Batemenace

To be fair, there are LOTS of tall groups of people in the cosmere. By all accounts, non-eunuch Terrismen are proportioned normally, regardless of genetic predisposition to be tall or not. The reason Drehy was picked out by the OP to begin with was Drehy's "eunuch-like" proportions.

While i personally don't think Drehy is a terrisman, I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume a terrisman that travels away from Scadrial is operating outside of Sazed's bidding. Sazed seems more concerned about Scadrial than the cosmere at large, and he doesn't seem like one who would restrict travel off the planet if someone figured out how to do so. Although Brandon has confirmed that there is a Kandra working somewhere in the cosmere, and that we've seen it off Scadrial.

I don't have the book in front of me, but I seem to recall in Shadows of Self that Wax thought the depictions of his "ancient" ancestors as lanky to be an artistic style, and thought it odd. Wax is of Terris blood, grew up with around Terris people, and apparently has never observed Terris people being especially long-limbed.

The proportions aren't genetic in origin, they're hormonal. The proportions wouldn't be passed down, even by a eunuch made whole again who still retained his lanky body type.

We aren't sure how Naln got Nightblood to begin with. It might be that the scholars were in the middle of figuring out Nightblood's inner working when they lost him. You also have to remember that Nightblood was created with awakening because that was what was available on Nalthis, it's absolutely possible for the scholars to reverse engineer Roshar-style shardblades from Nightblood, after all, Nightblood is a reverse engineering of Rosharan shardblades to begin with. The reason Nightblood would be so essential to the creation of new shardblades is that the scholars would be able to figure out how certain design issues were overcome by people with the same "mortal" limitations. It would be like looking over someone else's homework to see how they solved a problem that has you stumped. Here's the question: Did Vasher show up on Roshar and get mugged, or did Nightblood get kidnapped by worldhoppers and delivered to the artifabrians, with Vasher in hot pursuit? I'm leaning towards the second one. I can totally see the Ghostbloods, or a similar organization stealing Nightblood, and Vasher arriving on Roshar and trying to infiltrate the academic community in an attempt to get close to Nightblood. If nothing else, Vasher is responsible for Nightblood, and for trying to curtail the damage wrought by Nightblood's misuse. And in regard to Nightblood not granting powers like other shardblades, it's possible that a nahel bond will take time, if one is able to be formed at all. Honorblades grant surgebinding, living shardblades grant powers because of their spren, but dead shardblades don't grant power. While Nightblood isn't dead per se, He's not really "living" either, given his mechanical nature, so he probably won't grant power in the same way living blades do. Naln seems to be up to date and proficient on fabriels, baring all else, I'm betting if Szeth isn't able to bond with Nightblood, he's going to be given some fabriels to facilitate using Nightblood.

Not to go necro-ing my own thread, but I just stumbled across this QUESTION If Nightblood were on Roshar would he be a Shardblade? BRANDON SANDERSON Yes, they are exactly the same thing. He is a Shardblade that is twisted and is a lot more powerful than normal. It's official, Nightblood is a Shardblade. aannnddddd it might explain a few things, and muddy the water at the same time. The artifabrians have been trying for a long while to recreate Shardplate and Shardblades. Recently, they developed Half-shards, and we're hearing rumours that they're suddenly very close to creating shardblades. This all happens at roughly the same time Nightblood, the only known Shardblade created through human craftsmanship in the cosmere shows up in Roshar, and no longer in the possession of his previous holder, who, just happens to operating under the guise of an ardent. Someone started looking under Nightblood's hood and we're starting to see the results

I think given the topic's placement in the Cosmere section, we might as well try delving into philosophies that inspired the cosmere, or at least might be related. The first that comes to mind is Plato's Cave allegory in relation to the different realms of the cosmere. Anyone want to expound on that?

I think you mean the word "wonderful".

I think it comes down to preparation and whatever force multipliers each party brings to the actual fight. You stick TLR (with his metalminds and a belly full of allomantic metals) and Vasher (with a single breath) in a cage fight, TRL would probably come out on top. You start each one on opposite ends of a populated city and work their way towards each other, I think Vasher would come out on top due to the fact he seems better at guerrilla warfare and planning.

That's what I was wondering about. Is Nightblood able to be fueled by magic that's close by, or does the investiture have to be, well, invested in someone, like stormlight in a radiant or biochromatic breath in a person.

He might be a world hopper, it certainly wouldn't be shocking if Brandon confirmed it, but I wouldn't put it past Brandon to put the occasional red herring here and there.

I wonder what would happen if Szeth swallowed infused gemstones and drew Nightblood, would Nightblood even care about the stormlight or just go straight for Szeth's spark of life? Even if Szeth can't access the stormlight, Nightblood might be able to. Biochromatic breath is much more difficult to extract from someone than stormlight, and Nightblood seemed to have no trouble siphoning off one's breath. I'm pretty sure down the road Szeth will be able to use stormlight again sometime down the line, he's a Skybreaker, he's been paired off with a spren (albeit an artificial one), and he's a main character.

My thoughts are that it would be pretty silly of Nale to give Szeth Nightblood unless Nale had prepared Szeth to be able to use Nightblood. I know that things got changed up a bit at the end of WoR with Brandon's revision, but I think Nale could have easily modified Szeth with his fabriel in some way to work with Nightblood. I also wouldn't say that Nightblood fed off the breaths of his victims, but he certainly processed them in some way, even if he didn't absorb any power from them.

On Nalthis, Nightblood was fueled by breaths. Brandon has stated that Breath and surgebinding are similar investitures, and that there is a ratio of breaths to stormlight and that it’s easy to use the two magic systems interchangeably in some situations. So, it’s pretty much set in stone that Nightblood can run off of stormlight and will be able to function pretty much as he did on Nalthis now that he’s on Roshar, though I am curious if there are going to have to be any tweaks to what he’s capable of. As a newly minted Skybreaker, Szeth should be able to feed stormlight to Nightblood just like Vasher fed Nightblood breath. Due to stormlight being easier to acquire than breaths (at least for a Radiant), I’m betting that one unit of stormlight is far less potent than one unit of breath. It’s likely that in the coming books, we’re going to see some Nightblood on Shardblade/Honorblade action, which is where I think things start to get really interesting. Nightblood was essentially made in the “image” of shardblades, though Brandon has stated that Nightblood is orders of magnitude more powerful than a shardblade. Whether Brandon was also including living shardblades or honorblades is unknown to me, but we can still get an idea that giving Szeth Nightblood was like giving an F-22 to a velociraptor, terrifying. Brandon has also stated that Nightblood is essentially a “mechanical” spren. This raises some questions about the nature of shardblades. Is Nightblood so powerful because of his unique nature, or is it simply because when he was being created someone misread with the stormlight-to-breath conversion scales and created a weapon with a much faster metabolism than shardblades were ever meant to have? Another thought I had was about Nightblood’s bonding abilities on Roshar. Somewhere I read that Brandon said shardblades will slightly alter their appearance over time in response to whoever wields them (I’m assuming he was talking about dead shardblades). Will Nightblood change in appearance as a result of being bonded to Szeth? Normally I’d think not, as I don’t think he made any changes while he was in the possession of Vasher, but it’s really hard to tell when you start involving the possibility of Nahel bonds, and spren friendly environments, and if Nightblood had to be slightly tweaked to run off stormlight instead of breaths before he was given to Szeth. My last thought was about Nightblood in combat. On Nalthis, Nightblood sucked the breaths out of his victims, and then vented them, though in a “twisted” and “fouled” form. If used on a non-Radiant human on Roshar, would he simply suck out the “spark of life”, and vent it as stormlight or something else? What about a Radiant full of stormlight? What would happen if another Radiant was nearby and sucked up the vented stormlight? I doubt it would be healthy. I also wonder how much control Radiant have over selecting what stormlight they draw in. It might be Szeth’s new strategy when attacking multiple Radiants to simply kill one, and let the rest draw in the poisoned stormlight.