Investiture gaining sapience

[The Silverlight Scholar]

The Shards all have/had holders, previously separate and sapient creatures who merged with a huge chunk of investiture. What was special about the shards that allowed people to do this?

We know that any sufficiently large piece of investiture will gain sapience if left alone for long enough. 

We also have not seen anyone really merge with any amount of investiture besides Vin and Sazed on Scadrial. My best explanation for this is that any time anyone else held a huge chunk of investiture, the shard connected to it was either alive or shredded into tiny bits by Odium.

Does this make any sense?

Thank you in advance.

[Honorless]

17 minutes ago, The Silverlight Scholar said:

The Shards all have/had holders, previously separate and sapient creatures who merged with a huge chunk of investiture. What was special about the shards that allowed people to do this?

We know that any sufficiently large piece of investiture will gain sapience if left alone for long enough. 

We also have not seen anyone really merge with any amount of investiture besides Vin and Sazed on Scadrial. My best explanation for this is that any time anyone else held a huge chunk of investiture, the shard connected to it was either alive or shredded into tiny bits by Odium.

Does this make any sense?

Thank you in advance.

Investiture is just energy with the potential for conversion between itself, matter and energy, interacting with the Three Realms and yes, with the possibility of gaining sentience if left alone long enough. All spren are sapient Investiture. The Dor is said to be doing this to Sel. Nothing was special about those Shards which were taken up, that's their natural state when freed, it's what Odium did to Devotion and Dominion that makes them corner cases. Ambition fled then died after in the void of space, Honor can be reassembled, possibly what Dalinar came close to doing

Edited October 22, 2019 by Honorless