Odium more worried of Harmony than his current Adversaries

[goody153]

So i ran into this interesting WoB.

Tho Cultivation wasn't mentioned here so maybe he is only more worried about Harmony simply because he is a Shard compared to both Hoid/Dalinar. Still interesting nonetheless that he is more worried of Harmony who is so far away who probably doesn't even have plans involving him(or maybe he does with Hoid's letter and he has Kandra's spying on that place) than the actual people causing him problems upfront.

Or is it about overconfidence but he isn't that confident enough against Harmony (cause he is a relatively unknown vessel who just randomly joined the game) ?

Quote

WindRunner88 [PENDING REVIEW] (paraphrased)

At the present who is Odium more afraid of? Harmony, Dalinar or Hoid?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW] (paraphrased)

Harmony. Odium is extremely confident that he can out-smart Hoid

source

Personally while i do subscribe on the theory that Autonomy may likely be the big bad. It is interesting to find WoB that push the hype of a possible confrontation between the two bigs of Cosmere.

Thoughts ?

[+Child of Hodor]

 

 

Quote

 

Alloy of Law 17th Shard Q&A (Nov. 5, 2011)
#6

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Odium wants to be the only Shard. Odium could pick up other Shards if he wants to, but, he doesn't want to. His Shard is a good match for his personality and he doesn't want to be influenced by another Shard.

 

Rayse wants to be the most powerful being in the universe which is why he is knocking off the other Shards. He's been going after the Shards he was most threatened by including ones that settled on a planet together (Dominion and Devotion; Honor and Cultivation). Unfortunately for him while he got stuck in the Roshar system to Shards combined and now hold more power than him. He's taken out Vessels that held a single shard before, so he thinks he can take Cultivation. He hasn't had to take on a Vessel that held two Shards combined which is why he fears Harmony more. 

Autonomy would be a good villain. I don't think Rayse will survive the back 5 Stormlight Archive books. Odium will still be around, but combined with other shards or at least held by a Vessel who filters it in a less dangerous way. Someone who is practiced at reigning in his hatred like Kaladin would be a better Vessel.  

[Quantus]

I think he's most afraid of Harmony because Harmony is at present the most powerful being in the Cosmere by a reasonably wide margin, being the only thing that has managed to hold multiple Shards, and in doing so has a proven counter to Odium's current plan of becoming top dog by Splintering all the others. I dont really think that Sazed himself plays much of a role in his logic, aside from a general sense of urgency if he wants to counter/destroy/contain Harmony asap before Sazed starts paying attention to things outside of his immediate sphere. 

[Calderis]

I think Sazed is intelligent enough to realize that he can't just sit and ignore things outside his sphere.

There are players, and to truly protect his world he needs to know events outside it, and that's why he has Kandra searching elsewhere. 

I think he'd be all for trying to discover more if he didn't have some major distractions at the moment. 

[Fanghur Rahl]

8 hours ago, goody153 said:

So i ran into this interesting WoB.

Tho Cultivation wasn't mentioned here so maybe he is only more worried about Harmony simply because he is a Shard compared to both Hoid/Dalinar. Still interesting nonetheless that he is more worried of Harmony who is so far away who probably doesn't even have plans involving him(or maybe he does with Hoid's letter and he has Kandra's spying on that place) than the actual people causing him problems upfront.

Or is it about overconfidence but he isn't that confident enough against Harmony (cause he is a relatively unknown vessel who just randomly joined the game) ?

Personally while i do subscribe on the theory that Autonomy may likely be the big bad. It is interesting to find WoB that push the hype of a possible confrontation between the two bigs of Cosmere.

Thoughts ?

I love the idea that it will ultimately be Sazed who finishes Odium off, preferably immediately after acquiring Cultivation from its current vessel. He does need it after all.

[Calderis]

12 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I love the idea that it will ultimately be Sazed who finishes Odium off, preferably immediately after acquiring Cultivation from its current vessel. He does need it after all.

I think adding yet another intent to him is likely to simply paralyze him further. 

[Zelly]

2 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I think adding yet another intent to him is likely to simply paralyze him further. 

Cultivation, as "change" would be an interesting one to mix in though.  Preservation and Ruin resist and limit each other due to conflicting interests, but Cultivation seems like it would be able to work dynamically with both.

That being said, I don't really see it happening....

[Yeshaya]

47 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I think Sazed is intelligent enough to realize that he can't just sit and ignore things outside his sphere.

There are players, and to truly protect his world he needs to know events outside it, and that's why he has Kandra searching elsewhere. 

I think he'd be all for trying to discover more if he didn't have some major distractions at the moment. 

I certainly agree that Sazed wants to know more about the cosmere, since he's really new at this, plus a scholar at heart anyway. I do think though the Intent of his shard will keep him on the defense, rather than trying to proactively meddle in events in other systems. On a sidenote, I remember in Secret History that Kelsier asked Leras/Preservation to come with him to see the Ire, and Leras said he couldn't leave Scadrial since he was too invested in it. I would expect that same limitation would apply to Sazed, and limit him to just sending spies rather than interacting himself. So I agree that he won't just ignore things things happening elsewhere, but I think he'll be pretty handsoff.

 

On the original quote, I wonder what exactly it means that Odium is "afraid" of Harmony. I don't think he's afraid of Harmony coming over to Roshar to stop him. Rather I think he considers him to be the biggest obstacle in his quest to shatter the other 15 shards. I think he would be comfortable taking out Ruin and Preservation, seeing as they already did 99% of the work weakening each other already. But going up against a double-powered Shard, with such a difficult to manipulate, inert, intention, will be really hard for him.  

 

[Fanghur Rahl]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

I think adding yet another intent to him is likely to simply paralyze him further. 

Or it would complete him. After all, Adonalsium was able to function just fine, and those three Shards more than any other are intimately tied to each other. Plus, Cultivation as an intent fits his personality better than the other two in my opinion. I prefer to think that if he acquired all three ‘change’ Shards, they would meld together perfectly into a cohesive whole; he currently only holds two out of three Change Shards.

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Cultivation, as "change" would be an interesting one to mix in though.  Preservation and Ruin resist and limit each other due to conflicting interests, but Cultivation seems like it would be able to work dynamically with both.

Actually, in a vacuum Preservation and Cultivation are just as opposed as Preservation and Ruin; Cultivation and Ruin are both Shards of change, but with polar opposite ‘directions’ so to speak.

Edited September 17, 2018 by Fanghur Rahl

[Calderis]

1 minute ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Or it would complete him. After all, Adonalsium was able to function just fine,

I don't think Adonalsium was subject to the intents at all. I think he was them. All of them homogeneously mixed. 

I don't think any vessel holding multiple shards is going to feel any one of the singular intents any less strongly because of others that they hold. Just in addition too. 

[Fanghur Rahl]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

I don't think any vessel holding multiple shards is going to feel any one of the singular intents any less strongly because of others that they hold. Just in addition too. 

The problem with that is that it is a logically inconsistent proposition. You cannot simultaneously feel an absolute compulsion to preserve as well as an absolute compulsion to destroy, because those two states are mutually exclusive. Logically, there would have to be at least some degree of dilution between the intents of Preservation and Ruin within Harmony: he can destroy and he can preserve. Presumably he would feel each compulsion half as strongly as he otherwise would have if he held only one. But it doesn't make sense to me to say that these two conflicting intents render him unable to act at all, because inaction can be every bit as opposed to a given intent as action is. It gets you into a paradox somewhat analogous to asking a genie "I wish you would not grant me this wish". Personally, I prefer to think that the reason Harmony is 'paralyzed' like this is actually due to the fact that what he wants to do actually violates the intents of both his Shards; like I said, Cultivation as an intent fits Sazed's personality far better than either of the other two do in my opinion. 

The way I see it, the only logical way to look at it is that if a person holds two or more Shards whose intents are in opposition to one-another, the result would have to be a dilution of each intent. The fact that Sazed is able to both preserve and destroy even after holding the Shards for several centuries seems to support this view; he is able to, with considerable effort, act as he sees fit. Preservation and Ruin individually were not able to do that. So looked at this way, if I'm right, if Sazed acquired Cultivation as well, the compulsion imposed by each individual intent would only be 1/3 as strong as it otherwise would have been, which would presumably make it even easier for Sazed to act, not more difficult. And I still can't help but feel that since Ruin, Preservation and Cultivation form an undeniable set within the larger set of Shards, they could very well meld together. 

 

I can even think of a very fitting name for what Sazed would potentially become if it actually did work out this way, albeit in a rather ironic sense. 'Potency'.

[Calderis]

@Fanghur Rahl here is why I think of it as I do.

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Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Sazed's two Shards do not "cancel out", as Brandon said that it would like being pulled by two huge gravitational tides. You can get to a way that you aren't instantly ripped apart, but that doesn't mean you don't feel it. (When asked what effect the Shards would have on Sazed, Brandon said, "Read Alloy of Law to find out".)

source

These aren't things "he constantly feels" they are external to his own mind. 

A person holding a single Shard, over time, would be shaped to think in lime with the intent. For Harmony, with two, I think the dilution you speak of will eventually be there as the Shards merge over the course of eons. 

For now though, all I think it's done is trap him, and keep his personality closer to what it originally was instead of being warped towards only one intent. 

Adding a third gravity well wouldn't make the other two any weaker though. 

[Draginon]

You know if Sazed did get Cultivation it would make one wonder if it would pave the way for Sazed to become the new Adonalsium

[Fanghur Rahl]

38 minutes ago, Calderis said:

@Fanghur Rahl here is why I think of it as I do.

These aren't things "he constantly feels" they are external to his own mind. 

A person holding a single Shard, over time, would be shaped to think in lime with the intent. For Harmony, with two, I think the dilution you speak of will eventually be there as the Shards merge over the course of eons. 

For now though, all I think it's done is trap him, and keep his personality closer to what it originally was instead of being warped towards only one intent. 

Adding a third gravity well wouldn't make the other two any weaker though. 

Well, regardless, the fact still remains that unlike Ati or Leras, Sazed does at least appear to have retained considerably more of himself than they did even after nearly half a millennia of holding Harmony (at least I think that’s how long the delay between Eras was?). But anyway, I still stand by my basic thesis that if anyone is going to take up the Shard of Cultivation, no one has a better claim on it than Sazed/Harmony does. If only for purely thematic reasons. It’s not for nothing that I like referring to Ruin, Preservation and Cultivation as the ‘Change Trinity’.

[goody153]

I can certainly see Cultivation giving Sazed much more room than just the two shards alone but it probably won't help as you would think just it would help abit as Calderis pointed out. 

Adding Cultivation into the mix is certainly interesting but like @Draginon said it would likely pave way to the reformation of Adonalsium plot which i am not much of a fan. 

Harmony basically practice Cultivation anyways. If you remove his shard names and just look at his actions you can see he is basically developing Scadrial(or specific people in it) into something better in the future and completely going for the "the ends justify the means".

8 hours ago, Yeshaya said:

I remember in Secret History that Kelsier asked Leras/Preservation to come with him to see the Ire, and Leras said he couldn't leave Scadrial since he was too invested in it. I would expect that same limitation would apply to Sazed, and limit him to just sending spies rather than interacting himself.

Apparently he could do that but will he ?  Considering that Scadrial is basically Ruin/Preservation there must be big implications to the planet if he just suddenly leaves which probably doesn't bode well for the people who live there. 

[Fanghur Rahl]

7 hours ago, goody153 said:

Apparently he could do that but will he ?  Considering that Scadrial is basically Ruin/Preservation there must be big implications to the planet if he just suddenly leaves which probably doesn't bode well for the people who live there. 

Unless Trell/Autonomy manages to make good on their threat and destroys Scadrial, and Harmony either decides to help deal with Odium before fixing the damage or for whatever reason discovers that after all this time he needs the power to build things up in order to put Scadrial back together.

[Leyrann]

2 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Unless Trell/Autonomy manages to make good on their threat and destroys Scadrial, and Harmony either decides to help deal with Odium before fixing the damage or for whatever reason discovers that after all this time he needs the power to build things up in order to put Scadrial back together.

And then there's no setting for Mistborn 3 and 4.

[Fanghur Rahl]

2 hours ago, Leyrann said:

And then there's no setting for Mistborn 3 and 4.

Sure there would, it would just be after Scadrial is put back together.

[Yata]

Cosmere stories have to be stand alone and not require to have read something else.

A foreign god who arrive and does stuffs is a metaphorical and literal Deus ex machina.

Much more, Harmony as he is now will be probably unable to recreate Scadrial or regardless he would have no reason to restore the condition they have now.

Remember also that from the prospective of Mistborn, closing the Era2 with Scadrial destroyed (someone I doubt is in Trell possibilities) and god remaking it... Would be simply repeating the Era1 ending.

On a last note, someone before said Sazed isn't twisted as ATI and Leras... This is true, but he holds the Shards only from 300 years. It's a reasonable less time than the 10000 years Ati and Leras did it... Over time of Sazed would remain less and less.

He already is very different from the man we know in Era1, it's just the beginning

[Fanghur Rahl]

2 hours ago, Yata said:

Cosmere stories have to be stand alone and not require to have read something else.

A foreign god who arrive and does stuffs is a metaphorical and literal Deus ex machina.

Much more, Harmony as he is now will be probably unable to recreate Scadrial or regardless he would have no reason to restore the condition they have now.

Remember also that from the prospective of Mistborn, closing the Era2 with Scadrial destroyed (someone I doubt is in Trell possibilities) and god remaking it... Would be simply repeating the Era1 ending.

On a last note, someone before said Sazed isn't twisted as ATI and Leras... This is true, but he holds the Shards only from 300 years. It's a reasonable less time than the 10000 years Ati and Leras did it... Over time of Sazed would remain less and less.

He already is very different from the man we know in Era1, it's just the beginning

Live I said before, I freely admit that this is less something I believe will actually happen and more a daydream. But you’re wrong about the standalone part. Yes, as it currently stands Brandon has most of them as stand alone, but in the beginning of Arcanum Unbounded he hints that eventually this won’t necessarily be the case anymore.

[Agent34]

3 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Live I said before, I freely admit that this is less something I believe will actually happen and more a daydream. But you’re wrong about the standalone part. Yes, as it currently stands Brandon has most of them as stand alone, but in the beginning of Arcanum Unbounded he hints that eventually this won’t necessarily be the case anymore.

Mistborn Era 4 will be that time.

[Fanghur Rahl]

47 minutes ago, Agent34 said:

Mistborn Era 4 will be that time.

Most likely, but who knows? Honestly, after that letter to Hoid, I would be quite disappointed if Harmony doesn’t get involved in any meaningful way. Sending a Kandra spy just won’t cut it for me, nor ‘help’ Hoid in any appreciable way against Odium.

[Jace21]

7 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Most likely, but who knows? Honestly, after that letter to Hoid, I would be quite disappointed if Harmony doesn’t get involved in any meaningful way. Sending a Kandra spy just won’t cut it for me, nor ‘help’ Hoid in any appreciable way against Odium.

Brandon does, he has said before that Mistborn Era 4 and Dragonsteel will be the series where everything comes together.

Until then we can expect them to be more or less self-contained. Zahel and Nightblood are the exceptions as they come from Nalthis but were first conceived as Stormlight characters. I don't think we'll get any Mistborn characters mixed in outside of letters and cameos.

Harmony's letter to Hoid specifically says he will see what he can do IF Hoid comes and explains. I can't see Hoid packing up and leaving at this point, even to speak to Harmony.

[Potus]

I'm not sure if this was a WOB or just something Sanderson has said, but someone asked who would win if Harmony and Odium fought and he said Odium. Because while Harmony might be more powerful, he doesn't have the experience that Odium has.

[Fanghur Rahl]

1 hour ago, Jace21 said:

Harmony's letter to Hoid specifically says he will see what he can do IF Hoid comes and explains. I can't see Hoid packing up and leaving at this point, even to speak to Harmony.

I can’t imagine Hoid NOT immediately dropping what he was doing and going immediately to Shadesmar and thence to Scadrial’s Cognitive Realm to immediately meet with Harmony. Hoid isn’t an idiot. Everyone else who he’d asked for help basically told him to butt out and stop fussing, and then finally the Cosmere’s most powerful being expresses interest in helping if only Hoid would meet with him. He would have to be a total moron to not jump at the opportunity. For all we know that exactly what he did in one of his many long hiatuses from the story.