Azures blade and the way it kills in Oathbringer

[anotherdoug]

In oathbringer it is specifically mentioned that azure's blade doesnt burn out eyes like a shardblade and instead turns the dead gray and colorless.

i cant find any WoB on this but i feel like its a hint to how hers is obviously a bit more fine tuned than nightblood and instead of just consuming every bit of investiture it can it is designed specifically to take breaths... also, given the extra care in its creation, if she is actually sucking something into the blade when she kills is she basically charging up a investiture charged megabuster?

only issue is that im pretty sure ive read somewhere that a drab is essentially a normal non-nalthian and breath is specific to that system... so is it just a cast off description of someone dying? a continuity error and scrapped plan?

 

 

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, anotherdoug said:

In oathbringer it is specifically mentioned that azure's blade doesnt burn out eyes like a shardblade and instead turns the dead gray and colorless.

i cant find any WoB on this but i feel like its a hint to how hers is obviously a bit more fine tuned than nightblood and instead of just consuming every bit of investiture it can it is designed specifically to take breaths... also, given the extra care in its creation, if she is actually sucking something into the blade when she kills is she basically charging up a investiture charged megabuster?

We dont know, but best guess is that the differences in behavior are from a different Awakening Command than Nightblood's "Destroy Evil."  The color drain is indicative of Awakening, the magic system from Nalthis, but other than that we dont know what she (the blade) is and/or does.  She's weaker than Nightblood per WOB, but she's also younger and she may or may not be growing in the same ways.  

1 hour ago, anotherdoug said:

only issue is that im pretty sure ive read somewhere that a drab is essentially a normal non-nalthian and breath is specific to that system... so is it just a cast off description of someone dying? a continuity error and scrapped plan?

 

 

Nope, the opposite.  Nalthians are both with more Investiture than cosmere average, and drabs have less than standard  (see WOB below).

 

 

Quote

 

Questioner

In the last panel we talked a lot about people from different planets using magic systems on other planets, one of the things I've been thinking about, we've been thinking about, talking about Breath, and people being born with Breath, is that something specific to Nalthis or do, technically, other people on other planets have a Breath as well?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question and that is a Nalthian thing. Now, everyone in the cosmere to an extent has Investiture, the Nalthian Breath is part what everyone has and then a little extra, plus the ability to share it around. So a person who gives up their Breath on Nalthis is actually going below what a normal person has. But a normal person on Nalthis has more than somebody-- So if you were for instance to pick a world like Sixth of the Dusk, where there's not a Shard in residence, and you compared them to a Nalthian, Nalthian has an Investiture advantage over them. When they've given up their Breath, they have an Investiture disadvantage.

Bystander

So we're not Drabs?

Brandon Sanderson

So we're not Drabs. That's exactly it. We're not Drabs.

JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016)

 

 

[alder24]

1 hour ago, anotherdoug said:

In oathbringer it is specifically mentioned that azure's blade doesnt burn out eyes like a shardblade and instead turns the dead gray and colorless.

i cant find any WoB on this but i feel like its a hint to how hers is obviously a bit more fine tuned than nightblood and instead of just consuming every bit of investiture it can it is designed specifically to take breaths... also, given the extra care in its creation, if she is actually sucking something into the blade when she kills is she basically charging up a investiture charged megabuster?

only issue is that im pretty sure ive read somewhere that a drab is essentially a normal non-nalthian and breath is specific to that system... so is it just a cast off description of someone dying? a continuity error and scrapped plan?

We know almost nothing about it. It's for sure a type 4 Awaken entity, like Nightblood, because it looks like it's sentient. Color change is significant - when a Shardblade cuts a limb, it turns gray, because the soul is severed. In Awakening color draining changes something in the spirit of the soul. Similar things should be happening here - something is cut off, consumed or changed in a spirit that makes the entire body gray.

Does the blade consume some of the soul's investiture? We don't know. But I think that it does that, because type 4 objets should be like Returned, and Returned needs to feed on investiture to stay alive. But you don't need to feed Returned with Breaths - you just need any investiture. That's why Vasher is on Roshar, he's feeding on Stormlight instead on Breaths. If Azure's blade consumes some amount of investiture, it is clearly very little, just enough to feed those Breaths that were used for Awakening, nothing more. It doesn't accumulate in the sword like in the case of Nightblood.

Spoiler

Questioner

One question I've been thinking about a lot, and that is the black bladed sword. Is there just one sword, or is there one for each world, that [works with?] different...like Shard powers, or is it just one sword that can work with all?

Brandon Sanderson

[Nightblood] is something special. A long time ago, some people from the Warbreaker world came to Roshar, saw Shardblades, thought, "We can do this," went home and tried to make one. And that is Nightblood. And it went horribly horribly wrong. And so they didn't make any more, except now, Azure's sword is somewhat related. But that is the origin of Nightblood. Trying to make a Shardblade out of a different magic system.

Idaho Falls signing (July 21, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

There's a sword which Azure fights [with]?

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm?

Questioner

Is it a lot like Nightblood, maybe?

Brandon Sanderson

It shares some features, but is different.

Orem signing (Dec. 21, 2017)

 

Spoiler

tallakahath

So, on Nalthis, in the Warbreaker universe, when the color's pulled out of something, is that a physical or chemical change or is that a perceptual change?

Brandon Sanderson

It is actually a physical change, but the spirit of the thing is changing, and it's filtering through to the Physical Realm.

tallakahath

So, if I do that on a carrot, I can break beta carotin? If I do that on a piece of metal, I can reduce it and charge my battery that way?

Brandon Sanderson

Potentially, yeah! Yeah, that would work, you're changing it's Spiritual nature.

DragonCon 2019 (Aug. 29, 2019)

 

Spoiler

Ilkhan2016

Breath and Stormlight are both forms of Investiture. AFAIK you can power any of the magic systems from any form of Investiture. Zahel is on Roshar, I believe, primarily due to how easy Investiture (Stormlight) is to come across.

AFAIK the form of Investiture doesn't change anything about the abilities. For example, Szeth was sucked out of Stormlight when he drew Nightblood; and Azure used Stormlight to Awaken in Shadesmar.

/u/mistborn is that right?

Brandon Sanderson

A lot of this depends on the Investiture and the magic in question. Azure was legit using Breaths, for example--ones she'd brought with her. But Szeth was able to feed Stormlight to Nightblood, much as Vasher uses Stormlight to keep himself alive.

To Awaken with Stormlight, the easiest thing to do would be to first change Stormlight into Breaths--something that Azure doesn't know how to do. (Admittedly, Hoid doesn't either, so it's not like it's a simple thing to achieve.) You could also theoretically use some magical (or mechanical) means to power your Awakening with a different form of Investiture.

Extesian

This is very interesting. Is it possible then in the Cosmere for the 'intent' (spin or however described) of Investiture to be changed? And I mean within reasonable limits (not the powers of six shards or any of that). Can a Shard effectively grow in power in a place (e.g. toward an avatar) through another Shard's Investiture being changed (not just corrupted)? Or is it just making one type ('intent' - you should canonize a word for this :D) of Investiture mimic the properties of another?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of the ways of accomplishing what you're talking about would involve either 1) fooling/overwriting your spiritual makeup somehow. (This is what Hemalurgy does, for example.) 2) Refining the power somehow into a more pure form.

But there are a lot of variables. The way magic from Nalthis works, for example, the system is just looking for any available Investiture to power itself--and so basically anything will do, regardless of the source. This includes consuming your own soul, in some cases...

You'll see terminology coming along eventually that facilitates talking about all of this. I'm not yet decided on some of it.

Celestial_Blu3

How many Breaths does [Azure] have by her final appearance in OB?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO, I'm afraid.

General Reddit 2019 (April 25, 2019)

 

Spoiler

ZenBossanova (paraphrased)

Can Vasher use Stormlight to Awaken things?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, all it does is keep him alive. But he has tried and has not figured out how to Awaken things.

Firefight Phoenix signing (Jan. 21, 2015)

 

[Marabout]

My theory is that Nightblood was made from a thousand “normal” breaths (known) whereas Azure’s blade was made using a single Divine breath (Returned breath which would be roughly equivalent to 2000 breaths).

Because of this, Nightblood is schizophrenic because it has a thousand human-based breaths but Azure’s blade has a more “stable” sentience as it is coming directly from a Splinter of Endowment.

I think it is also why Nightblood would be almost impossible to replicate as the mix of breaths would be different with every attempt and as far as we know each attempt could give a completely different result (like mixing a cocktail).

The color draining effect I always assumed was from Azure’s sword using Awakening when it strikes anything although we don’t know what Command it uses.

Nightblood on the other hand was commanded to Destroy and I think that that manifested as a type of Soulcasting or maybe Division (which would make sense as it’s now a Skybreaker blade).

 

[The Stormfather He/Him]

i think that azure's blade could either be a corrupted spren shardblade, like glys, who was there during the recreance and died, or azure trying to create nightblood and maybe using "steal, or take" as a command.

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

We also know that color in and of itself is important in the Cosmere. It's a component in Awakening, and Brandon has said at some point that in the end it's color that differentiates polestones on Roshar.

So perhaps the fact that those killed by her Shardblade loose color is playing on that, somehow.