Can Plate and/or Shardblades be destroyed?

[Mason Wheeler]

In Dalinar's vision of the Day of Recreance, he saw hundreds of Shardbearers abandoning their Plate and Blades, and that was only a fraction of the sum total of the Knights Radiant.  He estimates that there are probably not even 100 known shard sets on Roshar.  That means that the rest of them are either hidden, lost... or destroyed.

Has anyone asked this before?  Is it possible to destroy or "break" a Shardblade or suit of Shardplate so that it no longer functions as such and can't be repaired/restored/regenerated/etc?

[galendo]

Hidden or lost I can get behind, but destruction can't account for all the missing blades, because

1) There isn't any in-text mention of blades being breakable or vulnerable to decay.  If something like nine-tenths of the blades had been destroyed, someone would have noticed.  A lot of someones, most likely.  Shardbearers would have been aware of the danger, and we as readers would have seen that awareness reflected in the characters' thoughts.

2) Blades and Plate are worth a fortune, and people don't generally go around destroying fortunes.  Even if they could be destroyed, we'd still need someone to want to destroy them.  And given how carefully these things are looked after by their owners, getting access to them in order to destroy them isn't really something that could happen secretly.

I suppose it's not impossible that someone like Nalan both knows a way to destroy Blades and has the desire to do so for some reason, but short of that, it seems rather unlikely.  Also, other than Elhokar, we haven't seen any evidence of Shardbearers particularly fearing assassination for their Shards, so even Nalan can't be actively killing Shardbearers and taking/destroying their Shards, except perhaps at a very, very slow rate.  When one looks at the turmoil caused by the Assassin in White, it seems impossible to suppose that anyone could have been eliminating Shardbearers in anything like an organized fashion without pretty much everyone being aware of it.

Now Plate, on the other hand...that I could see being destroy-able.  To regrow a set of Plate, you need a piece of the original.  If all the original pieces were broken, you wouldn't have anything to regrow it from, and so the Plate would be no more.  But again, this isn't ever something any of the characters worry about.  Who would destroy a set of Plate?  They might worry about having it stolen in battle, but the chance of losing every single last piece is just so small that it essentially never happens.

If anything, I'd think that one or more of the secret societies must be stockpiling the Shards.  We know Heleran got his Blade and Plate from somewhere, and we know the Ghostbloods had an extra soulcaster to lend to Shallan's father, so it seems pretty likely that they're behind the missing Shards somehow.  I suppose in theory they could be destroying the Shards rather than stockpiling them, but...Heleran did get his Shards from somewhere.  The Skybreakers' big ol' stockpile of Blade and Plate, I'm guessing.

[Eki]

I recently asked pretty much this question in another thread, but I don't know if anyone has asked Brandon about it.

I'm not sure how you would destroy a shardblade... If you did, what would happen to the spren? They are splinters, so would they just be even more splintered? Would they be impossible to 'revive'?

[Three1415]

Nightblood could conceivably destroy Blade and Plate when unsheathed (although Brandon RAFOed this question when asked directly), considering that when activated he simply consumes Investiture he comes into contact with, and is probably far more Invested than a Shardblade. The spren within the Blade would probably be likewise consumed, like Breaths as we see in Warbreaker; Stormlight is likely a comparable fuel as well. 

This is of particular relevance, as of course Szeth seems to have come into possession of Nightblood courtesy of Nale, so it's something we'll probably see eventually.

Edited July 7, 2016 by Three1415

[+hwiles He/Him]

On 7/6/2016 at 7:10 PM, Mason Wheeler said:

In Dalinar's vision of the Day of Recreance, he saw hundreds of Shardbearers abandoning their Plate and Blades, and that was only a fraction of the sum total of the Knights Radiant.  He estimates that there are probably not even 100 known shard sets on Roshar.  That means that the rest of them are either hidden, lost... or destroyed.

Has anyone asked this before?  Is it possible to destroy or "break" a Shardblade or suit of Shardplate so that it no longer functions as such and can't be repaired/restored/regenerated/etc?

Can plate or blade be truly irreperably destroyed?  Maybe, maybe not.  But it could almost certainly be lost forever in a Highstorm or buried in a landslide.  Storm Wardens are relatively new on Roshar, so too I would assume is their ability to mathematically predict the coming of Highstorms.  Considering that for most of the past 4,000 years the coming of Highstorms probably wasn't predictable, I'd assume there are a good number of blades and plates whose owners got trapped outside, either during a battle, or traveling between cities via ship, or whatever, and got blown across Roshar (or into the ocean).  Seeing as how the Highstorms end at the entrance to Shinovar, I wouldn't be surprised if they've collected quite a number of relics thought to be lost forever (though probably not soulcasters, as they seem pretty amazed by soulcast goods brought by traders).

Since new plates and blades haven't been getting created, it would actually be extremely peculiar if there were anywhere near as many available now as in the time of the Radiants.  There would definitely have been people trying, and to some degree succeeding, over the years in stockpiling sets, meaning relatively significant numbers of shardbearers fighting under one flag (five, a dozen, whatever)...Meaning that, if disaster struck, and statistically speaking, over 4,000 years of near constant warfare and unpredictable super-hurricanes, disaster is going to strike at some point, that many sets of shards could be swept up by a storm, lost in a hurricane, drowned and sucked into the ocean by a tidal wave, or buried in a landslide or avalanche.  Once it became known that a nation or lord had lost all of their shards in a disaster, it's probably a safe bet that their enemies would come crashing down on them, and roving bands of pillaging armies don't make the best historians/recorders of lost ancient treasures.  

[TwelfthOfSnackTime he/him]

Not to mention crem build-up making any shards left out disappear much faster than they would on earth even if they weren't blown into the sea. There might very well be hundreds of blades buried here and there throughout Roshar.

[Mason Wheeler]

43 minutes ago, TwelfthOfSnackTime said:

Not to mention crem build-up making any shards left out disappear much faster than they would on earth even if they weren't blown into the sea. There might very well be hundreds of blades buried here and there throughout Roshar.

That would make for a very interesting power: Shard-dowsing!

[Rasarr she/her]

11 hours ago, Mason Wheeler said:

That would make for a very interesting power: Shard-dowsing!

Considering how radiantspren usually react quite negatively to presence of a Shardblade, a shard-dowsing rod made of spren could be not so far-fetched...

[Erklitt]

13 hours ago, TwelfthOfSnackTime said:

Not to mention crem build-up making any shards left out disappear much faster than they would on earth even if they weren't blown into the sea. There might very well be hundreds of blades buried here and there throughout Roshar.

And not just single sets buried here and there: think of the buildings now closed up by crem, often mistaken now for natural formations. How many of those could be former battle scenes, hiding dozens of shardbearer corpses? This might be where the Parshendi first got their shards (iirc they used to have more than the one), and might also lead to them discovering more.

[Edit] @Rasarr:Just picturing someone walking the plains with a shard-dowsing rod, and that rod suddenly screaming, sputtering, wildly pulsating light...

 

 

Edited July 9, 2016 by Erklitt

[Patrick Star]

Nightblood got hungry and ate some of them

[Stormgate he/him]

3 hours ago, Patrick Star said:

Nightblood got hungry and ate some of them

Your name and signature have never seemed more appropriate. I say this in the kindest way possible.