TheoreticalMagic

Well, if you go to the thread about "Who do you think will be the big bad of the cosmere" you'll find my theory about the origins of the Iriali and how it pertains to the One - specifically, I think they're from Sel, descended from a Skai-created inverse of the Aona-created Elantrians, the original Men of Gold, dedicated to Dominion. I think Dominion is the One and they seek to restore him from what Odium and Autonomy did on Sel....or at least their religion has evolved the belief that they can restore Skai or Dominion. Specifically, this line from the interlude has me more convinced than ever: That drive, specifically? Sounds exactly like what Dominion would assign as the primary mission of his religion, for anyone who worshipped or followed him. And thus I think the talk about the One being Shattered and their quest to reform him is not about Adonalsium but rather about Odium's destruction of Dominion on Sel, and the formation of the Dor.

I have a pet theory that its actually going to be a reformed Dominion, based on my theory that the men of Red and Gold were originally Skai's version of Elantrians (gold hued instead of Aona's silver hued Elantrians) and when Odium came to Sel, Autonomy helped him destroy Skai and Aona in part so she could steal his not!Elantrians for herself, and they became the Men of Gold and Red because red is the color of corrupted Investiture, once she added her own in the mix to turn them away from just being Skai's weapons of mass destruction. (Equal power to Elantrians but dedicated to Dominion rather than Devotion? Terrifying). The Iriali on Roshar are descendants of the Not!Elantrians from Sel who escaped being drafted by Autonomy into her own private army, and their myths about reforming the One are a red herring....most people naturally think its a reference to the time before the Shards and the One they talk about reuniting by returning to their true home is Adonalsium, but I think its actually their legends of Skai...they believe that the more they experience and learn on their Long Trail, while continuously staying out of Autonomy's reach, the more they'll be able to bring under the dominion of Dominion once they find a way to restore their original god..... Thus making Skai or at least Dominion the final big bad of the cosmere, the dark horse no one saw coming because he seemed to be off the table as a potential player....from the very first book of the cosmere. Bringing everything full circle, because as terrifying as Autonomy, Odium and Ruin are capable of being, and doubtless other Shards as well....the potential of the Shard of Dominion as a big bad, with the full might of his Men of Gold at the height of their power....feels waaaay too good to waste on backstory that happened thousands of years before the very first book. As far into the cosmere as we are, in terms of pure power and versatility, the Elantrians and Ire remain all the way up there with very few other magics capable of matching them en masse (like individual Mistborn or fully-oathed Knights Radiant or an Awakener w/10000 Breaths are of course extremely potent in their own rights, but the numbers of magic-users able to wield the absolute peak of their homeworld's magic systems tend to be extremely variable....there's a wide spectrum of magical aptitude and potency on most Shardworlds whereas ALL the Elantrians are like...stupid powerful, lol. And Skai-commissioned counterparts dedicated to Dominion and conquest, the precursors of the monks of Jaddeth, created by Skai with intent rather than born of what remained after Odium Splintered the Sel Shards....they'd likely be just as powerful and numerous, which is what makes them so feared as Autonomy's army if that's who the Men of Red and Gold really are. Reunited w/their 'true god' and with Dominion having an axe to grind against multiple Shards and a cosmere to conquer? Dominion and his armies could be THE threat to end all threats in the space age of the cosmere, IMO. Especially if there is no separating the Dor back into Devotion and Dominion and they'll have to become a merged Shard in the future similar to Harmony....but while we're looking at Discord as a potential huge threat if the Ruin side edges out the Preservation side....if a merged Dominion/Devotion Shard ends up with a holder who is more of Dominion than of Devotion.....but has that same Intent and appetite for Dominion but now with their people equally driven to be utterly Devoted to Dominion....not a Shard of Unity so much as a Shard of....Zeal or Obsession or some synonym for All-Consuming, a Shard whose Intent is to gather everything in creation under their banner and demands and expects nothing short of everyone's utter Devotion to them.... Yeah. That could make for a BIG Bad, I think.

Well, based on this theory of mine from one of the Secret Forums, though I think anything further I add here is free of spoilers specific to the secret projects, but just to make it explicitly clear, this does cover all fifteen named Shards: (Buckle up, I had TIME tonight, and this got LONG) I theorize the Dawnshards are something like Connect, Change, Exist and Move. Connect I correlate to the Investiture/magical equivalent of gravity's place in the Unified Field Theory as one of the fundamental forces that govern our universe. Yes, even though gravity is one of the specific forces that fall under one single Shardworld's magic system (albeit while standing out among the nine other forces its supposedly 'equivalent' to. Its been noted that the surge of Adhesion was a deliberate addition by Honor rather than just a natural expression of the forces in the Rosharan and the way the various Shards' Intents interact with them and manifest magically. This could be because Honor was trying to stack the deck of his magic system by engineering a way to work in a force even more primal than the nine natural Surges, trying to grant his people access to power more directly aligned with the Dawnshards and the forces THEY govern....but in a deliberately diluted fashion or through a more restrictive lens than the Dawnshards allow access to, in order to avoid a repeat of the disaster that struck Ashyn when the Dawnshards and Surges were used recklessly there). Point being, the Dawnshard 'Connect,' the one that can bind any creature, Voidish or mortal, much like the Surge of Adhesion can create gravitational bonds holding things so firmly together they can't be separated....would be the Dawnshard that embodies the cosmere's primal force governing....Purpose. Meaning. Gravity. All the things that across every Realm - Physical, Cognitive and Spiritual - make actions and symbols and events MATTER, have lasting significance or build towards greater purposes or outcomes rather than just existing as singular blips in time and space that never connect - or bind themselves - to any other moments in time and space, which would mean nothing ever matters, causes never lead to effects, everything is aimless, directionless, purposeless...it exists just to exist in and of itself rather than as individual pieces of a greater whole....threads of a tapestry comprising the entirety of the cosmere....and with each thread's BINDING to the other threads and the overall tapestry itself...being the only things that allow those threads to stay together long and surely enough to form a greater picture, to add up to something bigger than themselves, a whole that surpasses the sum of its individual parts. Change would be the Dawnshard that serves as the magical/Investiture equivalent to the physical force of electromagnetism. Electromagnetism governs the charging of particles and the interactions between positive and negative charges, all of which is fundamental to the changing states of matter. In a similar vein, the Change Dawnshard governs and instigates the very essence of fluidity within the cosmere's various Realms, everything that keeps things from growing static and stagnant, ensuring that the cosmere's various pieces and forces don't become locked and mired into a single framework whose very existence would act as an endpoint to creation, claiming it had reached a 'final, ultimate form' from which there would be no further alterations, no new interactions between pieces would ever occur without Change, no new shapes or forms would ever be discovered by those various pieces....Change and its derivative forces and Shards are what keeps the tapestry that shows the shape and story of the cosmere from being 'complete' and just freezing in place, never again showing anything other than what the tapestry already displays in this moment. Connect makes things that happen matter, makes things have weight, makes interactions have meaning, makes causes link up to effects, actions beget consequences. Change is the energy of those interactions, the forces that make those ever-changing, ever-shifting interactions happen again and again, always in slightly new and different ways before sparking yet another new change in yet another interaction or shift in state or status. Then Exist would be the Dawnshard that correlates to the strong nuclear force in the Unified Field Theory, the cosmere magical equivalent to that physical force that unlike gravitation and electromagnetism doesn't ACTIVELY act upon particles or other forces in...but rather is a more passive force that defines the natural state and interactions between particles when not being actively acted upon. Its the force that defines and explains what we're looking at when we simply observe how different bits of creation exist in relation to each other at any given moment.....it contextualizes other forces, interactions and how all the pieces of creation fit together. It exists to say.....things exist. Even when not actively being acted upon or at rest or while being uncatalyzed potential energy that has yet to have the match struck that will spark its potential and use it in an actual energetic interaction that sparks change or binds a cause to a correlating effect...this is the force that's defined by simply being evidence or proof of the fact that all these individual pieces of creation and its myriad energies EXIST regardless of the why or the how, even in the absence of gravity or bindings that build and combine those pieces into greater wholes and before and after each individual change that turns what exists in any single moment into something new in the next moment. If Connect is the Dawnshard of Matter and Change is the Dawnshard of Energy, then Exist is the Dawnshard of Space, the basic bedrock of the cosmere upon which everything else is built....the fundamental, foundational stuff that needs to simply exist for no other reason than for all of creation to have something to be built UPON. Exist is the Dawnshard that creates a frame for that tapestry that shows the shape and story of the cosmere....the border and expanse of everything within that border that says everything contained within this frame IS the cosmere, it is what exists. The Exist Dawnshard and its linked Shards and the forces it governs are that which provide context so that the picture and story of the cosmere, everything the tapestry is comprised of....can exist within a singular frame, be viewed AS that larger whole....so that you can look at it and group everything within it together and say oh I see, all of this is meant to be viewed as one giant image, all of this is connected. THIS is the cosmere. This is everything that EXISTS, because this Dawnshard and its forces ensure that it does, by mandate of the Creative Urge, due to a Primal Command that said....EXIST, so that things could CONNECT and bind and build when CHANGE sparked new interactions, forced shifts in phase state, and so on and so on. Which brings us to the last Dawnshard, the correlating cosmere magical equivalent to the weak nuclear force in the Unified Field Theory. The outlier, for all that the strong and weak nuclear forces are often erroneously assumed to be direct opposites or inversions of each other, and fits into what Brandon's said about how one of the Dawnshards is distinct from the other three. This is the Move Dawnshard, the Dawnshard of Time to the other three Dawnshards of Space, Matter and Energy. Space, everything that exists, and Connect and Change, all the little pieces of Matter within that Space and all the Energy used to create constant changes and fluidity, forever shaping all that Matter across all of Space into new configurations and shapes and combinations. And finally, Time....the Primal Command that says Make Things Go, that looked at all the other fundamental ingredients of creation and how they fit together and were intended to work in concert with each other in order for creation to BE and to define how it all combines into that tapestry showing the story of the cosmere, the whole that's greater than the sum of its parts....and essentially acted as the pushing of a divine start button. Everything else, the other three Dawnshards and all the smaller Shards of Adonalsium that they were used to shatter God into...they all make up the engine of creation. You can't remove one of them or the forces or ingredients they govern and embody....without the engine as a whole falling apart or failing to work properly. They all need each other to do what they're intended to do. The outlier Dawnshard, the Move Dawnshard....that exists separate from the engine, because something had to turn that engine on. Once the engine had finished being assembled, once all the other ingredients of creation had been put in place and were ready to come together to BE creation....there was something else, one last Divine Command, to acknowledge that creation was ready to be created, and now it was time to press go....so that the creator, or those holding the powers of creation, could then step back and watch things MOVE. See creation actualized, the Grand Design at work. Which gives us the tapestry of the cosmere, fit within its frame of space, the borders of everything that the creator or those wielding its power commanded to EXIST, the shape and story that tapestry displays being woven of individual threads of matter, all the stuff that's bound together in order to ensure that each thread ends up having meaning beyond itself, is part of something bigger than just one single thread, none of it floating alone and disconnected in a void, all of the individual pieces of creation that the creator or its surrogates or substitutes gave the Command to CONNECT, to matter, to bind itself to more matter and bigger pictures....and with those images displayed upon the tapestry of creation being scenes of energy at work, their story constantly shifting, evolving, growing bigger and the tapestry's billions of connected threads combining and recombining into an endless array of new shapes, forms and combinations as the ways those threads combine constantly CHANGE. MOVE, Time, is the lever that needs to be pulled, the button that needs to be pushed, for the tapestry of creation, everything it is and everything it COULD be, to tell an actual story. To have momentum, to move forward, to CONNECT and CHANGE things that EXIST in a never-ending march forward that never stops, because the Primal Command, the divine mandate that comprises Time and its correlating Shards and forces....it didn't set a time limit, it didn't say MOVE and then stop, it just said MOVE.....and once everything was set in motion, nothing further needed to be said in order for creation to progress eternally onward, continuing the weaving of that tapestry without end, it growing and changing and the story it tells getting bigger and more intricate the more Time passes, the more things Move. And thus, all that said....these are the Shard Patterns that form in my estimation. The Shards that fall under the grouping of CONNECT, that correspond to that Dawnshard and together comprise equivalent forces to that initial, Prime creative demand that things matter and that everything that matters stick together, combine into bigger things: CONNECT Honor - this Shard embodies actions bound to consequences, intentions bound to actual deeds. Oaths connecting individuals to ideals in ways that only matter if that individual gives actual weight to their perception of Honor and how it binds their actions, narrows their focus, governs the hows and whys of connecting thought to action, cause to effect. Honor connects Knight to spren, connects oath to ideal, connects promises to the consequences of breaking those promises. Dominion - this Shard embodies the connections that bind all the people within a land, all the places under one ruler's thumb, into a singular mass that someone can claim as their dominion. To have dominion over certain skillsets, mastery of various arts or magics, means to not just be connected to every move that comprises a martial art, but to know how each of those moves connects to the others - only then can one take full advantage of all the potential that exists within that martial art, all the ways you can change from one stance to another by having complete dominion over every possible combination of moves and stances that make up that martial art. A leader is connected to everything in his dominion and has command of the ways individuals under his dominion can connect with each other, with their land, with a common, unifying cause. Dominions can spread and expand by subjugating new lands and people who upon conquest become connected to everything that already falls under a certain dominion, and whomever holds the reins of that dominion and everything it contains. And the only way to wrestle out from under someone's dominion, to break free of their control, is to sever what binds you to that person....and often whatever connections you have to everything else still under their dominion. Devotion - This Shard embodies the bond that signifies a desire or willingness to connect yourself to a focus to whom you'd give your loyalty, your time, your energy, possibly the entirety of everything you have to offer someone. It is not love, it is not an inherent potential for compassion or hope....as Adonalsium could have shattered in many different ways, in another universe perhaps there might be Shards of Love or Hope or Compassion, but this is not those. Unlike Odium, which can exist directionless and without target, Devotion requires a recipient. It includes all manner of positive attributes one might have to offer a single person or focus upon a singular pursuit or higher calling....to devote oneself to another person may often include giving them your loyalty, to devote oneself to the belief all knowledge exists to be shared might display an absence of greed or selfishness. Devotion can take many forms, change over time or even shift from one recipient to a different one, but its very nature requires connection. It is not the mere existence of positive traits like selflessness or charity or loyalty...it is the desire to focus all those traits, everything one has to offer, upon a single connection. A singular focus you willingly bind yourself to BEFORE making them the recipient of all you can devote to them. But it must be TO them. A passing of focus, energies and resources along one single connection, one binding thread....and if someone decides at some point there's a worthier recipient of their devotion, they can and often do shift where they direct their focus, but in order for that to happen, a new connection must be formed. Love can exist without aim. Compassion does not need to be channeled towards a specific person. But Devotion requires connection. One can not devote themselves to another or to a study or a cause without being willing to bind themselves to the subject of that devotion. Preservation - This Shard embodies the desire to connect a person, place or thing to a singular state of being. To look at what is and attempt to anchor it in that moment of time. To bind all the elements of a single picture so tightly together that they defy changing, they refuse to move, and they don't exist simply to exist....they exist to stay in THIS specific shape or configuration, THIS specific combination of connections, for as long as possible. This Shard's Intent is ultimately futile, or perhaps its more accurately labeled self-defeating.....its the Shard of Adonalsium that comprises whatever part of him was willing to act against his own grand design, all the other parts of him that were interested in keeping creation changing, moving, progressing onward. The Shard of him that was content to let things be stagnant, who upon creating something he felt particularly connected to or saw as perfect just as it was now....would rather freeze that thing in a single moment than explore what it could change into or let it advance towards the endpoint he'd initially envisioned for it. This Shard is the willingness or desire to defend and preserve the lives of others.....but as they are now, with a lack of interest, or even dismissal, of what changes death might bring...for an individual, for those affected by an individual's passing, for the shape of a nation or advancement of a society in the wake of existing connections being severed by death, but allowing for - even REQUIRING - all those connected to the deceased to form new connections and change their relationships accordingly. This Shard is the urge to cling to the shape of what is, at the expense of everything else it could be, in defiance of the Prime Command that things - that creation - always, ALWAYS move forward. It tries to make the story stop...and that's why its efforts to preserve specific connections, to bind things to one particular moment in time....will always have an endpoint, an entropy all its own. The urge to preserve, to connect oneself so tightly to what is, to refuse to accept that everything that exists must change, must move....its always doomed to fail, a clock on its best efforts. Because there's a clock on everything. Ruin will always win. Preservation is the Shard of Adonalsium that digs in its heels and fights against the inevitable anyway....because every day that Ruin is staved off just a little bit longer, is still a day longer Preservation has with the connections that exist right now, the shape those connections make and all the lives woven into this single still frame of the cosmere's tapestry. The Shards that fall under the grouping of CHANGE, that correspond to that Dawnshard and together comprise equivalent forces to that initial, Prime creative demand that energy be used to take all that matter and constantly connect it in new and different ways so that the shape of everything and the picture it forms is never static, forever changing: CHANGE Endowment - This Shard embodies the introduction of a new element into a picture that changes as a result of its addition. Whether its gifted freely or in response to a request, the essence of this Shard is that something is given, and the very bestowal of that gift changes things for its recipient. It might be hoarded, changing someone who previously had nothing into someone with resources to spare, it can be regifted, changing hands to someone else, it can be used up, changed from its initial shape or composition into one more useful to the person this gifted was endowed to....but from the moment there was an endowment, some kind of change happened. Being endowed with additional vitality by external energies or divine power can change a sick person into a healthier one, additional strength changes someone weak into someone stronger, wealth changes social status; an endowment of life force can change the inanimate into something alive, a gift of immortality can change a man into a god, and regifting a Divine Breath, bequeathing it to someone else can change their life and heal them even as it changes a god back into a man. Endowments can change the very state of a person's mortality and size of their reach, shape of their impact...but there is always change. Valor - This Shard embodies the very concept of bravery in the face of danger, regardless of fear....something that by its very nature demands actions be taken in order that it exist. A Shard of Courage or Bravery might be able to exist simply as the potential to act in spite of fear or danger, the inherent want to do so....but Valor is something different. An Intent whose existence must be framed in the context of changes made specifically TO defy an approaching danger or feelings of fear. Valor is not valor when separated from ACTS of Valor. The action undertaken, the change made from a person going from a position of fear or caution to a position of actual defiance or resistance....that is what defines Valor as something that can be described by deeds rather than a formless potential to maybe be brave in the face of one's fear. It requires no specific direction, nor movement from where one's first faced with danger to a different point before summoning the courage to act anyway....a person can go from acting with caution to acting with valor without so much as shifting their feet. Still, a change WILL happen, MUST happen, upon the decision to ACT upon the impulse or desire to be brave....only once energy has been expended, actions have been taken, a new shape has formed from the current situation and the positioning of the players involved....only then can context definitively frame whether or not the deeds performed and changes made....were evidence of Valor. Mercy - This Shard embodies the context whose framing of specific changes one makes to someone or something else's state of being...determines the presence of Mercy. Like Valor, Mercy can not exist devoid of context, simply on its own merits and needing no specific connections or any at all. One might possess an innate desire or primal urge to be merciful, to see that others do not suffer....but Mercy is a thing of deeds, not of possibilities. If no change occurs for the being that one's desire for mercy is aimed at....Mercy did not exist in the shape of that moment, in the way those threads of the tapestry were all bound together. Someone can beg for mercy, someone can ask for mercy on someone else's behalf, someone can wish that mercy might be taken on someone they pity....but these are nothing more than expressions of empathy or petitions for clemency if the desire to see that mercy is granted....is not actionably accompanied by a change in the situation that made someone need mercy in the first place. A person that exists in a situation where an enemy holds overwhelming power over them, where they're in danger or afraid or in actual pain - they exist in a situation and position where its reasonable to beg that mercy be shown. But that in and of itself is Supplication, is Desperation, is maybe even Hope for the potential that such a change to their situation might happen, that they might somehow find themselves in a better situation than they're in as of this moment. Similarly, a person with power over another, or in a position to grant aid that would change the stakes or intensity of a situation someone is currently suffering in....the desire to make changes that better the other's situation is Compassion, existing simply because it exists. The potential to intercede on someone's behalf, or stay your hand and spare someone from consequences or torment....that might be Empathy or even something akin to Pity....either of which could be said to exist whether you act on those impulses or not. Mercy is fulfilled actions, not just the potential for them. Like Valor, it requires acts to be the context it needs to BE Mercy. Only once a change has been made to the situation an imperiled person finds themselves in....has Mercy been present in the image that part of the tapestry shows. Unlike the Shards grouped under the Move Dawnshard, that require a destination or a journey to frame a change from one state of being or shape to another, Mercy, like Valor, requires no more than a single moment to exist. But within that moment, a change MUST happen. The Shards that fall under the grouping of EXIST, that correspond to that Dawnshard and together comprise equivalent forces to that initial, Prime creative demand that matter and energy, everything that connects and all the ways that can change, exist simply TO exist, not because of how they connect to other pieces of creation or the ways they can and do change: EXIST Odium - This Shard embodies directionless hatred, intense emotion that needs no context to exist, with the very fact that there existed in God enough Odium to even BE a Shard of him being proof in and of itself that Odium simply exists to exist, regardless of want or attempts to will it away. It can be channeled in various ways, connected to reasons for it being aimed in a certain direction or changed into new forms, interpreted as righteous vengeance or passion devoid of empathy, but no matter what it connects to or how the shape or appearance of it changes, how it moves people or even gods to act or how time moves its focus from one target to another....it exists. The potential for it lies within every person, every interaction, every change to a status quo or move to a new setting. Virtuosity - This Shard embodies great skill devoid of context. The specific state of being that is having or possessing prodigious skill - be it in terms of artistic expression or any other possible form of expertise. It IS expertise...but expertise as something that simply exists, not explicitly as the end result of a long journey acquiring or cultivating such expertise. It is the natural, inborn talents of the prodigy and the end result of decades devoted to honing one's craft. It is not the how of obtaining mastery of a skill, it is not the connections required to build lesser talent into something greater over time, with plentiful practice. It is not the changing of someone without notable skill into a paragon of their chosen field. It is just....talent. Skill. Expertise. The potential for greatness, inert until its actionably utilized to change something into art that connects with larger and wide audiences over time. Its not the how of great skill being put to use, its not the ways in which people, places or things are changed by one's utilization of virtuosity....it is the still, eternally patient, unformed clay that is everything that skill and expertise can be used to accomplish, all the ways it can change hearts and minds or connect people to new ideas, sentiments or views they never considered or encountered before a virtuoso moved them with what they used that skill and expertise to create. It exists within someone simply to exist, not requiring that it be put to use in order for it to count or its existence to matter, to validate or justify the having of such skill. Whether one possessing such skill or expertise ever puts it to use or never uses it to move or connect or change anything at all....either way, it still exists regardless. Autonomy - This Shard embodies everything it means to exist solely on your own merits, to be devoid of context....having and requiring no connections which give specific shape or meaning to your existence, nothing to define your allegiances or priorities or restrict them to one finite expression. It is life, agency, identity independent of any external influences, of connections its reliant on to exist in its current shape and form, of loyalties or obligations that demand it change from whatever it wants to be in any given moment, into a new or different shape and form of someone else's choosing. It is who or what a person is from the first moment of existence, before any connections are formed to condense it into a finite shape, anything binds it to a limited range of motion, anything exerts control or applies energy to steer it in a specific direction, attempts to say that only by doing this thing or declaring this allegiance or devoting oneself to this cause, will one's existence have meaning. It is the freedom to take nothing but a shape of your own choosing, and to only change yourself on your terms. It is the inherent potential to choose any path, any connection, any shape, any direction....because it is the very embodiment of what it means to have sole ownership of what your shapeless potential might become. Whimsy - This Shard embodies caprice, flights of fancy that require no context beyond the fact that one's whimsy can exist devoid of context. It is whatever was fanciful about Adonalsium, whatever impulses he had to act without thought or to create without specific aims or thought-out plans and intentions in mind. It is, however, the mere existence of these impulses, requiring no actual follow-through on whimsical thoughts, no attempt to make changes or deviate from a path or specific goal at the prompting of some capricious desire. Whimsy is the formless potential for the absurd that exists within all beings as something they could act upon, regardless of if they actually do. The possibilities for changes that might be made or connections that might be formed not in an attempt to advance someone towards some specific destination, but rather for no specific reason at all. It is the concept of action without thought, of moving or changing without care of consequences, of changing the shape of what is or the manner in which things are done, just to see what might result. It is the stray thought at the end of a long, arduous endeavor that whispers 'what if I now just undid all my hard work for no reason other than indulging in the delight of doing the unexpected.' The capacity to be motivated by the most basic of desires or instincts or impulses, the potential joy that can be found in the complete absence of plans and obligations and goals, existing simply TO exist and to explore...what happens if I do this, for absolutely no reason other than....I want to. There is no change that can be made to an act of whimsy to make it more whimsical....it is simply whimsical by its base nature, by the sole reason for making that change happen or exist. There is no journey that can make someone whimsical beyond whatever whims they already inherently possess....at most, a person can be motivated to change in such ways as to ACT on their whims more frequently. The capacity to have those whims exist....simply exists without prompting, catalyst, or the deliberate cultivation of such a characteristic. Whimsy exists simply to be random and absurd....and because the potential for randomness and absurdity lurks under the surface of every aspect of creation....there is a part of creation and its creator that is inherently whimsical...just because. The Shards that fall under the grouping of MOVE, that correspond to that Dawnshard and together comprise equivalent forces to that initial, Prime creative demand that creation have both direction and momentum. That everything that exists and connects and changes...once set in motion....never stop doing that. That the initial image at the moment of creation not be the entirety of creation, that the image actually be a story told by one image after another, a story that can only take shape once one moment turns into two and continues on to a third and will continue as long as things continue to move: MOVE Ruin - This Shard embodies the march of entropy, the natural progression of decay that begins from the moment of something's creation....even the cosmere itself. From the moment life begins, that life starts on an inevitable journey towards death. From the word go, a fire is doomed to eventually sputter out once all its oxygen is exhausted and there's nothing left to burn. Everything in creation moves, but entropy always moves with it, matching it step for step....and those steps always move in one direction, and one direction only. Creation creeps towards entropy. Ruin advances with age. Every single thread in creation has an endpoint past which there is no more thread, and ruin is the force that pushes a thing further and further down the length of their thread until its endpoint is eventually met. And ruin, like creation....never marches backwards. Cultivation - This Shard embodies the shepherding of something forward along a specific path of one's choosing. It might take something that exists and build specific connections with a particular aim or end goal in mind, and that those connections will be used to advance something towards, it might dictate what shapes an idea or society or a person's life might take, but it is always and inherently a journey over time. Something that does not and can not exist within a single moment, and that only the passage of time and the progression towards a deliberate goal can give shape and meaning to. It always has an aim, an intended destination. It might deviate from that initial goal, its path to that destination might end up taking a different shape than initially envisioned, but it always has a direction, it is always done with purpose, and that direction always faces forward, that purpose is always to build to something greater than what already exists or came before. One's efforts to cultivate a thing in a particular way might not work out as intended, might not ending up succeeding at all, but even the deliberate cultivation of weaknesses in one's enemy is still a deliberate march towards a specific intended shape: one where the enemy reaches a point where they've changed in ways that open up exploitable flaws that didn't previously exist. You can not cultivate in a backwards direction, you can not use the Intent to cultivate to move something backwards upon its timeline of existence and regress it to a previous state. Even if you somehow manage to reach that previous state, you did not get there by way of cultivation. It is only ever additive, never reductive, though those carefully cultivated additions don't have to be shaped with positive aims and changes in mind....just new ones, ones that take existing matter and connections and bonds and change it all into shapes and configurations closer to the one the cultivator envisions for it in their mind. Cultivation is inherently active and requires momentum....without a specific start point and end point, it has no context. Something or some person might have changed over the course of time, formed new connections and let go of old ones, but those changes do not and can not have meaning specifically bound to an intention or effort to cultivate something in a specific way....without the journey of cultivating something being bound to a specific start point before changes are made. Ambition - This Shard embodies the desire to advance oneself in some way, but always with a destination in mind. Ambition - whatever the end result of it - has a direction and requires momentum.....it is not a state of being, content to exist as unformed potential without definitive shape or bonds, it requires no specific connections and unlike Devotion can comprise multiple or generic focuses that fall under the umbrella of one's overall ambitions, and it exists regardless of how acting on one's ambitions changes them....it has no specific end shape in mind, only a forward-facing direction. A desire to use existing connections and build new ones, initiate changes to one's life or act as an agent of change in pursuit of reaching a further-off point in the future of one's timeline, where they might acquire the skills or positions or expertise or gains that they set their sights on initially. It is an intention that demands action, it has no interest in standing still or being content with one's current shape, connections or positioning. There must inherently be something in the distance or future that one desires to acquire or see a particular goal actualized....with an equally inherent understanding that these things will not simply come to you where you are, and that action must be taken, momentum applied to your personal journey in order to reach a specific target, goal or destination. How you apply your connections, what they are and who they're with has no bearing on Ambition itself, existing merely as factors that can be utilized in pursuit of one's ambitions, just as there is never a singular change that must be initiated in order to move one from a current existence of potential that has yet to be fully realized to the destination in which such potential is at least somewhat more firmly fleshed out and actualized....but changes must happen in pursuit of one's ambitions, because without change to your current shape, connections and existence, there can be no movement towards the fulfillment of those ambitions. And again, ambition, by the very nature of the Shard and the Intent it embodies...demands movement, forward momentum, actionable attempts to reach one's goals....or else those goals aren't actually ambitions so much as just idle wishes or wants. Ambition can not exist without an accompanying drive and a hunger to propel oneself forward, TOWARDS a specific goal. Invention - This Shard embodies the divine urge to create with an intended destination or goal for one's creation, the intention of making changes to something so that it might do a specific thing, progress to a new state and form where it possesses a capacity to do something it couldn't previously in its prior form or separate pieces. Invention is not simply the potential everything holds to be used as part of something that can do something completely new....it requires a fully realized form, something that has a specific shape, is made of separate parts connected in specific ways. Invention is not simply the connections that hold pieces of a tool together and make those individual pieces - once combined as a new, singular object - an invention that is distinct from whatever its individual components might be without those connections....the invention itself must have a purpose, be defined not just by its components' connections but also by what the invention is FOR, what it does, how it makes changes or forms connections as a function of purpose innate to its design. And Invention is not just changes made to something or multiple things that turn matter into something new....it can't be defined solely by the fact that Change has happened. A rock that's hammered into a new shape by hitting it with a larger rock is not proof of Invention just because that rock has been changed. But a rock that has been connected to a piece of wood, changed from a solitary object into a part of a weapon or a tool intended for digging....THAT is proof of Invention. A product of Invention. Invention is the move from things as they exist to a new shape, changes made and new connections formed....all in deliberate pursuit of an end goal, the realization of something someone wanted to make for a specific reason or purpose...into something someone DID make. Invention is forward facing, much like Cultivation. It is inseparable from progress, only additive, never reductive. Invention can create things that can change people and whole societies in ways that set them back, regress them, sever connections....but these are examples of end results of how inventions can be used. Invention itself can't be less than the components that comprise it were before they were combined to make something new. It can't be the inverse of its own realized potential. It can only be realized via its advancement from a start point, an initial concept or idea for a thing, to an end point, the realization of that concept, a finished design. It can not exist simply to exist, its changes can not be made just to say changes were made....the finished invention must exist for a reason, with a purpose. It must be the result of changes made, connections created...in ways that make it more than what it was before. That let it do things that couldn't previously be done without it. It must have its own timeline of creation, and exist at a part of that timeline that is to at least some degree further forward than it was at the start of its creation process. Invention is not invention unless there was a destination and a journey. It requires forward momentum and the passage of time. There must be a start point to the process of Inventing something, and an inventor must tell his design, his tools, his process to MOVE...for Invention to occur. SO. Just to recap: CONNECT Dawnshard Honor, Dominion, Devotion and Preservation CHANGE Dawnshard Endowment, Valor, Mercy EXIST Dawnshard Odium, Virtuosity, Autonomy, Whimsy MOVE Dawnshard Ruin, Cultivation, Ambition, Invention Which would leave the last remaining Shard as the fourth and final Shard grouped under the CHANGE Dawnshard.

For what its worth, his repeated focus on it being more like Star Trek than Star Wars sounds like that has more to do with plot than themes or tone. In Star Wars, for the MOST part, the plot is less about how individual cultures interact with each other and more about the operatic battle between good and evil, played out on a stage comprised of galactic wide civilizations that are a melting pot of all kinds of cultures and races whose allegiances are more defined by political affiliation than native culture. In Star Trek, for as much as the large scale conflicts are between races like the Borg and melting pot civilizations like the Federation itself, the plot focus tends to be more focused on the interactions of cultures WITHIN the Federation just as much as without, and with a lot of the interactions between Federation and non-Federation cultures revolving around things like First Contact scenarios....which Star Wars very rarely delves into, except for in things like the Expanded Universe books, with the Vong. Just an observation. To me it means that I'm not reading too much into the 'more Star Trek than Star Wars' statements when it comes to things like vibe, for lack of a better word. Just to avoid using tone again and sound less redundant, lol. I'm sure we'll see Federation type civilizations or alliances and a lot of focus on exploration and first encounters between Shardworlds, that sort of thing.....but that's more about what KIND of stories are going to be told in Era 4, from a plot/catalyst standpoint, than to definitively rule out some of those encounters (or the races they're comprised of) feeling a lot tonally closer to the science fantasy vibes of Star Wars; the distinct and iconic melding of advanced technology like spaceships and the esoteric practices and philosophies of pivotal figures using a power that deliberately resists being easily framed in the context of scientific terminology and sci-fi technobabble. Obviously some cultures and civilizations are going to have a very structured and scientifically contextualized view of their Shardworld's magic and how it works and how best to use it.....we already see that in action. But I think there's just as many who are going to have less defined views of how their world's magic works and WHY it works that way....still governed by the same laws of Investiture and Realmatic Theory that Brandon made sure all his magic systems adhered to....but with a lot of the specifics as to HOW their world's magic can be definitively explained according to those laws and theory being elusive and hard to pin down, even for the most scientifically and magically advanced civilizations in the cosmere....whereas the cultures those magic systems are native to might adopt a more 'we don't always know how it works, its just vibes, man' approach to using their magic systems.

Given that its been well-established that as much as the Shards influence the personality of their vessels over time, the vessel's initial personality can influence or at least act as a filter that interprets the Shard's Intent in a way distinct to that individual - with it being stated that two different vessels would exhibit or act upon the same Shard's Intent in different ways.....it makes sense to me that holders of the Dawnshards might similarly have their Dawnshard's Intent or nature influence them in somewhat different ways, distinct to each individual's personality or character traits. Like two individuals who've held the same Dawnshard, like Hoid and Sigzil, would both be altered by the experience in ways that fall under the same UMBRELLA of possible effects, thematic to or stemming from that specific Dawnshard's nature....but because of the differences in their own personalities and behaviors and worldviews....the lens through which the Dawnshard's power and influence on the universe beyond them (and upon them as well) is focused....any two different holders of the same Dawnshard might be altered by that experience to different degrees or with different benefits or restrictions. One man's trash is another man's treasure kinda thing....what's a Torment to one man might be a minor nuisance to another, and vice versa.

Thanks for this!

Thanks for letting me know, I wasn't aware that he'd said something like that. Do you have a link to where he did? Not doubting your word at all, I'm just curious about the full context and want to read up on that.

I would not count out the Nalthians yet - not only does the Scadrian ship use an Awakened Metalmind, which suggests an exchange of technology/magictech that could be just as likely to go both ways (Nalthians taught the Scadrians how to Awaken, the Scadrians provided some of their unkeyed magictech in trade for Nalthians to use for themselves), but let's not forget that Nalthis was implied to have the equivalent of worldhopper customs offices for people coming to and from their planet via Shadesmar....major players on Nalthis like the Five Scholars (who had enormous roles in shaping Nalthian countries in the past) have had a broad knowledge of the cosmere centuries ahead of a lot of other Shardworlds. And the mere fact that Breath Equivalent Units is used as a system of Investiture measurement could suggest that its not escaped anyone's notice that Awakening is one of the easier magic systems to hack or use to fuel other Shards' magic systems.....so I think that combination of factors makes it at least possible that Nalthis is positioned to know enough about how other magic systems work to use them in conjunction with Awakening and power all sorts of tech....including space travel. All that said, the fact that Nalthis has already been implicated as a major worldhopping hub in ages past could also suggest Nalthis never develops (or is slow to develop) space travel because the relative ease of worldhopping to and from it means there's less drive for them TO develop spaceship technology. Could go either way, honestly, just thought all of that was worth mentioning.

Ohhh I had not seen that, but it definitely fits with what I was thinking. Thanks for the link!

I would agree that mercy killing could have no correlation to the Shard BUT from what little we know of Sazed's convo with Endowment about some other Shards, there were hints that the Shard of Mercy or at least one of its holders has a rather severe and not necessarily altruistic interpretation of that particular Intent. Like it definitely contained vibes that Mercy is not a benevolent entity, or at the very least an intimidating entity to be wary of, despite common associations with mercy as a positive. There's nothing conclusive here, I'd agree, but between the whimsy reference (used as a modifier of a specific place, a planet that very well could be invested by Whimsy), and the vibes I've had about the Shard Mercy ever since that reference to it from Sazed....there MAY be something intentional about that line, even if its not actually meant as a direct reference to the Shard itself. For instance, I could see it being part of a longterm trend on Brandon's part to slowly seed in associations between mercy and a strict/harsh interpretation of that Intent, to pave the way for Mercy being introduced as a future Big Bad. So its a good catch and now I'm gonna be on the look out for more phrasings using mercy in that way, just to see if there is a larger pattern building along those lines.

We don't have NEARLY enough information to make such a bold claim, I think. For starters, all we know of the original Zellion's motivation for leading the Threnodites to Canticle is the modern generation's INTERPRETATION of those long ago events. Yes, they know of things from the Chorus, but uh, we have more than enough precedent to think that Threnodite shades should be perhaps taken with several grains of salt. Even if they're not actively trying to lead anyone astray, their recall of past events is not necessarily suspect, but at the very least likely to be skewed. And we also don't know how much of what was told to Nomad about the original motivations was verbatim what the modern Canticlers were told by the Chorus about why they left Threnody, vs their OWN interpretation of what the Chorus relayed to them. There's at least a couple degrees of hearsay in play here, even IF the source of the intel is one hundred percent accurate and unbiased, which is also not a given. And then there's the fact that we have zero idea if Canticle was the original destination, or if Zellion knew what life would be like there, the sacrifices that would be demanded, etc. A core theme of the book is people taking a chance on a better life and hoping for the future, even while being aware that things might not actually work out that way. There's zero reason to suspect that the same didn't hold just as true for the original Zellion and the Threnodites who chose to go with him. They knew it was a gamble but they had their reasons for leaving and just because WE have knowledge of where those intentions and choices led, doesn't mean hindsight is a fair lens by which to judge people who very likely couldn't have known for sure where events would lead, and were taking leaps of faith for their own personal reasons. And THEN there's the fact that life on Canticle was NEVER an inherent death sentence, and for all we know, Zellion led them there or chose to settle there because he or others figured out what was discovered in this very book.....that there are ways to recharge sunhearts and have a virtually unlimited power source that don't require sacrificing ANYONE.....and then any number of things could have happened that led to Zellion dying before this knowledge could become widespread or it being hidden or lost by other parties, etc. I mean, maybe Zellion and his motivations were sketch, but I maintain we have far too little information to make that claim with any degree of accuracy, just because in the many, many years since that time, things went south for the descendants of the people who originally came with Zellion for reasons their history has not retained a full and inherently objective recounting of.

To be fair, Sigzil describes himself as a link in the chain to the Dawnshard.....and chains can run in more than one direction. We know that Hoid had the Dawnshard PRIOR to Sigzil, so he's also a link in the same chain....but not necessarily the link in the direction Sigzil passed the Dawnshard to. So it could be that getting ahold of Sigzil could lead the Night Brigade to both the Dawnshard AND Hoid....but by following the links in the chain from Sigzil....in two separate directions.

Ah gotcha, I forgot about that specific line. That does track a lot more with what you're describing then, yeah.

Well this is still my take on the Dawnshards.....I think they're the arcane equivalent of the Unified Field Theory and act as supernatural equivalents to electromagnetism, gravity and strong and weak nuclear force: So I'm still going with my belief that the Dawnshards are some approximation of Exist (which I think was Nomad's), Weigh, Change and Move. So the Torment attached to the Exist Dawnshard is being unable to plot harm, or a threat to someone's Existence....and the corresponding Torment for the Change Dawnshard would be a kind of supernatural aversion to stagnancy. A constant drive to continuously engage in change or act as its agent. Its holders and former holders would lock up when they tried to dig their heels in and act according to recurring/established patterns of behavior instead of trying new things. Locking up if they tried to react in the exact same way they have previously. An inability to respond to familiar stimuli or events in tested and proven ways, instead being driven to constantly find new solutions. (The Torment for the Weigh Dawnshard would be locking up when trying to act with too little thought or intent....forcing those Dawnshard wielders to slow down and deliberate on their actions and impact. Kneejerk reactions would be out....their Torment literally forces them to slow down and think things through - much like how Nomad reflects on how his Torment actually ended up preparing/training him to fight the Cinder King even when the deck had been stacked against him, thinking through unorthodox ways to win....the Torments can actually have or result in positive traits for a Dawnshard wielder. Someone used to being too impulsive could benefit from a Torment that supernaturally mandates they take a beat to weigh the full significance of events or potential fallout. And then the Torment for the Move Dawnshard - which I classify as having a lot to do with forward momentum through time, the march of moments rather than just physically moving things - would be those wielders would be forced to constantly be on the move. In effect, it would be similar to how Nomad constantly skips from place to place in order to stay one step ahead of the Night Brigade, but in these particular holders' cases, its because their Torment won't let them stop and stay in one place for too long. A constant drive to keep moving.....it doesn't mean they can never stand in place, that they can't stay in one place long enough to sleep, its more like it won't let them put down roots, they do the opposite of locking up and are sort of jolted back into forward motion whenever they try and make plans to stay somewhere for the sake of STAYING there).

I'm not saying you're NOT right about Radiants being on one side of a widespread cosmere conflict, but I don't know that this particular argument proves it. Their wariness of Nomad being a Radiant isn't necessarily because of what it implies of his loyalties, but rather just the threat level of a person they barely know. It wasn't about determining whether this stranger was a specific enemy or combatant for a particular military, but rather just determining whether this stranger was packing the equivalent of a bazooka somewhere on his person.

My guess is also Invention, but I based it on how much emphasis the book put on the technical imagery for how the planet and its Investiture was set up....the frequent comparisons to the core to the sun as filaments of a light bulb, the fact that you basically had to build up a resistance that had to be burned away, releasing Investiture as a byproduct of the interaction similar to how bulbs are designed to 'lose' energy in the form of giving off light and heat....it all felt very deliberately designed, and in a way that made me think someone with the Intent of Invention would be the most likely candidate to be behind that design. Basically, the planet is SO weird and inexplicable, even counter-intuitive in a lot of ways, that it makes me doubt that it came about naturally or as an unintended result of a Shard randomly investing in it.....the planet itself felt experimental, like the end result of a Shard's deliberate Grand Design, and if ever there was a Shard inclined to go around experimenting with weird planetary setups or systems of Investiture, my bet's on Invention.

I'd really like to see this explored in future books for sure....because I think Autonomy is potentially one of the most unique of the Shards and has quirks that might not be true of the others....just because of the very nature of her Intent. In theory, its possible that in the long-run, NO ONE could hold the Shard of Autonomy without issue....because the mere existence of the wiggle room in how Autonomy is interpreted.....means that sooner or later, Autonomy as a singular Intent is going to HAVE to resolve the question of whose Autonomy takes priority...its own, or the cosmere's. And its entirely possible that there's just no way for Autonomy as it exists now, TO ever reconcile that dichotomy. Like I just mean.....from the jump, as others have pointed out, there's a LOT of wiggle room for even just Bavadin's own interpretation of her Intent. Because she's a singular entity as much as an embodiment of a divine urge....one can argue that the actions she can take that best embody or fulfill her Intent.....would be ones that put herself and her own needs/wants, the singular entity Autonomy....above all others. But then on the other hand, you could argue that the best way for her to embody her Intent is to maximize the number of people acting Autonomously, while minimizing the limitations/restrictions keeping people from acting with full Autonomy. Both seem like valid interpretations of her Intent....but eventually, these two interpretations WILL come into direct conflict with each other. Because the 'downside' of free will, is its paired with a spectrum of wants and needs encompassing all the choices people can make, even when those wants/needs put two people - and their free will - in direct opposition to each other. Being equally free to act on wholly opposite and conflicting needs/wants inevitably results in some degree of friction. And there's a give and take to these conflicts between two different individuals trying to exert their free will in pursuit of conflicting goals....because for one person to see their goal fulfilled, the other has to...not. At least in that one specific scenario, with the balancing act being that every single interaction between two people with free will is another potential moment where this time, the give and take might go YOUR way instead. So ideally, it all evens out in the end, except for extremism, the wants that place people at the far end of the spectrum of interactions, where their choices are MEANT to butt up against other peoples' freedoms or autonomy. But in the short term.....the more people with true autonomy, the more possible restrictions you might face on SPECIFIC wants/needs...because its contingent on the wants/needs of everyone else you interact with, and how much your respective wants/needs are able to accommodate each other's, or not so much. And herein lies the conflict I'm really interested in seeing with Bavadin: which interpretation of her Intent does she prioritize? The one that puts herself and her personal Autonomy, as an individual, above everything else? Or the one that views actualizing her Intent as being about how much Autonomy she can sow throughout the cosmere? Because if its the latter....at a certain point, there will be an interaction between Shard and non-Shards, where Bavadin would actually have to give up some of her own freedom to do basically whatever she wants, without restriction....for the sake of mortals' Autonomy. After all, how Autonomous can people ever truly be, if there's always a looming threat or possibility of Bavadin 'taking back' the Autonomy she's only let people have until she no longer wishes them to have it? If at any point Autonomy can and will utilize 'assets' like the Men of Gold and Red to subjugate others...then ultimately, there is a cap or ceiling on how truly Autonomous people were up until that point. Its not true free will if its conditional on a higher power's whims and can be taken away at any time, you know? So for Bavadin to maximize Autonomy as a universal Intent throughout the cosmere, beyond just her own Autonomy.....eventually she has to limit herself from impeding on mortals' free will and autonomy....or else they'll never truly be autonomous and she's undermined her own Intent. But Bavadin does not seem to be the kind of deity who's down for self-sacrifice, giving up any advantage that she has herself....so I have trouble picturing her ever being willing to self-impose a restriction or limitation on how much or how fully she 'allows' people true individual autonomy. Because from a certain perspective (ie that of a god-tier entity who does not seem to like being challenged or barred from obtaining whatever she wants or enacting her will however she wants) - even just the 'sacrifice' of acknowledging that she'll respect peoples' personal Autonomy and not override it with her own will...that's a narrowing of her options, the ways she can utilize her power as she wishes. It cuts into her own personal Autonomy, how free she is to act without consequences or regard for others..... As ultimately, the big irony of true autonomy is that in order to respect the autonomy of others, you have to accept that even if you do have the ability and resources to do things you want but at the expense of others, there are instances and scenarios in which you SHOULDN'T. Part of being a member of a society, an individual that exists alongside others as part of a larger whole, is acknowledging that give and take I was talking about....the fact that true equality means that not everybody gets to go first or get exactly what they want in each INDIVIDUAL circumstance. Allowances have to be made for other people to occasionally get to go ahead of you in line, even if you're used to always being first in line and don't WANT the delay that comes with being ten people deep into the line. Because otherwise....what you have isn't a true equally autonomous society or 'whole'...as ALWAYS going first in line, in every circumstance, with no give and take to the question of who gets to go first today....that's actively an impediment or limitation on the autonomy of others. Sure, they have the same possible options to act as you do....except they can only exercise theirs AFTER you enact yours. That is not two people with an equal ability to act freely on their respective wants or needs. That is one person being prioritized over the other. Thus....to ever truly spread her Intent throughout the cosmere or act in fulfillment of it...Bavadin at a certain point HAS to 'give up' the option of imposing her will over others. However, if Bavadin the Vessel views her own Intent as being about maximizing her own personal Autonomy as much as possible.....this will ALWAYS appear to her as sacrificing some of her Autonomy for the sake of others....which in her mind then might go against her Intent. And it creates a circular logic trap where the more Bavadin becomes defined by her Intent, the way others like Ati and Leras eventually did....the less willing she might become to limit herself in ANY way, for the sake of others' Autonomy, as this would require her to act opposite her own Intent. But refusing to limit her options to overrule mortals' autonomy whenever she wants, for any reason...is inherently then a limitation on how fully her Intent can be embodied or acted upon throughout the cosmere as a whole, beyond just herself. As such, Bavadin refusing to curtail her own Autonomy and thus forever standing in the way of anyone else's true and full Autonomy....would ALSO be seen as her actively acting against her own Intent! At that point....there's literally NO MOVE she can make....that wouldn't require her to actively act in opposition to her own Intent...which puts her in a kind of checkmate, where she's boxed herself in from moving any further in one direction or the other - in support of her own fullest Autonomy, or in support of the cosmere's fullest Autonomy. And that kind of checkmate, that reduction of possible moves that won't pit her against herself, where she literally can't make a move that won't to some degree be self-defeating.... That's the ultimate trap of an individual's personal autonomy...AUTONOMY'S personal autonomy....because no external force can ever strip us of our ability to act autonomously....more than our own internal indecision or conflicts about acting at all. Basically: Depending on how Bavadin interprets her own Intent, there's a very strong possibility she's headed down an inherently self-defeating path whether she sees the trap lying ahead of her or not. The more she tries to have her cake and eat it too, the bigger the fall she might be setting up for herself when those two opposing directions finally do come into direct conflict with each other and require her to choose which she prioritizes more: her Autonomy, or others'. Because she literally might not be able to choose at that point. Not when any choice she makes will come at her own expense. tl;dr version: Bavadin's greatest threat to herself and her Intent....might be Bavadin herself. There's a possible future in the cosmere's timeline where under the right circumstances, Autonomy could literally be boxed into Shattering HERSELF....into two or more Splinters only 'freed up' to act by the act of Autonomy's internally conflicting 'sides' being separated into completely separate Intents, distinct from each other.

Ah gotcha, thanks.

I honestly can't remember, but do we know for sure that Hoid refused to take up one of the Shards as they actually exist now? What I mean by that is, we've always been told that there's different configurations the Shards could have shattered in. Was the Shattering perhaps originally intended to shatter Adonalsium into seventeen Shards, one for each, but at the moment of the Shattering or during the process, Hoid changed his mind or refused to take up a Shard, so some kind of Cognitive blowback of that Shattered Adonalsium into just sixteen different Shards instead, one for each of the Vessels willing and prepared to take up a Shard?

I'm actually not sure about the timeline here, but truthfully I don't think it matters whether Lumar was one of the worlds the Iriali came to BEFORE Roshar or whether its one they went to AFTER Roshar. I think the more important part is just that the Iriali Long Trail had them living on at least three worlds before Roshar, and their legends say they'll likely be on several more worlds before they reach the Long Trail's end. But yeah, depending on the timeline I think it could also be that they leave Roshar in the aftermath of Stormlight Archive #5 and then end up on Lumar.....and then have already moved on as of 300 years prior to this particular book. And like you said, there's also the possibility that there are multiple Iriali populations and they scattered in different directions after they left Sel.

Sorry to double post, but I didn't want to just edit this into the last post in case anyone already read it..... But it just occurred to me that maybe the changes to anti-Lantrian and Elantrian magic after Aona and Skai's deaths - that could have been Autonomy's in, how she gained control over the Men of Gold in the first place. For that matter, we know from a Word of Brandon that the earthquake that originally shattered the main Elantrian Aon wasn't a DIRECT result of Rayse killing Aona and Skai, though it was somewhat related or stemming from that - just as we know that Bavadin did in some way conspire with Rayse or provide aid in his killing of Aona and Skai and shattering their Shards. So what if Autonomy caused the earthquake, or even just took advantage of it.....but all that was never even aimed AT the Elantrians....they just got caught in the crossfire? If there was another city like Elantris, a golden city of the anti-Lantrians....depending on where it was and how it and the anti-Lantrian magic was powered, the earthquake could have been aimed at disrupting THAT region's magic (or even just a ripple effect symptom of an attack on the anti-Lantrian city and its magic system). Because see.....if there was an anti-Lantrian city populated by Skai's version of the Elantrians....and sometime after the death of their god/Shard Dominion...their powerful magic, the thing that made them feared above all others, just.....inexplicably stopped working.....how willing might these anti-Lantrians have been to accept the help of another Shard or entity that swooped in and offered a solution, a way to get their magic working again? What if the two most powerful magic systems on Sel - the Elantrians' magic and the magic of their opposite peers, the anti-Lantrians - what if it 'broke' in the first place because Autonomy broke it deliberately.....just so she could offer a 'fix' to the powerful magical warriors she wanted working for her? And that could be how the Men of Gold became the Men of Gold and Red in the first place.....desperate to regain their power, the Men of Gold took Autonomy's deal and agreed to be her army, fight for her, if she could find a way to give them back their magic. Which of course she could....just by using her own power to patch whatever she'd done to break it in the first place. Thus ironically the Iriali are the descendants of those who refused to take Bavadin's deal and sacrifice their autonomy....even to get their powerful magic back. That could set up a fascinating potential conflict down the line, where the key to breaking Autonomy's power and wresting away control of her most powerful army of warriors....lies in the Iriali trying to 'save' their corrupted ancestors or cousins from Bavadin's influence.

Yeah exactly. They might not be exactly the same as Nalthian Lifeless or even powered by traditional Nalthian Awakening - since we do know that many magic systems can be hacked by users of other magic systems, given sufficient knowledge and Investiture, and I imagine Riina has more than enough of both to hack and thus mimic Awakening in her own way. But functionally speaking, I think they're rough equivalents of Lifeless, just made in a way and likeness that means more to Riina than just bringing in a bunch of Lifeless from Nalthis to use as bodyguards would. And yeah, we know the Iriali have lived on at least three different worlds before Roshar, one of them being this one, and so I think they're from Sel originally. They're the descendants of the anti-Lantrians who escaped Bavadin's clutches, and they've either forgotten their origins and true magic, or perhaps their magic was similarly affected in the way the Elantrians' was by the deaths of Aona and Skai, and the creation of the Dor and other factors like the region-shattering earthquake. Only the Iriali descended from the original Men of Gold haven't figured out how to 'fix' the damage done to their magic system or compensate for the changes that have happened to it, or maybe they just don't know how to access it on other worlds (since the anti-Lantrians' magic system would still be region-based like all Sel magics). It could be that the Iriali's frequent worldhopping, and the large scale disruption to their Connection to their original home and history, the way their long exile has impacted their sense of cultural identity....has basically rendered them unable to access their original magic, at least until they regain some sense of self and home and figure out a workaround in the same vein as the Ire figured out for making Aons work offworld. Meanwhile, the Men of Gold and Red wouldn't be similarly hindered in using the original anti-Lantrian magic, because the Red corrupted Investiture is likely linked to Autonomy hacking their magic system and providing them with other means of accessing it, or even fueling it directly herself.

To be clear, this is all theoretical (hence my name haha) but my gut says that if the MoGaR are from Sel originally, Autonomy co-opted them looooong before Elantris and its sequels. The Ire - and thus Elantris - seem to predate the deaths of Aona and Skai, and thus the crux of my theory is that Aona created the Elantrians - and though her death and the creation of the Dor affected Elantris and its magic in a number of ways, it didn't destroy any of that. And similarly, Skai created the MoGaR, with them possibly being gold-glowing mirrors of the Elantrians, fashioned in his own color (gold) the way Elantrians are silver-hued. The Red part would have been added when Autonomy - likely in the wake of Skai's death - coopted his people, the Dominion version or parallel of Devotion's Elantrians. Likely whatever the precise nature of their magic, being of Dominion, its probably even more suited to combat than Elantrians' Devotion-derived magic innately is.....and we've seen how regardless of the nature of Aons, they're still plenty potent in combat. Essentially I think that as much as Hrathen and his monks were a force to be reckoned with in the time of Elantris the novel.....they were really only a threat so long as the modern day Elantrians were hindered by the disruption of their power/Aons and their own lack of awareness/knowledge of the full potency of the magic at their disposal. Once Raoden and his fellow Elantrians fixed the Aons and got a better handle on their magic, the monks were much more easily fought. And that's because I think that even as powerful as the monks are....they were never created or empowered by Skai to be TRUE rivals to Elantrians. I can't help but think that the Shard of Dominion could put forth a lot more suitable rivals to the power possessed by Aona's empowered people, the Elantrians.....and that's what I think the Men of Gold and Red once were. The true rivals to the Elantrians, Skai's ACTUAL intended 'chosen people' - with the monks and their magic simply being the next most powerful force on Sel, and thus what stepped in to fill the power vacuum once Skai and Aona were dead and the Men of Gold and Red (and the Ire) were gone from their world. But that just means even with all of their power....the monks likely PALE in comparison to the Ire's original enemies, the monks' predecessors in terms of the mightiest Skai-derived magic users on Sel before them....the original Men of Gold. And after all, Red is the color of corrupted investiture, which seems an inevitable result of Autonomy hijacking the people and magic system of another Shard like Dominion's. So my thought is the Men of Gold and Red ORIGINALLY were just the Men of Gold, much like Elantrians could be described as being of Silver, based on appearances. But all of this likely happened long before the events of Elantris. (And then per Tress and the Emerald Sea, Riina just fashioned her own knock-offs of the Men of Gold that she remembers from her younger days on Sel, because they in her mind - and experience - likely represent the most fearsome warriors/force she can think of. And her brass facsimiles of these are of course just brass, no red, not just because there's no corrupted investiture involved in their making, but because Riina isn't basing her constructs on the Men of Gold and Red that modern worldhoppers fear so much. She based them on the original Men of Gold, her own contemporaries from before Bavadin coopted them - as they were likely already plenty fearsome even without the corruption of Investiture that turned them into the Men of Gold AND Red.....hence why Bavadin went to the trouble of making them her personal army in the first place).

Well, my longstanding theory that I've mentioned in other threads after the Lost Metal came out, is that the Men of Gold and Red are Skai's parallel to Aona's silver-hued Elantrians, from before the Shattering of Dominion and Devotion. I think that the true men of gold and red were co-opted by Bavadin in the aftermath of Aona and Skai's deaths, because the magical warriors of Dominion, on par with Elantrians, are pretty much the most terrifying force I can imagine in the cosmere as of this point, and my suspicion is that the Iriali are descendants of the original Skailantrians (Skai's race of Elantrians, lol) who evaded being conscripted as part of Bavadin's army and have been worldhopping to keep out of her clutches ever since. But if there's any basis to any of this.....the original Men of Gold and Red, a Dominion-based parallel to the Devotion-fueled Elantrians, would have likely been contemporaries of the Ire, before they left Sel. Which could very plausibly mean that before Rayse (with Bavadin's help) came to Sel and destroyed Skai and Aona.....the Men of Gold and Red and the Ire were natural rivals or enemies. And personality-wise, Riina absolutely strikes me as someone who would make analogues of her greatest enemies/most hated foes.....getting a kick out of getting to 'ironically' exert Dominion over these lifeless equivalents or knock-off versions of the real things. (Per the line someone referenced earlier in thread, what Shai said in TLM about the Men of Gold and Red being hard to control.....I could imagine that the Shard of Autonomy would actually have quite a few obstacles to overcome when enforcing her will over the chosen people of Dominion.....because the Intents at play there are all flowing in the wrong direction for Bavadin's control of the Men of Gold and Red to come at all naturally. It could be that the Men of Gold and Red, if Skai-borne parallels to Elantrians, could be paradoxically hard to control for anyone who isn't their 'true master' - Dominion himself. And thus Riina's like yeah, I'm not about to waste my time trying to corral some of the real deal here, I'll stick with cheap Xerox copies that I can personally code by hand, thanks.)

Hello all! Not to be like hey buckle up for another theoretical jaunt down Here's One Random User's Guesses About the Dawnshards lane....but I mean. Yeah. Buckle up for another theoretical jaunt down "Here's One Random User's Guesses About the Dawnshards" Lane. So I wonder if perhaps the four Dawnshards are simply the magical equivalents of the Unified Field Theory, aka the four fundamental forces of physics. After all, the four fundamental forces or interactions are often described as being the forces in physics that are impossible to reduce any further, to interactions any more incremental than these 'fundamental' ones themselves. That sounds to me an awful lot like the real world equivalent of the four Primal Commands that created the fundamental framework of the cosmere. Commands so fundamental they can't be reduced any further, whereas the sixteen Shards that 'descend' from these parent Dawnshards CAN be described as a more complex interaction deriving from one of these base four....that they build upon, and thus in turn can point back to as being a foundational Command at the root of their own nature. And after all, gravity is essentially the Surge of Adhesion, which has frequently been singled out as not being a proper Surge like the other nine, as well as aligning well with the Dawnshard we know of that 'binds any creature Voidish or mortal.' As such, perhaps Adhesion is not so much a Surge as it is a Shard-made facsimile of one of the fundamental forces of creation, the Dawnshard that is essentially Gravity or some version of Bind Them. Basically a watered down version of one quarter of the Creation Drive, as it was created by a Shard or Shards rather than being created by or concurrent with Ado/Adonalsium (whatever the precise relationship between Ado and the Dawnshards might be). And keep in mind that Gravity refers to a state of mind or being as much as it does a physical force, so rather than Adhesion, Binding, or Unity....a Dawnshard of Gravity could theoretically also have a name along the lines of Weight, or be akin to how Gravitas is synonymous with especially serious. Essentially, the Dawnshard of Gravity could be something that imbues creation with the physical, cognitive and spiritual equivalent of mass....of Purpose.....even of....Intent. As to the one Dawnshard we DO know: Change.... I'd argue that theoretically, this could be the corollary to Electromagnetism. Especially given all the theorizing that the Change Dawnshard is specifically about creating POSITIVE change. Much like electromagnetism's role in physics stems largely from the positive charging of particles, and how this instigates, well...change. The magical equivalent of imbuing a positive charge into creation could well be summed up as Change (Positive) - as charging particles, or the various interactions between positively and negatively charged particles, is what leads to most change in the universe. The charged state of particles is directly linked to the changing states of matter, the conversion and breakdown of elements, etc. When you charge a particle, when you imbue it with a spark of creation, so to speak....something happens as a direct result, always, without fail. You induce change. So if two of the Dawnshards are Gravity and Electromagnetism, just interpreted via a fantasy lens..... They might be called Weigh and Change. Weigh as in something you might Command.....as in weigh upon. As in have mass, have weight, have MEANING. Another way of saying 'have meaning' is to command something to MATTER. Although the commands act as verbs, they might be more easily pictured when combined with a modifier, just as a hypothetical (and with the understanding that this doesn't quite match the naming convention implied for the Dawnshards and its just a rephrasing/reframing of the Command for ease of defining/picturing). So Weigh/Gravity/Bind could be the magical command largely responsible for or resulting in matter in the cosmere. Honor of course would be the most obvious candidate for one of the four Shards attached to or stemming from this particular Dawnshard....which tracks with the idea that he created the Surge of Adhesion to mimic the power that essentially is his own parent power. And as such, bindings and oaths are the basic bedrock foundation for life on Roshar. They're as fundamental to the framework of post-humanity Roshar as crem. If there's a Dawnshard that Commands 'Imbue weight/mass/purpose/MATTER' into the basic framework of existence......then Honor would fit as one of the four Shards under that subheading. Because Honor only has as much meaning as how much your personal honor matters, how much you adhere to whatever oaths you swear by. If you don't imbue your actions, your deeds, everything you create by Intent....with actual weight, with actual gravity, with Honor that you hold yourself to, that you see as having meaning and in turn use to give your actions and words and oaths meaning..... Then none of that really matters. Honor only matters in as much as the individual cognitive being who conducts themselves with Honor, by Intent....MAKES it matter. Now switch gears over to Change......if the Dawnshard of Change is the magical equivalent of electromagnetism in a fantasy universe.....then it could perhaps more easily be pictured by reframing that Command as 'Induce change.' A Shard I imagine falls under the Change subheading, one of the four 'child' Shards of that parent Dawnshard....would be Endowment. Because Endowment is something you give....but with purpose, with Intent. You give it specifically with the aim of something being done WITH that endowment, something positive. A positive change resulting from a gift given. The fantasy equivalent of bequeathing a positive charge to a particle....in order to....Induce Change. To result in something being done with that endowment, that results in a change (a positive one) for the one the endowment was given to. Similarly, Cultivation would fit in this category IMO....because it results in a positive change as a consequence of something being added, some structure being implemented, some being - with Intent - providing nourishment or nurturing something in order to see it evolve, grow, become better, more civilized, etc. A child Shard of the parent Dawnshard that is Change might "Induce Change" by adding more sustenance or nourishment or making it more easily attainable, to see what positive changes result. And if the Command 'Imbue/Have Weight' is the Dawnshard that shapes matter in the cosmere, the Command 'Induce/Shape Change' might similarly be described as the Dawnshard that results in energy. Inducing positive charges that shape energetic changes. Anyway, in real world physics, gravitational and electromagnetic interactions are denoted as being those that produce significant long-term or long-range forces whose effects can be seen on every day life. Weigh and Change, Matter and Energy, the Primal Commands that shape the long-term or long-range events that ARE the story of the cosmere, the fundamental building blocks that move creation into new states of existence. Which leaves two Dawnshards, and two fundamental forces/interactions: The strong and weak nuclear forces. These two are pretty complicated forces in the sense that they're very easily misconstrued and thus often misunderstood or misrepresented. For starters, the naming of them positions them as seeming like natural opposites, but that's not really the case. There is an ANGLE from which they're opposites, but of the four fundamental forces, when people talk of one of the four forces being somewhat different in nature from the other three....its actually the weak nuclear force they're talking about. The strong nuclear force more naturally groups with gravitation and electromagnetism....weak nuclear force is the outlier, even if in many ways it DOES present itself as a logical paired interaction for the strong nuclear force. (Note: This also dovetails with how we know from a WoB that one of the Dawnshards is different from the other three in some key ways). Now the interesting thing about the strong nuclear force is that....although its often construed as being a binding force and thus could be confused or treated as interchangeable with the parent force from which Adhesion is derived....this is not wholly accurate.....at least not if that binding force is interpreted as an ACTIVE interaction. Because while gravitation and electromagnetism are forces that actively ACT on things....the binding denoted by the strong nuclear force isn't a similarly active participation, like those two other forces. Rather, the binding is more just....a description of the interaction that exists. What I mean by that is gravity and electromagnetism are forces that actively interact with things, moment by moment. They DO stuff. The strong nuclear force doesn't inherently have to DO anything, it doesn't have to actively INTERACT......it also just describes something that was already done, just by virtue of the way things exist. Basically what I'm trying to say is that the strong nuclear force above all else simply....is a way of explaining what we're looking at when we look at the fundamental bonds and framework between things even BEFORE electromagnetism and gravitation act UPON them. It says: here is potential that exists, potential for change, potential for matter. It doesn't have to DO anything TO exist....its us looking at stuff that exists and says okay, here is a thing that exists in this particular configuration, and here's why, here's what holds it all together....regardless of whether or not we saw it come together in the first place. In essence, the fantasy equivalent of this force, reinterpreted as a Primal Command that is one of four responsible for creation..... This Primal Command, the correlating equivalent of this interaction, could be described as simply: "Exist." In fact, this force is the lynchpin of this entire theory, because IMO here's the key thing about having FOUR different Primal Commands that are used together to create: If creation is either the end goal of these four Commands, imbued with Intent.....or if creation is simply the end result of these four Commands....either way.....if one of these four Commands in and of itself is "Create".....then why do you need the other three....for....creation? And if one of these four Commands is NOT "Create".....then no matter what the other three are "Change"/"Weigh"/"Bind"/"Divide"/"Unite".....any of the variations I've seen suggested, whichever way you look at it.....if none of the four Commands is Create.....then what are the other three Commands acting upon? What creation exists for them TO Change in the first place? Unless......there is no Dawnshard, no Command that just says "Create"....but there is still created stuff for the other three to act upon......because there IS a Dawnshard, a Command, that simply commands: "Exist." As if the magical or fantasy equivalent of the strong nuclear force is Ado or Adonalsium or some Prime Creator, commanding not that things BE creatED....but rather that things.....just already Exist. And thus another way of reframing or rephrasing this Primal Command for ease of picturing is just "Have Potential." With this being the Dawnshard that 'creates' space and all its boundless potential...by simply Commanding that all that potential just....inherently exist. And "Weigh" and "Change" (or Imbue Weight and Induce Change) are what act upon that Potential. The Matter and Energy that give it shape and purpose and definition....and then energetically change all of that into still more configurations. Thus the Shards that descend or derive from this parent Shard are the ones that denote innate potential that can be acted upon in a myriad of ways. For instance: Autonomy. All sentient beings exist with the innate potential to act autonomously, they have this capacity.....but whether or not they DO act autonomously is subject to whether that autonomy is allowed to matter, by the actions of others.....and with their ability to act on their own autonomy being subject to change, depending on the actions of others and forces acting upon them. Which brings us to the final Dawnshard, the one I think is the true outlier, not quite like the others......the one that corresponds with the weak nuclear force. Like the strong nuclear force, the weak one can be tricky to perfectly encapsulate, but the 'weak' part is a misnomer. Don't think of it in terms of lesser than the strong nuclear force in any way, because the usual kneejerk associations with strong and weak are utterly irrelevant to the NATURES of the strong and weak nuclear forces. And like I said earlier, there ARE still angles from which the weak nuclear force does pair naturally with the strong nuclear force, in ways that gravitation and electromagnetism don't. For instance, the weak nuclear force, unlike those other two, and similar to the strong nuclear force....isn't a force or interaction that inherently DOES anything. It doesn't require active participation or a specific catalyst. Rather, like the strong nuclear force, its perhaps better imagined or understood as just....a description of something that happens, regardless of what set that in motion or even whether something specific set it in motion at all. But at the same time, the thing that makes the weak nuclear force distinct from the three other fundamental forces is that its the only one of the four fundamental forces to break parity symmetry. This is....a whole thing that frankly I'm too exhausted by typing out this whole post to get into all of that now, but its not really necessary to understand it to understand the point I'm aiming at here. All you really have to get is that each of the other four forces: strong nuclear force, gravitation and electromagnetism....all have a relation to spatial coordinates that the weak nuclear force doesn't inherently have.....because while electromagnetism is a force that induces change, just like gravitation is a force that can create the kind of bond interactions that the strong nuclear force describes.....the weak nuclear force is what DESCRIBES the changes that take place once the potential described by the strong nuclear force IS acted upon. Another way to sum this up would be: the weak nuclear force is most relevant to describing what happens with radioactive decay. The gradual changes that take place among pre-existing bonds. And to bring this back to a fantasy equivalent......if the strong nuclear force correlates with 'Exist' or "Have Potential" and embodies the fundamental concept of space and its place in creation....the weak nuclear force embodies the fundamental concept of time. And this is how and why the weak nuclear force - and the Dawnshard it correlates to - would be distinct from the other three, the strong nuclear force (Exist), gravitation (Weigh) and Electromagnetism (Change). Because all of those things describe things that are, and how and why they change and what changes them. The weak nuclear force and its corresponding Dawnshard are simply the Creative Urge's awareness of all of that happening. The Prime Creator's desire to see that all of that happens. And if this urge or desire, this Prime Command were to have a specific name, I would imagine nothing more suitable than: "Move." Matter and Energy (Weigh and Change) are the substance and the events of the cosmere's story, everything that happens, why things change, why they matter, and Space (Exist) is the frame that encompasses it all, the stage upon which all of those events are set, with the edges of that stage existing as a frame and boundary that allows those events to be contained within something, for that existence to have a point of reference. Time (Move) is Prime Command that sets it all in motion, and thereby allows the story to take place. Without Time, without Momentum, without the prime urge to see all that has been created and the framework built to allow it to grow and change and matter.....actually DO all of that.....none of those other three Commands will ever result in anything. They'd pop into existence and then just....exist that way forever. The prime command that made things Exist, made them Have Potential would be irrelevant, because that infinite potential would never be acted upon. The prime command that set everything up to Change, to grow, to evolve, would never get to do its job. The prime command that imbues everything with weight, with import, that tells it all to have meaning, would never see any of that fulfilled. And thus, even though one of a set of four, even though intended to act in concert with the other three to ensure the fulfilment of the Creator's Created Vision.....Time "Make Things Go" is distinct from the other three. The other three Dawnshards conjured the framework of the machine that is the universe and installed the directives that would move that machine and all it creates. "Move" is the Dawnshard that acts as the start button that Ado pushed to make the machine turn on.....and stay on, continuing to advance the machine, the cosmere and all it contains....forever forward. And so just like "Exist" imagined a cosmere with innate potential, but doesn't require those things actively act in order to exist, but rather just exist regardless of all else, and that existence then shaped by energetic change and gravitated import....."Move" imagines change regardless of intent or active participation.....it just commands that things happen and continue to happen. So we end up with two Dawnshards that demand active engagement and intent, and two Dawnshards that are the reason things exist and change regardless of engagement and intent. Which brings me to my groupings: EXIST (Space) aka "Have potential" 1) Autonomy aka the innate capacity to self-govern, regardless of its actualization 2) Virtuosity aka the innate possession of knowledge or talent, regardless of whether that's ever realized or utilized MOVE (Time) aka "Things happen" 1) Ruin aka the inevitability of entropy, regardless of the how or why of it 2) Whimsy aka the randomness of change born of capriciousness, regardless of reason or intent WEIGH (Matter) aka "Imbue weight/import" 1) Honor aka the capacity to affect the potency of your words or actions via how much you actualize the honorable intent behind them 2) Devotion aka the capacity to affect the potency of your words or actions via how much you actualize the devotion that motivates them CHANGE (Energy) aka "Induce change" 1) Endowment aka the bequeathment of a gift to incite change 2) Cultivation aka the application of guidance or directive to enhance or encourage positive development 3) Invention aka the application of a spark of genius or ingenuity to change ideas or materials into something useful or desired I'm still undecided on where other things go, because Mercy could theoretically go under Exist or Weigh, depending on whether the cosmere rules consider Mercy to be an innate quality regardless of whether you act upon it or not, or whether the Mercy of your actions are relative to how much importance you attach to being merciful. I'm inclined to think Mercy goes under Exist, because whether the personal importance you place on whatever your personal view of mercy is doesn't necessarily equate to your actions actually being Merciful. Then again, Honor definitely goes under Weigh because adherence to one's vows or oaths is integral to the weight given to the magic these vows tap into......which suggests that in the cosmere there is no empirical standard to Honor, and rather the deciding factor in how much you're conducting yourself with Honor is relative to how much you commit to or abide by whatever code it is that you've sworn to, such as the Knights Radiant oaths. Personally, I think it could go either way and we won't know for sure until we see some indication of Mercy's magic system, because that - like with Honor - could give us a clue as to whether Mercy in the cosmere is considered an empirical standard, or whether your actions being considered merciful and thus granting access to Mercy's magic....depends on how well or not your actions are abiding by or aligning with a standard of mercy you've established as the baseline you measure mercy by. As a further example, I think (but I'm not one hundred percent sure) that Odium falls under Exist rather than Weigh, because what we've seen of Odium and the magic he's fueled suggests that unlike with Honor, there IS an empirical standard or baseline for Odium. After all, Rayse himself didn't abide by the same interpretation of his Intent that a lot of people fueled by his power considered to be "of Odium." He viewed himself as being Passion, and his magic didn't distinguish between whether or not all Voidbinders matched or aligned with an intentional desire to be of Odium, or act according to that nature. There was equal potential for his power and Investiture to be tapped by Dalinar, Singers, Moash......it simply built upon an innate capacity for hatred, with no regard for where that hatred was aimed or whether or not the person drawing upon Odium's Investiture happened to view themselves or their motivations as hatred, per se. Thus I posit Odium is derived from the parent Dawnshard "Exist" - tapping into or denoting some innate potential within people, regardless of whether they intentionally commit to it or use that intent to guide or shape their actions. Mercy, as well as Valor - could go either way, Weigh or Exist, alignment-relative or empirically innate. Similarly, Ambition could go either way, depending on whether there's an empirical standard for innate Ambition or if you have to align your actions with your own baseline for Ambition and commit to it, in order to tap Ambition-fueled Investiture. Which leaves me inclined to believe that Valor and Odium are the remaining two Exist Shards (Valor and Honor being under the same subheading just doesn't feel right to me, so I'm leaning towards Valor being empirically innate as opposed to Honor's relative alignment). Ambition and Mercy are the other two Intention/Potential Nature Shards, and thus if they're not Exist Shards, pursuant to the last two slots there being filled by Valor and Odium.....then I feel like Ambition and Mercy must be Weigh Shards, and thus their magic systems or Investiture channeling is reliant on a person aligning their actions with their own baseline for being/acting ambitious or merciful. Preservation is a tricky one but I think its ironically under the Move subheading, despite appearances. As I said earlier, I think a likely reframing or rephrasing of the Move Dawnshard is "Things Happen" and although preservation CAN denote a lack of change or stagnation.....that's not inherent in the word choice. Preservation is something that happens. If something is being preserved, regardless of the reason why - in pursuit of stagnation or in defense of life - you would describe that thing's state of being as 'it is being preserved' - which is a thing that happens. It has actual movement, even if that movement is in a consistent line for the time being described. And Preservation and Ruin being the only two paired Shards occupying the same subheading, would I think, actually make some sense and explain a lot for why those two Shards are natural opposites for each other in ways that no other Shards we've seen juxtaposed with each other are. They're opposites not because they hail from two different groupings, but because they're each other's inverse under the same subheading. Two opposite forms of things happening. "Something gets worse" and "Something is preserved" - those are paired opposites. Brandon's elsewhere said that if Ruin were to have a different opposite number....it might be Cultivation. This too makes sense because they both hail from different subheadings of "Things change" with Ruin being a description of 'regardless of why, things get worse as time passes' while its opposite number here is Cultivation as "make things better over time, with Intent." Again, a paired opposite for Ruin, but in an entirely different way that Ruin pairs opposite to Preservation. If there were to be another pair of Shards derived from the same parent Dawnshard, that act as paired opposites the way Ruin and Preservation do, I suspect one such example might be Odium and Virtuosity, as an example. Lastly of those we know is Dominion. While I'm not 100% on my reasoning for Odium and Valor being under Exist and Mercy and Ambition being under Weigh, I do feel confident enough in them to be inclined to assume Dominion is more likely to fall under one of the Things Happen or Induce Change subheadings. I'm leaning towards Things Happen, because Induce Change seems largely end-positive aimed, whereas Things Happen is inherently neutral, and while its feasible that Dominion could in some specific circumstances be hailed as a positive change, not in the sense of imposing authoritarian rule or tyranny but rather in the form of like....self-mastery, as in Induce Change in the form of learning or expertise so that one achieves Dominion over their field of study or intended pursuits.....I think its more likely that Dominion falls under "Move"/Things Happen in the sense that regardless of why, change often results as a followup to things coming under something else's purview or sway. If I'm right about this and Things Happen aka Move is the parent Dawnshard of Dominion, that would suggest that of the remaining two Shards, one falls under Move/Things Happen (Time) as well, and the other fills the last slot in Change/Induce Change (Energy). If Dominion IS actually derived from Change, then the remaining two Shards would move be Move/Things Happen (Time) Shards along with Ruin and Whimsy. But anyway. This is all theoretical for now. Guess we'll see one way or another, but in the meanwhile....thoughts?