"from a Shard we know"

[Ripheus23]

So Trellium is supposed to be the special metal of a Shard we know (per a WoB). Does Autonomy really count as a Shard we know, though? She's not directly identified in the letter stuff in the SA. Patji is not identified as one of her avatars in the relevant story. Aside from the AU essays, I don't even know if she's by-name mentioned in an as-such published Cosmere work at all. I mean I don't even know whether she's showed up in White Sand (I've read the first 2, don't know if there's a 3rd, and didn't detect her if she had a cameo somehow in the first 2...).

It could be that we "know" Autonomy because Sanderson has been willing to divulge a number of things about her. However, I want to propose a tinfoil-hat hypothesis, that Endowment is Trell, and that she has decided to interfere with Scadrial because Scadrial was somehow (very indirectly but necessarily) involved in the creation of Nightblood and she wants to prevent stuff like that from happening again.

[Pagerunner]

We were given Bavadin's name in WoK; that's what I'd say makes her count as one of the Shards we "knew" at the time of SoS.

[Ripheus23]

1 minute ago, Pagerunner said:

We were given Bavadin's name in WoK

I forgot about that, although I still don't know if that's enough to count as us "knowing" her. I feel we'd "know" her if we actually explicitly saw her, herself, in action, not just via avatars and their potentially alternative mindsets. (Though that begs the question as to whether she really has a specific mindset in herself anymore, if she ever did!)

[Calderis]

43 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

I forgot about that, although I still don't know if that's enough to count as us "knowing" her. I feel we'd "know" her if we actually explicitly saw her, herself, in action, not just via avatars and their potentially alternative mindsets. (Though that begs the question as to whether she really has a specific mindset in herself anymore, if she ever did!)

If that were the case, the only explicitly seen shards we'd known at that time would have been Preservation, Ruin, Honor, and... That's it. 

Until OB we didn't see Cultivation or Odium do anything, and other than that, the only shards we've actually seen outside of WoBs and letters are Ruin and Preservation. 

[Bigmikey357]

Yep. About to say that we don't really know Endowment either. Any info we have on Edgli comes from WOB.

[+Ark1002]

Though I do like the theory, I agree with the others. It doesn't have much backing it up...

[Fanghur Rahl]

Honestly, the other possibility is that at some point Brandon hyper-covertly mentioned some as yet unseen Shard and it’s that one that’s the real ‘Trell’. Then it technically wouldn’t be a lie. Off the top of my head, the only thing that I could maybe see as being this is ‘Purity’ (the entirely incongruously named moon in the Roshar system). I could certainly see a Shard of Purity being peeved at Sazed for mixing two different Shards like he did. Either that or maybe ‘Wisdom’, if we interpret what Hoid said in Oathbringer about him and Wisdom ‘not always seeing eye to eye’ (or something to that effect) as him naming ‘Wisdom’ as a Shard.

I doubt this is the case, but I don’t think we can completely rule out the possibility.

Edited October 15, 2018 by Fanghur Rahl

[PallonianFire]

6 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Honestly, the other possibility is that at some point Brandon hyper-covertly mentioned some as yet unseen Shard and it’s that one that’s the real ‘Trell’. Then it technically wouldn’t be a lie. Off the top of my head, the only thing that I could maybe see as being this is ‘Purity’ (the entirely incongruously named moon in the Roshar system). I could certainly see a Shard of Purity being peeved at Sazed for mixing two different Shards like he did. Either that or maybe ‘Wisdom’, if we interpret what Hoid said in Oathbringer about him and Wisdom ‘not always seeing eye to eye’ (or something to that effect) as him naming ‘Wisdom’ as a Shard.

I doubt this is the case, but I don’t think we can completely rule out the possibility.

Even if Purity is a Shard, which is unlikely, AU came out well after SoS and the WoB that the spike was from a Shard we knew.

[Ripheus23]

*Cackles maniacally* We could even argue that we don't know Ruin or Preservation that well, or Honor! We know NONE of the Shards! So Trell is not a Shard! *Cackling fades into the distance*

But srsly, if we know Bavadin well enough, then the argument in the thread about bringing her into play in the SA, is fine, since it was in the SA that her name was introduced, after all, no?

[Calderis]

2 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

But srsly, if we know Bavadin well enough, then the argument in the thread about bringing her into play in the SA, is fine, since it was in the SA that her name was introduced, after all, no?

I don't think that that is in any way the same thing, no. 

One is meta knowledge. The other is story relevance. 

[Fanghur Rahl]

I agree. Not to mention the fact that Bavadin (or one of her avatars) pretty much told Hoid to take a hike, so I think it’s probably safe to assume that they aren’t going to play any kind of direct role in Stormlight. At least with Harmony there’s a slight chance.

But to be fair, the overwhelming majority of our knowledge regarding Shards and Cosmere backstory does come in the form of WOBs rather than from the books directly, so we shouldn’t discount meta-knowledge as having any relevance.

[Calderis]

24 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

But to be fair, the overwhelming majority of our knowledge regarding Shards and Cosmere backstory does come in the form of WOBs rather than from the books directly, so we shouldn’t discount meta-knowledge as having any relevance.

The delineation in my mind is for the purpose of WoBs, Brandon answers according to the things he has told us. 

For the purpose of stories, he's not writing just for us. He's also writing for the people who don't read his Q&As. Who don't follow theories. Who just read his books and enjoy the stories. 

You know... Normal people. 

If it would seem out of the blue to someone who had only read the story, and never visited this site, or Reddit, or Arcanum, then it's not something that's going to be in the story. In series foreshadowing only in that case. 

[Fanghur Rahl]

Agreed. But then again, the only people who would even know about what little he’s said about Trell are those hardcore fans like us, so who knows? At any rate, I agree with you in this instance.