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So I have had this thought for a while and not been able to find anything. Don’t know if BS has said definitely not or anything either, if it turns out to be bunk feel free to take the thread down. But here goes, so I re-read Elantris recently and that got me thinking about the Dakhor Monks and why they are the way they are. I have no doubt that at least a good portion of their power comes from the Dor and they are heavily influenced like most of Fjordell by Dominion’s investment. But is it possible that during whatever happened between Odium and the other 2 shards. He may have either accidentally splintered a small segment of himself or accidentally invested some of himself on Sel, and “that small piece” mixed with the Dor and only the Dakhor have managed to access Odiums little piece, where the rest of Sel doesn’t even realise it exists. After all, the Dakhor are all very angry people. You could argue that through all the ritual sacrifice not only their bodies but their souls get twisted, (Similar to the returned souls of the Parshendi through Odiums influence) Their souls get mixed with that of those sacrificed. The Dakhor Monks also glow red, and that is a very popular colour of Odium’s. As I said just a thought and I would love to hear opinions on it.

From the perspective of the Shardholder, sure. But the overall power shift seems.......kinda nice? We had Adonalsium whose power then got dispersed to planets via worldhopping shards. Woohoo more, better, stronger magics in more places! Now those shards are being splintered or splintering the own power and trickling the power down even more. The peoples of the cosmere use these powers to improve their technology, gain insight from other realms, create connections to other peoples, and generally grow in knowledge and skills. It brings up a lot of age old political and religious questions. Should power belong to the few or the many? Does access to such power make the cosmere as a whole a better place, or just a more dangerous place? Is Odium really the secret Robin Hood hero of the cosmere, stealing from the rich and distributing to the poor? (Okay, that's a stretch ). Discuss!

So, I was thinking.... Most of the shards tend to have some sort of opposite. And there has been discussion on what Odium's opposite is. However, I'm wondering if anyone has looked at it from a perspective of opposite goals instead of opposite characters. For example, You have Ruin and Preservation, who have opposite goals: Destroy, and keep things the way they are. Now so far Odium's goal has been to shatter and essentially remove all other shards. Would that mean that his opposite would be a shard trying to reunite the shards into a single being again? On a similar note, If you were to combine Ambition and some other shard, couldn't you get an entity trying to absorb all of the other shards?

When a shard is “killed” they are splintered so if all of them were splintered what would happen to the cosmere?

Okay, with some new information and WoB, I thought I'd gather all my thoughts into one place and make this a proper theory: Threnody was a Shard. This all started when I stumbled over the word "threnodic", describing flowers that might be used at a funeral. The immediate rush to the dictionary produced this definition: Threnody (n) A song or poem that expresses sorrow for someone who is dead. or A song of lamentation for the dead. This clear nod to an emotion brought to mind the quote from the letter in WoR, regarding Odium as "God's own divine hatred" and what Odium has been up to. We know from WoB (question 32) that Odium has Splintered more than just Devotion, Dominion, and Honor: LEIFTINSPACECan you write in one of my books about something we don;t know about the Shards, or at least one of the Shards? BRANDON SANDERSONOdium has killed at least one more Shard than the ones we know about. So, we know that at least one aspect of Adonalsium's emotions became a Shard: his hatred. And that an unknown Shard has been Splintered. So operating under the hope that Threnody was named for a purpose, I asked at the Denver Calamity signing: Q: Was Threnody named in memorial for someone? A: Yes it was. (With a big smile on his face.) So there's that. This would seem to imply that whatever it was named for died before it was settled, or at least that it died before the current civilization as seen in "Shadows For Silence in the Forests of Hell". At that point in the timeline, we know that something is messed up in the Cognitive Realm, hence the situation with the Shades. We know one other world where things are wonky in the CR: Sel, where Devotion and Dominion were splintered. Add my final assumption (or prediction, if you will) that if Adonalsium Shattered into Shards that included an emotion (Odium; divine hatred), it may have included more than one—Threnody; divine sorrow or divine lamentation. The conclusion is that, at some point, Odium either splintered Threnody on another world, and the cataclysm forced the people there to move worlds, settling on and naming Threnody after the Shard; or he visited Threnody, then unnamed, and splintered Threnody there. If it is the former, I think the people who worldhopped would have used the unstable Investiture post-splintering to fuel their worldhop, and that is what is currently mucking things up in the Cognitive Realm. If the latter, then it is a similar situation with Sel, where the splinters and Investiture stayed at the world, but are causing havoc in the CR.

Devotion and Dominion are actually a "Spintered Shard" This post is a theory about the current situation of the Sel’s Shards. Maybe the title is a bit confusing but follow my thoughs. Let’s begin to some Cosmere’s “facts” wide accepted by everyone: Sel had two Shards: Devotion held by Aona and Dominion held by Skai Odium came to Sel, killed the Holders and Splintered the Shards. A little part of the Spinters gained sentience and became Seon and Skaze. The remain (massive) splinters of the two Shards merged together and became the Dor. The Dor is the core part of the Jesker religion, who see the Dor like an “overspirit” Another religion Shu-keseg workship the “unity of mind” From Shu-keseg came two branches: Shu-Dereth and Shu-Korath Shu-Dereth involves about “unity through control” Shu-Korag involves about “unity through love” the religion derivated from Shu-keseg have as mantra quite the intent of the two Sel’s shards. Now after this (maybe too long) introduction, I will explain my theory: Now on Sel there aren't two different shards but only one. Devotion or Dominiom are gone, now we have only a new Shard, I like to call it “Unity” but we could call with the neutral name of DorShard. The problem is that DorShard is actually Splintered. This is my explanation: When Odium came to Sel, he killed both of Shardholders and then spintered twe two Shards. A little of the Shards’s Splinters gained sentience and now they are know as Seon and Skaze. The unsentient part of the Spinters from both Shards then began to merge together. Why Did they merge ? Becouse the Devotion and Dominion's intents (or mandates if you prefer) are quite similar, they both were focused about bring Unity but using different methods. If you find this interpretation already heard, it is because it’s quite the same story of Shu-Keseg (but from the ending to the beginning) and I think that Keshu was inspired by this truth and his disciples’s shism was about the previous Shards’ situation. Now the DorShard is actually an unique Shard (like Harmony) but without host and probably Splintered (if the merging doesn’t put the Shard together). If now somebody “pick up the Dor” (and I don't know how it could be made), he will ascend to became a “Double Class” Shard like Harmony. EDIT: For the lazy sharder the main point in few words is: The Dor is a corpse of a new shard, not the patchwork of two corpse of shards

Hi there, This is my first post so it might have already been covered, if so thats my bad. It covers a few of the books so feel free to correct me if it is contradicted somewhere or if you have things to add. I was thinking about how Odium splintered the shard of Honor. I think that the honorblades that the Heralds wielded are actually the remnants of what is left of the shard of honor. This is why they can grant magically abilities to someone who previously could not access magic on Roshar. Also I wonder if they were all collected if they could reforge the Shard of Honor. If this is true then it would mean that the shards of Devotion and Dominion would have items that were made from their remnants. Brandon has said that the Aons inside of the Seons are splinters of Devotion so what are the splinters of Dominion? Also what would happen if a splinter of Devotion, a Seon, and a splinter of Honor, an honorblade, were combined like when Sazed combined the shards of Ruin and Preservation in the Mistborn series?

So my theory as to how the shattered plains shattered comes from reading Elantris and thinking about similarities between shardworlds and magic systems. We know that at least three shards have been splintered by Odium. Dominion and Devotion on Sel and Honor on Roshar. On both planets that Odium killed a Shardholder there was a devastating earthquake that broke the land. Sel presumably works like a regular planet and therefore has plate tectonics and fault lines so when one of the Shards was splintered it caused the land to break down a fault line leading to the rift in the middle of the southern continent. Roshar has land that is built up over time by crem deposits and worn down over time by the storms and therefore a massive energy burst might radiate out in a cymatic pattern like the shattered plains. It was not Ahairaitiem (I've no idea how to spell it with the Coppermind down) that shattered the land around Stormseat (btw if the storms come from Honor wouldn't Honor's home be at Stormseat) but the splintering of Honor. There were many desolations and there are no other places on Roshar with Cymatic lines nearly as obvious as the Shattered plains although many of the cities have cymatic patterns in their geography. On Sel the massive chasm that opened suddenly that shook an entire continent may have been caused by the splintering of Devotion or Dominion. It is a possible solution and I don't think we have enough information to know for sure but it is a possible explanation that elastically fits the evidence. As for why this didn't happen at the death of Ruin or preservation I have an idea. It's possible that it only happens when a shard is splintered and not when a shardholder dies, although the Scadrial was shaking badly already at the point of Vin's and Ruin's death and when Preservation died he was very weak and had given most of his power away.