Structure of 16 Shards

[pmj812]

Hi everyone! I’m new. That means most of these ideas have probably been discarded ages ago. I did try to look for them in the forums but I can’t say I was completely thorough.

Anyway here’s what I’ve got:

1) an idea about the 16 Shards based on a problem I had with Odium

2) Some Sprenology

3) a small Stormlight 2 prediction

SHARD THEORY:

So I was thinking: Why does Odium want to destroy the universe? Odium means hatred, premature heat death of universe seems like more of a Ruin thing. This had me gnawing on Odium all morning (not the best flavor btw) and I came up with an interesting possibility.

Remember in Allomancy a metal could be “external physical pulling” and that was what categorized it?

I think the Shards fall into 4 broad categories and within them can be positive or negative, dynamic or static.

3 of the 4 categories are physical, spiritual, cognitive. I’m stumped on the 4th. Cosmic maybe?

Let’s run with that. Here is what I am proposing:

Physical, positive, static: Preservation

Physical, negative, static: Ruin

Physical, positive, dynamic: Cultivation

Physical, negative, dynamic: Rot?

Spiritual, positive, static: Honor

Spiritual, negative, static: Odium (Bavadin, not Rayse)

Spiritual, positive, dynamic: Compassion/Charity/Aona

Spiritual, negative, dynamic: Skai - Envy?

Cognitive, positive, static: Knowledge?

Cognitive, negative, static: Ignorance?

Cognitive, positive, dynamic: Hope or Learning?

Cognitive, negative, dynamic: Despair or Forgetting?

Cosmic, Positive, Static: ???

Cosmic, Negative, Static: HDU (Rayse)

Cosmic, Positive, Dynamic: Endowment

Cosmic, Negative, Dynamic: Entropy?

HDU stands for Heat Death of the Universe, which seems to be Rayse’s goal.

I acknowledge the likelihood that Rayse is Odium, but what if Odium is only Rayse’s henchman?

Question marks indicate wild speculation, obvs.

OK! Onward to justification!

Since I was thinking that Odium’s “destroy it all” thing seemed more in Ruin’s court, and Odium is an emotion, and emotions are, perhaps, spiritual - That’s what sparked the idea that Odium and Ruin were somehow in the same category. Ruin wanting to see all physical things destroyed, odium wanting to see all spiritual things destroyed, and if they take down the other realms at the same time, hey! bonus!

The rest of the structure comes from the fact that there seem to be so many opposed pairs, and from cultivation and charity come the notion of the static vs. dynamic ideas.

The idea of cosmic as the fourth category and above the other three comes from Sazed, Endowment, and what Brandon has said about Sazed: Sazed can’t reach into the afterlife proper (yet), but perhaps Endowment can, making Endowment one of the “greater” shards.

From here we get the idea that Rayse is the greater cosmic static negative because letter writer calls his shard the most powerful. Thus Odium becomes Bavadin and only the Sauron to Rayse’s Morgoth.

From here I make the further wild guess that the Letter Recipient is either Knowledge or the Cosmic Positive Static I have no name for, and Hoid may be Hope, but probably not. I think it’s possible the Nightwatcher is Despair. For this to be true then Honor’s reference of Cultivation would not be a reference to any of the “three who ruled” but rather a more distant memory. Or perhaps that the Old Magic and the Nightwatcher are not the third of the 3 at all, but moved in and set up shop later.

So anyway that’s the big theory. Fire away!

the small theories: the Spren are the slivers of Honor, they and the Highstorms are his remains.

Also, this one is more of a storytelling nature: One of two things will happen in stormlight 2: either Jasnah is right about the parshmen and no-one will believe her, leading to tragedy, or she is wrong and everyone believes her, leading to atrocity.

[Mad_Scientist]

First, let me say welcome to 17th Shard!

Now, onto your post.

So I was thinking: Why does Odium want to destroy the universe? Odium means hatred, premature heat death of universe seems like more of a Ruin thing. This had me gnawing on Odium all morning (not the best flavor btw) and I came up with an interesting possibility.

I'm not sure Odium does want to destroy the universe. I know we have the vision between Honor and Dalinar, where Dalinar sees two stars disappear, but I always figured that was supposed to be figurative, perhaps with the two stars winking out representing Aona and Skai, who were both killed. It could also mean that Odium is literally trying to destroy all the stars, though, and some of the death visions from WoK could possibly mean that Odium is trying to destroy the sun of Roshar. So I can understand your view on Odium's goal, even if I don't quite agree.

Assuming for the moment that you're right, then it's hard to know for sure why, but hatred can inspire lots of things. If you really, really hate someone, you may find yourself wanting to kill him. Or make him suffer. Or make him suffer, kill him, then make him suffer more after death. I've always kind of figured that Odium's ultimate goal is some sort of eternal torment for all/most, perhaps something similiar to what the Heralds apparantly suffer between desolations.

You Shard categories are interesting. Shard pairs and categories have been discussed here, but I don't think I've seen someone attempt to classify all 16 like that, or even all of the known Shards. So I like your ideas some, but unfortunately there's a pretty big problem with them. You speculate that Odium and Rayse are different, but Thorondir's post in this thread mentions Brandon confirming that Odium is Rayse. So that proves at least part of your classification wrong.

Regardless, I've always felt that Odium is more the counterpart of Aona than the counterpart of Honor. Odium is a hatred synonym, afterall, and Aona is a love synonym. They may not be exact opposites like Ruin and Preservation, but Brandon said that not all Shard pairs are like that.

If I categorized the known Shards, it would be something like this. First, we have the Shards that represent actions.

Actions

Preservation

Ruin

Cultivation

Endowment

Preservation and Ruin are obviously a pair, being opposites. And I think Cultivation and Endowment are also a pair, but in a different way. They both represent different methods of acomplishing similiar tasks. Both increase what someone or something else has. Cultivation does it by encouraging growth in that someone or something, and Endowment does it by giving to that someone or something.

Next, we got the emotional Shards, those that represent feelings.

Emotions/Feelings

Odium

Aona's Shard (I suspect Devotion)

In this case, Odium and Aona would be counterparts, being near or perfect opposites, depending on what exactly the name of Aona's Shard is.

And finally, we have the Shards that represent ideals or moral views.

Ideals

Honor

Skai's Shard? (I suspect Skai is related to the concept of unity/solidarity in some way)

I'm not sure if Skai and Honor would be counterparts or not.

Obviously, I break things down a bit differently than you, and I'm not sure what the rest of the Shards would fit in. I kind of also feel they might break down into 4 groups of 4, but if so, what would they be in addition to Actions, Emotions, and Ideals?

Also, if it turned out that your categories are corect, I'd probably still keep the groupings I have above, just replacing actions with physical, emotions with cognitive, and ideals with spiritual.

Now, as for your view of Endowment, I've always assumed that she/he was stopping the souls from passing onto the true afterlife, and that this was the reason she was able to bring the dead back to life when Sazed couldn't. But it's never been confirmed by Brandon either way, so Endowment's ability remains a little something of a mystery. It should be noted, however, that somehow the Heralds are being brought back to life over and over again on Roshar, so some other Shard has figured something out related to that.

Also, related to some of your ending Shard speculation, I'm afraid that Brandon has confirmed in an interview that one of the three Shards that have existed on Roshar is Cultivation. I can probably find the exact quote if you want.

Finally, when you speculate that spren are slivers of Honor, I think the term you are actually looking for is Splinters. Slivers are people who have held all/most of a Shard's power but lost it, people like the Lord Ruler (via the Well of Acension) and Vin. Splinters are... well, we honestly aren't totally sure. Pieces of a Shard's power of some sort, though the exact definition is unknown. We know the Divine breaths of the Returned are Splinters, and it's been strongly implied but not 100% confirmed that Seons from Elantris are Splinters or related to them.

Kind of a long response here. Anyways, once again, welcome to the 17th Shard. I like some of your Shard classifcation ideas, even if I'm not sure I agree with them, so I'd be interested to see how you'd adjust them knowing that Odium and Rayse are the same.

[pmj812]

You're right on splinters. Sorry about that.

I guess one of the things about odium/rayse that confuses me is, why is Hatred one of the most powerful of the shards? and why does Hoid hate Bavadin, whoever that is?

Anyway the whole thing sort of rolled together in my head when I started trying to put the shards into a version of the allomancy wheel. I still think there's a way to categorize them that way. I suspect my first attempt is way off (heck I'd be disappointed if I was completely right - it would deprive me of 10 more years of speculating!) but even off-the-wall ideas sometimes shake something loose, you know?

I think you're right about ideals being spiritual and emotions being cognitive. That raises the question, is compassion/charity an ideal or an emotion? Or is it both?

On another note, when I saw that Aona meant charity, it made me think that the other theological virtues, faith and hope, might also be shards.

Finally, to elaborate why I made honor and odium opposites:

The idea is, the dynamic represents a rising action or a falling action, and the static represents the pinnacle or nadir. So charity is the virtue that leads to a more perfect spirit, and the state of the perfect spirit is honor. Meanwhile, Odium is the dead spirit, devoid entirely of virtue.

Actually what makes me think of this is a juxtaposition of Preservation, Nohadon, and Dalinar. Dalinar says the Codes are for a people that already knows right from wrong. But first they have to get there. Likewise, preservation is not a virtue unless the thing being preserved is good

First a thing is cultivated and made good, then the good is preserved. Or it rots and falls into ruin.

Edited August 5, 2011 by pmj812

[Mad_Scientist]

You're right on splinters. Sorry about that.

No need to be sorry, the terms can be easy to mix up.

I guess one of the things about odium/rayse that confuses me is, why is Hatred one of the most powerful of the shards? and why does Hoid hate Bavadin, whoever that is?

First your second question. I think the answer actually has nothing to do with Bavadin's Shard. Assuming that Hoid is indeed the writer of that letter, it means that he knew people like Ati(Ruin) and Rayse(Odium) long before they got Shards. He talks about how Rayse was a horrible person even before taking his Shard.

It seems to me that whatever grudge Hoid bears against Rayse and Bavadin actually relates to things they did in the very distant past, before they became Shards. But that's just my impression.

As to why Odium is so powerful... I don't think he was actually referred to as the most powerful. Most "dangerous" and most "terrible," but that's not quite the same thing. I think that he's probably pretty close in power to the other Shards, but that the nature of his powers, his strengths and weakness, make him the most dangerous.

One could wonder why a Shard like Ruin isn't the most dangerous, given that it's power is based on destruction. I think that it may be because Ruin is too rigid.

My classification of Shards into Actions/Emotions/Ideals may not have importance, and may not be the "proper" way to classify them, if such a way exists. But it does show some interesting things. Ideals and emotions influence people's actions. They determine what people do.

So Ruin represents an action, but Odium and Honor and Aona's Shard represent reasons for actions. That might make them a bit more flexible, a bit more potent, and would explain why Odium would be even more dangerous than Ruin.

I could be wrong, but that's my current thinking on the matter.

That raises the question, is compassion/charity an ideal or an emotion? Or is it both?

Well, I suppose it would depend on what exactly Aona's Shard is. It's not precisely Charity or Compassion. From a 17th Shard inteview, we have the following:

17S Does Aona = Love or Compassion?

BS: "You have it, it's just a synonym there. You basically have it"

17S Does Skai = Devotion or Order?

BS: "You're not on there. But you are on on the first one [Aona]."

Then we have the following twitter exchange between Chaos and Brandon:

Chaos: So Aona is a synonym for love, hmm? Is Charity the correct Shard name?

Brandon: Not quite. I'm trying to remember what the guesses were for the other Shard on Sel. I may have dismissed them too quickly.

Chaos: How about Mercy for Aona, then? The guesses for Skai's Shard include Devotion, Obedience, and Order

Brandon: Okay, I was right, then. Ha There's something very ironic in all of this.

A lot of people (myself included) think the "ironic" thing Brandon was talking about is that Devotion, one of the guesses for Skai, is actually the correct name for Aona. It hasn't been confirmed if that is the case, but I stongly believe it to be so.

Now, if Aona is Devotion, I'd guess she'd be an Emotion/Feeling Shard. One can be devoted to an ideal, but devotion by itself is not an ideal.

That said, I'm not sure I really like the words emotion or feeling to describe Shards like Aona. Those words don't really seem quite... strong enough for the impression a word like devotion gives me. To me, devotion means more than just an emotion, more than just a feeling. It's an emotion that guides and influences you. Someone can love a person, yet still do horrible things to them in the name of the greater good, or because of (insert countless scenarios here). But if someone is devoted to a person, they love them so much that they place them above most other things. At least that's how I see things.

EDIT: Interesting thoughts on static/dynamic Shards. I understand your groupings better now. Hmm. Still don't agree with the pairings, but I can kind of see where you're coming from now.

Edited August 5, 2011 by Mad_Scientist