Nightblood
also known as sword-nimi
A long, dark-bladed sword in a silver sheath with a pure black hilt — heavier than a sword its size should be, and clasped at the hilt to keep it sheathed. Not a Shardblade but a weapon of similar grade made on another world, awake in its own right and able to speak with the wielder it has chosen. Nin hands it to Szeth as a Skybreaker's test; Szeth addresses it as *sword-nimi*. SA:OB:Ch 90
A long, dark-bladed sword in a silver sheath with a pure black hilt, carried by Vasher wrapped in white linen. Heavier than a sword its size should be, and clasped at the hilt to keep it sheathed. When the clasp is loosed, the colors of nearby rooms grow strange — reds turn maroon, yellows turn gold — and anyone who draws it dies. It speaks into the mind of the man who carries it, eager and proud of the killing it does. STD:WB:Prologue superseded at SA:OB:Ch 90
Known facts
- kills-anyone-who-drawsAnyone who draws Nightblood from its sheath dies. Its three guards in the T'Telir dungeon unclasp the sheath in curiosity, walk out of the cell carrying it, and are dead in their guard room before Vasher has finished tying his straw figure together. The sword speaks happily into Vasher's mind about the killing afterward.STD:WB:Prologue
- speaks-while-sheathedSpeaks into Vasher's mind even while sheathed and carried — bickering, demanding fresh air and sunlight, sulking when reminded he is not a person — and kills anyone foolish enough to pull him from his sheath, as a pair of cutpurses learn when one steals him from a booth in T'Telir.STD:WB:Ch 5
- drains-living-colorTouching the sword drains the colour out of living flesh — Lolan reached for it and woke with his hand grey to the wrist. Lightsong notes that ordinary Awakening cannot do this; it pulls colour only from objects, never from a living person.STD:WB:Ch 26
- blackens-woundsA wound from the sword turns its edges black and drains the colour from the skin around it like a spreading disease. The four thieves Denth had worked with the day before are found dead in the D'Denir Garden bearing exactly that mark.STD:WB:Ch 29
- calls-lifeless-abominationHe refers to Clod simply as *the abomination* when Vasher watches the Denth team from the rooftop — the sword's standing opinion of Lifeless.STD:WB:Ch 29
- kills-anyone-who-draws-itLeft bare-bladed in a street where a pack of thugs is marching Vivenna to Denth, the black sword kills every one of them with no help from Vasher. The first man to undo the clasp swings the sheathed blade with terrible, unnatural force; bones break, faces shatter, his friends pile in to take it from him. Black smoke rises where a sliver of metal is exposed; black vines climb the holder's arm and pulse out of his skin. He kills every friend, then rams the sheathed weapon through his own chest and dies upright on it. The sword in its sheath is nearly as deadly as the sword bare — and the sword chooses whom it lets walk away holding it.STD:WB:Ch 41
- required-a-thousand-breaths-to-awakenVasher reflects on the rooftop that the sword's creation required a thousand Breaths invested into a piece of steel — the sum Shashara worked out for Awakening an object to sentience. Even she only half-understood why the process produced a mind at all; by the laws of Awakening a sword like this should have no more wit than a tassel.STD:WB:Ch 50
- command-is-destroy-evilThe single Command Shashara and Vasher settled on to anchor the sword's personality was *destroy evil* — chosen as elegant and self-evident, with no foresight for the fact that a steel blade with no experience of being alive has no way at all to know what *evil* means. The sword has been trying to figure that out by trial ever since.STD:WB:Ch 50
- dissolves-lifeless-on-touchA single scratch from the blade is enough to dissolve a Lifeless into black smoke — bodies evaporate like paper in an invisible fire, and stone walls and ceilings do the same when run through. Vasher destroys all fifty Lifeless of a palace squad in a few minutes by drawing it.STD:WB:Ch 56
- drinks-wielders-breathWhile drawn, the sword drinks its wielder's Breath at a punishing rate — half of Vivenna's several-hundred-Breath gift to Vasher is gone after a few minutes of fighting. Black veinlike tendrils climb from the hilt up the wielder's forearm, feeding. Held long enough, it would kill him.STD:WB:Ch 56
- nightblood-consumes-its-victims-body-and-soulDrawn for the first time on Roshar, the black sword consumes its victim entirely — flesh, blood, and apparently soul vanish to black smoke, leaving no stain. Ordinary Shardblades only burn the eyes. The blade drains a large reserve of Stormlight to do so, and bleaches the wielder's flesh where the dark fluid creeps up his arm.SA:OB:Ch 92
- nightblood-mentions-shashara-and-vivennaSpeaking to Szeth, the sword remembers being made by Shashara — a name that sounds to him like Shalash, the Eastern form of the Herald Shush-daughter-God — and recalls being carried by Vivenna, who never drew it. Szeth wonders whether the weapon's origin lies with the Heralds.SA:OB:Ch 92
- chipped-the-bondsmith-honorbladeStriking Ishar's Bondsmith Honorblade in Szeth's hands, Nightblood left a visible chip in its unearthly steel — the first such marring of an Honorblade Dalinar has ever seen — and consumed the light of Dalinar's perpendicularity when Szeth stabbed it.SA:RoW:Ch 111
- starting-to-realise-the-killings-are-his-ownWalking with Szeth to the homestead, Nightblood starts to understand that the corpses he wakes up to find are people *he* killed — including Szeth's friend Taravangian. He says his metal brain is slow to change but he does not want to kill, that he is supposed to destroy only evil things, and that Adolin has been telling him swords can also just be beautiful works of art. He recognises Szeth is not evil yet Nightblood nearly killed him — and would not know if he wasn't paying attention. He asks Syl for help.SA:WaT:Ch 35
- appears-as-blazing-golden-sword-in-shadesmarDrawn into Shadesmar alongside Szeth, Nightblood manifests not as a black sword but as a blazing, radiant line of golden light — the way the sword sees itself, in a realm where appearance follows perception. The sword has been chatting with the Honorblades Szeth recovered and tries (and fails) to grant him other Radiant abilities.SA:WaT:Ch 53
- kills-permanently-edgedancer-honorbearer-cannot-returnCounting six Honorbearers where there should be seven, Szeth works out why the missing young Edgedancer hasn't been reborn: she is the one he killed in Shadesmar with Nightblood. The sword's death is final in a way Ishar's remade Heralds cannot work around — a soul Nightblood ate cannot be recalled into a new body.SA:WaT:Ch 132
- learns-the-surges-from-the-honorbladesDrawn against the cords binding the Heralds and the Honorblades on the Shin field, Nightblood tells Kaladin he has learned the Surges from the swords he has stood among, and forms a Connection through which he draws his price not from a wielder's soul but from Kaladin's Stormlight across the field — enough that he can return Szeth's Lashings while Szeth bears him.SA:WaT:Ch 140
- chooses-not-to-kill-his-friendsWith Szeth disintegrating into his smoke and the black sword spinning point-down on the stones like a top released from its string, Nightblood hears Kaladin tell him *you are not a thing* — and quietly answers, *I will not kill my friends.* The smoke fades; the sword clatters still.SA:WaT:Ch 143
Events
- STD:WB:Prologue Carried in Vasher's duffel, drawn by the guards in their guard room, and reclaimed off the corpse skewered to a chair on the way out.
- STD:WB:Ch 5 Carried sheathed through T'Telir at Vasher's side, set against a wall while he eats, stolen by a cutpurse who is killed for it, then retrieved from an alley with his sheath barely opened and his thieves dead around him.
- STD:WB:Ch 21 Carried at Vasher's side through the infiltration of Mercystar's palace, sulking in his mind about being asked to sneak and stay sheathed. Briefly tossed across the servants' hallway as a lure; one of the fleeing servants stops dead, picks the sword up, and gets a thin sliver of it drawn before Vasher kicks him down and re-clasps the sheath.
- STD:WB:Ch 29 Recognises Denth in the street as *VaraTreledees*, asks again whether Shashara is there, and dismisses Clod as the abomination.
- STD:WB:Ch 33 Carried across Vasher's arm on the balcony, sheathed — a deep black sword Vivenna does not yet have a name for.
- STD:WB:Ch 35 Vasher unsheathes the black sword and orders Vivenna to lift it; the moment she touches it a voice in her head offers — almost politely — to kill someone today on her behalf. She drops it and retches.
- STD:WB:Ch 41 Used as bait in the street: anyone who draws it is compelled to kill, then kills himself. The blade annihilates the entire escort sent to bring Vivenna to Denth.
- STD:WB:Ch 43 Leans sheathed against the table beside Vasher while he eats. Continues to make Vivenna mildly nauseous in close proximity, even with the clasp done.
- STD:WB:Ch 45 Carried sheathed at Vasher's side and leaned against the wall of the rented room through the lesson. The mere sight of the sword still nauseates Vivenna; she finds herself unable to stop glancing at it as the lecture runs through Types One, Two, and Three — and starts to guess what Vasher will not tell her about Type Four.
- STD:WB:Ch 48 Locked in the closet for the early portion of the chapter, then taken out as Vasher dresses for the raid; Vivenna still finds the sword nauseating to look at.
- STD:WB:Ch 48 Used sheathed as a club through most of the fight; near the end Vasher begins to draw the blade, black smoke spilling from the sheath, Vivenna hears the sword's voice in her own head urging her to draw it and feed it the men on the floor; only her call from the cage pulls Vasher back. He snaps the sword home.
- STD:WB:Ch 48 Carried at Vasher's side as they cross the city to Nanrovah's mansion. The guard dogs that fawn on Vasher noticeably avoid the sword.
- STD:WB:Ch 50 Carried at Vasher's back on the wall of the Court of Gods; complains of the closet and urges him to go kill Lightsong because he will start a war they don't want — which the sword has decided makes him *evil*.
- STD:WB:Ch 50 Drawn just far enough out of the sheath to make a captured maid vomit, then used as the threat that pries the queen's location out of her.
- STD:WB:Ch 50 Thrown into the mercenary line as a distraction; rolls free, but Denth's men hold long enough for the ambush to close. Tonk Fah wants to keep the sword; Denth smacks him for it and takes the wrapped bundle himself to dispose of.
- STD:WB:Ch 52 Hauled out of the T'Telir bay tangled in Old Chapps's weighted net, complains that it hates the water, and offers the old fisherman a chance to go destroy some evil — to which he says yes.
- STD:WB:Ch 53 Driven into the chest of Old Chapps on the floor of a slum room with three other corpses around him; calls happily to Vivenna that he is satisfied with himself, says he was drawn a little bit by the old fisherman, and tells her Vasher is hurt in the God King's palace where he went to rescue her sister.
- STD:WB:Ch 54 Tossed by Vivenna — blanket and all — onto the lawn in front of the heavy guard at the palace doors as a distraction. The men freeze; one picks the sword up; the rest begin to fight. *Well, I guess this works too,* it notes.
- STD:WB:Ch 55 Talks Vivenna toward the palace, declares the guards in front of it evil, then is thrown blanket-and-all onto the lawn as her distraction; the guard who picks the sword up backs into the building with the rest following.
- STD:WB:Ch 56 Found sprouting from a guard's chest just inside the palace front doors. Vasher pulls it free, leaves the sheath behind, and walks through fifty Lifeless in minutes — black smoke rising from each, half his Breath gone — before throwing it aside three floors up to keep it from killing him.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Dragged along in his sheath, and cheerfully claims not to remember what happened but says they slew a lot of evil.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Forgets time and decides to remind Vasher aloud — to Vivenna as well, since it has decided to include her in his thoughts now — that he left an army behind here last time.
- STD:WB:Epilogue Carried in Vasher's hand on the road. Complains of being bored and ignored, agrees with Vivenna that Vasher is a grump.
- SA:OB:Ch 92 Carried on Szeth's back; drawn for the first time to erase Minister Kwati.
- SA:OB:Ch 98 Strapped to Szeth's back where he cannot draw it, the sword chatters cheerfully through the dust-bag game — asks where the evil is, suggests making a stand, name-drops Vasher who teaches swords now even though VaraTreledees always says he is no good with one.
- SA:OB:Ch 106 Strapped to Szeth's back where it cannot be drawn; comments excitedly on the ruined courthouse, on having missed the fun, and offers to be drawn against Nin in case he turns out to be evil.
- SA:OB:Ch 121 Hums happily in Szeth's hand and confides afterward that it had never really liked Nin.
- SA:RoW:Ch 111 Drawn by Szeth to cut Ishar's bond-stealing cord and to stab the perpendicularity, consuming its light; chips the Bondsmith Honorblade when the two cross.
- SA:RoW:Ch 113 Drawn by Taravangian in the place between realms and rammed up into Odium's chest; consumes the Vessel and most of his body but the power itself is too vast to drink.
- SA:WaT:Ch 8 Pops into Kaladin's mind from across Szeth's back to ask whether the trip will have snacks, on the standing instructions of Lift.
- SA:WaT:Ch 19 Nightblood is strapped across Szeth's back throughout, weighing in with a wry complaint about being ignored after Szeth's spren rebukes him.
- SA:WaT:Ch 28 Strapped awkwardly across Szeth's back rather than summoned — too long to wear at the waist, too hard to draw, in Kaladin's view a good argument for the normal practice of carrying a Blade in the spiritweb.
- SA:WaT:Ch 41 Held by Kaladin in the doorway, sheathed, not drawn.
- SA:WaT:Ch 45 Carried on Szeth's back; persuades the Stoneward Honorblade not to slice through the cloth Kaladin has wrapped it in, and draws nervous stares from the townsfolk of Koring.
- SA:WaT:Ch 53 Appears in Shadesmar as a blazing golden sword, chats cheerfully through the fight, fails to grant Szeth other Radiant abilities, and vaporises the Edgedancer into motes of light.
- SA:WaT:Ch 66 Carried in Szeth's bundle of swords on his back; periodically heard speaking softly with the Honorblades.
- SA:WaT:Ch 72 Riding on Szeth's back among the Honorblades, asks whether he is all right and worries aloud about evil — the sword can now *feel* what Szeth feels.
- SA:WaT:Ch 90 Chatters happily about Lift's vocabulary and the swords feeling almost home, then is bundled into the pack Szeth hands Kaladin before the duel.
- SA:WaT:Ch 108 Strapped to Szeth's back among the Honorblades; cheerfully volunteers for the duel — *I think you should use me for this fight. I'm a really good sword* — and reluctantly stands down when Szeth asks to choose.
- SA:WaT:Ch 126 Bundled with the Honorblades in the wagon bed and delighted to discover it is *a chariot* — *you got me a chariot?*
- SA:WaT:Ch 129 Szeth leaves Nightblood in the wagon to guard the Honorblades and — over the sword's protest — declines to carry him into the talk with Ishu.
- SA:WaT:Ch 130 Nightblood is set down a short distance from the circle with the rest of the swords Nin declines to mount on the stone.
- SA:WaT:Ch 135 Rests on a patch of unmoving Shin grass beside Kaladin's pack, eager when Szeth asks what it does with those it eats — *I'm a great sword. Pick me, please.*
- SA:WaT:Ch 138 Calls plaintively to Szeth from the grass — *Szeth, what is wrong?* — and gets no answer.
- SA:WaT:Ch 140 Used by Kaladin to sever the Bondsmith's cords, then tossed to Szeth with the new Connection in place — drinking Kaladin's Light across the field while Szeth takes him into the fight.
- SA:WaT:Ch 141 In Szeth's hand throughout the fight, drinking Kaladin's Light across the field and crying *Destroy evil!* with every Honorbearer cut down — Stoneward's wall consumed in a burst of smoke, Moss's Lightweaving burned away to reveal the man beneath.
- SA:WaT:Ch 142 Drinks Light at a furious rate across the field as Szeth wields him among the whisper-shades — frost forming on Kaladin's clothing as his gemstones go dun one after another.
- SA:WaT:Ch 143 Hurled away by Szeth, spins point-down on the stones in a corrupted scream — *Destroy! Evil!* — until Kaladin gives him the lesson he had been listening to all along. Then quietly: *I will not kill my friends.* The blade clatters still.
- SA:WaT:Ch 144 Sheathed by Kaladin before he goes to the ring — the sword now in a stupor, full of Investiture, mumbling to itself.
- SA:WaT:Ch 146 Sheathed on the ground where Szeth dropped it; calls to him in a small, frail voice; fears it killed Kaladin, is told the Blade did, and ends the chapter slung over Szeth's one remaining shoulder.
- SA:WoR:Ch 88 Tossed sheathed and skidding across the rock to Szeth from Nin's hand — the Blade itself an inch out, black, trailing what looks like Stormlight made dark. Speaks the same cheerful greeting in Szeth's mind that it once spoke in others': *Hello. Would you like to destroy some evil today?*
Backreferences
- summarySA:OB:Ch 90
- summarySA:OB:Ch 92
- factNightblood
- summarySA:OB:Ch 98
- summarySA:OB:Ch 106
- summarySA:OB:Ch 116
- summarySA:OB:Ch 117
- summarySA:OB:Ch 118
- summarySA:OB:Ch 119
- summarySA:OB:Ch 121
- factNightblood
- factVessel
- summarySTD:WB:Prologue
- factNightblood
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 5
- factVasher
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 21
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 29
- factVasher
- factShashara
- factShashara
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 35
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 41
- factVasher
- factNightblood
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 43
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 45
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 48
- factVasher
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 49
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 50
- factAwakening
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 52
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 53
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 54
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 55
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 56
- factNightblood
- factNightblood
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 57
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 58
- factVasher
- summarySTD:WB:Epilogue
- factReturned
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 8
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 19
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 22
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 35
- factNightblood
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 40
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 45
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 52
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 53
- factNightblood
- factSzeth-son-son-Vallano
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 72
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 90
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 91
- factTaravangian
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 95
- factSzeth-son-son-Vallano
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 110
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 125
- factTaravangian
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 126
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 129
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 132
- factNightblood
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 135
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 140
- factNightblood
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 141
- factSzeth-son-son-Vallano
- factSzeth-son-son-Vallano
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 142
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 143
- factNightblood
- factSzeth-son-son-Vallano
- factSzeth-son-son-Vallano
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 144
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 146
- factSzeth-son-son-Vallano