Narrowing Down the Last Shards [AU]

[Mr. Staccato]

Anyway, so the ten named shards are as follows:

1. Ambition - desire to achieve success or greatness; tangentially related to determination and hope
2. Devotion - related to belief and/or loyalty to something else; may also refer to compassion
3. Dominion - this confused me a bit because I used to conflate dominion with the need to rule over people or enslave - but it's more accurately portrayed in the series as something like responsibility, the right to rule; authority
4. Honor - a sense of personal morality - also touches upon respect, justice, and obligation to do good; truth falls under here as well but not necessarily
5. Cultivation - the act of cultivating, which in itself means to care for something in great detail, to watch over it, to personally supervise; also means to refine something or to foster warmth and affection in someone - though this is a bit subjective
6. Odium - pure, unadulterated hatred; I believe a WoB (or was it an in-world reference that said it?) once stated that Odium is god's hatred seperated from that which gave it context
7. Ruin - destruction, death - although Ruin is portrayed as malicious, he is more a natural force than an actual emotion; he also symbolizes change and renewal
8. Preservation - stasis, the state in which something remains as it is; can also mean to protect someone from harm but it can also be construed as stagnation
9. Autonomy - the capacity of one to make decisions for himself or herself; freedom is autonomy but autonomy isn't necessarily freedom - more like will, being, sentience
10. Endowment - to provide freely; endowment means to bequeath or give - to entrust someone with something else; compared to devotion and cultivation it's a bit more passive

Now that I have that covered, let me move on to what I believe the remaining shards are. First, I don't really believe in positive-negative pairs though this may naturally come as a result with the shards intent - meaning that although they are in fact a positive-negative pair, it was never truly deliberate. I also have a thing against the idea of godly attributes because surely some of the things that we see here aren't "godly." For one Ruin and Preservation aren't attributes - they are forces naturally present in world; Autonomy too, since if you look at it, one can argue that some of the other shards pertain to emotion - these emotions come to us all - some natural, some not - but Autonomy precedes all that with the simple idea of something so inherently human as being able to think for ourselves.

Maybe the shards really are just simple. Things that are either inherent forces in the world, human emotion pushed towards the far absolute, or concepts that we simply learn by ourselves as we grow and mature. For that reason I humbly present the following as my guesses at the remaining shards:

• Nihilism - a belief in nothing and no one; often used in the context of not believing in any religion like atheism, but nihilism can also mean a belief in simply nothing - the end result of this can be selfishness or apathy. Shards don't have deliberate opposites but opposites born of the natural consequences of what their intents symbolize - if that is the case then Nihilism may be perceived as the opposite of Honor (whose very intent is to believe in something or someone), Devotion (to surrender oneself to someone else), or Endowment (who entrusts to others what is needed). If Nihilism is in fact a shard then there is every chance that he is the runaway of the sixteen (because believing in nothing causes him to value himself more than anything else in the world).
• Valor - to be honest I got this idea from Diablo 3 (Imperius, anyone?). I mean, we have shards that indicate compassion (Devotion, Cultivation), impartiality (Dominion, Autonomy), and belief (Honor, Ambition), but courage and fearlessness is something that humans seem to idolize among the rest and arguably if we would take into consideration the idea of godly attributes then valor is very high on that list. I mean, look - valor does not need to be honorable though it is often described in tandem as such. I think of Valor more like a synergistic pair to Honor in the same way that some have said that Cultivation and Preservation operate under the same way.
• Birth - I can't get the name right for this one. See, Ruin is destruction and change, Preservation is protection or prolonging something, Cultivation is essentially changing something for the better without destruction - so that leaves the simple act of creation. I named this shard Birth because while it gives life, it's not compassionate - I was going for something like pure creation - the simple act of creating, leaving everything that's been given birth to fend for themselves, that way it would balance out with Preservation and Cultivation who have shown varying degrees of kindness but with the inability to create.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Mr. Staccato
More on the way

[What's a Seawolf?]

8 hours ago, Kaladin Zahel said:

And for the 16th shard, I feel it is both unrelated and necessary to the whole: Consciousness/Awareness

 

I REALLY like the idea of an Awareness shard.  If the shard that wants to survive is not actually some form of survival, I think Awareness would be a good fit.

Would also cover various forms of enlightenment, wisdom etc.

And yes all of those things don't necessarily fall into the purview of Awareness, but I think they could fall into the umbrella of the shard if written a certain way.

Now, how 'Awareness' would affect the overall Cosmere story I'm uncertain.  Though if Silverlight does have a shard, something like Awareness would make sense.

[ROSHtaFARian2.0]

Its worth pointing out that we have to remember that at the end of the day, a large part of this is just semantics. All the Intents are deliberately broad and open to being interpreted in a number of different ways. Many of the themes or ideas being presented in this thread cover very similar ground, and it will all just come down to what specific word Brandon uses to focus these fairly broad concepts into a single, condensed Intent. With the established shards, some of his word choices are absolutely what we'd expect - Devotion, Honor, these absolutely make sense as divine attributes and were of no surprise to anyway. Others like Odium or Autonomy were a bit of a surprise, not because 'god's wrath' or 'free will' are surprising in and of themselves, but because those specific word choices weren't necessarily what we personally would've thought or predicted for those concepts. 

So I think there's actually more agreement than disagreement overall on a lot of these, when it comes to the underlying ideas....its word choice where most of us part ways.

[The One Who Connects]

@Kaladin Zahel I like the 3 Shard Pairs idea, since it's different than what we're used to.

I have an idea for the Autonomy, Dominion and ?? Trio, though it may disagree with your 2:1 positive:negative ratio. The ?? Is the shard in the middle.

Odium is an antonym of Honor and Devotion, while the two are not the same.

Ruin is an antonym of Preservation and Cultivation while the two are not the same. 

Autonomy and Dominion are not the same, so perhaps there is something that is an antonym of both words. 

[Kaladin Zahel]

10 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

 

Autonomy and Dominion are not the same, so perhaps there is something that is an antonym of both words. 

Good catch. There actually was a mutual antonym but I wasn't comfortable at the time to add.

Autonomy and Dominion could have a matching shard of Subordination, Servitude, or Subservience.

I like Servitude the best as it fits with most religious doctrines and intents. I'll edit my post to reflect the new potential shard.

Thanks!

[thegatorgirl00]

@Kaladin Zahel, instead of Humility, I think Charity would be a better pair for Ambition. 

Ambition- trying to better oneself

Charity- trying to better others

I think the third in the set would have something to do with inaction,  the desire to observe without interfering. I keep thinking about the deist idea of God, but I don't have a good name for the attribute. 

[Kaladin Zahel]

@thegatorgirl00 Thank you for the suggestion.

The reason I went with Humility was to stay away from an attribute as similar to Endowment as Charity or Generosity.

I could maybe make the third in this segment Hubris or Pride making a segment that is more negative than positive.

As for inaction, I couldn't think of a reasonable trait that would have a following or magic system attached.

I'll add both in parentheses for now.

[Farnsworth]

What about the survival Shard? Also, there is a lot of speculation that the planet Purity, in the Threnody system, is a Shard.

[+Extesian]

I'm a bit excited, though maybe prematurely, about a WoB at the Poland signing that just happened. Still waiting to hear a recording but @Oversleep summarized one as

Quote

Survival Shard... it was wise decision [to get away from all of that]

So I'm thinking Wisdom. It would make a lot of sense and match with some of the thoughts on here?

[AeonaRin]

Hello. I want to propose my take on the subject. There was a whole process going on. 

 

1.       I believe that Shards are godly traits, as they exist as a part of a godly creature. So. First I defined which are and which are not godly traits.

There are lots of traits that could describe a god, there’s a reason some religions had whole pantheons. But in case of one deity there are some rules:

God is omnipotent à therefore God cannot be unable to do something, so there’s probably no Shard of Impotency

God is omniscient à therefore God cannot be ignorant, so there’s probably no Shard of Oblivion

 

2.       Then I analyzed what could be intents of known Shards (and let’s ignore Preservation and Ruin as we already know it’s a pair) and their potential opposites, having in mind that these too need to be godly traits. Even with malicious traits: God gives and takes, forgives and rebounds, preserves and ruins.

Honor – to act with integrity and virtue, to be noble, merciful, to keep promises, have morals à Antagonist’s intent: to be selfish, ruthless and cruel, to be execrable, to break promises.

Devotion – to be loyal, loving, to care, to sacrifice à Antagonist’s intent: to be selfish, uncaring; to be neutral, to believe in non-intervention politics.

Cultivation – to aim for progress, to tame the wilderness, to produce à Antagonist’s intent: to leave alone or neglect; to leave something raw and natural.

Dominion – to rule, to govern, to seek power à Antagonist’s intent: to value independence, to be insubordinate or riot.

Odium – to hate, to discredit virtue, to act with disgrace, to be execrable, ruthless, cruel à Antagonist’s intent: to love, to be kind, to be noble.

Ambition – to have aspirations, to be eager, to hunger for accomplishments à Antagonist’s intent: to be satisfied with what one has, to be humble

Autonomy – to be independent, self-sufficient, insubordinate, to value freedom, to riot à Antagonist’s intent: to suppress, to govern, to overpower.

Endowment – to give, to grant, to aid à Antagonist’s intent: to take, to divest, to bereave

 

I coloured some traits that make pairs.

In case of Odium, it is a potential antagonist of either Honor or Devotion. I decided though, that Honor’s antagonist and Odium have more in common that Devotion’s antagonist and Odium. I thought Indifference (as an opposite of Devotion) is a better fit for a godly trait than Disgrace (as an opposite of Honor), so I settled for following pairs:

Preservation	Ruin
Honor	Odium/
Dominion	Autonomy
Devotion	Indifference
Cultivation	Stagnation/Seclusion/Solitude/Serenity
Ambition	Humility
Endowment	Divestiture/Bereavement

This way I was left with 14 Shards. Only one pair to go! As you can probably see I had a problem to come up with a good name for Cultivation’s antagonist. I thought that intent of literally leaving things wild and undomesticated is a bit too similar to Indifference which I already choose for Devotion’s antagonist. So I tried to have a little more abstract take on it. Solitude or Seclusion on the other hand seemed to be too similar to Autonomy. Therefore Serenity is quite a loose idea, but the best I had.

3.       Next step was to analyze other characteristics commonly recognized as godly. Here are some popular choices and why I find them unlikely:

Love – I think it’s too broad of a term, while shards we already know are usually quite easy to define. What is more, we Already have Devotion and Endowment, that together could be fused into love.

Mercy – I believe we already have that in Honor.

Wisdom – there can be no good opposite of that for a god-like creature.

Purity – Again, we have that in Honor, and a bit in Endowment, etc.

And here are some I find plausible:

Certitude/Trust Evaluation Ingenuity Enlightenment Patience Impetuosity

 

Trust/Evaluation – God sometimes puts humans to test, human is expected to trust

Ingenuity/Enlightenment – quite popular choices, God needs both.

Patience/Impetuosity – God exhibits both.

 

4.       Then I confronted my theory with past disputes. In this thread Extesian proposed a neat system with Shards grouped in fours, like Allomantic metals. I disagree with some propositions, but I liked the system and considered an alternate pairing – Cultivation (as in working on other things) vs Ambition (as in working on yourself) – that made sense. It eliminates the unfortunate Serenity, but I do think Humility could be a good Shard. This system also eliminates the dilemma of Cultivation/Preservation/Ruin triangle.

Therefore my alternative pairings

Preservation	Ruin
Honor	Odium/
Dominion	Autonomy
Cultivation	Ambition
Devotion	Indifference
Endowment	Divestiture/Bereavement

Became groups of four:

 

Cognitive

Enlightenment – to seek understanding

Ingenuity – to seek innovation

Trust – to believe

Evaluation – to test

 

Spiritual/emotional

Devotion – to engage

Indifference – to stay neutral

Honor – to have morals

Odium – To discredit morals

 

Physical

Endowment – to give something to others

Bereavement – to take something from others

Autonomy – to have control of yourself

Dominion – to have control of others

 

Temporal

Cultivation – to work on something

Ambition – to work on yourself

Preservation – to never change

Ruin – to break things down

Quote

 

All fours are in following order:

External pulling

External pushing

Internal pulling

Internal pushing

 

 

5.       The last thing was to ask myself, which of these could be the survival shard? I think Indifference would make a pretty good one. And so I accepted the list in this form.

 

 

What do you think?

Edited April 15, 2017 by strumienpola

[The One Who Connects]

@strumienpola Fairly certain that Brandon has said that not all of them have an opposite. (If he only aid "not all perfect opposites," then the story could change)

You say that Gods are omniscient, without ignorance. That directly supports an Intent like Wisdom, for the exact same reason you say it's unlikely later on. 

Cognitive Set: I don't see the push/pull relationship with Enlightenment and Ingenuity. Trust and Evaluation are a bit clearer, even though Trust could be covered by Honor. If you're going the "trust in God route," then it falls to faith and Devotion.

I could also argue that "seeking innovation" bleeds into the "take it apart and build it better" approach that we often equate with Cultivation, but that's more of a venn diagram than them being the same.

Spiritual/Emotional Set: Brandon hasn't equated Odium to "discrediting morals." Odium is hatred, and Kaladin's Third Ideal even allows for him to hate, so long as he still does the right thing. 

Physical Set: No philosophical debate here, but the word Bereavement just seems too uncommon, while all the other Shard Names so far have been very commonly known words.

Temporal Set: I disagree with your mini-definition of Ambition. Working on yourself could be rewritten as self-improvement. Self-improvement is cultivating your skills, thus Cultivation. Your Ambition can be considered your Drive, your want to do something, including but in no way limited to "on yourself."

 

This is separate, but related to my pick of Wisdom. I formally support Kaladin Zahel's positive-negative-positive sets of 3 idea, with Wisdom being number 16 by itself.

Edited April 15, 2017 by The One Who Connects
Minor fixes, corrections

[AeonaRin]

I am fairly certain he said they are opposites but not all of them are perfect. 

Wisdom could be a substitute for Enlightenment, but I think the latter makes a better shard. It's also much easier to fit an opposite - even a vague one. 

I quite strongly believe trust and honor are not very similar. Trust as in believing, which people before me proposed. I just think trust/evaluation is more god-like, because God of the biblical stories tests men if they trust him. 

By ingenuity I mean creativity. Feeling. Vs. sensing of Enlightenment. I almost called this pair Sense and Sensibility xD (this pun would work in Alcatraz though!)

Odium means many things and Brandon said specifically that it could be an opppsite for several shards. "Dishonor" is actually along with "hatered" among the most common synonyms. But even as just hatered I don't think it's a antagonist for Devotion, as devotion means to be loyal or to sacrifice, more than anything else. 

Divestiture means practically the same thing as bereavement, so whatevs the point is, it's the shard of taking, or taking back. 

Ad. Ambition - I did eventually agree that Ambition can be interpreted this way and can be paired with cultivation. I am hesitant, because I think Odium was chasing Ambition first, because it was a threat to him, and self-improvement isn't exactly dangerous. But it is plausible and it did let me avoid the questionable pairing of cultivation I came up with originally, so you can consider me converted. 

Edited April 16, 2017 by strumienpola
Sorry, lots of autocorrect.

[The One Who Connects]

@strumienpola Fair enough for Wisdom/Enlightenment, I still feel like it'd be Wisdom, but now it's just semantics, so I'll drop the debate.

I realized that you might've meant trust that way, but I took that as something along the lines of God tests man's faith in him. And then I lumped faith with Devotion, and here we are. "Testing your trust" just sounded... dishonorable to me. I know you mean he is testing whether or not they trust him, but the shorthand reminded me of "testing my patience" which has negative connotation. Fault lies on my preconceived notions of small phrases

As for Ingenuity: Ah, that makes more sense. 

I might've taken the definition Brandon accepted for Odium too far and assumed it was the only one. I never really saw Odium as the direct opposite of Devotion either, but I also see Devotion in the semi-religious light of faith and belief, so who knows?

My point was that I only knew what Divestiture meant because Brandon has used Invest/Divest before. I only knew what Bereavement meant because you said what it meant. It just felt odd for 1-2 of your 16 to be words people probably wouldn't know, when the other 14 were really common/straightforward. But hey, maybe Brandon couldn't find a good 6th-8th Grade word for "takes away." (Not like I've got any ideas either, so don't take this as condescending.)

Perhaps I can offer a way out of the Ambition problem. There was a recent thread called "A Shard influences Plots." Honorable people being cultivated to survive in a world of hate, people who want to preserve the world fighting people who want to ruin it, etc... It got glazed over by the logic that "of course they influence people/this isn't news/etc.." But consider this: Wherever Ambition settled down would produce a race of highly ambitious beings. The IRE tried to take a dying Shard probably of their own accord. With Ambition still in the picture, how long before someone else became ambitious enough to kill a live one, following in the footsteps of what they did to Adonalsium? I feel like the only reason the main villain is Odium is because he decided to "be the only shard" and Ambition didn't.

[ZenBossanova]

I had a shard of Hunger / Consuming, but that was the most natural one to replace with Ingenuity because it was in the same section as Endowment, Ambition, and Cultivation. (Not that Ingenuity has been verified yet)

Edited April 16, 2017 by ZenBossanova

[Djarskublar]

I feel like their may be another Shard on the Ruin, Preservation, Cultivation scale. Chaos would make for an interesting Shard. It could supplant some of the less interesting possibilities like Indifference, which I was totally indifferent to. It would be the Shard of letting things take their course randomly.

[ZenBossanova]

5 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

I feel like their may be another Shard on the Ruin, Preservation, Cultivation scale. Chaos would make for an interesting Shard. It could supplant some of the less interesting possibilities like Indifference, which I was totally indifferent to. It would be the Shard of letting things take their course randomly.

I had a Shard of Paradox / Transcendence in that slot. It is is things that appear paradoxical, but can give us greater things, like how mathematicians let parallel lines cross (which sounds like a paradox), and that gave them the kind of geometry that Einstein's theory of General Relativity used. 

[Djarskublar]

5 hours ago, ZenBossanova said:

I had a Shard of Paradox / Transcendence in that slot. It is is things that appear paradoxical, but can give us greater things, like how mathematicians let parallel lines cross (which sounds like a paradox), and that gave them the kind of geometry that Einstein's theory of General Relativity used. 

Nah, that doesn't sound like something on that scale. It's more like Ruin destroys, Chaos lets random stuff happen and doesn't involve itself except to sow, well, chaos (a decent candidate for the survival shard, I think), Cultivation makes things grow, and Preservation is stasis. That's the sliding scale I'm seeing. We have a Shard for destruction and cultivation-- willed and directed change of certain types. We also have a Shard that specifically tries to avoid change. So I could totally see a Shard that complements Preservation more directly as constant, random change. I could also see an argument that Chaos drifts too close to Ruin, but I dunno either way of course.

[AeonaRin]

Oh, I didn't think of Chaos as Cultivation's antagonit. I feel stupid now.

It makes sense, only then I think I don't know which quadrant to put Ambition in. Because temporal and physical wpuld be fully occupied and it's not very cognitive, leaving only spiritual, which in my humble opinion is also occupied. So I don't know. 

I fell quite strongly about Indifference though. There's no more godly attribute than that. 

[Djarskublar]

19 minutes ago, strumienpola said:

Oh, I didn't think of Chaos as Cultivation's antagonit. I feel stupid now.

It makes sense, only then I think I don't know which quadrant to put Ambition in. Because temporal and physical wpuld be fully occupied and it's not very cognitive, leaving only spiritual, which in my humble opinion is also occupied. So I don't know. 

I fell quite strongly about Indifference though. There's no more godly attribute than that. 

I feel like Chaos would be a more direct opposite to Preservation, rather than Cultivation. I think Ruin and Cultivation are more opposite, though it has been described as a triangle of opposites.

I'm not terribly attached to the idea that the Shards need to fit into quadrants like that. I think Preservation set up the magic that way so that the people would have an easier time figuring out the 16 connection. Just because there are also 16 Shards doesn't mean they have to fit into categories in the same way at all. It just restricts the potential variety of Shards.

As for indifference, I can see why you would think of that, but my views of God make that seem ludicrous. Not to bash your views, of course. I can see where you are coming from, it's just not something I can agree with. Beyond that, I'm certain that Brandon's views on the subject are much closer to mine than yours. I could see him setting it up more like your views anyway, but I think it is less likely.

[AeonaRin]

I know the shards don't have to be organized the same way allomancy is, but it is a very good theory that I personally like

And if Brandon's personal views on God had a deciding role in setting the shards, I don't think there would be an Odium. 

[Calderis]

39 minutes ago, strumienpola said:

I know the shards don't have to be organized the same way allomancy is, but it is a very good theory that I personally like

And if Brandon's personal views on God had a deciding role in setting the shards, I don't think there would be an Odium. 

The Christian God is full of righteous anger. Read the old testament. Odium is just that anger separated from the attributes that made it a positive trait (subjectively). 

[Oversleep]

2 hours ago, strumienpola said:

And if Brandon's personal views on God had a deciding role in setting the shards, I don't think there would be an Odium.

Well, God is said to be vengeful; as far as I'm concerned, Hate can very well be God's attribute.

[ZenBossanova]

17 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

Nah, that doesn't sound like something on that scale. It's more like Ruin destroys, Chaos lets random stuff happen and doesn't involve itself except to sow, well, chaos (a decent candidate for the survival shard, I think), Cultivation makes things grow, and Preservation is stasis. That's the sliding scale I'm seeing. We have a Shard for destruction and cultivation-- willed and directed change of certain types. We also have a Shard that specifically tries to avoid change. So I could totally see a Shard that complements Preservation more directly as constant, random change. I could also see an argument that Chaos drifts too close to Ruin, but I dunno either way of course.

Perhaps, but let me explain myself and maybe you will like it more. 

A shard of Paradox / Transcendence is IMHO the best candidate for Ashyn (The Silence Divine). If the shards are attributes of Diety, or of Civilization, then this works much better than Chaos does. 

Where Ruin would destroy, and Cultivation would create, Transcend would replace. It would upend things in a kind of creative destruction, and not one that would be easily predicted. The 4th in this quadrant would be Ingenuity (if that one is verified), so all the shards would be involved in creating or upending somehow. 

[AeonaRin]

10 hours ago, Oversleep said:

Well, God is said to be vengeful; as far as I'm concerned, Hate can very well be God's attribute.

I agree. And so can be indifference

[Pagerunner]

12 minutes ago, ZenBossanova said:

Perhaps, but let me explain myself and maybe you will like it more. 

A shard of Paradox / Transcendence is IMHO the best candidate for Ashyn (The Silence Divine). If the shards are attributes of Diety, or of Civilization, then this works much better than Chaos does. 

Where Ruin would destroy, and Cultivation would create, Transcend would replace. It would upend things in a kind of creative destruction, and not one that would be easily predicted. The 4th in this quadrant would be Ingenuity (if that one is verified), so all the shards would be involved in creating or upending somehow. 

Ashyn does not have a Shard. The magic there is something you interact with, more Realmatic effects (silly science), not a formalized magic system.