shard combination

[Wits instant noodles he/him]

We have seen that its possible to combine shards but intent doesn't always make it easy to act with investiture from these shards ex Harmony. What shard combinations would be the easiest to act with and the most powerful.(this includes shattered shards)

[alder24]

Ruin and Cultivation, they are both about change. Maybe Devotion and Endowment also. Devotion was said to care and provide for people, and Endowment is about gifting.

But those are Shards with intents which align, but it doesn't mean that Shards with opposite intent would be as unable to act as Harmony.

[The Subsumer he/him]

17 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Ruin and Cultivation, they are both about change. Maybe Devotion and Endowment also. Devotion was said to care and provide for people, and Endowment is about gifting.

But those are Shards with intents which align, but it doesn't mean that Shards with opposite intent would be as unable to act as Harmony.

It would be hard though. The whole problem Harmony is having is that every time he tries to act his two sides- Ruin and Preservation- both fight against him for any decision he makes. Sazed is a total Preservation type of guy, but if he goes too far into Preservation without helping his Ruin side, he's going to fall apart.

Back to the original post, I believe- and I've seen a WoB to confirm this, just can't remember where- that Odium and Ruin would be super powerful together. Hatred and Destruction. That seems like a cosmere-level threat

[Quantus he/him]

Ruin and Cultivation are compatible per WOB, as are Odium and Honor (had the vessel's personalities been different).  I feel like Dominion and Ambition would have pair well into something like Conquest, but probably not peasant to be around.

I thought Devotion and Endowment at first, but Endowment is specifically about a No-Strings-Attached theme and Devotion seems like it'd be a little too Pro-Connection. But all of that is probably within the variance range of the Vessel's interpretation of the Shardic Intent.

 

Quote

 

Autarchk

If I can ask a question, I just read the Mistborn trilogy and, were Preservation and Ruin two different shards or a single one with their power split somehow? If they were two shards, does that mean a single person can hold more than one, since Harmony apparently holds both now?

Brandon Sanderson

They were two shards.

Yes, one entity can hold more than one. Remember that holding a shard changes you, over time. Rayse knows this, and prefers to leave behind destroyed rivals as opposed to taking their power and potentially being overwhelmed by it.

Nepene

I have a question, if you are willing. Would Ruin be more compatible with Rayse, would he pick up that shard had he visited Scadrial and shattered him? All the shards we have seen that he has shattered seem rather different in intent than him- Honor, Cultivation, Love, Dominion. But Ruin seems more in line with Odium. Rayse has ruined the days of quite a few people.

Brandon Sanderson

Technically, Ruin would be most compatible with Cultivation. Ruin's 'theme' so to speak is that all things must age and pass. An embodiment of entropy. That power, separated from the whole and being held by a person who did not have the willpower to resist its transformation of him, led to something very dangerous. But it was not evil. None of the sixteen technically are, though you may have read that Hoid has specific beef with Rayse. Whether you think of Odium as evil depends upon how much you agree with Hoid's particular view.

That said, Ruin would have been one of the 'safer' of the sixteen for Rayse to take, if he'd been about that. Odium is by its nature selfish, however, and the combination of it and Rayse makes for an entity that fears an additional power would destroy it and make it into something else.

General Reddit 2013 (March 14, 2013)

 

 

 

 

Quote

 

Questioner

What Shard is the opposite of Odium in the sense of the *inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

There are several that could be considered opposites--

Questioner

I mean in the assimilation sense, you’ve said that Odium doesn’t want to absorb any of the other ones but which one would want to?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, which one would want to join with him?

Questioner

Or any of them.

Brandon Sanderson

I think that if personalities had been different, Honor and Odium, there would have been a very natural pairing, not that they’re opposites but they would have attracted. [...]

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

 

 

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, The Subsumer said:

It would be hard though. The whole problem Harmony is having is that every time he tries to act his two sides- Ruin and Preservation- both fight against him for any decision he makes. Sazed is a total Preservation type of guy, but if he goes too far into Preservation without helping his Ruin side, he's going to fall apart.

Yes, but Harmony was not the only option Sazed could have become, he could also be Discord. It is likely Discord would not have the same limitations as Harmony.

Spoiler

chasmfriend's friend (Paraphrased)

My friend asked for Brandon to write something about Harmony in her Alloy of Law.

Brandon Sanderson

There's another name Harmony could go by if he weren't able to control the conflict between his halves… *to Zas* Have you guys figured that one out yet? Oh, I'm not going to say anything. You have it on recording… I was pretty sneaky with that one so I don't know if you have it or not.

Holiday signing (Dec. 12, 2015)

 

Questioner

Is there a significance between Harmony and Discord being musical terms? And would they be considered different Investiture tones? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and no. So what's going on here is that... it is significant, I chose those two terms very specifically. Not gonna tell you a lot about Discord or things like that, but the idea is that idea of Harmony is in... the sounds are in harmony, they are working together. In Discord they are not. I wouldn't call them Investiture tones, more the way the two tones are responding to each other.

JordanCon 2021 (July 17, 2021)

Combination of two Shards can have more than one intent, depending on a Vessel.

[Wits instant noodles he/him]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

it doesn't mean that Shards with opposite intent would be as unable to act as Harmony

I agree harmony only doesn't supper act because of how directly opposite ruin and preservation are. but if you had two pretty different shards you would just only really be able to act in any meaningful capacity if the intent of the shards allowed it. your example of ruin and cultivation is one such example some things you would be able to act but cultivation is about growth were ruin is about destruction so they might conflict I personally imagine in that case very similar to harmony

[alder24]

13 hours ago, Wits instant noodles said:

your example of ruin and cultivation is one such example some things you would be able to act but cultivation is about growth were ruin is about destruction so they might conflict I personally imagine in that case very similar to harmony

Ruin care about the end result, which is death and increasing entropy. Cultivation cares about change, growth, good or bad, doesn't matter as long as it changes. Cultivation side can change in such a way, to make people more destructive, or die as the end result, thus satisfying both intents. 

[Mistchemist16]

First off, I think you could make a compelling argument that most Shards who have been Shard for a long time would struggle to become hybrids at all. Accepting another Shard means twisting your own intent and we’ve seen how strong that grasp is, like with Ati. Dominion and Ambition might be able to do it all the time because it aligns with their Intent, but you’d probably need a fresh Vessel in most cases, who still has mortal goals

As for what Shards go together, it’s a bit tricky because the Vessel can do so much to reinterpret a Shard’s Intent. In this case, opposites don’t attract. There are a few that seem to be pretty good fits and work within Brandon’s use of the Magic the Gathering color wheel (TLDR is that each color has similar ideologies along with allies.)

Honor-Preservation: (Double white) This makes sense when you think about it. Both Shards favor order and perhaps some sense of fairness. It also fits with the idea of keeping oaths

Endowment-Cultivation: (Double green) Both are willing to give themselves to others and see results grow in the long run.

Ruin-Ambition: (Double Black): It’s important to note here that part of why Ruin focused on entropy was because Ati was tempering it. Under another vessel, Ruin could easily mean “destroy your enemies”.  Which justifes the combo

Dominion-Ambition: (Black/White + Black): Pretty self explanatory. Perhaps the most active of any Shard combo and the most likely to try becoming the one true God

Autonomy is almost certainly the hardest shard of all to hybridize because it is inherently opposed to any match. In fact, you might even need to get more than two Shards in a hybrid before Autonomy slots in cleanly