Nightblood

[EvangelionMech he/him]

Since the magic systems of Nalthis and Roshar are different, would Nightblood still consume the wielder's "breath"?

[Yata he/him]

To be honest I saw a couple of contradictory WoB about Nightblood and the whole Cosmere's Investiture. I will try to find them

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, Yata said:

To be honest I saw a couple of contradictory WoB about Nightblood and the whole Cosmere's Investiture. I will try to find them

There was a WoB which states that Investiture cannot be created nor destroyed and another which says that Nightblood is slowly reducing the total investiture in Cosmere. Is that what you were referring to? 

[Yata he/him]

Just now, Spoolofwhool said:

There was a WoB which states that Investiture cannot be created nor destroyed and another which says that Nightblood is slowly reducing the total investiture in Cosmere. Is that what you were referring to? 

Nope, also if I remeber the ones you cited. I meant:

1) NB reduces the amount of usable of Investiture

2) Nb doesn't reduce the amount of usable investiture.

But I have to re-search them, because I think there was some precise wording in the WoBs.

I remember that actually reading together you may extrapolate that :"Nightblood's consumed Investiture aren't usable for a long long time but soon or later it will return avaliable" or "Nightblood changes the Investiture to be unusable by anyone"...But they are just memories, I have to check the actual WoB

[Jondesu he/him]

12 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Nightblood isn't awakened steel. Anyone with the ninth heightening can awaken Steel as a Type III Biochromatic entity, in other words, a non-sentient awakened object. In Warbreaker, it was said that he killed Shashara so that the knowledge to create Type IV entitires, sentient awakened objects, wouldn't spread. It's possible he knows that Nightblood is reducing the overall system of investiture. Hard to say really, but I'd be willing to believe he can, especially since he contains a splinter which is a part of Endowment and for the most part, Nightblood is removing Endowment's investiture from the system currently.

Don't think there's a WoB on the matter. It's likely either aluminium or an alloy of it, or just heavily invested.  

Nightblood is indeed Awakened Steel (or perhaps some other metal, I don't know if we have confirmation), just using a different process that resulted in the Type IV entity. He's simply not a non-sentient awakened entity, which would be Type III as you said, but that doesn't change the fact that he's steel/metal, and Awakened.

jW

[Spoolofwhool]

15 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

Nightblood is indeed Awakened Steel (or perhaps some other metal, I don't know if we have confirmation), just using a different process that resulted in the Type IV entity. He's simply not a non-sentient awakened entity, which would be Type III as you said, but that doesn't change the fact that he's steel/metal, and Awakened.

jW

Yes, my bad on what I said. However, my correction still stands. What you said earlier is that Vasher was trying to hide the process for awakening steel, which is incorrect. He was hiding the method for creating Type IV constructs.

[Darkness he/him]

On September 1, 2016 at 7:37 PM, Tanmay Shrivastava said:

Since the magic systems of Nalthis and Roshar are different, would Nightblood still consume the wielder's "breath"?

Nightblood can consume Breath, and he can also consume spren

 

 

QUESTION

If sprens are pieces of the god power, and investiture is the power of the god, then can Nightblood consume spren?

BRANDON SANDERSON

He could theoret- Yeah, he could totally consume spren. There's not even any “theoretically” to that.

 

so I don't see how the innate 'life force' or magic systems of other races would be too much of a stretch, except that others' life forces are slightly weaker than a typical Nalthisean Breath, so might take less time to consume. Magic system might matter somewhere, but I kind of doubt it...

I personally suspect something fairly unique is going on with Nightblood spiritually. This isn't canon, but I think Nightblood, being an artificial construct, may have no Identity beyond 'destroy evil', which hardly seems limiting. It's my thought that Nightblood is able to basically function as though he is divested of Identity, burning through the investiture of anything/anyone unless he specifically perceives it as 'not evil', which is a demonstrably loose term... he often doesn't even need to know the target to go after it. In addition, using his ability has the unintended (i.e. not driven by his Command), side effect of burning through the wielder's investiture, 'good' or 'evil'.

In effect, I would suggest that Nightblood has a very simple and... loose?... Spirit web as a function of being imbued with only one, amorphous Ideal (sic. Command)... this not only leads to his Identity flexibility (ability to access different magics), but also impairs his Connection to other things, distorting his ability to understand somewhat intuitive concepts like good and evil

 

 . Having a Cognitive side to him, he does try to mimic things ("I like Vivenna"), but he really doesn't get what that actually means to a person, unlike a greater spren might for example. He probably also wasn't imbued with a sense of 'home is Nalthis', hidden inside 'destroy evil', so I'd say location and type of magic would matter very little if at all.

Nightblood is fascinated by gender, and trying to figure it out. Unlike spren like Syl, Nightblood has not self gender assigned as an influence of interacting with humans.

Wew... that got tangential.

 

QUESTION

How does Nightblood work on Roshar?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Well Nightblood feeds on Investiture, which is the general life-force/magic-force in the cosmere and so he can feed on basically any source of magical energy.

Edited September 4, 2016 by Darkness
Found and inserted another WoB at the end

[jtburrup]

Ok, so I'm probably a noob to ask this, but how is Szeth going to use Nightblood then (I'm assuming that the weapon given at the end of WoR is Nightblood...please correct me if I'm wrong) ? Wouldn't he have the risk of running out of stormlight and then having Nightblood consume his spark of life? That seems like an awful large risk to take.

 

 

[Eki]

7 minutes ago, jtburrup said:

Ok, so I'm probably a noob to ask this, but how is Szeth going to use Nightblood then (I'm assuming that the weapon given at the end of WoR is Nightblood...please correct me if I'm wrong) ? Wouldn't he have the risk of running out of stormlight and then having Nightblood consume his spark of life? That seems like an awful large risk to take.

Someone asked the same question here:

Basically, it's likely that he won't be able to unsheathe Nightblood safely (at least initially - anything could happen), but he can still use the sword in other ways, just like Vasher does in Warbreaker.

Edited September 6, 2016 by Eki