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Unity, Adonalsium and the Cosmere Endgame


Mage_914

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Ok here's my crazy theory. I think that Unity is a hidden 17th intent that's distributed among the other shards. I think that Unity will inevitably bring about the rebirth of Adonalsium as part of the Cosmere endgame. Here's my chain of events.

When the 16 Vessels shattered Adonalsium they did so by shattering his Unity portion, however that works. This is why when Dalinar says "I am Unity" Odium immediately starts quaking in his boots. "We killed you!!!", emphasis on We. I think the We here is the 16 vessels.

By breaking Adonalsium's Unity they were able split him up but because his Unity was the main center of the shattering, each Shard got a little bit of the Unity intent. Whether this was intentional on Adonalsium's part as per some greater plan is up for debate. In any case the strength of the intent was nothing major, not even enough for most of them to notice, but it did influence them to a degree. This is why of the 10 Shards we've seen so far, we see 6 of them pair up on planets. This is in direct opposition to the fact that they all swore an oath to go their separate ways after the shattering. Unity isn't acting in full force here obviously but it's just enough of a nudge for the Shards that have reason to want to live together do so in spite of the oath. Of those six, four of them have recombined, or been Unified, in some fashion. Devotion and Dominion combined to become the Dor and Ruin and Preservation combined to become Harmony.

On top of this, I think this theory also explains Autonomy's weird behavior. As the Shard with the most polar opposite intent to Unity she was the one who was able to detect it's influence more easily than the other due to the contrast of intents. Thus she somehow excised the Unity from within her Shard and this caused a second, smaller shattering of Autonomy. This basically leaves Bavadin with a crumbling Shard that can't hold itself together for any length of time. Each of her mini-Shards that resulted from her mini-Shattering has itself taken up the oath to spread out and this time they follow the oath because there's no Unity interfering with it. I honestly don't know if the mini-Shards are being taken up by various other Vessels, i.e. that random guy named Trell from White Sand, or if Bavadin is straight up creating multiple personality offshoots of herself to manage the mini-Shards.

In any case, this would explain who is attacking Scadrial in Era 2 as well as explain why they are attacking. Autonomy is likely the only Shard who has caught on to Unity's shenanigans and has a keen interest in preventing them. That's why they are going after Harmony, the person who, arguably, has been most influenced by Unity. I also think that Autonomy has Odium as a bit of a lackey at this point, sending him like an attack dog against the Shards that have the most Unity in them. Ambition first because what's more ambitious than having all the Shardic power to yourself, thus Unifying Adonalsium again. Then Devotion and Dominion because love and control are both closely tied to the concept of Unity. This can be seen in the fact that the three main religions on Sel, Shu-Keseg, Shu-Dereth, and Shu-Korath all are focused on the idea of Unity, simply disagreeing on how Unity can be achieved. Honor is up next because a loose interpretation of Honor could easily turn itself into something similar to Unity and because Honor and Cultivation broke the pact and cohabitated.

Thus the endgame for the Cosmere is that the Shards will continue to recombine, creating stronger and stronger gods until they all become one and Adonalsium is reborn. Autonomy is trying everything to prevent this because Unity is antithetical to her intent and Odium honestly just wants to pull a Goku and be "The Strongest in the Universe" so he's not ok with an ever dwindling list of stronger gods either.

As a quick mini-theory here at the end I believe that the next target after Honor and Cultivation was supposed to be Endowment. She was showing some signs of Unity's influence. The Pahn Kahl over on Nalthis had a religion founded around the idea of many gods Unifying to become one god and awakening inherently requires some level of cooperation between people for it to work thus signalling to an increasingly paranoid Bavadin that Edgli was "infected" by Unity. Scadrial would have been out of the picture at that point because Ruin and Preservation were about as far from Unity as you could get. They were literally killing each other over a disagreement about how to end the world. Harmony was a major shock and a bit of a wake-up call.

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Questioner

So, the sixteen Shards. Is it possible that there are more than sixteen, yet they do not know of them?

Brandon Sanderson

This would be possible but I'll just go ahead and tell you no there aren't. *laughter* That'll stop a lot of theorizing, though it is possible that Shards have been divided and things like this. And so you can call two subsets-- But it's kind of like there are twelve tribes of Israel. They became twelve other tribes of Israel. There were still twelve because two were the sons of one. Yeah, stuff like that.

Footnote: Brandon was referring to Ephraim and Manasseh, sons of Joseph. The land of Israel was divided among twelve tribes that were slightly different from the original twelve, as Joseph's was replaced by those of his sons and Levi's was not a landed tribe.
Skyward San Diego signing (Nov. 7, 2018)

 

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7 minutes ago, Karger said:

Questioner

So, the sixteen Shards. Is it possible that there are more than sixteen, yet they do not know of them?

Brandon Sanderson

This would be possible but I'll just go ahead and tell you no there aren't. *laughter* That'll stop a lot of theorizing, though it is possible that Shards have been divided and things like this. And so you can call two subsets-- But it's kind of like there are twelve tribes of Israel. They became twelve other tribes of Israel. There were still twelve because two were the sons of one. Yeah, stuff like that.

Footnote: Brandon was referring to Ephraim and Manasseh, sons of Joseph. The land of Israel was divided among twelve tribes that were slightly different from the original twelve, as Joseph's was replaced by those of his sons and Levi's was not a landed tribe.
Skyward San Diego signing (Nov. 7, 2018)

So, are you saying that this proves it or disproves it? To clarify I wasn't saying that Unity is a Shard. I was saying that it was an Intent shared by all shards.

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Who knows? I still think that Unity is just Dalinar's interpretation of Honor's Intent.

There does seem to be precedent for shared... something between Shards called Passion, which both Ruin and Odium talk about.

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Valhalla

Ruin and Odium, they both talked about their passion, and it was italicized both times. Would any other Shards talk about passion in that same italicized way?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes they would.

Valhalla

Would any of them not talk about it that way?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Excellent, good questions.

Idaho Falls signing (July 21, 2018)
Quote

Questioner

Was it relevant that Ruin mentioned Passion to Vin?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

 

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1 hour ago, Mage_914 said:

So, are you saying that this proves it or disproves it? To clarify I wasn't saying that Unity is a Shard. I was saying that it was an Intent shared by all shards.

I personally see this as evidence that this theory is not correct.  However your counterarguments are pretty good so I am left undecided in the matter.

Please add your theory here.

 

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On top of this, I think this theory also explains Autonomy's weird behavior. As the Shard with the most polar opposite intent to Unity 

I don't think that Autonomy is quite the opposite of Unity. The word doesn't suggest wanting to divide things, but rather wanting to stand by their own power, or the ability to make their own decisions.

I think that Autonomy's goal is not necessarily to keep the shards apart, but to empower people to make their own decisions. I also think that Autonomy could be the only shard not overrun by their Intent, because of the Intent

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/5/2020 at 0:12 PM, rosin_the_beau said:

I don't think that Autonomy is quite the opposite of Unity. The word doesn't suggest wanting to divide things, but rather wanting to stand by their own power, or the ability to make their own decisions.

I think that Autonomy's goal is not necessarily to keep the shards apart, but to empower people to make their own decisions. I also think that Autonomy could be the only shard not overrun by their Intent, because of the Intent

I think you have a very rosy picture of Bavadin. Hoid mentions her in the same breath as Odium. If someone as knowledgeable as Hoid compares a person to a serial killer who also happens to be the god of Hatred then I doubt that person is doing anything to empower others.

Also note that Autonomy has basically screwed Taldain in the name of standing alone. Their technology was like a thousand years ahead of most of the Cosmere during the White Sand era but then their offworld travel got revoked and they regressed technologically.

Now the people there are stuck on a backwater, primitive world with no international trade. Its basically Japan before the Meiji Restoration. Pretty soon, Matthew Perry's gonna show up with steam engines and cannons and the people of Taldain will be at a loss for what to do. All of this is directly Autonomy's doing.

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On 21/05/2020 at 1:48 AM, Karger said:

 

There were 13 groups descendent from Abraham (Israel), the 12 are as Brandon says (re the descendants of Daniel) but the 13th were the descendants of Levi. Levite's were called to be temple servants, their lives devoted to maintaining the ceremonial rites to ensure the other Israelite tribes could commune with God. 
 

In the same way, a Thirteenth shard may make sense as one the enable commune between the others... 

I'm new to theorising, not sure how literally we are to take WoBs.

 

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On 7/15/2020 at 3:01 PM, Melson said:

There were 13 groups descendent from Abraham (Israel), the 12 are as Brandon says (re the descendants of Daniel) but the 13th were the descendants of Levi. Levite's were called to be temple servants, their lives devoted to maintaining the ceremonial rites to ensure the other Israelite tribes could commune with God. 
 

In the same way, a Thirteenth shard may make sense as one the enable commune between the others... 

I'm new to theorising, not sure how literally we are to take WoBs.

 

From what I understand, there were 12 groups but the Levites portion went to the eldest who gave his portion to his two sons, making it 12 groups again. Very good point though, is there one shard who has chosen not to invest themselves (besides Odium) and is meaning to act as a sort of intermediary? Good thought and welcome to the shard!

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5 hours ago, Yolenlightweaver said:

From what I understand, there were 12 groups but the Levites portion went to the eldest who gave his portion to his two sons, making it 12 groups again. Very good point though, is there one shard who has chosen not to invest themselves (besides Odium) and is meaning to act as a sort of intermediary? Good thought and welcome to the shard!

That could be the 17th Shard

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