How does holding multiple shards work

[Doonl]

A big deal is made, especially in LM, about how Sazed not only has trouble acting, but very likely will be entirely changing the nature of the shard he holds. On first glance this is not terribly strange, but when considering the larger implications, it seems problematic for the future of the cosmere. 

When Adonalsium was still around, there were not shards, there was just Adonalsium, and the shattering split his essence into the various shards, representing facets of their self(?). This part is a little hazy, and the exact nature of what determined the split is unknown. However, it is important because one of the core ideas that has been thrown around by many people, especially hoid, is the possible recreation of Adonalsium through the reassembly of all the shards. Unfortunately, Sazed's situation may imply this is impossible. 

Sazed's situation hinges on the fact that the two shards he holds are in opposition. It is not just that the two shards, in combining, have reached a middle ground intent that is essentially "do nothing," Preservation and Ruin are both still very much separate, and seem to be fighting each other. Their powers are still distinct from one another, as shown by the different magic systems, along with various specific examples. Sazed must struggle to maintain a balance, which he does by doing nothing. Harmony has never been referred to has one shard. It is always two held by one vessel. Yet if the idea that Adonalsium can be reassembled is to hold water, the different shards have to be able to marge back into one thing. Yet if I were to guess, sazed, should he be killed, will drop Preservation and Ruin as two separate shards. 

Now I have four guesses to a possible reason behind this:

1) The two shards have not merged yet. We have been told over and over that Sazed will become Discord. Maybe this is not just because he has failed to maintain the balance he has so far, but instead because of a fundamental change in what the shard(s) he hold is. Harmony has been a sort of transition period, and Discord will be the "settled"  shard, the two truly becoming one for the foreseeable future. In this case the settled shard would be Discord because Ruin is the stronger of the two chunks of investiture that Sazed holds, and thus would have a slightly greater infuence on the total intent. In this case Adonalsium could still be formed, but would probably go through a very dangerous period of transition for every shard added.

2) The continuing split between the shards is because of cognitive perception. We have heard a lot that perception of stuff shapes it. For example, in Emperors soul, a wall made up of many stones is still, in its soul, one object, because people (and thus the wall itself) see it as one thing. This principle could very well apply to shards, since it does to spren, which are (through the right lense) just much smaller shards. If this is the case, Sazed still holds not one big shard, but two distinct ones, because people believe him to. If for example everyone in the Cosmere began believing that the shards of Ruin and Preservation were not distinct, and that Harmony was just a single mass of investiture with a single intent held by a single man, then that might very well become true. The intent would still be somewhere between Ruin and Preservation, but the inner conflict that Sazed struggles with would likely become far easier to deal with. If this is the case, Adonalsiums reconstruction is theoretically possible but would require the majority of people to not just know, but believe, that Adonalsium is back. (This theory also creates that cool possibility that the shattering was caused by enought people just... not believing in Adonalsium).

3) Sazed is doing it wrong. He seems to view his efforts to hold both shards as a battle of sorts. But what if he found a way to balance them towards the same goal. The best example of this I can think of is actually Rashek. TLR worked incredibly hard to keep scadrial alive (Preservation) by doing some truly horrible things, such as genocide, eugenics, slavery, and Hemalurgic creations (Ruin). He straddled the line between the shards enough that both Leras and Ati seem to have viewed him as one of their best agents in the world. Maybe Sazed just needs to direct the conflict between the two shards instead of trying to tamp it all down until it explodes into Discord. If this is true, then I actually suspect Adonalsium would be easier to combine than Harmony. Given that all the shards were parts of Adonalsium's essence, their intent when all put together probably ends up being null, whether that is do nothing or literally a complete lack of intent for the vessel. (This could also be effected by if Adonalsium had a vessel or was just a bunch of magic goop that was together enough to become sentient)

4) Finally, the possibility must be considered that the shards simply cant be recombined, at the very least not as they were. I'm of two minds on this. Narratively, this might be unsatisfying, and we have recieved enough speculation about the rebirth of Adonalsium that I think it must be possible. However, it also would be fitting to several of the themes of the cosmere if you could not just undo the shattering. A core idea is that the cracks in a person dont just go away, they remain even after healing, and that space leaves room for something new to be born. 

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this since it could very well be the biggest question mark we have in the cosmere right now

[Telesphoros]

There's another possibility as well - that two Shards is not balanced but it may be possible to combine more than that. It depends a lot on the nature of Adonalsium and how it was split, which we know pretty much nothing about right now, but it might be that while two Shards cannot be combined as it would not be a stable configuration the full sixteen might be, with different aspects of each Shard playing off one another without actually cancelling each other out.

Edited November 16, 2022 by Telesphoros

[Doonl]

7 minutes ago, Telesphoros said:

There's another possibility as well - that two Shards is not balanced but it may be possible to combine more than that. It depends a lot on the nature of Adonalsium and how it was split, which we know pretty much nothing about right now, but it might be that while two Shards cannot be combined as it would not be a stable configuration the full sixteen might be, with different aspects of each Shard playing off one another without actually cancelling each other out.

This is kinda what I was getting at in my 3rd guess, like maybe Sazed just got crazy unlucky with the shards he picked up. I mean there are a whole lot of combinations that at least seem like they would be a lot more stable. Ex: Endowment and devotion, Cultivation and Endowment, Autonomy and Whimsy (as mentioned in TLM), Dominion and Ambition, etc. So Adonalsium would be perfectly stable. I could imagine that Harmony would function a lot better if say Autonomy got added, maybe creating an intent to preserve the autonomy of people, and destroy(ruin) anything that threatens that autonomy

[Yumiya]

On 11/16/2022 at 7:01 PM, Doonl said:

Autonomy and Whimsy (as mentioned in TLM)

I got a different impression from TLM. The only time Whimsy is mentioned is by Telsin.

 

Spoiler

 Half the time, being ‘autonomous’ means following her plan. And there’s no Whimsy to her—that’s a different god.

Could you elaborate on your interpretation? I personally have a theory about Whimsy that I will write up in a separate post at some point.

[Doonl]

5 hours ago, Yumiya said:

I got a different impression from TLM. The only time Whimsy is mentioned is by Telsin.

 

  Hide contents

 Half the time, being ‘autonomous’ means following her plan. And there’s no Whimsy to her—that’s a different god.

Could you elaborate on your interpretation? I personally have a theory about Whimsy that I will write up in a separate post at some point.

Telsin's comment implies that, should Autonomy and Whimsy be held by the same vessel the change would not be stagnation like with Sazed, but instead a removal of Autonomy's obsession with control (ironic as that is). Instead, Telsin seems to think that there would be an improvement if the two were combined creating something like Independence (the name is pure guesswork). My point is just that the two seem to be a far more complementary and stable shard combination that Preservation and Ruin, who's intents are at best conflicting and at worst diametrically opposed.

I could obviously be wrong on the specific combination of Autonomy and Whimsy but the main point is just that Sazed got incredibly unlucky with the two shard combination he got and that there are many intent pairings that are far less inclined to cause a crisis of personality for the vessel.