Harmony Headcannon

[etmental]

I haven’t seen anybody do headcannons on here before but here goes.

Every 400 years Sazed gives up the harmony shard to a cognitive shadow he has prepared to carry out the Godly things he does on the daily and in a full born body he designed he spends one day among the people of Scadrial.

He does this for a few reasons:

He never wants to lose sight of what it is like to be a human and/or lose his ability to relate to the people he is protecting. 

By spending time without the shards he is able to clean himself of their influence for a time, giving him more freedom to act without the conflict between ruin and preservation stopping him from doing certain things. 

Sazed avoids completely losing his identity to the shard in the ways that Honor and Ruin has before him. 

 

Does anybody see this as a realistic tho g to do or even possible? the way I see it he will still have a connection to those shards that very few people could so he could retrieve the harmony shard anytime he wants and if he did this unexpectedly then nobody would have time to prepare themselves to get the shards in the way kelsier had help to use preservation.

Thought, feelings, complaints? 

 

Edited November 23, 2018 by etmental

[Weltall]

One huge problem with the idea is that as Secret History makes clear, it is very difficult for a Cognitive Shadow to Ascend. Kelsier had to literally cheat in order to make it work and his effectiveness in using the power was limited by his lack of connection to the Physical. That the power was actively fighing against him because he was more aligned towards Ruin didn't help either. So it would be very difficult to imagine a Cognitive Shadow holding both halves of Harmony successfully and it's more likely that Bad Things would quickly happen, much like if Sazed hadn't been there to pick up the Shards in the first place and they began acting on their own. There's also the question of how you'd get this 'temporary Vessel' Cognitive Shadow in the first place. In order to get that you'd need someone to die under the right circumstances and then you run into all sorts of questions like: How do you ensure that they give the power up again after a day?

If you were instead thinking of sapient Investiture that wasn't originally human (or some other species) then while it's easier for Sazed to create such an entity, there are questions of timescale and whether a Splinter can actually Ascend. Brandon has RAFO'd whether such a thing is possible and on another instance he was a bit more specific and said that 'it doesn't quite work that way'. On the timescale issue we've been told that there are ways to speed up the process of Investiture developing sapience but in at least some instances we're looking at something that takes thousands of years to occur.

We know that Vessels can manifest a Physical body to interact with the world whenever they want to, though it wouldn't do what you're thinking and cut off Sazed from the Shards' influence. It would also probably take a lot longer than a day for a Vessel to stop being influenced by the intent of their Shard and even then, there would be permanent aftereffects.

Neat idea and something I could very easily see Sazed doing if it were possible, but I'm not sure the mechanics work out.

[Bigmikey357]

Then we get the problem of what that entity does with that power. Rashek held half of the Harmony shard for a few minutes and he remade the entire solar system, changed the DNA of several species and created 3 new species. That's a lot of trust to put in someone when it's impossible to know what they'd do with it. 

[goody153]

3 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

Then we get the problem of what that entity does with that power. Rashek held half of the Harmony shard for a few minutes and he remade the entire solar system, changed the DNA of several species and created 3 new species. That's a lot of trust to put in someone when it's impossible to know what they'd do with it. 

It wasn't actually even half. It was apparently an insignificant part of preservation that he held.

But yeah unless Sazed himself like cherry picks the one who would use his power (assuming all the mechanics work out) like shard levels of planning on whoever uses his power to be actually effective then i think it is a bad idea considering that a more experienced vessel would almost always be better than a new one (assuming they have the same levels of competency and they just differ on experience.)

[Gray to]

I like it. If any shard were to come down and be with humanity, it would be Sazed. Except he wouldn't have a fullborn body. He would recreate his original body and wear his Terri's robes and just have a nice quiet day in the park

Edited November 29, 2018 by Ookla the Gray

[Ripheus23]

Hmm this is the best I can do:

[kenod]

Obligatory XKCD:

Edited November 30, 2018 by Ookla the Foxed