Trellium Theory

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

So, after the cliffhanger from chapter 13 tells us that Trellium and Harmonium are “reacting”, I had an idea.

If Trell is Autonomy, would Trellium cause Harmonium to divide and become “autonomous”? And therefore give you atium and lerasium again??

Edited October 24, 2022 by CognitiveShadow
Typo

[handleinthedark]

This definitely went through my head. However we also saw that the trellium spike pushed away from the other spikes when removed from the Cycle. These are invested with Ruin(I assume) so it is possible that trellium displaces other investiture, achieving autonomy. This might explain why trellium spiked individuals are separated from Harmony's senses.

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

Very good points! Another thought: is it the Trellium that is reacting to the harmonium? Two shards in one, two godmetals in one, sort of the anti-autonomy in some ways. Wonder if it could be similar to voidlight and anti void light…?

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, CognitiveShadow said:

Wonder if it could be similar to voidlight and anti void light…?

Similar maybe but nowhere near as powerful if it is.

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Similar maybe but nowhere near as powerful if it is.

Yeah I think you’re right, it’d be more of an opposite intent than an actual anti-investiture situation I think. Maybe their intents cancel each other out or something, but not sure what that would do?

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

Oh oh or maybe it’s just more like Ruin and Preservation were sort of opposites in intent. Could see that as well.

[Requiem17 she/her]

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. Ruin + Preservation = bomb metal because of opposite intent

Harmony + Autonomy = super bomb metal because of even more opposite intent 

The thing that makes me not understand this type of theory is how can godmetal just auto-combine itself. Wouldn't the individual god intents to not combine override this? If you just put any random godmetal near another godmetal will it combine? Or does Harmony's intent of being in Harmony screw himself over and force a harmony with Trellium? Somebody call Khriss lol 

 

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

Yeah good questions! It’s tough to say for sure, like we never saw lerasium and atium interacting together right? I’d assume that they don’t just naturally join together, but their intents probably have some kind of reaction. I’d imagine that it varies between each shard and how their intents come into contact.

Stormlight and voidlight could be a similar point of reference in this regard- they are not true opposites, but they do interact like water and oil. So odium and honors investiture has that effect on each other. I believe the fused used raysium weapons right? Didn’t seem to have anything weird happen when raysium and shardblades met in combat.

I think I lean towards this: trellium (autonomy) wants to be on its own, harmonium wants to be together, so the god metals just might combine together upon contact. I like your idea of the harmony’s intent driving towards combining naturally, but it probably depends on the intent of the other god metal. Not sure what that metal becomes… maybe peace metal or something like that? Some kind of nonintervention-ish, be in harmony with yourself but away from other things? So then THAT is the “right” metal that was referenced in the note from Harmony.

 

of course everything is weird because the metals are hemelurgic spikes so who knows what that actually does to all of this super hypothetical and tenuous theorizing.

[Hoids Imaginary Friend]

I'm still in the Odium is Trell camp and Odium has a habit of corrupting investiture instead of investing.

Which makes me think the "Trell" spike is a corrupted God metal, most likely Harmonium or its derivatives.

[Isilel]

Given the experiments with anti-lights in RoW, maybe the same could be done with Shard investiture in metallic form. Could trellium be anti-harmonium somehow? 

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

6 hours ago, Hoids Imaginary Friend said:

Which makes me think the "Trell" spike is a corrupted God metal, most likely Harmonium or its derivatives.

Yeah this is totally possible, it would make a lot of sense too. But does it have to be Odium corrupting the Harmonium? I know we’ve seen him do that previously, but it could still be Autonomy right?

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

4 hours ago, Isilel said:

Could trellium be anti-harmonium somehow? 

Could be! Maybe it’s Discordium? And Harmony is secretly having a “Fight Club” problem with himself, going behind his own back and switching between acting as Harmony and Discord and losing his memory?

 

but not sure this all makes sense with the off world Trell lovers we’ve seen

[dbulick]

2 hours ago, CognitiveShadow said:

Could be! Maybe it’s Discordium? And Harmony is secretly having a “Fight Club” problem with himself, going behind his own back and switching between acting as Harmony and Discord and losing his memory?

 

but not sure this all makes sense with the off world Trell lovers we’ve seen

The ole dual identities.  If that weren't being explored with Shallan, I could see Sanderson going this way.

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

42 minutes ago, dbulick said:

The ole dual identities.  If that weren't being explored with Shallan, I could see Sanderson going this way.

Yeah that’s a good point, already did that one in RoW

[Ashbringer he/him]

Trellium is usually used as a Hemalurgic Spike, and at least Bleeder used it a lot to steal Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities. I don't think it could do that if it was anti-harmonium, it'd react to the energy of Preservation and Ruin in those charges. 

It did repel the other, "normal" Spikes though.

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

That makes sense, seems more likely to be corrupted harmonium or autonomy’s godmetal