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Shardic Future Sight


Who's the Best at Future Sight?  

28 members have voted

  1. 1. Shards

    • Ambition
    • Autonomy
      0
    • Cultivation
    • Devotion
      0
    • Dominion
      0
    • Endowment
    • Honor
    • Odium
    • Preservation
    • Ruin
      0
    • Harmony


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Which one do you think is best? (As in can see the farthest and have the wisdom to use what they see to greatest advantage.)

Leave your opinion below!

I'm personally leaning towards Cultivation. She has a similar vibe to Preservation, who was really good at it, but is more future oriented.

I almost didn't include D/D and Ambition because of lack of screen time... But if you really want to vote for them, they're in option!

Edited by Steel Inquisitive
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I believe it's Ambition because she managed to escape Odium for a long time, even making him battle two other Shards instead despite being first on his list. I imagine she really messed with him until the battle in the Threnodite System. It's also an Intent that is completely time-related.

Cultivation is also a good guess. Honor not being the best at it is confirmed though, as mentioned above. 

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10 hours ago, Chasmfiend#1 said:

I voted on Honor, based on how he most likely knew he was going to die, so he arranged a way to insure Roshar survived by sending a message to Dalinar. Other than maybe Preservation, I don't think any of the other Shards have done that.

Did he not explicitly say that Cultivation was better?

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I voted for Preservation. Of the future sight we know about for sure has happened, his is clearly the best. Now we don't know enough about the other shards and what they've seen and planned I will still make my case for Preservation. His future sight was good enough that he was able to perfectly predict everything that was going to happen across at minimum a thousand years (and likely much further) after he died. To keep this in perspective, that requires understanding all of the variables to the outcome he desires and take into account the future sight of another shard and account for Ruin's actions. And then on top of that, all of the little things that add together over the course of centuries that could have derailed his entire plan. Hell, he technically even played Kelsier.

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I think you're discounting another part of the equation - the state of most active investiture associated with that Shard.

I've posted my theory before, but I think Endowment currently has almost everyone beat at futuresight.

Perhaps Harmony is better, insofar has it is technically two shards with polar opposite intents, covering an extremely wide range of actions, and the fact that Scadrial is so heavily invested, giving Sazed a very wide net to cast.

Edited by TheFoxQR
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1 minute ago, TheFoxQR said:

I think you're discounting another part of the equation - the state of most active investiture associated with that Shard.

I've posted my theory before, but I think Endowment currently has almost everyone beat at futuresight.

Perhaps Harmony is better, insofar has it is technically two shards with polar opposite intents, covering an extremely wide range of actions, and the fact that Scadrial is so heavily invested, giving Sazed a very wide net to cast.

Yeah, I'm surprised more people aren't picking endowment. I went with Cultivation because I liked the idea more... But seriously it's probably a toss up between Cultivation, Endowment, and Preservation. (Oh and odium is in there somewhere)

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I don't pick Endowment for a couple reasons, one biggie is that she seems to be taking the shotgun approach with future sight rather than the scalpel that Preservation and likely Cultivation do. She seemingly creates the Returned to cover a large amount of possibilities (though admittedly we only know what two of the Returned's visions have been) without any care if they succeed their goal. We can conjecture all we want about how her goals might not be the same as the reason the person chose to Return but based on what we have seen, I don't have much confidence in her ability. At least compared to other Shards.

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I picked Preservation, because he accurately was able to predict and manipulate events thousands of years after he predicted them. He gave the Terris their prophecies before he crafted Ruin's cage (and sacrificed most of his consciousness to do so), and that was some thousands of years, it seems, before they came to fruition.

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13 minutes ago, Steel Inquisitive said:

I wonder if the ability is completely reliant on the shard. If I were to hold Preservation would I automatically be as good as Leras?

I personally believe it is a mix of the Shard's Intent and the holder. The Shard itself likely determines the maximum level of future sight you can have but how good you are at getting to that level and utilizing the ability is dependent on the Shardvessel

Edit: Or alternatively, the Intent determines how natural and easy it is to see the future and the rest might be down to the Vessels

Edited by StanLemon
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On 6/30/2019 at 0:15 AM, StanLemon said:

I don't pick Endowment for a couple reasons, one biggie is that she seems to be taking the shotgun approach with future sight rather than the scalpel that Preservation and likely Cultivation do. She seemingly creates the Returned to cover a large amount of possibilities (though admittedly we only know what two of the Returned's visions have been) without any care if they succeed their goal. We can conjecture all we want about how her goals might not be the same as the reason the person chose to Return but based on what we have seen, I don't have much confidence in her ability. At least compared to other Shards.

I think you're falling in a trap - see, we've not seen much about Endowment's futuresight in action. Or much about Endowment, really. Compare this with Preservation, where we had an entire trilogy's worth of set up, and Cultivation, whose futuresight we only really respect because of a clear display at the end of OB (okay, and maybe because the Diagram exists). Both those things have required taking a certain long term perspective on those shards. This makes them popular choices, because we've had clear overt examples.

If you think about it, Lightsong and Warbreaker, two returned, saved Vivenna's (someone with a higher concentration of Endowment's investiture) life and set her on a specific path. Highmarshal Azure has so far directly delayed atleast one scheme of Odium's, and she's still going strong. The five scholars, also Returned, were directly responsible for the creation of Nightblood, also now on Roshar. Vasher has so far atleast once probably saved Adolin's life, and god knows how many more he's responsible for via simple dissemination of certain knowledge. Both Vasher and Vivenna have played subtle supporting roles in keeping the budding Knights Radiant going.

These aren't all indications of the strongest futuresight, I'm reading that into those events. However, considering how little we've seen of her, these are my suspicions - Endowment prefers to work in a much more hands-on manner than the other Shards. She instills potential where needed, knowing full well how that potential will be used. Much of her work seems defensive - using her investiture to weave a net around herself. But I think she's just as capable of precise cuts as Cultivation or Preservation, if not more.

Edited by TheFoxQR
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2 minutes ago, TheFoxQR said:

These aren't all indications of the strongest futuresight, I'm reading that into those events. However, considering how little we've seen of her, these are my suspicions - Endowment prefers to work in a much more hands-on manner than the other Shards. She instills potential where needed, knowing full well how that potential will be used. Much of her work seems defensive - using her investiture to weave a net around herself. But I think she's just as capable of precise cuts as Cultivation or Preservation, if not more.

But plenty of returned do fail.  We know for a fact that Blushweaver was supposed to stop the war but things did not work out and she only made things worse.  Yes Endowment had a backup plan but given the nature of the current court of the gods I think she slips up a bit. 

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12 hours ago, Karger said:

But plenty of returned do fail.  We know for a fact that Blushweaver was supposed to stop the war but things did not work out and she only made things worse.  Yes Endowment had a backup plan but given the nature of the current court of the gods I think she slips up a bit. 

I think she's completely fine with that. She only Endows potential, and she does it where it has the greatest chance of helping. Doesn't mean it will always work.

That war had Nalthians on both sides, she wouldn't simply have picked sides. She would just try and Empower the best of both sides, giving each a chance to win well.

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14 hours ago, Karger said:

But plenty of returned do fail.  We know for a fact that Blushweaver was supposed to stop the war but things did not work out and she only made things worse.  Yes Endowment had a backup plan but given the nature of the current court of the gods I think she slips up a bit. 

Brandon Sanderson

What did Blushweaver achieve? In fact, she Returned in the first place to be involved in this ending as well. One thing to note about the Returned coming back is that they do see the future, but when they Return, they aren't guaranteed to be able to change anything. Before her Return, Blushweaver was a powerful merchant in the city, and very well known. She was assassinated after denouncing a group of dye merchants she'd worked with for their deceptive and criminal practices. Her testimony ended with them in jail, but it got her killed. That's how she earned the title of Blushweaver the Honest (which, if you'll remember, she eventually got changed to Blushweaver the Beautiful).

She Returned because she didn't want T'Telir to fall to the invaders she saw taking it after Bluefingers and the others caused their revolt. That was why she gathered the armies. While she didn't succeed in her quest as well as Lightsong did, she did help out quite a bit. I think she's pleased, on the other side, with how things turned out.

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I think the Shards with the best Future Sight would be those who's Intent is fundamentally characterized by a concern with the Future and how things develop, so of the list of Shards we know the top two are (to my mind) Ambition and Cultivation.  I voted Cultivation by virtue of still being alive.  

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6 hours ago, Quantus said:

I think the Shards with the best Future Sight would be those who's Intent is fundamentally characterized by a concern with the Future and how things develop, so of the list of Shards we know the top two are (to my mind) Ambition and Cultivation.  I voted Cultivation by virtue of still being alive.  

Except her lover died. Her and Honor were two Shards against Odium's one, unless Honor's death was part of some big plan like Preservation's sacrifice then I call that a big failure.

21 hours ago, TheFoxQR said:

These aren't all indications of the strongest futuresight, I'm reading that into those events. However, considering how little we've seen of her, these are my suspicions - Endowment prefers to work in a much more hands-on manner than the other Shards. She instills potential where needed, knowing full well how that potential will be used. Much of her work seems defensive - using her investiture to weave a net around herself. But I think she's just as capable of precise cuts as Cultivation or Preservation, if not more

Except as you point out, that's you reading a lot into it. Most Returned die within a week and Endowment is bound to get a few things right from time to time with how often she creates the Returned. But look at it this way, of all the Returned we know about only two have fully successfully found their calling for why they came back. Blushweaver managed to have a round about success in a way though so let us bring that tally up to three. That's still pretty low success rate. Of the court of gods, most have become decadent and selfish and even the ones that aren't still don't particularly do anything. Then you have the five scholars. Vasher became something of a tyrant at least for a little while and though for a while after he has tried to do good he eventually abandoned Nalthis, his wife wanted to spread knowledge of how to make the Cosmere equivalent of a nuke to everyone, Denth became pretty selfish and evil, and Arsteel and Yesteel are implied to not have been very good either. 

We can conjecture all we want into how much of these events was her plan but considering what we have seen she in no way deserves to be considered the best. In fact based solely on what we've seen, Ruin has displayed better future sight than she has.

Edited by StanLemon
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1 hour ago, StanLemon said:

But look at it this way, of all the Returned we know about only two have fully successfully found their calling for why they came back. Blushweaver managed to have a round about success in a way though so let us bring that tally up to three. That's still pretty low success rate. Of the court of gods, most have become decadent and selfish and even the ones that aren't still don't particularly do anything. Then you have the five scholars. Vasher became something of a tyrant at least for a little while and though for a while after he has tried to do good he eventually abandoned Nalthis, his wife wanted to spread knowledge of how to make the Cosmere equivalent of a nuke to everyone, Denth became pretty selfish and evil, and Arsteel and Yesteel are implied to not have been very good either. 

We can conjecture all we want into how much of these events was her plan but considering what we have seen she in no way deserves to be considered the best. In fact based solely on what we've seen, Ruin has displayed better future sight than she has.

I disagree here - my point was simply to say that with Shards like Preservation, Ruin and even Cultivation, we have a lot of context. When you say Ruin has better futuresight than her, what are you comparing to? We only really saw Ruin's Futuresight through Kelsier. To discount her on that is a fallacy of sorts. Of course people would think Preservation is better at future sight, the culmination of his plan was the Climax of a Trilogy! The Lord Ruler was a massive tyrannical that-bodypart-that-shall-be-bleeped for a thousand years before that, and Preservation actually liked him! Does that mean Preservation's futuresight is flawed?

No, just because the Returned are not the best of people is no indication to the quality of Endowment's Futuresight. I'm judging her futuresight on how unconcerned she seemed in her one and only first person account, and the effects the Returned have had on Roshar whenever they have been in a story.

  • Blushweaver's death spurred Lightsong into action. Lightsong sacrificed himself to save Susebron, and that lead to the defeat of the Rebel forces. Here she shows a domino effect by putting the right personalities in the right places over an extended period of time.
  • Vivenna being in Kholinar saved a big portion of it long enough for the Radiants to do their mission. Her being there allowed her to help the Radiants trapped in Shadesmar, where they probably would have died otherwise. And she's still around.
  • Nightblood has played a pretty hefty role in the Battle of Thaylen City, and looks like it still has more to do. By the way, Nightblood was made by the five scholars, Returned.
  • Vasher quite literally taught Adolin and Kaladin, and pretty much saved Adolin's backside during his fully disadvantaged duel by making him spring into action. Even then, it was the skills he taught Adolin that led to it not being an utter disaster. Vasher in Roshar was able to do those things because of what experience has shown him before - experience gained directly from his fellow Returned - Shasharra, Arsteel and Vara'Treledees.

What I'm trying to say is, the people from Nalthis have played a significant role in Roshar, by subtly pushing things in the right direction. If this is by intent, doesn't that prove her capable of extremely fine grained futuresight?

You say most returned don't accomplish anything. But why does every returned have to accomplish something monumental? Would you say the Cultivation takes a shotgun approach to futuresight just because every person receiving a boon and curse from the old magic doesn't then go on to change the world? Most might just be the equivalent of batteries for Endowment, not unlike the Spren on Roshar, and the Mists and the Pits of Hathsin on Scadrial - a place for her to stow her investiture and still keep it active in the system. They also might just be the perfect mechanism to enact subtle, deniable change. Just like when Cultivation intervenes in the enactment of the old magic.

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While her first person account implies that she isn't worried about Odium. To me that comes off more as arrogance than anything else based on they way she words the whole conversation. As to why I say Ruin has shown better future sight than Endowment, I base that off what we know for sure of Endowment's future sight. Of the Returned, most who do survive give up their Divine Breath within a few years and the moments we know for sure she has predicted have been only a handful of years after the person has Returned. Contrary to that, we know Ruin has planned at minimum decades in advance with his manipulations with Zane, Vin, and Kelsier and it is entirely possible his spanned into centuries with his manipulations of The Lord Ruler. 

Also, no I wouldn't say Cultivation is shotgunning it. Why? Because she's not the one doing most of the boons and banes. The only ones we know for sure she were involved in were Dalinar's and Lift's. Both were very deliberate. 

As far as the effect the Returned have, your first one is within the couple of years I specified earlier. As to the others, while they have had a big impact on Roshar that doesn't necessarily mean that that is part of any plan of hers. While I fully admit it is possible that she has planned out so much and it would be a nice level of chessmastery, it doesn't necessarily mean she's planned the actions of every Nalthis native including how they affect things around them. That's like saying that everything going on on Scadrial in Era 2 is still part of Preservation's plans.

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12 hours ago, StanLemon said:

Except her lover died. Her and Honor were two Shards against Odium's one, unless Honor's death was part of some big plan like Preservation's sacrifice then I call that a big failure.

Seeing the Future changes the Future, so just like two Atium burners fighting, Future Sight offers no definitive advantage in Shard-Vs-Shard conflicts.  They all have it to some extent by virtue of existing primarily in the Spiritual Realm.  

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11 hours ago, TheFoxQR said:

Vivenna being in Kholinar saved a big portion of it long enough for the Radiants to do their mission. Her being there allowed her to help the Radiants trapped in Shadesmar, where they probably would have died otherwise. And she's still around.

Vivenaa (to the best of our knowledge) is not a returned so Endowment can not take credit for her.

11 hours ago, TheFoxQR said:

Would you say the Cultivation takes a shotgun approach to futuresight just because every person receiving a boon and curse from the old magic doesn't then go on to change the world? 

The old magic is done by The Nightwatcher.  Cultivation generally does not interfere with that.  The only "Old Magic" that Cultivation has actually done is with Dalinar which was successful.

11 hours ago, TheFoxQR said:

What I'm trying to say is, the people from Nalthis have played a significant role in Roshar, by subtly pushing things in the right direction. If this is by intent, doesn't that prove her capable of extremely fine grained futuresight?

But Endowment does not want to get involved in Roshar.  She still holds vary strongly to her interpretation of the none interference agreement.

No good can come of two Shards settling in one location. It was agreed that we would not interfere with one another, and it disappoints me that so few of the Shards have kept to this original agreement. As for Uli Da, it was obvious from the outset that she was going to be a problem. Good riddance. Regardless, this is not your concern. You turned your back on divinity. If Rayse becomes an issue, he will be dealt with.

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