Theory on How Shards Are Shattered

[Morningtide]

So, I don't really have any proof for this, but I was talking with a few other Sharders during school about how to shatter Shards and we came to this conclusion.

Shards must be shattered by forcing them to act against their primary intent. It clearly doesn't work to just kill the vessel (examples of this is Mistborn and RoW), so there has to be another way to shatter the shard. Basically, the only thing that I think could truly break a power is forcing that power to do something it cannot. In this case, that is act against its primary intent. 

In the case of Honor, Odium probably managed to get Honor to break an oath. The Stormfather said that Honor got to the point at the end where he didn't care what the oath was about, as long as it was kept. Odium could have used this to force Honor into a Kaladin-in-Words-of-Radiance situation that forced Honor to break an oath. This would go against everything the power stood for, effectively destroying it. 

Like I said, I don't really have any proof, and I don't think that I did a great job explaining it, but hopefully it makes sense!

[cometaryorbit]

That's a good idea, and I think Odium does do something like this - though given all the "hearts" emphasis in Stormlight it might be related to the actions of people the Shard has Invested in.

But I don't think that's the only way to do it, though Odium may need something like that to defeat pairs of Shards like Dominion/Devotion and Honor/Cultivation.

In Mistborn: Secret History, Fuzz/Leras/Preservation says that the power would be Splintered by Ruin after he dies, at which point there would be no Vessel to act against its Intent. I'm thinking that the Shard might be vulnerable to being Splintered (at least by another Shard) once it's not held.

Hmm, I wonder what defines a Shard as Splintered? Shards can create Splinters of themselves voluntarily (Endowment's Divine Breath, and Honor created honorspren before his death). If Endowment took say 50% of her Investiture to make a ridiculous number of Divine Breaths, but Edgli the Vessel didn't die, would Endowment count as Splintered? What if it was 95%?

I think there's a WoB saying that the killing of the Shard's mind (Vessel?) is part of what makes it Splintered. Do Dominion and Devotion count as Splintered? They have Splinters (seons and skaze) but it seems like most of their power is merged as the Dor.

[Kandrafish]

I like this idea.

 

I, personally, have this idea that splintering means a divergence in the power. For example, if Honor was put in the same position as Kaladin was in Words of Radiance, where he had two conflicting oaths. 

I think that the act of splintering is causing the power to polarize and pull in separate directions (i.e. part of the power needs to protect human lives because of the deal it made, but part of it knows that he committed to not destroying innocent lives and slaveform singers are, in essence, innocent people who have been affected). I think that this is like a check-mate situation, so if Leras is dead and cannot move his pieces, it would be easy enough for Ruin to create a destructive army of Koloss that preserve themselves well and then part of preservation needs to preserve the Koloss, but part needs to preserve the rest of the world.

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

 

Hmm, I wonder what defines a Shard as Splintered? Shards can create Splinters of themselves voluntarily (Endowment's Divine Breath, and Honor created honorspren before his death). If Endowment took say 50% of her Investiture to make a ridiculous number of Divine Breaths, but Edgli the Vessel didn't die, would Endowment count as Splintered? What if it was 95%?

I think that Brandon would probably claim that this is a grey area, or that it is a spectrum.

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

I think there's a WoB saying that the killing of the Shard's mind (Vessel?) is part of what makes it Splintered. Do Dominion and Devotion count as Splintered? They have Splinters (seons and skaze) but it seems like most of their power is merged as the Dor.

I've never been good with classifications, but I am also curious about how Honor's condition varies from Dominion and Devotion. The fact that Odium was responsible for both makes me wonder if there are some similarities, even if the cognitive realm is not as packed with investiture for Honor (instead it seems like an intentional sprinkling of spren investiture).

[LewsTherinTelescope]

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Hmm, I wonder what defines a Shard as Splintered? Shards can create Splinters of themselves voluntarily (Endowment's Divine Breath, and Honor created honorspren before his death). If Endowment took say 50% of her Investiture to make a ridiculous number of Divine Breaths, but Edgli the Vessel didn't die, would Endowment count as Splintered? What if it was 95%?

I'm curious as well. My gut feeling is that there's not really a hard cutoff, going off this WoB:

Quote

RayW2

Can Dalinar hypothetically repair Honor's Shard or this is beyond his powers?

Brandon Sanderson

This would not be within the scope of his powers, traditionally. (Though I should note that what it even means to 'repair Honor's Shard' is subject to debate.)

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 4, 2018)

And off the fact that the Stormfather and Dalinar seem to kinda still count as Honor for a lot of things even though they don't have access to nearly as much power as Tanavast did. But that's just my guess.

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Do Dominion and Devotion count as Splintered? They have Splinters (seons and skaze) but it seems like most of their power is merged as the Dor.

They do. Hoid mentions that "Aona and Skai are both dead, and that which they held has been Splintered", Harmony that "the deaths of both Devotion and Dominion trouble me greatly, as I had not realized this immense power we held was something that could be broken in such a way", and Khriss that "at some point in the distant past, both Devotion and Dominion were destroyed. Their Investiture—their power—was Splintered". It's sort of weird, for the reason you say – what we know of the Dor seems to point towards it being more one mass, but Brandon and characters in-world consistently refer to D&D as Splintered. The Dor is pretty weird.

17 minutes ago, Kandrafish said:

it would be easy enough for Ruin to create a destructive army of Koloss that preserve themselves well and then part of preservation needs to preserve the Koloss, but part needs to preserve the rest of the world

Wouldn't that work regardless of whether there was a Vessel or not? Leras towards the end couldn't really interfere much, and neither could Kell.

[Kandrafish]

2 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I'm curious as well. My gut feeling is that there's not really a hard cutoff, going off this WoB:

I agree.

2 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

And off the fact that the Stormfather and Dalinar seem to kinda still count as Honor for a lot of things even though they don't have access to nearly as much power as Tanavast did. But that's just my guess.

 

2 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

They do. Hoid mentions that "Aona and Skai are both dead, and that which they held has been Splintered", Harmony that "the deaths of both Devotion and Dominion trouble me greatly, as I had not realized this immense power we held was something that could be broken in such a way", and Khriss that "at some point in the distant past, both Devotion and Dominion were destroyed. Their Investiture—their power—was Splintered". It's sort of weird, for the reason you say – what we know of the Dor seems to point towards it being more one mass, but Brandon and characters in-world consistently refer to D&D as Splintered. The Dor is pretty weird.

Huh... That is a good thing to note. Kriss puts the power getting splintered as completely separate as the death.

2 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Wouldn't that work regardless of whether there was a Vessel or not? Leras towards the end couldn't really interfere much, and neither could Kell.

I think that Kell was what stopped Preservation from being splintered. Going back to my Chess metaphor, if Ruin were trying to make a play to splinter Preservation, he would need to actually change the world significantly. And, the way that "Everything he tries is blocked by Ruin." in Secret History shows that the Shards prevent each other from taking serious action.  I believe that Kelsier takes similar action to stop Ruin from destroying a city and is only partially successful. The impression I got was that Kelsier was losing, but he was still enough of a thorn in Ruin's side to stop him from doing whatever he wanted.

So, if Ruin tries to set up a situation like this he needs to make some move and if Kelsier just counters, knowing that Ruin is bad, this is more useful than having nobody at all.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

11 minutes ago, Kandrafish said:

And, the way that "Everything he tries is blocked by Ruin." in Secret History shows that the Shards prevent each other from taking serious action. 

They do, but there's Intent limits on things, and Kell in particularly was fantastically bad as a Vessel for multiple reasons (he didn't match the Intent, the power already wanted to be with Vin and didn't like other people, and he was a Shadow with no Physical tie), so if it were something like making a bunch of koloss, is that something he's able to stop? Not like he can smite them or destroy the spikes.

[Kandrafish]

10 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

They do, but there's Intent limits on things, and Kell in particularly was fantastically bad as a Vessel for multiple reasons (he didn't match the Intent, the power already wanted to be with Vin and didn't like other people, and he was a Shadow with no Physical tie), so if it were something like making a bunch of koloss, is that something he's able to stop? Not like he can smite them or destroy the spikes.

I think the distinction is that Kelsier did not need to have this conflict of long term preservation versus short term because he could preserve the people of Scadrial to preserve the planet of Scadrial.

I think that the Koloss alone, would not be what is required to fully separate the intent. Kelsier's artificial Connection from the IRE would withstand a little more, but I still think that it would be about finding things that Connect like Koloss trying to preserve themselves and their humanity... And an atmosphere that wants to stay cloudy and inhospitable. I think it would be the push to oppose oneself...

But, there needs to be a threshold for how much divergence of intent splinters some shard and my cop out answer to my not super well thought out idea is that: "maybe its below the threshold and Kelsier somehow had enough connection and made the right actions to keep it below this arbitrary threshold that I just made up"

[cometaryorbit]

43 minutes ago, Kandrafish said:

Huh... That is a good thing to note. Kriss puts the power getting splintered as completely separate as the death.

Given that wording, and Fuzz/Leras/Preservation talking as if Preservation would be Splintered by Ruin shortly after his death, I figured killing the Vessel was (at least usually) a pre-requisite for Splintering the Shard.

However, every "on-screen" Vessel death (Leras/Preservation, Ati/Ruin, Vin/Preservation, and Rayse/Odium) has had someone else take up the Shard immediately.

There's a WoB that says Splintering is a possible 'natural' outcome of a Shard without a Vessel

Quote

Questioner

Can holders of Shards give them up voluntarily? If so, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a Vessel for a Shard of Adonalsium can give up their power if they wish.

As for what would happen...well, there are some variables in there. Kind of like the variables in what happens to a bucket of water if you dump it out. Depends on where it falls, how strong the wind is, what the air is like.

Power dropped like this, if left alone, could end up Splintering and turning into something like spren/seons. It could become something more like the Stormfather--a large, self-aware entity. It could become something like the Dor or many of the Unmade--something proto-aware, but not truly an individual. There are other possibilities as well, depending on lots of factors. (Are sapient beings involved? what is being done with the power--is it concentrated in the Spiritual Realm as normal, or is it being pushed somewhere else?)

FAQFriday 2017 (June 9, 2017)

 

So I don't think there is anything particularly special about Splintering.

I think Odium probably did do some "Intent exploiting" stuff as part of the process of Splintering Honor, and likely Dominion/Devotion as well, but perhaps more to weaken those Shards so he could defeat them (without personal loss - apparently Odium was harmed in his fight with Ambition???)

Edited March 17, 2022 by cometaryorbit
found WoB

[Kandrafish]

28 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Given that wording, and Fuzz/Leras/Preservation talking as if Preservation would be Splintered by Ruin shortly after his death, I figured killing the Vessel was (at least usually) a pre-requisite for Splintering the Shard.

However, every "on-screen" Vessel death (Leras/Preservation, Ati/Ruin, Vin/Preservation, and Rayse/Odium) has had someone else take up the Shard immediately.

There's a WoB that says Splintering is a possible 'natural' outcome of a Shard without a Vessel

 

So I don't think there is anything particularly special about Splintering.

I think Odium probably did do some "Intent exploiting" stuff as part of the process of Splintering Honor, and likely Dominion/Devotion as well, but perhaps more to weaken those Shards so he could defeat them (without personal loss - apparently Odium was harmed in his fight with Ambition???)

That is what I am trying to get at... If there is converging intent, you get more stable powers like the Stormfather, but if a shard creates a divergence in another shard's intent, it could cause splintering. 

I think it could be a good model to try and exploit.

At the end of the Hero of Ages, the intent of Preservation is clear "don't let the world be completely destroyed!" Ruin's intent would converge as well to let the world fall apart into nothing/ true disorder (true entropy). Thus pools of power that didn't diverge formed before Sazed. You could argue that this was a pretty rapid time frame, but I still think that the readily available power indicates the opposite of what you would expect prior to divergence before splintering.

Honor would have many reasons for divergence (Heralds betraying oaths and imprisonment of Ba Ado Mishram are both pretty dishonorable).