Shard Groupings (Dawnshard Spoilers)

[Jess]

This thread is to continue the discussion about the natures of the four Dawnshards, and which Shards might be associated with each, but with the addition of Invention, Whimsy, Mercy, and Valor.

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My current idea:

Change - Cultivation, Ruin, Endowment, Preservation. I understand that including Preservation here seems backwards, but being adamantly against change is still being defined by your relationship to change. 

Bind or Restrain - Honor, Dominion (the binding of others), Devotion (the binding of the self), Autonomy (included here under the same rationale as including Preservation under CHANGE).

Act - Odium (acting from hatred, passion, fury), Ambition (taking action to fulfill one's goals), Invention (acting on ideas), Whimsy (the freedom to act on caprice).

The final set, I have a hard time summing up in a single verb, but I understand as sort of a philosophical opposite to ACT. What Odium, Ambition, Invention, and Whimsy have in common is that they are centered on the desires, feelings, and thoughts of the self, with a certain disregard for what effects your actions have on the world around you. These Shards all impose their own will on the world, exert control on the world.

In contrast, the final set have in common a certain self-abnegation. Instead of being able to impose your own will on the world, these Shards are about what you do when you have no control over the world, how you behave when faced with bad circumstances. I am reminded of Jasnah's perspective on the word 'hope': a value you turn to when you lack options. Arguably irrational, yet still noble. With that in mind, I lean toward Accept, but React or Choose could also work.

• Valor - True valor only exists when you are scared, but stand firm anyway. You accept that circumstances are dire, and choose to disregard your own survival.
• Mercy - True mercy only exists when you could punish somebody, but stay your hand. You accept letting somebody "get off light", and instead choose forgiveness and compassion.
• Hypothetical Wisdom/Prudence/Understanding Shard - The better part of wisdom is setting aside wishful thinking and accepting the world as it is, choosing to face hard truths over comforting lies.
• Honestly, a Hope Shard could very well fit here, but who even knows.

I actually see all four of these Commands as underpinned by a fundamental philosophical dichotomy: that of self vs other, or perhaps subject vs object. But that gets very nebulous (and long-winded) so I'll save it for another post, perhaps.

[Branf]

Ooh, This is very different from what other people have picked but I do like the ideas. There's not been that much discussion yet where valour, mercy, and whimsy fit in with dawnshards so I'm curious to see what other people think. Might have to come up with my own ideas.

[LiftIRL]

Your theories are p in line w/ my ideas, but i think its would be more like one of those Political Diagram memes- that is, the four categories have combinations. I just think like you said, the relationships with the concepts are not entirely straight forward- jsut because you're not Change-y doesn't mean you're not defined by your connection to the concept of change, so it makes sense to me to view them a bit like dnd alignments, with 2 different scales where being Chaotic means more than being Not-Lawful. It also make sense to me because of the radiant orders, who all share 1 part with another order- so the groups would be compounds. but it's an idea i came up wih v recently binging and still havent had time to develop it, so idk if it would work with the shards and numbers- im just putting it out ig.

[+JesterLavorre]

I was about to make this thread myself!  Here’s my ideas:

Spoiler

 

TL;DR

Change

• Cultivation (positive change)
• Preservation (lack of change)
• Ruin (negative change)
• Whimsy/Endowment (Chaos/changing others)

Unite/Bind

• Devotion (binding yourself to another)
• Dominion (binding others to you)
• Honor (binding yourself to an oath)
• Whimsy/Endowment/Autonomy (lack of restraints/binding a part of yourself to others)

Identity/Drive/Motivate

• Autonomy (uniqueness, individual desires)
• Ambition (drive to improve)
• Valor (drive to persevere)

Think/Live/Contemplate/Feel

• Mercy (Morality)
• Wisdom/Prudence (Self-Awareness, pondering your own sentience)
• Odium (Emotion)
• Invention (The Ability to think about and contemplate other things)

 

Ok, let’s start with change. I think this is the easiest to do. Ruin, cultivation, and preservation all fall into this DS. This gives us the shards of positive change, negative change, and lack of change, they all seem to fit together. For the other shard, I would say either endowment or whimsy. Whimsy, by definition, requires randomness and change. It’s the shard of chaos. Endowment, meanwhile, would be the shard of changing others. This leaves us with this for the change dawnshard:

• Spoiler

   

  • Cultivation (positive change)
  • Preservation (lack of change)
  • Ruin (negative change)
  • Whimsy/Endowment (Chaos/changing others)

   

Now, I think it is very likely the next dawnshard is Unity or bind, or something similar. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the main reason is a quote from an in-world document that says one of the dawnshards was known to bind any creature, voidish or mortal.

So, taking this, I think we can say that Devotion, dominion, and honor all fall squarely in this DS. Dominion is binding others to you, devotion is binding you to others, and Honor is binding to an oath. It seems like this DS has a similar “symmetry” as the change DS. Each shard seems to very clearly be an aspect of the DS. They all seem to fit well together, like puzzle pieces. For the final shard in unity, I would say either whimsy or autonomy. They are both the breaking of bonds or prior commitments. Endowment is also a possibility for the fourth unity shard. Endowment is taking one of your bonds and giving it to someone else.

So, the unity shard is as follows:

•  

Spoiler

 

• Devotion (binding yourself to another)
• Dominion (binding others to you)
• Honor (binding yourself to an oath)
• Whimsy/Endowment/Autonomy (lack of restraints/binding a part of yourself to others)

 

So, the remaining shards all seem to focus on very human aspects. This makes sense. One of the primary properties of investiture is its ability to take on conciousness. The question in how to break up these shards. I would also be looking for some sort of symmetry in these dawnshards, similar to how the shards composing the other two Dawnshards fit together so well.

So, what I came up with was a Dawnshard of consciousness. Consciousness is often defined as something like the ability to think about and contemplate your situation. This would be the Dawnshard that creates sapience. I think the two shards I like most for this are Invention and the Hypothetical “wisdom” shard. Here, these shards fit so well together. Wisdom is inner contemplation, self-reflection. Invention is outer contemplation, creativity, thinking about the outside world. Next for this dawnshard is Odium and Mercy. Odium is passion, your base emotions. Mercy, meanwhile, can be interpreted as morality, your conscience. This gives new context to Frost saying that odium is god’s divine anger, separated from the virtues that gave it context. What if Mercy is that virtue? All together, I think these shards seem to fit together well. They make up what makes us human. Our ability to contemplate our situation and feel emotions in response to it. I would name this dawnshard something like contemplate, feel, think, or live:

•  

Spoiler

 

• Mercy (Morality)
• Wisdom/Prudence (Self-Awareness, pondering your own sentience)
• Odium (Emotion)
• Invention (The Ability to think about and contemplate other things)

 

Lastly, we have three shards that seem live human traits, but don’t fit into any of the other Dawnshards. These are Autonomy (which could be in Unity), Ambition, and Valor. The one thing I notice about both ambition and valor is that they are both forceful traits that want something and involve the acquisition of a goal. Ambition is striving to become better, while valor is striving to succeed/persistence. They are both about the process of reaching a goal. This gives me the idea for a dawnshard like “Drive” or “Motivate”. While the “Feel” dawnshard gives life awareness, the “Drive” dawnshard gives life meaning, purpose:

• Spoiler

   

  • Autonomy (uniqueness, individual desires)
  • Ambition (drive to improve)
  • Valor (drive to persevere)

   

While I think it’s highly unlikely much of this is exactly right, I do like the idea of mercy being “the virtue that gives Odium context”. It gives a whole new angle to Sazed finding mercy “worrying”.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Ookla the Sprinkle

[cheezyguy6]

A lot of what I've seen classify the four Dawnshards as follows:

Change, Unite, Survive, Feel

I like this classification, as I feel like there are several good points to back it up. The only other times in the Cosmere that we've heard such specific commands stated in such specific ways, it has been SURVIVE (to Kelsier), and UNITE (to Dalinar). The fourth one having something to do with emotion is obvious because that's where the remaining shards fit. I've seen it as Inspire, Think, etc. but I think it works to just call it feel for now.

I also think this can fit pretty much all human attributes, at a base level. Something like this

• Survive - Basic human survival instinct. Makes us alive, gives us bodies, makes us strong physically.
• Feel -  Gives us emotion, more to live for than pure survival. 
• Change - Anything that involves building up or changing our world or ourselves. Makes us more than animals.
• Unite - Connection to other people, the world around us, and to ourselves. Any sort of connection. 

Based on this, I feel like there are some shards that fit very naturally, and some that we just don't know enough about to place.

Starting with Change, I think the most obvious ones are Ruin and Cultivation. I'm split on whether or not to put preservation in this group, as he is largely defined by change. However, he also falls right in with Survive, and he was the one who gave Kelsier that command, so I'm more inclined to put him there. The other shard I'd put here for sure is Invention, as invention involves changing something about the world around us, in a way external to the self.

• Change
  • Ruin
  • Cultivation
  • Invention
  • ? (maybe preservation?)

Next is survive, and like I said above, I'm going to put preservation here. I am also going to put the "shard that just wants to survive" here, for obvious reasons. I'm not totally sure about the other two, but I think what I'm going to put is Devotion, because according to the Coppermind, "She appears to wish to care for people and provide them safety from pain and harm," and Mercy, as in survival of those under your control. The opposite of killing. I also think it's likely this is the dawnshard that hoid once held, as it would stop him from harming others.

• Survive
  • Preservation
  • "just wants to survive"
  • Devotion?
  • Mercy

Next Feel. Odium belongs here, as does Whimsy I think. That seems to be more of an emotion than anything else, the idea of silliness. Valor is defined as "great courage in the face of danger, especially in battle," and if courage doesn't go in feel, I don't know what does. I think ambition also probably goes here, though I'm not totally sure. 

• Feel
  • Odium
  • Whimsy
  • Valor
  • Ambition?

Next Unite. Obviously Honor. I think Dominion is another likely choice, as it involves binding those who don't want to be bound. Other than that, I'm not really sure. The only ones I haven't mentioned are Endowment, Autonomy, and the other unnamed shard, and we don't know enough about their shardic intent to know for sure. I'll throw them in here, but know I'm not sure. 

• Unite
  • Honor
  • Dominion
  • ?
  • ?

The ?s would then be Autonomy, Endowment, and the unknown.

[cheezyguy6]

Here's my newest diagram. I kind of just threw up a few of the Positive/Negative Internal/External classifications because we don't know enough about the shards themselves to be sure. For example, ambition could totally be positive or negative and we really have no idea, so I just threw it in there. 

It's also worth noting that the positive/negative internal/external idea is really just speculation, it could be totally wrong. But it also lines up really well with allomancy, which is cool, and seems like something Brandon would do. 

Edited December 6, 2020 by cheezyguy6