On Preservation's Sacrifice To Make Humanity

[Moogle]

Background
In the past, there's been a bit of confusion on what exactly required Preservation give up part of himself in order to grant sentience to humanity. (At least, I was confused.)

 

Perhaps this is obvious to everyone else, but with the recent AMA, I think we have a very strong explanation for why Preservation had to do this, despite Shardless worlds like the First of the Sun being able to have sentient life.
 
What's Needed for Sentience?
Investiture, apparently. As Sazed puts it:
Preservation's desire to create sentient life was what eventually broke the stalemate. In order to give mankind awareness and independent thought, Preservation knew that he would have to give up part of himself—his own soul—to dwell within mankind. This would leave him just a tiny bit weaker than his opposite, Ruin.

We know from the AMA that when a human is born, it "draws" on Investiture to make a soul. We know souls are made of Investiture. So, and note this part is speculation, it seems that there needs to be free-floating Investiture given up on a planet for sentient beings to be born there.
 
Well... we do know that most of the planets do have this. WoB:

Q: What differentiates a minor Shardworld like First of the Sun?
B: The amount of Investiture, and whether there is actually a Shard in presence.
Q: I’m assuming there is not one there?
B: There is not one there.
Q: So it’s like a Splintered one from something else?
B: No what you’ll find is that the worlds were all created with a level of-- a little bit of sort of ambient magic. What you’ll find in worlds like that is things like, Shadows for Silence and things like this, the magic, it’s not necessarily “people with magic” it’s you can interact with nature...
Q: So there is inherent investiture...
B: There is inherent investiture in every world created but you are going to see-- You aren’t going to find Mistborn on a world like that but what you might find is a way there are magic aspects to the setting. Spren could exist on a world like that but they would be like the minor spren, you wouldn’t find Syl, but you would find something like lifespren.
(source)

 
So basically, every world we've seen seemingly has this Investiture in it that allows for sentient beings to be born.
 
Adonalsium created a lot of the planets, as we learn from the epigraphs of WoR:
Is not the destruction we have wrought enough? The worlds you now tread bear the touch and design of Adonalsium. Our interference so far has brought nothing but pain.
 

Seems likely to me that he left behind some of his power on each world, just a little, such that sentient beings could be born.

However, Preservation and Ruin apparently outright made their own new planet, rather than using one Adonalsium already crafted, as Sazed implies:
Instead of being composed of half Ruin and half Preservation—as, say, a rock would be—atium was completely of Ruin.
 
This planet wouldn't have had this free-floating Investiture once created, like Adonalsium left behind, so either Preservation or Ruin or both would have had to Invest some extra Investiture in the planet in order to create sentient beings.

Edited July 29, 2015 by Moogle

[Kurkistan]

A plausible/persuasive idea.

[SmurfAquamarineBodies]

That makes sense to me. Any idea why Preservation and Ruin decided to make a planet?

[WeiryWriter]

@Smurf, The impression that I've always had isn't that they created the actual hunk of rock that makes up the planet, they just created life on it.

 

@Moogle, I do like your theory though.

[ParadoxicalZen]

That makes sense to me. Any idea why Preservation and Ruin decided to make a planet?

 

If they did, it was probably at a very early stage where the Shardic influence was almost insignificant and Ati and Leras were still...well Ati and Leras. If you had recently acquired nigh-omnipotency from a metaphysical embodiment of an aspect of creation, what would you do that would be a good test of your powers? (Make a bacon sub would the first objective but each to their own i guess)

 

On a serious note, I'm not sure if they did make the planet or not but it is probably well within their capabilities, providing they don't interfere with each other too much. Or perhaps they used a barren planet with no life and terraformed it instead. Less investiture required perhaps than creating a planet from scratch

[natc]

Making a bacon sub in the vacuum of space when you don't even have a body to try it with sounds terrible actually.

[kaladin_stormblessed_]

Isn't there something in the series that they created life and a world together, so that after a certain period of time Ati could destroy it, as goes his intent? Its possible they found and made their own rock with life that they knew would eventually be destroyed because that would be better than finding a world with life or adonalsiums design and then destroying it, because Ati was once a good man.

[Moogle]

I asked Brandon, and got a reply:

Q: Did Ruin and Preservation create Scadrial, as in the actual planet? The other Shards seem to have settled on already-made worlds (or at least, they did for Roshar).

A: What Ruin and Preservation did is less common, for certain.

(source)

 

You could take the answer as implicitly saying 'yes' to the first part, and then explaining that what R+P did was uncommon, or you could take it as him being tricksy. I'm not sure which, but I'll consider it evidence for the theory either way.

[Argent]

I've always understood it that Scadrial itself existed, but had no humans. The ambient investiture was enough for animal and plant life, but nothing sapient. Then Ati and Leras show up, decide to team up create humans (modeled after the ones on Yolen), do so  (with Preservation investing himself more heavily in them), and call it a day. The big about rocks having equal parts Ruin and Preservation, it probably doesn't mean much. The Shards, I imagine, radiate investiture, so to speak, which suggests that it permeates everything inside their field of influence. If there had been humans on Scadrial, they probably would've gotten the 50/50 mix by default too. But because they were more... artificially created, the Shards got to choose how to mix them.

[Moogle]

I've always understood it that Scadrial itself existed, but had no humans. The ambient investiture was enough for animal and plant life, but nothing sapient. Then Ati and Leras show up, decide to team up create humans (modeled after the ones on Yolen), do so  (with Preservation investing himself more heavily in them), and call it a day. The big about rocks having equal parts Ruin and Preservation, it probably doesn't mean much. The Shards, I imagine, radiate investiture, so to speak, which suggests that it permeates everything inside their field of influence. If there had been humans on Scadrial, they probably would've gotten the 50/50 mix by default too. But because they were more... artificially created, the Shards got to choose how to mix them.

 

The problem I see with this is then that you have to explain why Threnody and First of the Sun both support human life without Shards but the planet Ruin/Preservation found does not. You can say that both just have higher levels of ambient magic... but it seems a little odd that Adonalsium would play favorites with his toys. He/she/it seems to have intended the planets give rise to sentient beings (though this is massive speculation on my part).

 

I'm also leery of your interpretation of the 50/50 rock thing - we know from the AMA that Investiture can be converted to and from matter. If Adonalsium originally created the planet, I would suspect that the rocks would convert back into Adonalsium, as opposed to Ruin/Preservation. Sazed could have been oversimplifying, but I don't see why he would in this case.

Edited July 30, 2015 by Moogle

[Argent]

I'd keep clear of involving Adonalsium in the conversation - there is far too little we know. The rules could be different for him/her/it. 

 

As for why there are people on Threnody and not on ancient Scadrial, it could be as simple as "not all planets get humans." Ati and Leras chose Scadrial for some reason and decided they want to have humans. So they did. It could've been not a matter of impossibility, but improbability.

[Oudeis]

There was a WoB once which gave me the impression that at the Shattering, Ati and Leras realized they had opposite intents, and that Ati would eventually need to be balanced. This is hugely speculative from me, but my impression was that they both ran immediately to a world and Invested in it, knowing it would be something Ruin would have difficulty doing once he lost the battle against his Intent. Given a choice between a populated world like Threnody or a barren one, perhaps in that moment of omnipotent panic and indecision, they chose to play it safe, not being sure exactly how things would turn out? Then once Preservation realized the only real solution was to kill both himself and Ati and allow someone else to take up both Intents at once, he came up with this whole plan which required life.

 

Just my head!canon.

[KnightGradient]

Wasn't my headcanon before but now needs to be supported by BS or I will be very angry.