Harmony, or 'a harmony'

[Prymalfire Noble-Blooded]

In RoW, the combination of Voidlight and Stormlight is described as 'snapping into harmony'. Warlight is the 'harmony' of Odium and Honour's investitures. This leads me to wonder: Is Sazed's Intent really Harmony, or is he simply holding a harmony of two shards, and the harmonized intent has yet to be revealed?

[Sylveris Noble]

Tbh, I never found Harmony to be an accurate name for the combination of ruin of preservation, given that the former tends downwards while the later is a zero sum trend.

If Harmony was Cultivation+Ruin or even Cultivation+Preservation+Ruin (so basically a sine function :p) it would be more fitting.

 

I guess Sazed holds the shard of Controlled Descent imo

[Golstar Babsk]

I think Harmony is the only way to combine these two powers - as they are antagonist, the result can only be Harmony or Discord. This means that Sazed has to act within the confines of Harmony as a shardic Intent to keep control of the constituent shards, and while perfectly capable of utilizing the power of each individual shard - has to balance this to maintain adherence to the overall Intent. This makes Harmony a rather impotent shard as the investiture comes from the constituent shards and not the intent. He thus has an extra layer of Intent to go through. Want to save someone? Dip into Preservation, but the intent of Harmony requires an equal amount of Ruin be exercised. And since inaction is fundamentally Preservation - simply remaining passive will probably cause the Ruin component to eventually reject Sazed, so he has to balance inaction with action.

War is a way to adhere to Odium and Honor at once - at least if War is interpreted as organized violence operating under declared intents and allowing for surrender. I don't see it is a combination as much as a description of (one) way to follow both intents at once.

Cultivation and Ruin in 'harmony' would to me be something like Division (cultivation towards nothingness), Cultivation and Preservation is a difficult one - I guess Growth (unchecked and eternal expansion).

[Honorless Lord Ruler]

I think that's why he chose the name. Preservation and Ruin in harmony. 

[sentinel Noble-Blooded]

4 hours ago, Sylveris said:

I guess Sazed holds the shard of Controlled Descent imo

...Falling, with style?

[Kramerfarve House Lord]

Iirc, it hasn't been confirmed that Sazed has actually harmonized the two shards, just that he is a single vessel handling both at the same time. He frequently has difficulty actually acting on anything because the Intents are too dissimilar. He took the name Harmony because he managed to balance the Intents so they wouldn't tear him apart, but it is a very delicate balance, and he could break given a big enough push.

WandW spoilers

Spoiler

This is evidenced by the instability of his godmetal (ettmetal/harmonium).