture, made crossing several systems by Vasher et Al., and that he is his own unique thing that Shards can't predict. I think he is connected to black more as a Black Hole, the opposite of Light in general and thus the embodiment of anti-Investiture than as the colour Black connected to Ruin.

 

[Honorspring]

15 hours ago, IndigoAjah said:

As for Tien, I don't know but I think it's possible as we know he had a Spren attracted to him.

 

As for NB, we've had some hints that Ruin is vaguely involved, but I think NB borrows from all Investiture, made crossing several systems by Vasher et Al., and that he is his own unique thing that Shards can't predict. I think he is connected to black more as a Black Hole, the opposite of Light in general and thus the embodiment of anti-Investiture than as the colour Black connected to Ruin.

 

With Tien, I think the important thing here isn't that he was Radiant, or anything about his life at all, but about him having knowledge from being in the Beyond for years. Dalinar "united them" so I feel like it was the actual soul of Tien, not just a memory or vision like Dalinar has in highstorms

 

We have WoBs on Nighblood kind of explaining that he eats the investiture of everything he touches, and that the black smoke that bleeds from his blade is excess investiture. He has eaten so much that its like trying to hold a gallon of water in a solo cup, it just pours out of him. So he isn't destroying the investiture, he seems to be converting it (to what I think is investiture keyed to the intent of Ruin, or his rhythm or whatever). We know from RoW that anti investiture cancels out with regular investiture, or really only the investiture that it was intentionally keyed to be opposite of. Its highly destructive in a way that Nightblood is not. While the sword severs all connections in all three realms, anti light blows up so I'm kinda convinced he isn't anti so much as pure destructive force, per his command

[Part of the One]

If the smoke that bleeds off of NB is converted Ruin investiture (cool idea btw) that opens up some other interesting possibilities. Would there be a way to freeze/coalesce that investiture into Atium? 

And speaking anti investiture, if you had a source of anti-Ruin, you could destroy whoever was holding NB in the physical realm by bring it close and letting them mix. In a gem? The way it eats/bleeds the investiture it would be like setting off a nuke probably.

[Halyo_Alex]

11 hours ago, Part of the One said:

If the smoke that bleeds off of NB is converted Ruin investiture (cool idea btw) that opens up some other interesting possibilities. Would there be a way to freeze/coalesce that investiture into Atium? 

If that's the case doesn't that make the black smoke literally just Ruin's Mist? Can you put it in a gemstone and get Mistlight?

11 hours ago, Part of the One said:

And speaking anti investiture, if you had a source of anti-Ruin, you could destroy whoever was holding NB in the physical realm by bring it close and letting them mix. In a gem? The way it eats/bleeds the investiture it would be like setting off a nuke probably.

"anti-ruin" just sounds kinda funny to me, but yeah, I wonder if Nightblood attempted to feed on that if he would actually become hungrier.

[IndigoAjah]

14 hours ago, Honorspring said:

With Tien, I think the important thing here isn't that he was Radiant, or anything about his life at all, but about him having knowledge from being in the Beyond for years. Dalinar "united them" so I feel like it was the actual soul of Tien, not just a memory or vision like Dalinar has in highstorms

 

We have WoBs on Nighblood kind of explaining that he eats the investiture of everything he touches, and that the black smoke that bleeds from his blade is excess investiture. He has eaten so much that its like trying to hold a gallon of water in a solo cup, it just pours out of him. So he isn't destroying the investiture, he seems to be converting it (to what I think is investiture keyed to the intent of Ruin, or his rhythm or whatever). We know from RoW that anti investiture cancels out with regular investiture, or really only the investiture that it was intentionally keyed to be opposite of. Its highly destructive in a way that Nightblood is not. While the sword severs all connections in all three realms, anti light blows up so I'm kinda convinced he isn't anti so much as pure destructive force, per his command

Maybe anti-Investiture isn't the right concept, but more like an Investiture Black Hole.

 

I just think there's no evidence of Nightblood emitting any Investiture, rather nullifying and absorbing it all, and Black has a deeper meaning that just a colour of light attached to one Shardic Intent. 

 

Though you could argue the Intent of "Destroy Evil" relies on Ruin to work.

 

I think obsessing too much over the colour, though we know Colour to be important, is dangerous as Stormlight already has colour-coding attached with the 10 gemstones and Heralds and colours of 10 Radiant Orders, then you add in colours for each Shard and finding 16 truly distinct colours is a tricky one, especially when the implication of blending Lights would be that Adonalsiumlight is feasible and, by every actual rule of Light, that should be White not Preservationlight and its total absence Black rather than one of its components. 

 

Any object that sucks in all Investiture from all sources, which from what we've seen of Nightblood in several worlds and several Shardsources, appears to be the case whatever else he might be, would appear Black. Drawing conclusions past that is tricky. It may be something different happens with NB and Investiture but there's no clear reason, imo, to believe so right now and thus Occam's Razor suggests NB is Black and associated with Black because of that.

Edited January 11, 2021 by IndigoAjah

[Honorspring]

53 minutes ago, IndigoAjah said:

Maybe anti-Investiture isn't the right concept, but more like an Investiture Black Hole.

 

I just think there's no evidence of Nightblood emitting any Investiture, rather nullifying and absorbing it all, and Black has a deeper meaning that just a colour of light attached to one Shardic Intent.  

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/452/#e14511

This is the wob I mentioned, explaining that nightblood leaks investiture because he can't hold that which he has consumed.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e10902

And this is a wob confirming that Nightblood has a direct relation to Ruin. 

[Patrickb]

I want to ask next time there's an opportunity if, following the black hole analogy, there's something like the black hole information paradox going on with what Nightblood absorbs. Given his comment in the WoB there about Nightblood doing something weird to it, I'd imagine the black smoke is just raw investiture without a link to a given shard.

Edited January 18, 2021 by Patrickb
missed the wob I linked being linked already in the post immediately above mine

[The First Gem]

On 1/5/2021 at 10:32 AM, Honorspring said:

As I was reading Rhythm of War, Kaladin's vision of Tien caught my eye and one particular phrase raised a huge question for me. When Tien says (paraphrasing here, will add actual quote later today) "look at them Kal. Look at their colors" in reference to his Connections to others, it almost seems like a huge hint as to the significance of color in the Cosmere. And because Kaladin later found the wooden horse that was handed to him in the vision, it seems that it was a genuine Connection he had with Tien from the Beyond. Does anyone else get the feeling that this is vastly important? Or that it might be worth getting a WoB on? Also, side note to make this post super long, we have a WoB confirming that color is important in the Mistborn series and we know that Honors color is blue and Honor is the force of cohesion, that which binds and Connects things to each other. I'm assuming this is why the lines that show allomancers sources of metal, or their Connection to them, are blue. The only other reference to color in Mistborn that I know of is that Ruin is black and Preservation is white. Is it possible that Ruin was directly involved in the creation of nightblood which is why nightblood turned black upon its creation? It's command is "destroy evil" and destruction is exactly ruin

IK this is old but " Is it possible that Ruin was directly involved in the creation of nightblood which is why nightblood turned black upon its creation? It's command is "destroy evil" and destruction is exactly ruin" Yes it was confirmed that Nightblood has Ruins investitiure and is connected to him. Although we dont know if he was directly involved or if the command "Destroy Evil" Connected him to ruin.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

2 hours ago, Hoids Wit said:

IK this is old but " Is it possible that Ruin was directly involved in the creation of nightblood which is why nightblood turned black upon its creation? It's command is "destroy evil" and destruction is exactly ruin" Yes it was confirmed that Nightblood has Ruins investitiure and is connected to him. Although we dont know if he was directly involved or if the command "Destroy Evil" Connected him to ruin.

Do we know if hemalurgy was at all involved in creating Nightblood as well?  There is some funky stuff happening with that sword.  Certainly I would like to see some of Vivenas conversations with her awakened blade as well to see how the 2 differ and it would be great to learn the command used to create that one as it seems more in line with what Shashara had in mind when wanting to awaken a blade.  (I think it is safe to say that Nightblood was not the intended end point for shardblade replication).   

[The First Gem]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Do we know if hemalurgy was at all involved in creating Nightblood as well?  There is some funky stuff happening with that sword.  Certainly I would like to see some of Vivenas conversations with her awakened blade as well to see how the 2 differ and it would be great to learn the command used to create that one as it seems more in line with what Shashara had in mind when wanting to awaken a blade.  (I think it is safe to say that Nightblood was not the intended end point for shardblade replication).   

Hmm idk if Hemalurgy was involved. I don’t think that it exhibits behavior on a spike but on one note spikes can be awakened… another the spike used would probably be aluminum because it steals powers which might allud to investiture. I don’t think aluminum can be awakened though…

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

3 minutes ago, Hoids Wit said:

Hmm idk if Hemalurgy was involved. I don’t think that it exhibits behavior on a spike but on one note spikes can be awakened… another the spike used would probably be aluminum because it steals powers which might allud to investiture. I don’t think aluminum can be awakened though…

This train of thought could be 100% my brain being wrong... so feel free to correct me.  

Was Shashara killed with Nightblood?  Was she one of if not the first to be killed by Nightblood?  Could Nightblood have been awakened and then used and directed via Ruins intent (as we saw with spook) and that cramped just that last bit of investiture into Nightblood creating what we see today.  

[Returned]

7 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Was Shashara killed with Nightblood?  Was she one of if not the first to be killed by Nightblood?  Could Nightblood have been awakened and then used and directed via Ruins intent (as we saw with spook) and that cramped just that last bit of investiture into Nightblood creating what we see today.  

Shashara was killed by Nightblood (wielded by Vasher), per an annotation in Warbreaker (I don't recall an in-text statement that this is the case):

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Lightsong Sees the Painting of the Red Battle

[...]

The person Lightsong sees in the abstract painting is Shashara, Denth's sister, one of the Five Scholars and a Returned also known as Glorysinger by the Cult of the Returned. She is seen here in Lightsong's vision as she's drawing Nightblood at the battle of Twilight Falls. It's the only time the sword was drawn in battle, and Vasher was horrified by the result.

It's because of her insistence on using the sword in battle, and on giving away the secret to creating more, that Vasher and she fought. He ended up killing her with Nightblood, which they'd created together during the days they were in love—he married her a short time before their falling out. That marriage ended with him slaying his own wife to keep her from creating more abominations like Nightblood and loosing them upon the world.

[...]

Warbreaker Annotations (Nov. 16, 2010)

But this same annotation indicates that Nightblood had been used in the battle prior to Shashara's death, by Shashara herself, so she almost certainly can't be the first one killed with/by him. From what we've seen of Nightblood in action, and given Shashara's knowledge of him and commitment to the battle, whether or not others were killed with his blade or by his influence/Investiture is not clear and may not matter. But given how far-reaching and devastating the Manywar was it doesn't seem like a wild idea to think that Ruin's influence was involved. Even the war's ending left a broken set of nations, and Nightblood's creation was important to the destruction of the Five Scholars' organized cooperation and their research into Awakening, the development of Nalthis as a whole in its expansion of their own Shard's magics and nature. And at least some Nalthians had worldhopped (they were trying to imitate Shardblades with Nightblood, after all), so it's not unreasonable to think that someone picked up a Hemalurgic spike along the way, or learned of them and then tried to work on a sword whose blade was such a spike...

But even so I'm not sold that this is the avenue Ruin's power would have taken to end up in Nightblood. It's a bit... direct for a being like Ati/Ruin, and would be a pretty serious move on Endowment's turf while Ruin had been both restrictively Invested elsewhere and imprisoned for some time (probably; the timeline is a bit fuzzy). An Invested object, like a Hemalurgic spike, is harder to affect with other Investiture and so would be a curious choice for an object to Awaken with an experimental process (though we don't know anything about Shashara and Vasher's research here, so maybe that's a useful, or even necessary, element!). I'd wager that, rather than being directly (or meaningfully) guided by Ruin or Ruin's/Ati's Intent, the way that Nightblood works in attacking someone's spiritweb uses or requires Ruin's power in the same way that making a Hemalurgic spike does to tear off a piece of someone's spiritweb. But who really knows?

Edited October 25, 2022 by Returned

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

7 hours ago, Returned said:

Shashara was killed by Nightblood (wielded by Vasher), per an annotation in Warbreaker (I don't recall an in-text statement that this is the case):

But this same annotation indicates that Nightblood had been used in the battle prior to Shashara's death, by Shashara herself, so she almost certainly can't be the first one killed with/by him. From what we've seen of Nightblood in action, and given Shashara's knowledge of him and commitment to the battle, whether or not others were killed with his blade or by his influence/Investiture is not clear and may not matter. But given how far-reaching and devastating the Manywar was it doesn't seem like a wild idea to think that Ruin's influence was involved. Even the war's ending left a broken set of nations, and Nightblood's creation was important to the destruction of the Five Scholars' organized cooperation and their research into Awakening, the development of Nalthis as a whole in its expansion of their own Shard's magics and nature. And at least some Nalthians had worldhopped (they were trying to imitate Shardblades with Nightblood, after all), so it's not unreasonable to think that someone picked up a Hemalurgic spike along the way, or learned of them and then tried to work on a sword whose blade was such a spike...

But even so I'm not sold that this is the avenue Ruin's power would have taken to end up in Nightblood. It's a bit... direct for a being like Ati/Ruin, and would be a pretty serious move on Endowment's turf while Ruin had been both restrictively Invested elsewhere and imprisoned for some time (probably; the timeline is a bit fuzzy). An Invested object, like a Hemalurgic spike, is harder to affect with other Investiture and so would be a curious choice for an object to Awaken with an experimental process (though we don't know anything about Shashara and Vasher's research here, so maybe that's a useful, or even necessary, element!). I'd wager that, rather than being directly (or meaningfully) guided by Ruin or Ruin's/Ati's Intent, the way that Nightblood works in attacking someone's spiritweb uses or requires Ruin's power in the same way that making a Hemalurgic spike does to tear off a piece of someone's spiritweb. But who really knows?

Perhaps I am underestimating each breath when I say this but is 1000 breaths enough to cause such a change in an uninvested sword?  

Maybe I missed this as well but I don't think we know how many breaths it took to create Vivennas sword.  Perhaps the reason Nightblood is so heavily invested is that he was forged out of an already invested spike and then they stuffed 1000 breaths into him on top of that.  

How terrifying is it to think that if it is only 1000 breaths and nothing more than "Destroy evil" there could easily be 50 nightbloods worth of breaths in a single person at anytime on Nalthis.  

If Vivennas sword were less breaths or the same with a different command that allows it to not feed on investiture then we could see a day where a group of Kalads phantoms are running around weilding shards while being magic resistant stone golems.... what's more terrifying than a stone golem that is packed full of investiture???  A heavily invested stone golem that is holding a shardblade.  Basically shardplate and blade in drone form with no driving human full of squishy bits behind it.  And it would only take a generation or two to make thousands and thousands of these shardbearer golems.  Sure they don't have surges or the ability to use magic but what an army!  Line them up with a few awakeners wearing aluminum chainmail and you could be facing a horde of zombies (creat lifeless from the corpses left on the battlefield).  Awakening has such potential that hasn't been touched it is scary to think of the force that Nalthis could potentially create and bring forward in a conflict.   

 

[Returned]

2 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Perhaps I am underestimating each breath when I say this but is 1000 breaths enough to cause such a change in an uninvested sword?  

I think it's impossible for us to say, if only because we don't know the visualization of the Command Shashara used. Better Commands with better visualizations substantially reduce the number of Breaths needed to Awaken something compared with less precise ones, so knowing that it took 1000 Breaths to Awaken Nightblood doesn't give us a lot of guidance. In any case I would presume it takes more Breaths, rather than fewer, to Awaken something that is otherwise Invested, so if Nightblood was a Hemalurgic spike (or something along those lines) then the 1000 Breath piece is even more impressive. That's just the trend we've seen with interacting magics.

2 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Maybe I missed this as well but I don't think we know how many breaths it took to create Vivennas sword.  Perhaps the reason Nightblood is so heavily invested is that he was forged out of an already invested spike and then they stuffed 1000 breaths into him on top of that.  

How terrifying is it to think that if it is only 1000 breaths and nothing more than "Destroy evil" there could easily be 50 nightbloods worth of breaths in a single person at anytime on Nalthis.

We don't know much of anything about Vivenna's sword, which is very frustrating to me! We don't know how many Breaths it took to Awaken, nor the Command used to do so. That it drains color, rather than Investiture, has to matter in a big way, but we don't even know much about the significance of color being what fuels Awakening! I think that it's probably safe to say that Vivenna's sword was created through a different method than Nightblood was, though where the methods differ is obviously all guesswork too. In any case, Vasher isn't/wouldn't be thrilled about Vivenna's sword (per WoB, and it's not yet decided if he's canonically aware of it at this point in the series).

But I think that people are too focused on the magical side of creating Nightblood. We know that there are lots of other features that matter to Awakening, like the form of the object, its composition, the inclusion of things like ichor-alcohol, and so on. I don't think that Nightblood's most dramatic features (massive destruction all around, killing anything with just one nick, encouraging evil feelings and actions) are the only reasons Vasher is so opposed to making more. Making something along the lines of Nightblood, using Shashara's method, raises other concerns beyond wanton destruction even if it's no more generally destructive than Vivenna's sword.

For what it's worth, I think that Nightblood's blade is made of an atium alloy. That's why it has the general Investiture that it does, why it "steals" Investiture, why it attacks the spirit rather than the body, why its high degree of Investiture wouldn't inhibit its Awakening, and why it's so uncontrollably destructive.

[The First Gem]

22 minutes ago, Returned said: 

For what it's worth, I think that Nightblood's blade is made of an atium alloy. That's why it has the general Investiture that it does, why it "steals" Investiture, why it attacks the spirit rather than the body, why its high degree of Investiture wouldn't inhibit its Awakening, and why it's so uncontrollably destructive.

A interesting theory. Atium spikes steal any power but it would also need to be refined very much. What would the other metal be? And do we know if Shashara even knew about scadrial and Atium? 

[Returned]

32 minutes ago, Hoids Wit said:

A interesting theory. Atium spikes steal any power but it would also need to be refined very much. What would the other metal be? And do we know if Shashara even knew about scadrial and Atium?

No idea! We don't know if Shashara knew about Scadrial and atium at all, though it's at least possible that she did. She could also have gotten the atium alloy from a different worldhopper and studied it herself, determining it to be suitable for her purposes. She was an immortal, highly respected scholar and knew enough about Awakening to be aware of the importance of lots of precise details. In trying to Awaken something that was never alive and could not take on a more human form the material might have been very, very important.

We know a few things that let us wiggle around some of the unknown details. Multiple alloys of atium exist and are meaningful with regard to Cosmeric properties. What we call "atium" on Scadrial is also an alloy (very slightly) in the first place, with implications we don't yet have a good grasp of. The proportion of one element of an alloy can be very small and still important in the end result, so it's possible that a very small amount of atium would have been enough. We know that godmetals can be alloyed with other metals to produce all kinds of magically relevant things, especially those on Scadrial. These are things like new metals with new properties in all of the Metallic Arts. And we know that, unlike other highly Invested objects (especially metals, like a fully-charged metalmind or a godmetal like a spren's Shardblade), atium can be affected pretty easily by something as simple as a weak steelpush despite being (largely) a godmetal. And atium's properties in Hemalurgy may not be relevant to its properties in Awakening (unless the blade was already a Hemalurgically-charged spike, which I think is less likely than just being the metal itself).

And, finally, "Ruin's Investiture" is a pretty vague phrase, but analogous ones suggest that atium is perhaps the only fit for it (at the time that Nightblood was created, at least). Preservation's Investiture manifested as lerasium, mists, and the pool at the Well of Ascension. Ruin's Investiture was only manifested as atium, as far as we know.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Returned

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

16 minutes ago, Returned said:

No idea! We don't know if Shashara knew about Scadrial and atium at all, though it's at least possible that she did. She could also have gotten the atium alloy from a different worldhopper and studied it herself, determining it to be suitable for her purposes. She was an immortal, highly respected scholar and knew enough about Awakening to be aware of the importance of lots of precise details. In trying to Awaken something that was never alive and could not take on a more human form the material might have been very, very important.

We know a few things that let us wiggle around some of the unknown details. Multiple alloys of atium exist and are meaningful with regard to Cosmeric properties. What we call "atium" on Scadrial is also an alloy (very slightly) in the first place, with implications we don't yet have a good grasp of. The proportion of one element of an alloy can be very small and still important in the end result, so it's possible that a very small amount of atium would have been enough. We know that godmetals can be alloyed with other metals to produce all kinds of magically relevant things, especially those on Scadrial. These are things like new metals with new properties in all of the Metallic Arts. And we know that, unlike other highly Invested objects (especially metals, like a fully-charged metalmind or a godmetal like a spren's Shardblade), atium can be affected pretty easily by something as simple as a weak steelpush despite being (largely) a godmetal. And atium's properties in Hemalurgy may not be relevant to its properties in Awakening (unless the blade was already a Hemalurgically-charged spike, which I think is less likely than just being the metal itself).

And, finally, "Ruin's Investiture" is a pretty vague phrase, but analogous ones suggest that atium is perhaps the only fit for it (when Nightblood was created, at least). Preservation's Investiture manifested as lerasium, mists, and the pool at the Well of Ascension. Ruin's Investiture was only manifested as atium, as far as we know.

I really like all of this.  It rings more plausible in my ears that some atium used in Nightbloods original forging is more likely than packing a spike full of breaths.  As far breath count goes those were all great points and definately just leave more questions than answers.  

Awakening is frustrating.  Colors are frustrating.  We need more Warbreaker books in the cosmere!  Especially since we have so many WoB explaining how color specifically is an important and intentional choice in gems and metal and even hair of other cosmere worlds.