Could a Splinter Invest a World?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

So if a Shard, for whatever reason, decided to split off a whole bunch of it's Investiture and made a powerful Splinter, then sent that Splinter to a world that doesn't have much or any magic, could the Splinter Invest enough into said world that it could become a 'Major Shard World'? With Magic on the level of Allomancy or something like that?

Or is truly Investing an entire planet a job for a proper Shard?

[HSuperLee he/him]

Though we're not certain of this, what you're describing could be fairly similar to how Autonomy is creating their avatars. In which case the answer would be yes, what you're saying is possible. But we're not sure exactly what Autonomy is doing or how it works, so the process might be completely different. But I would imagine what you're describing is possible. After all, the Cosmere is saturated with a lot more Shardic investiture than any Shard is completely aware of, so if the Splinter just goes to a planet where a lot of their Shard's investiture is being unused and starts collecting it, the Shard probably wouldn't even miss it.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

8 minutes ago, HSuperLee said:

Though we're not certain of this, what you're describing could be fairly similar to how Autonomy is creating their avatars. In which case the answer would be yes, what you're saying is possible. But we're not sure exactly what Autonomy is doing or how it works, so the process might be completely different. But I would imagine what you're describing is possible. After all, the Cosmere is saturated with a lot more Shardic investiture than any Shard is completely aware of, so if the Splinter just goes to a planet where a lot of their Shard's investiture is being unused and starts collecting it, the Shard probably wouldn't even miss it.

Well doesn't this just open up a literally cosmic sized can of worms.

This might even happen in the future of the Cosmere, with Shards eventually trying to spread beyond their Shardworlds so they don't get left behind by the Mortal's or something.

Or maybe this might eventually be how Shards will war against each other, using Avatars/Splinters and Proxy Planets, kind of like how America and Russia used smaller nations in the Cold War to gain influence.

[cometaryorbit]

I think it ought to be theoretically possible - I don't think there's necessarily that much difference between a full Shard and a hypothetical huge Splinter* - but would take a really, really big Splinter. The Stormfather is arguably kind of in this situation, but he's also got Connections and such left over from being a Sliver of Honor as well as a Splinter.

*maybe? Depends on if Shards are actually mathematically infinite or just too big to matter. I think it's got to be the latter or a finite quantity of atium/a finite number of human souls wouldn't have affected the Ruin vs Preservation balance.

I think most Splinters are miniscule in comparison to a Shard though.

Edited October 6, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

19 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I think it ought to be theoretically possible - I don't think there's necessarily that much difference between a full Shard and a hypothetical huge Splinter* - but would take a really, really big Splinter. The Stormfather is arguably kind of in this situation, but he's also got Connections and such left over from being a Sliver of Honor as well as a Splinter.

*maybe? Depends on if Shards are actually mathematically infinite or just too big to matter. I think it's got to be the latter or a finite quantity of atium/a finite number of human souls wouldn't have affected the Ruin vs Preservation balance.

I think most Splinters are miniscule in comparison to a Shard though.

So what you're saying is, my theory is sound in principle, we just need a Shard to make a Splinter with maybe 1-5% of their Investiture for it to be big enough to matter.

Unless it would be possible for a smaller but still very powerful Splinter to Invest a region instead of an entire planet?

Also Brandon has said that Shards have a finite amount of Investiture but it's so much that it's practically infinite from our point of view.

[stonehand]

10 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

 Depends on if Shards are actually mathematically infinite or just too big to matter.

The cool thing is, they can be mathematically infinite and still be smaller/less than/a constituent part of the infinity represented by Adonalsium.

Imagine a number line that starts at zero and continues on to infinity. It's got infinite numbers.

Now imagine a number line that starts at zero and proceeds in multiples of five and goes on to infinity. It has infinite numbers. But it has *less* numbers than the first one. It is a smaller infinity. But it's still infinite!

[bmcclure7]

22 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

Though we're not certain of this, what you're describing could be fairly similar to how Autonomy is creating their avatars. In which case the answer would be yes, what you're saying is possible. But we're not sure exactly what Autonomy is doing or how it works, so the process might be completely different. But I would imagine what you're describing is possible. After all, the Cosmere is saturated with a lot more Shardic investiture than any Shard is completely aware of, so if the Splinter just goes to a planet where a lot of their Shard's investiture is being unused and starts collecting it, the Shard probably wouldn't even miss it.

 Avatars are not splinters. 

[cometaryorbit]

5 hours ago, stonehand said:

The cool thing is, they can be mathematically infinite and still be smaller/less than/a constituent part of the infinity represented by Adonalsium.

Imagine a number line that starts at zero and continues on to infinity. It's got infinite numbers.

Now imagine a number line that starts at zero and proceeds in multiples of five and goes on to infinity. It has infinite numbers. But it has *less* numbers than the first one. It is a smaller infinity. But it's still infinite!

I know there are different infinities, and that concept totally works for subdividing Adonalsium into Shards, but I don't think subtracting a finite amount affects infinities. And the amount of atium needed to balance/unbalance Ruin vs Preservation was definitely finite.

15 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

So what you're saying is, my theory is sound in principle, we just need a Shard to make a Splinter with maybe 1-5% of their Investiture for it to be big enough to matter.

Unless it would be possible for a smaller but still very powerful Splinter to Invest a region instead of an entire planet?

That's more or less the way I see it, though I have no idea what the actual percentage is. I'm not sure if the Stormfather is like 20% of Honor or like 0.1%. I think normal Splinters are super tiny, not even a millionth of a Shard (a Divine Breath = 2000 Breaths, and given that Endowment's never going to have issues providing Breaths regardless of population growth on Nalthis, Endowment's got to be equivalent to tens of billions of Breaths at the very least and probably far more than that; I'd say probably trillions or more and thus a Divine Breath is less than one-billionth of the Shard).

I wish we knew how much godmetal mass was equivalent to 1 Breath, then we could estimate Radiant spren and Shardplate "cousin" spren relative to Divine Breaths.

I think Investing a region ought to be possible, especially if the Splinter is Cognitive in nature rather than Spiritual. Invested regions of land on Sel might be something like this, though I don't think they are distinct enough from the Dor as a whole to count as Splinters (or even avatars).

Edited October 6, 2022 by cometaryorbit