Intents of Shards related to why they broke Adonalsium

[Landis963]

When it comes to Shardic Intents, the choice of mental state has always seemed off to me.  Why "Ruin" and not simply "Death"?  Why "Devotion" and not simply "Love"?  Why have "Autonomy" and "Endowment" at all?  But then a thought occurred: What if those were the prevailing thoughts and motivations of the Shardvessels when they took up the power?  

In this vein:

Ati might have seen it as inevitable.

Leras might have wanted to preserve the power

Rayse might have hated Adonalsium.

Bavadin might have wanted to be free of Adonalsium's influence.

Skai might have seen Adonalsium as a threat to his control.

Aona might have done it for the people she loved.  

Tanavast, because he thought he was giving Adonalsium an honorable death.  

 

It breaks down from here because it's hard to reconcile "Endowment" with "I want to kill a god," and same with Cultivation.  (Admittedly, it's easier to think of Cultivation's motivation - "I want to kill Adonalsium so that we can build anew" - we just don't know her Vessel's name.  

Thoughts?

Edited August 13, 2016 by Landis963

[Khyrindor]

Endowment may have wanted to share the power to others, perhaps she thought Adonalsium wasn't being free enough with it. Also, HEADCANON ACCEPTED! Brandon has said that Adonalsium could have been shattered in different ways, and this supports that! Nice theory!

[StormyQueen]

I would certainly say this is plausible given what we know, and it does seem to make sense (I actually really like this)

But, in a theoretical situation, what if two people had had very similar motivations would there be two shards of, say, Ruin, then, would they do pretty much the same thing? 

We probably don't know enough to answer that, but it's worth thinking about in accordance to this

[goody153]

Interesting theory. I like it.

I think there was a WoB somewhere about the shattering could've produced different 16 intents but this would make sense as to how the process of who takes up which shard happened.(why Ati ended up with Ruin and Rayse didn't randomly end up with Devotion unless the designation of Shards to the 16 was actually random  or first come first serve lol)

[Yata]

I have this idea of how the Shattering happen:

First kill God (well I have an idea also about this but it's not linked to this thread)

Then the Vessels pulls from Adonalsium's Corpse using Spiritual Connection they were deeply connected. Probably the 16 was choosen to be compatible with parts of Adonalsium.

Everyone of them obtain a shard of Adonalsium's Power.

[PallonianFire]

Definitely a cool idea, though Frost's letter makes it problematic when he says Rayse is carrying "God's own divine hatred." That definitely points to the Intents coming from Adonalsium, not the Vessels themselves.

[Landis963]

6 hours ago, PallonianFire said:

Definitely a cool idea, though Frost's letter makes it problematic when he says Rayse is carrying "God's own divine hatred." That definitely points to the Intents coming from Adonalsium, not the Vessels themselves.

Not necessarily. The Connection has to come from somewhere, and if Rayse allowed his hatred for Adonalsium to define him, then that would be all the connection he'd need to strip "Hatred" away from the rest of God's corpse. The second letter only states that Adonalsium had hatred in addition to "the virtues that gave it context." (Please correct if the quote isn't exact)

[PallonianFire]

Oh, I see what you mean. That the current mindsets of each of the Vessels provided a Connection to Adonalsium at the moment of Shattering, thus attracting those particular pieces of him. That's...a really, really cool idea.

[Landis963]

1 minute ago, PallonianFire said:

Oh, I see what you mean. That the current mindsets of each of the Vessels provided a Connection to Adonalsium at the moment of Shattering, thus attracting those particular pieces of him. That's...a really, really cool idea.

Unfortunately, we won't know for certain until Dragonsteel is concluded.  But if this gets proven in the 10+ years necessary for that to happen, ha, I win, and you heard it here first. 

[PallonianFire]

Sadly, yeah. Gonna be a long wait...but I'm fully on board with this theory until further notice.

[Djarskublar]

Wait, I thought Rayse killed the first Odium holder and stole it because it matched him... I'm not great at remembering things like that, but I'm fairly sure of this one. I thought the original Odium holder was a decent fellow. May be confusing that with Ati being shaped by Ruin.

Also, we do have the whole bit about Ati being shaped by the shardic intent, not the other way around. That isn't exactly what you were talking about, but still. I don't think this theory is without merit by any means, but it feels off.

I could maybe see it being shaped by the emotions of the holders at first, but not intents, they just don't match. I think there are enough minor discrepancies to say the theory is at least incomplete. Still like it a lot though. Good thinking OP!

Perhaps a better explanation would be that the shards had a general area they could break into (see the why Devotion rather than Love bit), and their first holders cemented the exact intents. Discrepancies can be accounted for by saying that as some were cemented it shifted the others to eliminate some overlap. If, for example, multiple people hated Mr A, one became hatred, and one became a more sinister connotation of the base general intent.

[Radiant Returned]

1 hour ago, Djarskublar said:

Wait, I thought Rayse killed the first Odium holder and stole it because it matched him... I'm not great at remembering things like that, but I'm fairly sure of this one. I thought the original Odium holder was a decent fellow. May be confusing that with Ati being shaped by Ruin.

You're confusing Ati with being shaped by Ruin. I'm pretty sure there's some WoBs but also the letters pretty much confirm Ati as one of the original 16. I'm fairly certain that Sazed (and briefly Vin and Kelsier I guess) is the only non-original Shardholder we've seen.

[Djarskublar]

1 minute ago, Radiant Returned said:

You're confusing Ati with being shaped by Ruin. I'm pretty sure there's some WoBs but also the letters pretty much confirm Ati as one of the original 16. I'm fairly certain that Sazed (and briefly Vin and Kelsier I guess) is the only non-original Shardholder we've seen.

I'm not saying Ati wasn't one of the originals, but that Rayse is new. I knew about Ati being shaped, and I guess that colored my memory of Rayse. Ati is definitely original, but I thought that Rayse killed the previous holder. I just wasn't sure if there was something saying the guy he killed was a decent fellow. Rayse was a bad dude, so he wanted the bad power that fit him the best.

On a side note, Ati got shaped a long time ago. Does that mean that even the Shards that were stronger mentally have been fully shaped by now? Not counting Sazed of course.

[Radiant Returned]

15 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

I'm not saying Ati wasn't one of the originals, but that Rayse is new.

Sorry, I read you completely wrong, brain fuzzed there for a second. I don't know if Rayse was the original holder but I think the Letter almost (though not completely) confirms it: 

Quote

While I mourn for the great suffering Rayse has caused, I do not believe we could hope for a better outcome than this. He bears the weight of God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context. He is what we made him to be, old friend. And that is what he, unfortunately, wished to become.

 

19 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

On a side note, Ati got shaped a long time ago. Does that mean that even the Shards that were stronger mentally have been fully shaped by now? Not counting Sazed of course.

Yes I think so. The Recipient (presumably Frost) of the Letter says that he believes Rayse is more force than individual now (though Hoid disagrees). And like you pointed out the only Vessels we've seen in Ati and Leras were both fully consumed by their Intents. Ruin could only destroy and Ati couldn't bring himself to harm a soul. Tanavast is the only other Vessel we've kinda seen in person and his Intent of "Honor", while it probably kept him from doing anything dishonorable, probably didn't warp his personality as much as an Intent like Ruin or Preserve IMO. So Vessel's like Endowment and Cultivation probably have had similar-to Honor warpings in that they must do their Intents but they're personality's haven't warped drastically, while Odium (and possibly to a lesser extent Autonomy) have presumably been completely warped, though in Rayse's case he definitely wanted that.