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Investiture is a Two Way Street


ROSHtafARian

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We've spent a lot of time talking about how Investiture affects planets, people, and magic systems, but not a whole lot about how it affects the Shards performing it.  And it seems to me, the key is in the root of the word, invest.  When you invest in something in any form, you put a lot of yourself or your resources into it, you in various ways link its fate, and its success or failure, to your own.

 

This matches what Brandon's said about Odium settling on Roshar.  Now that he's invested himself and his magic there, he can't leave easily.  Essentially, he sunk his roots into it for whatever reason and is now tied to it, and can't leave quickly or at least without leaving chunks (perhaps Splinters?) of himself behind in the process.

 

The question becomes then, how are Shards affected by the Investiture they sink into persons or planets?  We've seen them have multiple reasons for doing so, to create life on Scadrial, etc.  As such, the benefits of investing in life or magic or a planet would seem to be many and varied, depending on their specific reason for investing.  One thing that seems inescapable to me though, is that the moment a Shard sinks their Investiture into a planet or people, they link themselves to it, and for better or worse tie their fate (or aspects of it) to that of the planet or people.

 

Now what exactly does that mean for nigh all powerful (within the boundaries of their Intent) Shards?  Honor spoke of how they are bound by certain rules.  I don't believe he spoke of specific guidelines or anything like that, I think his perception is colored by his Intent and he simply related things to something he was intimately familiar with: rules, orders, protocols, etc.  I believe he was speaking simply of Shardic limitations.  One such limitation obviously is what happens when a Shard Invests in a planet....they tie a piece or pieces of themselves to it and can't leave that behind easily.  In addition, Shards can manipulate life, create magic, change the orbit of planets.  They're enormously powerful and their Intents are broad enough that they can 'justify' using that power in any number of ways in pursuit of that Intent.  But, they are limited by their Intents as well.  It warps their personalities, and I believe as a result of that, they can't act against their Intent, or at least not without consequences.

 

What I mean by this is Shards seem to be largely Spiritual.  And from what we know of the Spiritual in Realmatic theory, is much like Plato's philosophies, the Spiritual in the cosmere seems to be the true nature or essence of things, the fundamental 'truth' of them, for lack of a better word.  A rock has a physical form, it is perceived a certain way and perhaps perceives its relation to the rest of the world a certain way, and then it has an essence for lack of a better word, the core nature of what it means to be a rock.  Similarly, Shards have a physical aspect, they have a cognitive aspect that determines how they perceive the rest of the world (colored by their Intent), and then they have their fundamental Spiritual nature, which I believe is the distilled essence of their Intent.

 

So when a Shard invests its power in a world, they're obviously not doing so with their physical aspect, and not with their cognitive, its their spiritual power their Investing.  Their essence, the core fundamental power of their Intent.  When Preservation created life on Scadrial, he permeated it with his nature, the essence of what it means to preserve.  But that permeation, that Investiture, was a two way street.  It connected humanity to him, intrinsically, meant that they were constantly in contact with a piece of him....but also that parts of him were constantly in contact with humanity.  And herein lies the catch, or danger, of Investiture for Shards, and why I believe Odium in particular avoided it for so long, and only did so reluctantly on Roshar.

 

Shards have limitations, they are bound or restricted by their Intent.  Humans have no such restriction.  Even when gifted with a piece of a Shard's power, via Investiture, usually in the form of magic, this doesn't color their thoughts or actions, they're still free to wield it as they choose.  The essence of a Shard's Intent is too diluted in the amounts that an individual human can access for it to drastically change their personality.  Shards can manipulate them, but short of 'cheating', like Ruin spiking people to create a stronger connection to them for him to use, they can't control their every action, or how they wield that Investiture once given it.  Initial access to a Shard's Investiture in a magic system seems to be by acting in sync with a Shard's Intent....ie humans access Allomancy for the first time when snapping, and acting in preservation of life.....but once a human has access to that system, they can use Allomancy to Ruin as easily as they use it to Preserve.

 

And that's the catch.

 

When a single human uses Investiture against a Shard's Intent, they're effectively using the Shard against itself.  A Shard isn't just driven by its Intent, a Shard IS its Intent.  Devotion isn't just a handy name, that Shard IS Devotion, its everything it means to be devotion.  When a human takes a piece of Preservation and uses it in pursuit of Ruin, its not just a simple action without consequences.  Its a tiny alteration in the fundamental essence of what Preservation is.  When you use Allomancy to Ruin something, you're using the essence of Preservation to do so.  You're saying to the Spiritual, 'I know what Preservation usually means, it means acting to protect or maintain life...but just this one time, it also means destroying this thing over here.'  And so, in the smallest, tiniest of ways, an Allomancer acting in pursuit of Ruin weakens Preservation, it makes the core nature of Preservation contradict itself, diluting the strength of its true Intent.  Maybe it even creates a tiny little fracture in the Shard that is Preservation.

 

Now, one human acting against a Shard's Intent, even a hundred humans acting against it - that's still far too little to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.  But get enough humans wielding Investiture against a Shard's Intent for long enough, in extreme enough ways?  That could actually hurt a Shard, in one of the only ways a Shard can be hurt.  Weakening its fundamental nature, turning its own power against itself.  Perhaps, this is even how a Shard can be Splintered.  I have no idea if this is what happened on Sel, but potentially, if Odium could have gotten enough magic wielders to wield the magic Devotion and Dominion were Invested in against their Intents, the contradiction of physical and cognitive act against spiritual purpose on a grand scale over a large enough time could potentially have created fractures in the Shards that eventually Splintered them.  Brandon did say Splintering was a long and difficult process.  After all, the Shards would be unlikely to just sit there and not try and stop Odium from turning their own power against them like this....but Investiture once given is not easily taken away, by all accounts, and so simply yanking their power away from the humans wasn't an option.  And one way or another, Odium won.

 

This, I believe, is the nature of the Oathpact on Roshar, and why Odium finally Invested himself in a planet.  I believe that for whatever reason, Honor and Cultivation were more difficult to attack in this way than Devotion and Dominion were.  Perhaps they were more evenly matched in their influence among humans, or humans were more committed to their Shards' Intents.  Perhaps Honor and Cultivation had learned from Aona and Skai's mistakes and were better prepared.  But for whatever reason, Odium's initial efforts weren't cutting it.  I think Honor proposed the Oathpact.  Its more his style, it fits his paradigm.  In his communications with Dalinar, everything he said about Shards was couched in terms of rules, and choosing champions, etc.  The Oathpact is written in the language of Honor, I think Odium views the Shards and the worlds according to his own Intent, and thus would never have conceived of a similar idea.  But whoever came up with it, I believe the Oathpact was proposed between Honor and Odium, a challenge of Intents, winner take all.  Conditions of the Oathpact forced Odium to finally Invest himself in a world and magic in counterpoint to Honor's Investiture in his Heralds and Knights.  Ritualistic combat was created in the form of a recurring battle, the Desolations, Odium's Voidbringers (and Unmade most likely) versus Honor's Knight Radiants and Heralds.  Another condition of the Oathpact was that between Desolations, the Heralds would be taken to a prison of Odium's choosing, Damnation, and tortured, in an effort to get them to betray their Oaths - to act against Honor's Intent.   

 

To my mind, Odium agreed to the Oathpact only because he was sure he could get humanity to betray Honor, given enough time.  Honor agreed to the Oathpact because he was confident in humanity, and perhaps even believed he could get mankind (and the Voidbringers) to use Odium's power against him.  Others have speculated that the Shardblades are tools of Odium....if they are, Honor might have allowed his Knights to use them in an effort to use Odium's Investiture in pursuit of Honor.

 

However, as we saw, all but one of the Heralds DID betray Honor's Intent, and forsake their Oaths.  And ultimately, for whatever reason, the Knights Radiant abandoned their Oaths as well, and I believe that was the final straw, and what ultimately Splintered Honor.  But Odium was still Invested in Roshar, one Herald still was true to his Oath, and I think Cultivation proved to be more of a wildcard than Odium anticipated.  Perhaps she's stayed behind the scenes, Cultivating Honor in mankind and keeping Honor's Intent 'alive' enough to keep his essence from dissipating as much as Devotion and Dominion's seems to, or alternately, perhaps she's working to turn Odium's Voidbringers against him, still hoping to Splinter Odium.  The trick of it is Odium may have succeeded in Splintering Honor, but merely by getting Odium to Invest in Roshar at all, Honor won a decisive victory that still gives humanity (and Cultivation) a fighting chance.

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1) Honor's "still bound by some rules" line is in reference to choosing champions to decide the fate of a war, so I would hazard that he's not just speaking in riddles, but that, in fact, Odium can and will lose if he picks a champion and Honor's champion defeats him.
 
2) We know that Splinters are "less physical, more cognitive and spiritual", and they are what you get when you splinter a Shard, so it seems that Shards are also primarily a mix of Cognitive and Spiritual, or at least have equal parts Cog/Spirit, assuming their Physical component isn't associated with its Splinters, for some reason.
 
3) Your line about rocks perceiving and being perceived could have come out of a textbook (don't worry, I'm working on it :P) describing the Cognitive. The Spiritual, it seems, is all about pure ideals.

 

Other than those points, I actually rather like your theory.

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I'm very intrigued by the idea that humans can Splinter a Shard by using its power against its Intent. But I can see some issues:

 

  • If the Shardblades really are of Odium (and I think they are), the Heralds and the Knights Radiant have been presumably using Odium's power against his Intent for thousands of years. And yet Odium still survived. The breaking of the Oathpact, the Recreance, and the existence of corrupt Shardbearers all happened relatively recently, and yet Honor died so easily.
     
  • Rashek created three Hemalurgic races and an atium-based economy to preserve the Final Empire for a thousand years, and yet in the end it took a suicidal Vin to kill Ati. It could be argued that Rashek's actions lead to more ruin than preservation overall, but since he and most of his Steel Ministry were Allomancers, that would raise the question of how Leras survived... unless the total amount of ruin and preservation balanced each other out. Well, that might work.
     
  • I can imagine how this process could kill Aona, but it's harder to imagine Dominion-based magic users using their powers to not dominate. Did Rayse kill Skai by making his people nicer to each other?

 

I think it's more likely that using a Shard's power against its Intent merely renders it more inert, less able to act, and therefore more prone to being destroyed by another Shard. That still doesn't explain how Dominion was defeated, though. Perhaps he was simply weaker than Odium.

Edited by skaa
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Some good points, and I don't have time to respond to them all, but I wanted to say a couple things about skaa's...

 

First off, using a Shard's Investiture against its Intent isn't simply a matter of aligning yourself against that Shard in theory.  Intent can't be faked, so simply the fact that they were Honor's Knights that were using shardblades against Odium's soldiers wouldn't in and of itself hurt Odium.  After all, Odium's nature is hatred, and in war, its easy for intent to get shifted.  A Knight could start out fully honorable, but in the midst of battle, watching his friends and comrades being slaughtered by what he considers inhuman monsters, its easy to imagine that Knight wielding a shardblade not out of Honor like he intended, but simply because he hates the things that are slaughtering his fellow Knights and those he protects.  In fact, I imagine if my theory is correct, this is exactly what Odium was thinking when he agreed to the Oathpact and created shardblades, knowing the Knights would take them up.  Honor might have trusted his Knights to remain virtuous in their intent, and Odium was betting on how easy it would be for them to give into hatred of their enemies when wielding his weapons.

 

For your second point, I think you hit the nail on the head, the ruin and preservation balanced each other out.  After all, Rashek's actions did lead to a lot of ruin, but by the same token he maintained a relatively stable empire for a thousand years, society and culture were practically stagnant under his rule, never changing the status quo....which is the very definition of preservation, albeit not the most pleasant kind.  Remember, every act Rashek took was in his mind about protecting the world from a far greater evil than himself, that being Ruin.  Its true that a lot of his actions inadvertently led to Ruin or were manipulated by Ruin, but in the grand scheme of things, Rashek's Intent was all about preserving the world no matter the cost, and given that he controlled and directed a large portion of the world's magic and magic users, that counts for a lot.  In fact, I'd even argue that its possible Rashek's actions over the last thousand years actually weakened Ruin a little as well, and helped when Vin fought him.

 

We honestly don't know much about how Skai's magic systems worked, so I imagine after the Elantris sequel comes out we could figure this out a lot better.  But I think the key there might be in how the opposite of dominion would be a kind of submission....and think how many monks regularly submitted and sacrificed themselves to empower one Fjordish magic user.  Its possible Odium's influence on Sel involved manipulating how people viewed or approached Skai's magic, and it became about concentrating all of the power in a very small, select elite, and making them uber powerful...which means the vast majority of people would be 'giving up' their Investiture to empower that small elite.  While technically on the surface it would look like Skai's magic system was still all about Dominion, in reality, a lot of Investiture was being expended in submission rather than acting towards Dominion themselves.

Edited by ROSHtafARian
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Good points, ROSHtafARian! Yeah, that does fit with what we've seen so far in Dakhor magic. I suppose AonDor can also be used against the Intent of its Shard. And since Harmony holds both Ruin and Preservation, it would be hard to go against his Intent.

 

I wonder how this affects Endowment, though. If people started hoarding Breaths, never giving any away, would that be harmful to Endowment? How about the Returned who refuse to use their Divine Breath? I suppose this makes the buying and selling of Breaths somewhat less problematic to me, because it motivates people to give their Breaths to someone else.

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Good points, ROSHtafARian! Yeah, that does fit with what we've seen so far in Dakhor magic. I suppose AonDor can also be used against the Intent of its Shard. And since Harmony holds both Ruin and Preservation, it would be hard to go against his Intent.

 

I wonder how this affects Endowment, though. If people started hoarding Breaths, never giving any away, would that be harmful to Endowment? How about the Returned who refuse to use their Divine Breath? I suppose this makes the buying and selling of Breaths somewhat less problematic to me, because it motivates people to give their Breaths to someone else.

 

That's exactly what I've figured about Nalthis.  I think it would be relatively easy for Odium to handle Endowment if this is true, which might make him/her low down his priority list.  Endowment's Intent is all about bestowing gifts or having natural gifts, so if people stopped giving their Breaths away or even using them at all, for whatever reason, possibly hoarding them to create an uberpowerful elite like I suggested might have happened in Fjordell - that could probably do the trick.  If you think about it, Endowment creates Splinters to make the Returned happen, but the assumption there is at some point they will use their Divine Breath to heal someone and it will return to Endowment at which point it can Return someone else without ever losing more of itself.  Its suggested by the visions Returned have and the way they've been known to use their Breaths that there's some purpose to who Endowment chooses to Return and why.  But regardless, if all of the current Returned just refused to ever heal anyone or expend their Divine Breath, perhaps due to Odium's influence, at some point, its seriously going to mess with Endowment's plans, and possibly his/her Intent over a long enough time.  If none of the Divine Breaths ever return to Endowment, eventually it has to stop creating new Returned or else it'll end up Splintering itself into oblivion, essentially.  

 

I don't know, I think Endowment is a tricky Intent to ACT against, its more a lack of acting with it that'd be the issue.  So perhaps there are variations.  Unlike what I suggested with Aona and Skai, where large enough groups of magic users using Investiture against a Shards' Intent leads to fractures and eventual Splintering, perhaps with Endowment it'd be a matter of if enough people hoarded its Investiture, contrary to its Intent, eventually that would kind of build up like internal pressure, which would lead to fractures and Splintering. 

Edited by ROSHtafARian
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Hmmm... some really nice ideas here. I like the general thrust of it.

 

The slight problem I am having with is is that, correct me if I have misunderstood, your main argument is that invested humans acting against the intent of the 'parent' Shard weakens it.

 

But while I can see a Shardic intent as being 'pure'. A human's intent is extremely subjective.

 

On Scadrial for example, Rashek's intention was to Preserve the human race, but his actions cause alot of Ruin (almost destroyed the planet through ignorance).

 

So is he using Preservations power against its intent or not? On the one hand Rasheks intent was indeed preservation. But his use of the power of the well cause huge amounts of destuctioin.

 

I suppose you could say that it is only the intents of the user that is important so Rashek, ultimately acted to preserve since that was his intention.

 

But then again, humans rarely do things for pure motives and reasons. Rashek systematically tried to wipe out Feruchemy from the Terris people while trying to preserve mankind...

 

I guess all I am trying to say, with my rambling is that Human intentions for the use of power are too subjective for anyone to really decide whether they act for or against a Shardic intent or not.

Edited by MadRand
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Well I think that's kinda the point. No matter how good you make your magic system for fulfilling your intent, the act of investing yourself into humans opens the door for them to abuse it against your intent. Even though you (the shard) are still bound, the humans are not.

Seems like it'd create a sort of "this statement is false" scenario for the shard.

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Humans acting against intent reminded me of part of a conversation between Shallan and Kasbal:

“Everything has its opposite, Shallan. The Almighty is a force of good. To balance his goodness, the cosmere needed the Voidbringers as his opposite.”

“So the more good that the Almighty did, the more evil he created as a by-product? What’s the point of doing any good at all if it just creates more evil?”

“I see Jasnah has continued your training in philosophy.”

“That’s not philosophy,” Shallan said. “That’s simple logic.”

He sighed. “I don’t think you want to get into the deep theology of this. Suffice it to say that the Almighty’s pure goodness created the Voidbringers, but men may choose good without creating evil because as mortals they have a dual nature. Thus the only way for good to increase in the cosmere is for men to create it -- in that way, good may come to outweigh evil.”

It could be as simple as "Shards need humans as pawns," but it's also compatible with the theory here.
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What I like about this theory is, that in my opinion it explains why Odium invested and ankered himself on Roshar, while not doing so on Sel:

On Sel the people that become Elantrians are chosen (seemingly) randomly. On Roshar however, the surgebinders are chosen by what they do, so, if this theory has merrit, Honor managed to get that flaw out of his magic system, since once the users stop being honorable or whatever their spren wants from them, I believe the Nahel bond breaks. Because of that Odium cannot use humans to break Honor and has to invest himself instead. Note, that in this post I make several assumptions that might be baseless, so read at your own risk.

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/>It seems more that it's people who are super Devoted to something.

This seems likely, although I'm not certain we have any example beyond Raoden to back it up. The prior post still works though, in that the Shaod is likely permanent, as would be the Dakhor bone transformations, unlike the nahel bond which could conceivably be revoked.

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Also, aside from Galladon, the farthest we've seen an Elantrian (that we know of) from Elantris is Teod.  It could be that if you are away from Sel and/or Elantris for too long or too far, then the glow fades and even disappears until you return.

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  • 1 month later...

It seems that it's people who are super Devoted to something. [who become elantrians]

 

This seems likely, although I'm not certain we have any example beyond Raoden to back it up. 

 

Um.. Galledon (farming), Mareshe (art), Karata (her child). These are very highly probable, as well as a lower indication with Dashe (soldiering), Kahar (cleaning). Kolo?

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I'm very intrigued by the idea that humans can Splinter a Shard by using its power against its Intent. But I can see some issues:

 

  • If the Shardblades really are of Odium (and I think they are), the Heralds and the Knights Radiant have been presumably using Odium's power against his Intent for thousands of years. And yet Odium still survived. The breaking of the Oathpact, the Recreance, and the existence of corrupt Shardbearers all happened relatively recently, and yet Honor died so easily.

 

I wonder though...  Odium sounds like the kind of sado-masochist who cuts himself as well as attacking others. As long as the blades are used for killing things, they're probably in line with his intent.

 

Edit; OH!! on this bit:   "That still doesn't explain how Dominion was defeated, though. Perhaps he was simply weaker than Odium."

 

The followers of Dominion in Elantris seem hellbent on destroying Elantris. Not dominating, but destroying. If you destroy your enemies, you cannot dominate them.

Edited by CabbageHead
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