ZHRPhoenix

I love your breakdown and explanation of the shards and I have conceded that the shard Odium being primarily fear was in fact a stretch and more that it's just an aspect of Odium Brandon seems to want us to keep an eye on. As for Honor splitting himself it could've also involved Cultivation as an outside influence to help overcome the idea of unity. Love the feedback and keep it up!

Let me start off with thanks for the reply to the thread and I loved your insight, you are absolutely right on this point and perhaps it was a little bold of me to go as far as saying the shards entire intent dealt with fear and my efforts would have been better focused in pointing out the connection to fear as a subset of Odium. The whole hatred and passion just seemed to be underplayed by the messages of fear on and off-screen so my assumption was a full-on red herring of it being fear warped so far as to be confused as other emotion but perhaps Brandon was more so just trying to focus on fear as an aspect and I still suspect it as an important aspect that Brandon wants us to notice for some reason or another. Again I do think I may have stretched to say fear was the primary intent of the shard but reading through your sources leads me to believe that instead the innate hatred and urge to destroy may be an amplification of fear at least in the case of Taravangian cause despite being an all-around not so cool dude he never truly came across as hateful. Well maybe that time he tried to kill singing children but hey let's just chalk that one up to Cultivation's old magic making things screwy since in that case being cruel was his curse for the intelligence. In the end, though that does beg the question of how much do we really know Taravangian maybe he really is horrible and would've wanted the singing children killed innately and the compassion was the true boon to temper his fury. As for the questioned/challenged issue, I do think that can largely be attributed to the shard being innately lonely to some degree, it may be hard even for a hostile shard to be alone for so long with nobody to really talk to, just subjects being given orders even if it is insubordination if its the only person who spoke a differing opinion to you this year you'll get a kick out of it. Also, I do agree that Shard intents aren't self-directed but that Taravangian as a person and a vessel may have some noticeable effects on a shard of passion and perhaps even change the perceived intent of the shard from hatred to a more fear centered shard, all of Taravangian's passions amplified and based on my reading I think the direction we are gonna see is amplified fear going forward. A fair argument but again I do think this is similar to my last point that this may be more a look at the character of the vessel in relation to the shard from a story perspective but not necessarily actually unique to Rayse, Odium, or Taravangian specifically. Rather it's something Brandon likes to give us for thematic reasons. Absolutely I think he's been experimenting with different methods and don't think he's truly gotten it the way he wanted a single time so far but is perhaps close to a breakthrough in that department. That is a fair and interesting point, I believe general consensus is that she was on the side of Odium since Harmony was worried by her response when reached out to about standing up to Odium. Though this is still up in the air in terms of cannon so definitely some room for theorizing there. At this point in my theorizing, I'm really working on loose connections of being likely of Ambition's Investiture and as for Mercy's Intent, we really don't know what it is so it is hard to get a clear image of why she was involved and why Harmony doesn't like her. Yes, I absolutely misspoke here and did mean splinter and the only reason I use the term sub shard rather than bigger splinter is that it just doesn't seem like 1/10th of a god even if that god is already 1/16th of a bigger god would still be on the same scale as a Seon or normal spren. I still think if my theory is correct the Stormfather is by far the most special and unique as bonsmith spren always are and is likely even stronger than my other 9 theorized subshards for many reasons. As for having a bearing on the people, eh probably not at least not till late cosmere. The most I could see Brandon actually taking this arc is in uniting all 10 subshards essentially being Honor's true intent in his words "Unite them." being that Dalinar has to find the other 9 and probably reach the 5th ideal with their subshard spren. The reason I theorize Syl being one of these subshards is that she is the last living honorspren that was created before the recreance and would have been the most likely to have been singled out by Honor himself to be turned into a subshard. Though if you hate it that much there are 10 other honorspren the Stormfather made directly that could also be candidates. It just feels like too big a task for Brandon to throw on a side character though and it seems like we aren't going to be seeing another Windrunner on the same scale as Kal and Syl based on the remaining outlines for the other 6 books. Essentially what I was trying to say is since the shards are bound by intent of their shards but humans are free to change their intents the subshards would be free of the restriction of intent almost completely though if they are a spren from each order you would instead be bound by the Ideals of your order. The main part is there to support my theory of more shards always being worse off than individually is that in your WoB quote it is stated that even the shard of Ruin is only a "safer" option than most of the 16 but is still heavily implied to be more restrictive of him. Any shift in a shards primal intent seems to have large effects on what they are capable of doing. We really just don't have enough info on Adonalsium to know for sure what his limits were since all we know is most of his creations were done with the dawnshards which were used to kill him so at least at some point he no longer had possession of them. It's possible he was so muddled with different Intents that he was physically incapable of acting without the dawnshards to overcome it. Or it's completely possible you are right and he was fully capable of acting without restriction as a whole unit but even if that is the case it seems more like a wave function in terms of how much intent restricts entities. 2 shards may make it near impossible to act with 1 shard only having some trouble whereas humans tend to have no issue changing intent unless bound by ideals. The smaller the splinter/shard the less intent seems to keep it from acting. What happens going the other way is up in the air. As for being able to kill vessels and splinter shards it doesn't seem that special since even Vin killed a vessel after having barely become a vessel herself, as for doing it safely that just seems to need care, planning, and practice. Splintering we don't know for sure if that's anything special but if it is that would likely mean Odium already has a dawnshard intermingled with its shard which would be interesting and explain the hatred aspect of Odium since Brandon has said that none of the shards intents are truly evil, the evil they cause is due to the vessels use/interpretations, unless that is Odium had a shard along the lines of Hatred or Destruction. Rysn's dawnshard of Change does seem to be a primal force and we don't know the other 3 so it's possible one could be the act of Destruction though I can't see this being the case unless it is paired in the system with a dawnshard of Creation to balance out the system. That's fair but one reason to bring them up is if he was looking for one. As for being further derivations of honor yes and no. I think it would take the approach of the Knights Radiants and Heralds which seem to be ideas on 10 different forms of Honor hence 10 different kinds of Ideals. The main takeaway here is in the fact that if Sazed the vessel died it has been established he would drop the shard of Harmony/Discord depending on who the new vessel was but that you would essentially have to reshatter the shard in order to get just ruin or preservation back. This likely mirrors the ideas of gravity in investiture over time clumping up together in god metals, shard pools, and heck possibly even Adonalsium himself could have been some big bang level investiture clump where the universe collapsed condensing all the investiture into Adonalsium who then created the Cosmere in order to start diffusing the investiture back out into the wider Cosmere before being accelerated by the splintering into 16 shards. This was on the more farfetched side of my theorizing so I can understand disagreeing, merely a thought I had since in RoW even after being betrayed Dalinar doesn't seem to hate Taravangian, and still even sympathizes with him to at least some degree. As for trusting a new vessel, each vessel is different to some extent. All understanding of shards we have so far suggests that the shard may be the overarching intent but the vessel has a lot of wiggle room in how they let that intent guide them. He can totally blame Rayse as just being a horrible person who let the intent of passion consume him and fuel his hatred and ambitions. Again Odium the shard itself is confirmed to not be evil, it requires either a poor vessel or an evil vessel to act truly evil. Even Hoid may have advocated for releasing Odium with a trustworthy vessel at the wheel though I doubt he likes TOdium much more than ROdium. There is still some wiggle room for manipulation if Taravangian convinces Dalinar to cancel the duel he is freed from the system. Or just wait till after the duel then make another deal to release him. There is certainly still some room to wiggle, I don't see Brandon locking Odium to Roshar for the entire Cosmere just to win a single continent. I mean in the sense of Odium the shard will be shattered by a non shard or subshard. I don't think any sort of coalition of shards on Hoid or Harmony's part will be his ultimate downfall but rather Dalinar will play at least some role in the shattering of Odium. I was referencing fear of failure driving him to save everyone rather than Rayse's fear of others being able to defeat him causing him to destroy anything he perceived as a threat. Again I was essentially insinuating that he would be driven by fear of not being able to save everyone leading him to dethrone the "broken gods" that are the other shards to become the ruler of the Cosmere because only he is strong enough. He's sure he has the strength to rule as the perfect god but fears he won't be good enough unless he is the only god because under any other shard he sees people as being mistreated and that he isn't doing enough to help them. I'm referencing his scene where he learns how to beat Rayse on one of his dumb days and he realizes that he can overcome the stupidity if he channels his compassion for people into the drive to find this discovery. Learning to think while dumb while full of passion. Training him to be ready for the shard of Odium. Again mainly I was just trying to show the lines Brandon seems to be drawing between the ideas of Odium and Fear over and over. Overall you made a lot of great points and gave me a lot more viewpoints to think of this from. I definitely latched on to the message of Odium being associated with fear a little too strongly and while I think it is something brandon is trying to point at perhaps it is not in the shards overall intent but perhaps more just a hint at what to expect from Odium in the near future. I hope I explained my process on subshards a little better and on why I think splinter is too loose a term for what I think these 10 subshards are. Things that aren't quite just small pieces of a god and not quite a full god. Even as shards they are considered near-infinite in potential and power merely bound by their intent so 1/10th of that is more like a greek pantheon level god, beings of crazy power but specialized even further into orders and ideals as ideas of character and/or goals rather than primal intent.

I was doing a little more digging today and can't believe I missed this WoB but it also seems to support the idea that the shards are not static and can at least be formed into bigger shards so it seems only natural that they could go the other way and become smaller shards. Also another example of the strong association with fear. Something else of note is looking through WoB on the Arcanum archive Brandon loves wiggling in the idea of fear when talking about Odium and even a simple search for the word fear almost every mention is either from reckoners his non-cosmere work that talks a lot about fear closely followed by mentions of Odium and Rayse being afraid.

So a theory I've discussed in my own thread is that Honor may have been shattered more than splintered in the sense that I think Honor formed 10 Subshard entities before his death with one of them being the stormfather and one of them being Syl, likely all smaller aspects of Honor in line with the 10 orders of Knights radiants. So perhaps what Odium meant is that he had killed Honor as a whole and didn't realize that parts of Honor were still alive one of them potentially being named Unity. In this case, the stormfather/Dalinar are likely in the process of fusing into the new vessel of the subshard Unity whereas Kaladin and Syl may be in the process of becoming a vessel of a subshard along the lines of Protection. Nice theorizing keep it up!

I think the bigger issue is that Cadmium and Bendalloy fit quite well to this as well since time is heavily connected to the spiritual world and I believe there is WoB out there somewhere although I am struggling to find it that essentially how they get around redshift is by moving light in and out of the spiritual realm at the bubbles threshold. Then again you may be onto something since I know Brandon has mentioned multiple times on live streams that the table is not absolute and not actually restricted by any laws of the Cosmere, it's grouped how it is because it's close enough and humans love grouping things together. So I do think you are right that they are at least somewhat spiritual in nature. Also technically spiritual isn't a true category on the table, instead, there is physical, mental, temporal, and enhancement. Perhaps what you just did is stumbled upon an entirely new way of grouping the metals. Great work keep it up!

I think in that instance it is more a sense of fear for his nation and his people and is a rare moment where he does put others above himself, perhaps that will even be a major arc of his escapades or even be part of how Odium gets defeated next, a chink in the intent, a people to give him pause long enough for them to resist. I think the only major counterpoint to this would be him destroying Hoid's breathes but I also see this as an act of fear, Hoid found out he wasn't Rayse crazy fast and I think that scared T-Odium at the moment and realized that perhaps it isn't a good idea to reveal the fact that there is a different Odium quite yet. After all, he does make a pattern throughout the books of withholding information until he thinks it necessary or beneficial to release. Nevertheless, I do agree that perhaps I did not explain Taravangian the person's connection to fear quite well enough in my original post but would also like to mention that I don't think the vessel has to have a predisposition for the shards nature but that this is more of a Brandon likes to connect the personalities of the vessel and shard to some degree for story purposes. Let's start with his trip to the Nightwatcher where Taravangian asks for "The capacity to save humankind" which at least to me seems an act that meant he feared he wouldn't be able to do enough, this leads me to think maybe TOdium will be a whole new kind of fear even, perhaps he will fear not being a good enough god for his people though this still wouldn't stop him being an antagonist since he would still likely want to be a sole god so he could rule all people as the aimed to do on Roshar. Perhaps instead of the Paranoia type fear of Rayse destroying anything that he sees as a threat Taravangian as Odium will seek to be a Utilitarian god destroying the other shards in an intelligent and calculated way so that he can have sole control of the Cosmere and rule it the way he sees as best. Who knows maybe this is even how the Cosmere ends with Taravangian finally getting his Utilitarian dream. In addition, I think part of Cultivation knew Taravangian would become Odium and that is why she gave him the specific boon and curse of having great intelligence and compassion but never at the same time, to train his mind to overcome this gap such as he did in the end, he finally learned to be intelligent when he was supposed to be stupid and kind so perhaps his arc of Odium will also include the opposite learning to reign in the great intelligence of being a Shard and the Utilitarian desires to still find compassion within himself even when it seems impossible. Maybe cultivation even gets to survive this new Odium age as a reward for helping him as a sub god being forced to swear oaths that she will not act against Odium and instead serve him as the high lords serve the Queen. This would make an excellent look at the trope of Baldr from Norse mythology who was destined to die and in fear his mother made everything in the universe promise to cause him no harm except for mistletoe which ends up killing him but up until that point was invincible even if someone tried to hurt him their oath magically repelled any attack. Which now that I think about it that trope is also linked to the one I mentioned earlier of Odium creating its own defeat based on its action against the Cosmere in that the only reason Baldr's blind twin brother stabs him with the Mistletoe spear is that he thinks it can't hurt him and was tricked by Loki into doing so. We also haven't seen much of Taravangian's family so perhaps that will be his downfall, conquering the Cosmere but getting his original wish of safety for his family allowing them to defeat him since he can't fathom them doing anything against him. I hope this helps convey my thought process a little better but I appreciate the feedback and let me know if there is anything else I missed or got wrong!

That's true but taravangian as a person is very fearful as well. His major struggle is trying to find a way to defeat an enemy that he thinks is too powerful to be beat. Furthermore fear can manifest as hatred. Few things are more dangerous than a cornered animal in fear for it's life, essentially my thought process is the shard causes such a deep routed fear that it leads to hating almost everyone and everything else because to odium anything could be a threat. I also feel when reading Odium scenes that he comes off as wearing a mask of power most of the time and doesn't really feel like a real person except for the moments the fear breaks through also something I missed earlier is that he is very hesitant to ever enter a contest of champions unless he's first afraid that he may lose.

I will start this off with a warning that this thread will contain spoilers for most if not all of the Cosmere so I recommend turning away now if you aren't caught up, with that being said let's begin. *WoB/Sources/Quotes in spoiler sections to help reduce length* 1. Odium is the wrong name for the shard. I propose Odium's true shard name should instead be fear and that he excepts being called Odium and being seen as passion and hatred to hide this. Multiple WoB references Rayse as being both afraid of other shards and afraid of taking up shards since they may change him and in his mind that is no better than being destroyed. 2. It is well accepted that at least Rayse-Odium's main goal was to splinter all other shards and become the sole god of the Cosmere though he seems to be zoning in on exactly what that means based on the different methods of splintering shards. Devotion/Dominion being splintered and pulled into the cognitive realm to form the Dor though this seems to have displeased Odium since the power is still accessible through inhabitants of Sel. Ambition who's splintering seems to have been very messy although I suspect was much more intentional. We know Mercy was involved in at least one of the clashes between Odium and Ambition so perhaps the condition of her request was that in helping splinter a shard he was not allowed to go as far as before in pulling them through to the cognitive so Odium instead created or helped shape a pseudo vessel for the shard's power in the form of the evil that would constantly leak the shard's power forming shades to prevent it from ever completely reforming into a full shard. This brings us to Honor who I believe knew what was coming and perhaps even knew he could not defeat Odium so instead decided to lean into the process and splinter himself as much as possible before Odium could in order to create the most useful tools for after his death. I believe the largest portion to be the Stormfather since he was named Honor's heir and transferred as much of himself as he could over creating what I will call the first subshard, essentially something in between a full shard and a sliver and split the rest of his power into 9 other subshards perhaps each one appears as a spren such as the stormfather and each order has one of these subshards. 3. Honor shattered himself? If I am correct in the assumption that Honor intentionally split his power I believe he did it in the hopes that he would actually be stronger divided and splintered than as a whole shard. Harmony specifically states that having two shards makes it more difficult for him to act, a sentiment Rayse-Odium seems to at least somewhat agree with since he refuses to take up a second shard. Perhaps Honor attempted to mimic the shattering of Adonalsium upon himself to create even smaller shards in a hope that it would grant them greater control over their powers. I believe this is the reason the Dawnshard of change is in the Rosharan system at all, since the 4 dawnshards were involved in shattering Adonalsium perhaps Tanavast used this dawnshard to further shatter his shard. After all, Harmony seems to act much more like a single shard than as two separate shards combined so perhaps the days of 16 shards have been over for quite a while today and in fact, there would only be 1 great shard(Harmony) the only double shard we know of and while theoretically stronger has less ability to act. Possibly followed by the Dor which seems to be something similar in the mixing of Devotion and Dominion but without a true vessel and leaking far more into the physical realm. Then followed by the 10 remaining full shards Then the splintered shard of Ambition which I believe is in a semi vessel called the evil that is leaking similar to the Dor in Sel but instead by creating shades and enforcing rules to purposefully hinder humanity from becoming to advanced to itself be a threat to Odium, and finally my theorized 10 new subshards of Honor that would be the last thing on the power scale of shards with slivers being close behind although to distinct from shards to be considered in this Hierarchy. In the end, this would mean there are 23 "vessels" of Adonalsiums original power at this point although taking many forms from the original 16 shards. 4.Taravangian Odium-I believe the new Odium is going to attempt to escape the Rosharan system by tricking Dalinar into thinking that since he is a new vessel he should not be bound to the system any longer and instead be allowed to leave and set up his own system. Whether this will work or not I have no idea but most likely even if Taravangian tries this and means it at first I believe the fear of the shard would soon corrupt him and he would begin destroying other shards again out of paranoia. 5. The downfall of Odium will inevitably be due to something less than a shard I believe. I think his fear is driving him to focus too much on the other shards and his fear of Harmony furthers my belief in this since Harmony is likely the smallest threat to Odium being so powerful that he can actually barely act and could do no harm to Odium. Instead, I think the new set of subshards of Honor will be his downfall. The bridge between shards and humans allows absolute control of the shard's full extent by unifying together. Individually they may be weaker than Odium but theoretically, if Dalinar connects the other 9 subshards(him being one since bonded to stormfather) together then this will be the true end of Odium since they will have all the power of a shard but be able to use it without the restriction of intent binding them such as Harmony. 6. The end of the Cosmere- since Odium seems to be the primary antagonist of the Cosmere I theorize that the true end of the series will only occur once Odium is either himself splintered so far that his shards power no longer poses a threat, he ends up combining with other shards that actually mellow out the fear and only by becoming more powerful does his rampage stop, or Odium succeeds in splintering every other shard then proceeding to kill most of the intelligent life in the Cosmere in fear that it could also oppose him since after all it was mere mortals that shattered Adonalsium. Perhaps the only race left will be Dull form singers or his fused that are either too weak to resist Odium or bound and controlled by him explicitly like how Harmony can control Hemalurgic Constructs. Side Note: Odium's arc seems to be associated with the trope of creating your own downfall by being so afraid that he will be taken down that he becomes a harsh tyrannical god that everyone wants to take down whereas if he had just gone and invested his own system from the start likely would have been fine. I apologize if this wasn't well written or if I missed anything/didn't use enough sources. I happily invite discussion and will try to update and improve this as I go since this is my first attempt at theorizing and is only a first draft of my ideas.

If I'm not mistaken it has been canonized that over time a shards power can create a vessel from scratch so is it possible that since only most of Honor's power got transferred to the storm father that there is a lesser portion of that power splintered off and seeking a host which Kaladin seems to be the perfect fit for. This could also perhaps explain shades on threnody if in only splintering a shard it is not preventing it from taking a new vessel whereas on Sel the power was more so ripped out of the spiritual realm altogether making it perhaps unable to gain hosts. Excuse my poor phrasing and lack of exact WoB but my theory essentially boils down to, the power is splintered essentially creating sub shards, the largest being the storm father and other smaller portions seeking out hosts such as Kaladin or in the case of threnody perhaps each shade is very small pieces of the shards remaining power latching on to cognitive shadows and creating hundreds of mini shards. Essentially I think Honor won't reform as a whole shard but rather as lesser shards, if Adonalsium can be splintered into 16 shards I see no reason they can't become even smaller fragments just like recombining the fragments seems to be possible with Harmony. If this is the case it could also be possible that Dalinar is becoming one of these splinters/sub shards either through bonding the storm father or just by embodying the ideals of Honor making him a suitable host. The number 10 is very important to Roshar so completely unbiased but the possibility that Honor got splintered into 10 pieces that are seeking out a hostfrom each order embodying different aspects of Honor. As we have seen though, destroying shards is tricky business so it makes sense to me that Odium would settle for simply shattering the other shards into smaller pieces only fearing the 15 full shards of Adonalsium but rather than recreating the deaths of Devotion and Dominion again finds it much easier to just split the power and let it take smaller forms. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and this has been disproven but think it might be worth looking into further although I am new to the scholarly side of the Cosmere only just now catching up. TL;DR Perhaps Odium realizes he can't truly destroy the power of the 15 other shards but is instead trying to splinter it into pieces that cannot oppose him such as shades on threnody that may be less than .1% of Ambitions shard each whereas Cultivation may have helped Honor at least not shatter into such tiny pieces perhaps instead 10 so that she could cultivate 10 new vessels to take the power and by unifying them they could overcome Odium. After all, Harmony has proven that the more power one vessel holds the harder it is to act so perhaps she saw Honor dying and being split into 10 smaller weaker shards as an advantage since they could theoretically do much much more than Odium as a single intent shard. (Sorry even my TL;DR was long I'll blame it on me being extremely sick and half out of it, I will try to revisit and revise this when I am more coherent.