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Adonalsium's opposite?


Vortaan

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In reading the AMA on Reddit, the one answer that popped out to me was one about Adonalsium. WoB here seems to indicate that there is an equal and opposite force to Adonalsium... so what if Shards like Odium aren't of  Adonalsium, but are of this opposite force? Sort of like some spren are part Cultivation and part Honor?

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My first thought was the Fain life in the Liar of Partinel chapters. In Warbreaker, Hoid says he came from "a distant place where two lands meet and gods have died". Adonalsium could've been the power behind one of those two lands.

I actually like Odium as part of Adonalsium. I think part of the tension in the backstory is struggling with the idea of how Odium or Ruin aren't necessarily evil.

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I agree that that answer was very intriguing, but It's always best to pull the quote.

Source

Q: Before Adonalsium shattered, was it consciously opposed by something, be it people or another cosmic force? Is whatever opposed it still around?
A: Yes. Yes.

 

This is still quite open. The opposition to Adonalsium could have been a group of people (Rayse and co., perhaps?) or organization, as opposed to some cosmic force.

 

The question even remains as to whether that opposition played a real role in Adonalsium's Shattering; and if it did, to what extent.

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Anti-Life

 

You turned your back and I wrecked your world. I robbed your people of their powers, their hopes, their future, themselves. What will you do when your friends, your enemies, your lover, are all Darkseid? When there is one body. One mind. One will. One life that is Darkseid. Will you be the enemy of all existence, then? What irony that will be, Son of Krypton?

 

All is one in Darkseid. This mighty body is my church. When I command your surrender, I speak with three billion voices. When I make a fist to crush your resistance. It is with three billion hands. When I stare into your eyes and shatter your dreams. And break your heart. It is with six billion eyes! Nothing like Darkseid has ever come among you: Nothing will again. I will take you to a hell without exit or end. And there I will murder your souls!

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Now that I think about it, what opposes basically Creation? Non-existence? Even complete entropy would equal Ruin, no?

Since "entropy" is off the list, and "nothingness" annoys me since even physicists can't decide if it means anything, I'm going to go with "meaninglessness". Say Adonalsium is creation by specific means, patterning physical things after the perfect ideals in the Spiritual Realm. Its opposite would be things existing just as matter without this connection.
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Man, I have no idea what this could be. But I bet it has to do with these "subtle forces":

 

JOSH AND ERIC
So are Shards the most powerful thing in the Cosmere?

ADAM
Or is Adonalsium?

JOSH AND ERIC
No, no, let him RAFO the first one first, or he'll lump them together.

BRANDON SANDERSON
It depends on what you believe. The Shards are the most powerful things currently overtly manifest. There are those who would say there are other subtle forces being manifest. Most people in the know would say that Shards are the most powerful thing.

ADAM
Does Hoid believe that Shards are the most powerful thing?

BRANDON SANDERSON
You'll have to ask him sometime. [gives troll grin]. Or see him get asked something like that sometime. There's argument to be made that right now Harmony is the most powerful thing in the Cosmere.

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Since "entropy" is off the list, and "nothingness" annoys me since even physicists can't decide if it means anything, I'm going to go with "meaninglessness". Say Adonalsium is creation by specific means, patterning physical things after the perfect ideals in the Spiritual Realm. Its opposite would be things existing just as matter without this connection.

 

Hm. I kind of like that. I'm also leaning towards a break in causality, robbing all actions and effects from appropriate meanings.

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Man, I have no idea what this could be. But I bet it has to do with these "subtle forces":

 

That's interesting since the most subtle things I have noticed in the Cosmere actually seem to benefit the heroes. Kelsier's snapping, Raoden's noticing Aon Rao... I wonder if the anti-Adonalsium could actually be the good guy?

 

 

 

 

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Now that I think about it, what opposes basically Creation? Non-existence? Even complete entropy would equal Ruin, no?

 

What is creation? God is in everything, and everything is in god, as per Spinoza. Everything is made of the powers of creation. So what would be the ultimate enemy of God? Something that could destroy the powers of creation permanently, destroy the soul, destroy things on a spiritual level.

 

The more a mind consists of true and good ideas, the more it is aligned with the intent of God, the more of it remains. The only thing that could kill a god is something that could poison its mind, make it decay as the body does. Make it rot.

 

That's my theory.

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Man, I have no idea what this could be. But I bet it has to do with these "subtle forces":

I saw the "subtle forces" as Shai's Unknown God, and thought it might have also helped Raoden, and maybe Kelsier.

I wasn't going to ask about it, but Brandon actually said "God Beyond" in response to Windrunner, so I ended up asking the question there. No answer though.

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That's interesting since the most subtle things I have noticed in the Cosmere actually seem to benefit the heroes. Kelsier's snapping, Raoden's noticing Aon Rao... I wonder if the anti-Adonalsium could actually be the good guy?

 

Well that would certainly put a different spin on restoring Adonalsium. And Hoid. 

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Implying of course, that Hoid is definitely bent on restoring Adonalsium.  Perhaps Hoid is, or is part, of this opposition, and maybe the 'most frightening and terrible of all the Shards' is the part of Adolasium that he was opposed to?  Or perhaps this is what the 'element' relates to (though I have my own, unrelated, pet theory about that).  If Adonalsium wasn't all-powerful, as since it was broken, we can assume it wasn't, the opposing force didn't have to be his equal and opposite, but just effective.

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What if the Fain was some kind of world-decay? Adonalsium kept on pushing it back, like Rashek would have done with the mists, going on for centuries until it finally couldn't fight anymore.

 

Maybe the 17th Shard wanted to....add themselves into things? Before or after I don't know.

 

Heck, maybe Adonalsium was sick, tying into #1.

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Random thought: Remember when Preservation's mind was reduced to pretty much nothing, and the mists started Snapping people? Sazed makes a mention about how without a mind to control it, Preservation's power just acted on it's last directive, with the result that it couldn't stop itself from Snapping those who wouldn't survive the process.

 

What if Adonalsium was something similar, and that's why the Shards now have personalities attached? Maybe the whole goal of shattering Adonalsium in the first place is the people who picked up the Shards, to provide some kind of guidance to the universe. Maybe Rayse wasn't supposed to be part of that group, and that's why Hoid holds a grudge against him. What if each Shardworld is actually a microcosm for "How I could run the universe"? Maybe picking up the Shards altered the original people enough that the grand plan fell apart.

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...Seriously, folks, I've been saying for ages that there was a lot more backstory that we weren't privy to.  I haven't speculated about it much because the evidence at the moment is almost non-existent, but clearly there was some kind of supernatural conflict going on even in the deep past.  Hoid's comments on his backstory in Warbreaker, the Letter (Hoid authorship or not, it clearly references said past), and Liar of Partinel are more than enough to make that clear.

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...Seriously, folks, I've been saying for ages that there was a lot more backstory that we weren't privy to.  I haven't speculated about it much because the evidence at the moment is almost non-existent, but clearly there was some kind of supernatural conflict going on even in the deep past.  Hoid's comments on his backstory in Warbreaker, the Letter (Hoid authorship or not, it clearly references said past), and Liar of Partinel are more than enough to make that clear.

 

Isn't the point of this site to speculate the heck out of that very background? It's the impression I always got...

 

Anyways, in line with Hoid's speech about Gibltesh, and assuming the mindless Adonalsium theory is right, maybe this is Hoid having second thoughts about the whole thing?

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I notice a lot of compounding Adonalsium with God in the forums.  Just because it is a force of creation doesn't make it God.  Since it was opposed, and apparently destroyed, it is clearly not God as we understand it.  I don't think that just because BS is a religious person, that he is any less creative in the worldbuilding of his religions.  

And just because Adonalsium was opposed, it doesn't mean that it's opponent was it's opposite. I think neither Adonalsium or whatever opposed it is an idealized good or evil.  The presence of the Shard Odium pretty much guarantees that Adonalsium's nature was more mixed than that.

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Possible adversaries:

How about the entire Cognitive Realm as an opposing force? We know Ati tried to "oppose" the Ruin Shard, and failed horribly. That could be a microcosm of individual will vs. Shardic influence. Maybe the Cognitive is what imposes limitations like metal blindness, and planet-specific focuses. Also the Cognitive Realm seems outside the Shard magic system, since Preservation was able to use it to cheat and imprison Ruin without it simply being countered.
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Well, in Leras' case he was using his mind to cage up Ati's mind, instea do fusing shardic powers to attack shardic powers. Kind of a different case, but I guess that proves your point to some extent.

 

It just seems like Adonalsium has too many different shards to have become a monster the way Ati did.

Unless you think he blew up due to shardic imbalance, in which case it all works out.

 

Heck, who needs a specific cause, maybe it was all seven (;D) of them!

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Well, at least there doesn't seem to be an anti-adonalsium that creates new magic systems.  That's good to know.

 

From reddit

 

Are there any magic systems in the cosmere that aren't shard based?

2) This depends on definitions. The effects of Adonalsium permeate everything, and Adonalsium is also the source of the Shards. It is possible to find a magic that isn't DIRECTLY powered by a specific shard, however, though most of these would have been set up before the shattering and would be much smaller in scope than things like Allomancy and Surgebinding.

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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