[Theory][Spoilers through RoW] Cultivation doesn't have a goal or an endgame

[stonehand]

Cultivation doesn't have a goal or an endgame. She wants to guide everyone and everything to be the best version of themselves. What does "best" mean here? Whatever the subject thinks it does. The alethi  (as a group) think the best version of themselves have to be the best warriors. Taravangian thinks his best version is to have the capacity to stop what is coming. His stated goal is not to stop it....just to have the capacity to do so. Seems to me that the vessel of Odium has the capacity to stop what odium is doing. He's new, and the shardic intent won't begin to consume him for centuries, maybe millenia. And yet. Will he stop it? Taravangian's arc is over. Taravangian got what he wanted. TOdium's arc has just begun and we have no idea what He will do next.

[TruthwatcherDan he/him]

I kind of agree, her goal is to nurture and grow things to their potential without holding bias over what is good or evil.

Cultivation is a chaotic neutral IMO; she's not manipulating she's "cultivating"... gardening is an apt metaphor; human's perceive the nature of what is being grown (flowers/weeds or good/bad)... whereas, Cultivation is the action/intent of watering, fertilising, and tending to the garden...the garden will grow regardless of what is planted, or how it is perceived, it simply is and cultivation brings out it's potential. 

3 hours ago, stonehand said:

His stated goal is not to stop it....just to have the capacity to do so.

His goal as Taravagian was to save Kharbranth and his people, which win or lose the contest of champions he has achieved. The question is can he balance his sanity and holding the shard of Odium and how does he get out of the Rosharian System... sane or insane, (T)Odiums eyes are set on the whole Cosmere based on what we read of his ascension! 

[Quantus he/him]

I think she Had a stated goal and Endgame, she simply accomplished it by arranging the murder of Rayse, thus avenging her mate.  I think her next Goal is going to be to arrange a successor so that she can let herself Retire.  TOdium will probably prefer dealing with a young and inexperienced Shard so I expect he'll want to lay low until after the transition of power.  My money's currently on Lift.

[StormingTexan he/him]

3 hours ago, Quantus said:

My money's currently on Lift.

LIFTvation? CultiLift? This does note bode well for the future of everyone's dinner plates on Roshar... 

[Kvothe the Bloodless he/him]

4 hours ago, Quantus said:

I think she Had a stated goal and Endgame, she simply accomplished it by arranging the murder of Rayse, thus avenging her mate.  I think her next Goal is going to be to arrange a successor so that she can let herself Retire.  TOdium will probably prefer dealing with a young and inexperienced Shard so I expect he'll want to lay low until after the transition of power.  My money's currently on Lift.

I find it very interesting that potentially all three Rosharian vessels will have given up their shards (whether willingly or not) and that we may have three new vessels for each shard soon. Of course, Tanavast was killed and his shard was splintered, and more recently, Rayse was killed and his shard was taken up by Odium. So if Cultivation "retires" and Lift is her successor and then maybe Kaladin/Dalinar is Tanavast's succesor, there may end up being three inexperienced vessels, which could be very intriguing.

[Quantus he/him]

8 minutes ago, Kvothe the Bloodless said:

I find it very interesting that potentially all three Rosharian vessels will have given up their shards (whether willingly or not) and that we may have three new vessels for each shard soon. Of course, Tanavast was killed and his shard was splintered, and more recently, Rayse was killed and his shard was taken up by Odium. So if Cultivation "retires" and Lift is her successor and then maybe Kaladin/Dalinar is Tanavast's succesor, there may end up being three inexperienced vessels, which could be very intriguing.

And we have three characters that are confirmed to have been visited by Cultivation and not the Nightwatcher: Taravangian, Dalinar, and Lift.  The first has ascended fully, and the second appears to have at least partially ascended That Time. The third asked that she stay the same and not become someone else and was given some weird Connection to Lifelight (and thus Cultivation) as part of it.

[Hazekiller16 she/her]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

And we have three characters that are confirmed to have been visited by Cultivation and not the Nightwatcher: Taravangian, Dalinar, and Lift.  The first has ascended fully, and the second appears to have at least partially ascended That Time. The third asked that she stay the same and not become someone else and was given some weird Connection to Lifelight (and thus Cultivation) as part of it.

If Lift ascends she could be a very important shard. Maybe that is what her boon is, the Intent of the shard would not effect her.

[teknopathetic he/him]

1 hour ago, Kvothe the Bloodless said:

I find it very interesting that potentially all three Rosharian vessels will have given up their shards (whether willingly or not) and that we may have three new vessels for each shard soon. Of course, Tanavast was killed and his shard was splintered, and more recently, Rayse was killed and his shard was taken up by Odium. So if Cultivation "retires" and Lift is her successor and then maybe Kaladin/Dalinar is Tanavast's succesor, there may end up being three inexperienced vessels, which could be very intriguing.

I find it interesting that Cultivation let someone take up the shard. She could have showed up and said "DONT DO THAT", but she seems to have wanted Odium to exist rather than being split. 

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, teknopathetic said:

I find it interesting that Cultivation let someone take up the shard. She could have showed up and said "DONT DO THAT", but she seems to have wanted Odium to exist rather than being split. 

She (and most of the originals that have weighed in on the subject, including Hoid and Frost) seem to want Odium (and ruin for that matter) to have a custodian rather than risk it gaining sentience on it's own. Which is probably what Ambition is out there doing, since Rayse would have needed a reason to modify his M.O. after Ambition and before D&D.

[Returned]

49 minutes ago, teknopathetic said:

I find it interesting that Cultivation let someone take up the shard. She could have showed up and said "DONT DO THAT", but she seems to have wanted Odium to exist rather than being split. 

Destroying things isn't really her jam. She's all about making sure they grow, possibly in a specific way or towards a specific end. It might be nearly as difficult for her to destroy something as for Preservation.

[TruthwatcherDan he/him]

3 hours ago, Hazekiller16 said:

If Lift ascends she could be a very important shard. Maybe that is what her boon is, the Intent of the shard would not effect her.

This is a really interesting and terrifying idea... if the old magic still effects a shard holder... then old mate Taravagian just became a million times scarier! Imagine Taravagian on his smartest day given nearly infinite time to achieve it, then throw in the fact he has the power of Odium. Storms!

But then, inversely, what would his most compassionate day in the same context look like? Odium crying and handing out free hugs?  

[Jgalb]

I personally am hoping for Cultivation to be a longterm villian. Having an Odium-Cultivation team up seems like a great twist for Brandon to execute.

[CrypticSpren he/him]

I know this has already been said, I kind of do want to reiterate that Cultivation does seem to be hoping to put the shards in the hands of whoever would grow most as a result of holding those shards. At the time of asking for a boon from the Nightwatcher, each of the three shard candidates were antithetical to the intents of the shards they were presumably being prepped to bear.

Dalinar was a poor leader who acted without restraint in the name of the greater good - in short, he was dishonorable. Lift asked not to change - not to cultivate herself into whatever she had the potential to be. Taravingian strove for the ability to make logically perfect choices apart from emotion, opposite the Passion that Odium espouses himself to be. Evidently, they were all unhappy with their lives, seeking the Nightwatcher as a result.

Cultivation then gave them boons that would help them realize a life acting in a way the shards intended. Dalinar, able to temporarily lose some of his guilt, is able to pick up the Codes and live honorably. Lift, having been given powers, is put in a position of power that forces some degree of responsibility on her; the fact that she is starting to physically age despite always being full of Light that shapes your body into your own self perception being symbolic of the fact that she is at least somewhat accepting that she is growing up. Taravingian, having his dumb days, learns (or at least was supposed to learn) that having empathy is something that is useful for the greater good.

... That being said, I also don't think that is evidence enough that Cultivation has no endgame. There were surely non-shardic ways that could have cultivated Dalinar, Lift, and Taravingian just as well. And if taking up shards were really such a good way of cultivating people, I would think that Cultivation would have raised people to hold them in the past (at the very least for Honor, who has no bearer at the moment).

I think what we need to recognize is that even if they have been together for a very long time, there still is Cultivation the shard and Korellium Avast, its holder. Picture this. Korellium Avast has recognized that Roshar - which she very much cares for, it basically being something that she raised with Tanavast - is extremely screwed. But having her shard for so long, she isn't able to take any drastic actions not in the Intent of Cultivation. There isn't anything she can do that saves Roshar in a direct manner, so the least that she can do is cause some chaos by meddling with the affairs of the most powerful things on the planet.

So, in short, I think Korellium Avast does have Roshar's best interests in mind. It's just that by virtue of being beholden to her shardic Intent, giving the shards new bearers that would be cultivated from holding them is the best that she can do.

Edit: Yes, villain Cultivation would be cool. But seeing as Odium kinda murdered her lover and Unmade many of her creations, effectively reverse-cultivating them, I don't really see a team up happening.

Edited April 30, 2022 by CrypticSpren

[Solant he/him]

See, I'm completely in the other camp on this. I suspect that she forsaw the contest between Dalinar and Odium, and her meddling with Dalinar/ Lift/ T was all in service to the long game and making sure that not only Rayse but Odium the shard would be at a great enough disadvantage to lose. I'm out of the loop, so I don't know if we have confirmation that T is still affected by his bane/ boon, but if it hadn't been for his smartest day he would have never been able to manipulate events to where he would be holding Odium. The same goes for Dalinar and being a Bondsmith and being in the position to confront him. I don't know if Lift has a greater role to play in the contest, but I think if she was using regular storm light like the other radiants, its possible she may have been incapacitated like the majority of them were during the tower sequence during RoW and those events would have ended much differently. Most importantly though, what happens if the god of Divine Anger at a crucial moment lacks the capacity for anger? 

I could be way off here, but I always interpreted Cultivation as controlled growth by design. I don't see her changing people for the sake of change, or being completely random without an end game at all.

[CrypticSpren he/him]

I wouldn't say we're in completely different camps - we're both still on the side of Korellium Avast being on the side of the good of Roshar.

Anyhow, your interpretation of Cultivation's Intent probably is more accurate that how I interpreted it on further reflection... otherwise she would just be called Growth or something along those lines. And seeing that Dalinar and Taravingian are both influential figures in Roshar even prior to gaining a boon/bane, yeah, maybe Cultivation does have an end goal. I amend my opinions.

Nevertheless, I still do stand by the fact that Cultivation had to choose people who embodied the opposite of the shards that they were meant to hold and suffered as a result in order for her to bestow powers upon them

[stonehand]

On 4/20/2022 at 1:20 AM, TruthwatcherDan said:

His goal as Taravagian was to save Kharbranth and his people, which win or lose the contest of champions he has achieved.

I was a bit unclear. While this was his overall goal, it wasn't what he asked when Cultivated interceded for the Nightwatcher. His request was "to have the capacity to stop what is coming". Fast forward a few years, and now he certainly has the capacity to stop it. Cultivation well, cultivated him until he got exactly what he asked her for.

[cometaryorbit]

On 4/19/2022 at 9:17 PM, stonehand said:

 Seems to me that the vessel of Odium has the capacity to stop what odium is doing. He's new, and the shardic intent won't begin to consume him for centuries, maybe millenia. And yet. Will he stop it?

Oh.

Wow.

That is exactly true, and I totally missed that. Taravangian taking up Odium makes way more sense now.

[stonehand]

On 5/1/2022 at 4:43 PM, CrypticSpren said:

Nevertheless, I still do stand by the fact that Cultivation had to choose people who embodied the opposite of the shards that they were meant to hold and suffered as a result in order for her to bestow powers upon them

Ah, because she couldn't do anything if she wasn't doing it by cultivating them. I like it!