Sateryn

OK digging up some more Q&A quotes here. Questioner If it's possible for Nightblood to actually interact with a Shard, what would happen? Brandon Sanderson A Shard would try to stay very far away from Nightblood. Nightblood could not plausibly destroy an entire Shard but the Vessel could be in danger. So in that case, if we assume that there is no manifestation of the Vessel in the Physical realm, Odium's "Vision-space" must be in the Cognitive or Spiritual (or some undisclosed in-between) wherein the 'soul' of the Vessel is present. If Nightblood is capable of severing the Connection between the Vessel and the Shard, it would have to be at some kind of focal point for the Vessel, otherwise as per my previous post simply being in the same cosmic area as a Shard would sever the Vessel, since Shard's are basically omnipresent within at least a solar system sized area.

Huh, I appreciate the quote, and I'm not second-guessing Sanderson obviously just fan-theory-crafting, but that doesn't seem to make logical sense in connection to events as we've seen them. If the body is absorbed into the power that means the Vessel no longer has a central 'self' in a physical sense, that their consciousness would just be dispersed throughout the power and their personality effectively being a construct running within the swirling vortex of the Shard's power. So if that's the case, does Nightblood coming into 'physical' contact with any portion of a Shard's essence immediately kill the Vessel? Or perhaps at least instantly sever the Connection between the Shard and the Vessel? There's a Sanderson quote responding to if Nightblood could destroy a Shard and he gave a sort of vague answer, but from a purely logical standpoint it seems to me that Nightblood could sever a Shard on contact with just a coalesced gathering of power, and if the power of a Shard is expansive and omnipresent (or at least locallypresent) then you'd think Nightblood would destroy any Vessel within a star-system radius around it whenever it's unsheathed. I guess the only answer consistent with the quote about Fain would be that when a Shard-bearer is focusing their attention on a specific space in the Physical realm, that must be a concentration of the essence of the Vessel - otherwise, what of Odium (or more specifically Rayse) was there for Nightblood to stab? Ok so maybe it's not a pocket dimension in the Physical realm, but I'm still sporting the idea that direct contact Visions are somehow the Vessel and the subject being in some kind of proximity to each other, perhaps in the Cognitive or Spiritual. There had to be some kind of concentrated manifestation point of Rayse present in that Vision for Nightblood to be able to touch him, right?

New user here, don't really know anybody IRL who also reads these books, and late night musing got something in my head that I was so itching to discuss I just had to register to post this. This is part question, part personal wild theorizing. So I was thinking about how exactly Taravangian was able to stab Rayse, and this got me to contemplating what happens to a person's physical body while they are holding a Shard. We know that when a Vessel dies their body appears at the location where their attention was currently focused (we've seen this with Leras, Ati, and Rayse), so my wild speculation is: When one Ascends, one's physical body is stored in what is basically a pocket dimension within the Physical realm, and while Vessels can communicate with mortals in a variety of ways (like Sazed speaking to those with spikes, or Odium speaking into the minds of those he has Connection to) actually being face-to-face with a mortal involves pulling them into this pocket dimension and interacting with them using the Vessel's physical body. This would explain how Rayse was able to actually be stabbed, because otherwise it doesn't make a lot of sense - since we know Shards can make avatars, and Odium is rather paranoid and defensive and while it could be argued he's just so arrogant he's never consider a mortal a threat that seems a bit of a write-off to explain why he'd make himself vulnerable in that way, unless it's basically the only way he can be in direct contact with someone. But, a sort of pocket dimension containing their physical body would explain the Visions that Odium uses to show off to people, it also explains the Visions that Dalinar sees (if Honor created a little play inside his pocket dimension and it's kept open by the Stormfather), and it would also explain how Odium had a body for Taravangian to stab.