Another theory on Shards classification

[ShardPug]

          Hello, fellow cosmerenauts, this is once again a theory of classify Shards by Dawnshards. I am sure similar theories have been shared before, and thanks for everyone that are patient enough to see my take on it.

          What we know is that original Sixteeners use Dawnshards to Shatter Adolnalsium, and there are four Dawnshards. Most theories I’ve seen proposed utilizing each Dawnshard twice to create 16 Shards, 4 x 4 = 16.

My theory is that each Dawnshard has been used once, and it cuts the Investiture into two parts. One fits with the Dawnshard’s description, one is not. Repeat that four times, and the result is all 16 Shards. So it’s more like 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16.

 

Here are my speculative Dawnshards:

          Create: make something out of nothing, giving.

          Change: change properties of something

          Destroy: make something into nothing, taking. (Side note: I believe it is related to the creation of Nightblood)

          Choice: free will to act. This is the “special” one Brandon has commented about.

 

Shards would be aligned in the following chart. 1 means the Shard has the property of such Dawnshard, 0 means it does not:

(Note: Assuming the final Shard is indeed Wisdom/Prudence)

	Choose	Create	Change	Destroy
Autonomy	1	1	1	1
Virtuosity	1	1	1	0
Devotion	1	1	0	1
Endowment	1	1	0	0
Valor	1	0	1	1
Cultivation	1	0	1	0
Mercy	1	0	0	1
Wis/Pru	1	0	0	0
Ambition	0	1	1	1
Invention	0	1	1	0
Dominion	0	1	0	1
Honor	0	1	0	0
Ruin	0	0	1	1
Whimsy	0	0	1	0
Odium	0	0	0	1
Preservation	0	0	0	0

Here are my reasons for each alignment.

Autonomy: Can do everything to achieve its goal, but can also choose not to do anything.

Virtuosity: Art is to create and improve, but it’s up to person’s free will to create.

Devotion: Willing to do good and bad things for the entity you devoted to, but in certain way and to specific target, can’t change.

Endowment: giving out things without cost (pure create). Can choose grant power to whom.

Valor: fight for higher ideal. Apply change and destructive power to where they think is needed.

Cultivation: choose and prune how thing will going to change

Mercy: Choose to use power to end (destroy) other’s suffering.

Wisdom/Prudence: Observe and making decision, and stay out of action.

Ambition: like Autonomy, will do anything to achieve its goal, but always preemptively acts on it.

Invention: needs for creating and optimize new tools and methods.

Dominion: destroy current structure to assert dominance, no change under dominance.

Honor: need to create and maintain rules.

Ruin: need to change and destroy things

Whimsy: always changing

Odium: universal hatred and destruction

Preservation: absolute stasis

 

The advantage of this system is it provides more interesting ways to do Shard pairing; there are multiple ways to interpreted whose counterpart is who.

Of course there are some weak cases, but overall I am quite content of what I made.

I am sure this is full of holes, but it is a fun thought experiment.

[Aeoryi she/her]

Odium appears to be strong emotions and passions. Its a theme of RoW that passion is up to interpretation.

I think ambition is more like setting goals and self improvement. 

Overall that is a pretty cool list. It's well thought out and pretty neat to look at. Good job!

[Firesong she/her]

9 hours ago, Aeoliae said:

Odium appears to be strong emotions and passions. Its a theme of RoW that passion is up to interpretation.

I think ambition is more like setting goals and self improvement. 

Overall that is a pretty cool list. It's well thought out and pretty neat to look at. Good job!

Ambition is definitely implied to be far more malicious. Brandon said that she was one of the biggest threats to Odium taking over the cosmere, and that she would be mono-black, other Shards show exhaustion with her and that they expected what happened, and the effects of her Splintering were notably far more twisted and malicious than we have seen for other Shards. 

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

I love this way of dividing things. I think I actually like it more than the primary/secondary Dawnshard style.

Actually, the way the metals are laid out gives me some suspicions that there is plenty of validity to this. Push/pull and internal/external obviously follow the split, but we can also split up Physical, Mental, Temporal, and Enhancement.

Dawnshard 1   Dawnshard 2   Dawnshard 2   Dawnshard 4

Push/Pull         In/External       Spiritual/Not     Mind/Body

Now if we can map the shards to the metals, we have our answer to which shards are mapped to which Dawnshards. I'll come back to this later and leave my thoughts to this mapping.

[dannnex male]

how does preservation make sense then? it was created with 0 dawnshards?