Shardic Future Sight

[Zas678 he/him]

So we've been talking in the Austre is Endowment thread, and we were talking about future sight. This is why I think various shards are "better" than other shards at seeing into the future.

Now what's going on here when they look into the future? I think that Honor sums it up best:

The figure didn’t answerimmediately. Then he said, “You’re probably wondering if this is a vision ofthe future.”

<snip>

The figure squinted at the horizon. “I cannot see the future completely. Cultivation, she is better at it than I. It’s as if the future is a shattering window. The further you look, the more pieces that window breaks into. The near future can be anticipated, but the distant future . . . I can only guess.”

This theory is based heavily on three facts:

1. A Shardholder's interpretation of an Intent helps determine the effects on the Shardholder.

2. Cultivation is better at future sight than Honor is. (The end of Way of Kings)

3. Preservation seems to be better at future sight than Ruin is. (The prophecies)

So, I'll dive right into it.

The ability to see into the future is determined by a Shardholder's Intent. The more an Intent would look to the future, the better the Shardbearer would be at seeing the future.

It makes sense that Honor isn't as good at future sight as Cultivation is. Honor, as an emotion, tends to look at what the honorable thing to do right now is, or remembering promises that were said before to try and keep them. Cultivation is all about helping you grow in the future. So it makes sense that she would be better at future sight than Honor.

Although I don't think that this is so much because of what the Intent is, as it is the effect on the Shardholder's mind. So Cultivation isn't good at future sight because she's Cultivation- she's good at future sight because her mind is so shaped by Cultivation that it is easier to plan and see into the future. Does that make sense?

In other words, If someone ascended as Cultivation, but deeply believed that Cultivation was about learning from your past, than that Cultivation wouldn't be as good at seeing into the future.

This may explain why Preservation was so amazingly accurate with his prophecies, while Ruin managed to walk in seemingly blindly. It makes sense that Preservation would be very concerned with the long haul, while Ruin tends to be very passionate about the now, about what he can do now to destroy.

That's not to say that Ruin doesn't plan- he does a magnificent job helping overthrow The Lord Ruler. But Ati seems to have become a being of passion, of lust after Ruin. Such people don't look into their future plans very often.

Feel free to come up with more examples, or give me reasons why this doesn't work.

[Windrunner he/him]

Nice! I like it a lot. One question. Do you think future sight would come because a Shard gets better at looking into the future because they're always trying to because their intent drives them to do so, or that it's just an instantaneous ability they receive because of the way the holder interprets the intent?

Or in other words Cultivation is good at looking into the future because she is always trying to do so or she was always better at looking into the future because the woman who took Cultivation believed that planning with the future in mind was intrinsic to the intent of Cultivation. Does that make sense?

[Voidus]

I really like this! I think this may be my first Espoused theory! (Ironically even before my own theories )

[CrazyRioter she/her]

it makes sense. I like it, though sadly I can't provide any constructive commentary at the moment, maybe I will think of something later.

[Odium's_Shard]

As I said back over on the Austre/Endowment thread, in reply to you, Windrunner:

Nice! I like it a lot. One question. Do you think future sight would come because a Shard gets better at looking into the future because they're always trying to because their intent drives them to do so, or that it's just an instantaneous ability they receive because of the way the holder interprets the intent?

Or in other words Cultivation is good at looking into the future because she is always trying to do so or she was always better at looking into the future because the woman who took Cultivation believed that planning with the future in mind was intrinsic to the intent of Cultivation. Does that make sense?

I had the feeling that, because Cultivation would wish things to 'grow', that requires planning into the future, like any farmer would. He wouldn't plant his seeds then sit on his arse for 9-12 months.

The person who takes up the Shard maybe originally be resistant from the powers that the Intent of the Shard initially present (ie taking up Cultivation doesn't give you future-sight if you're a short-sighted person), however, due to the nature of the Shard's Intent, it not only drives the adaptations within the Shard's power that enables it to perform these special abilities, it bends the Holder's personality in line with the Intent, such as for Ati. He may originally have liked to plan ahead, but after so long, he is more passionate and destructive.

Same would go for Cultivation's Shardholder. Over time, their personality and tendencies will mold into the shape of the Shard they pick up, not the other way around. So in the end, they will get better at seeing into the future, whether they like it or not. They will also become less spontaneous, as I doubt Cultivation is a spontaneous Shard. If her 'experiments/harvests' fail, she doesn't go out on a retribution spree, she instead sits back and plans more complex plots.

[Aethling he/him]

Wasn't the point made though that Ruin completely hijacked the prophecies for his own uses? If preservation was that good at reading the future, a complete change of meaning of the prophecies would be fairly easy to detect.

[Chaos he/him]

Wasn't the point made though that Ruin completely hijacked the prophecies for his own uses? If preservation was that good at reading the future, a complete change of meaning of the prophecies would be fairly easy to detect.

Actually, this is excellent point which helps the theory. Ruin never saw far enough into the future to understand Preservation's plan. Even with Ruin's meddling of the Prophecies, there are plenty of passages which still successfully point to Sazed being the Hero of Ages--"hold the fate of the world on his arms", for example. Ruin didn't get it. He didn't get who would be the Hero. If Ruin truly saw into the future, he could've killed Sazed, and very easily block Preservation's plan from every coming into fruition. Instead, Ruin acted more selfishly, focusing on himself rather than the future. "I'm going to manipulate the Prophecies for my own gain, rather than just trying to stopping Preservation." "Even after I'm freed, I'm going to continue using Vin as my puppet to find the atium, even though Preservation chose her to ascend to godhood and she'll totally kill me later. Nothing could go wrong with this plan." In fact, that latter one was something I just thought up now. If Ruin saw the future effectively, he should've been able to counter Preservation. If Ruin killed Vin directly upon being freed, it's smooth sailing from there. But no. As is made clear from annotations, Ruin always acted with lusts.

This always bothered me until reading this theory, Zas. As is obvious from atium, the direct essence of a Shard lets you see into the future--there was also that quote about Wyrn's future sight where Brandon said seeing into the future required the direct essence of a Shard, or something along those lines. It's certainly possible for any Shard to see into the future, so why couldn't Ruin? It always confused me. It had to be something with a Shard's intent, since that's the predominant differentiator between Shards, and Zas perfectly explains it.

You know, it just occurred to me that atium is the exactly the future sight that Ruin would subscribe to. Not something which would let you to make long-term plans, but something almost immediate, so you can dominate and control right now. What else can you do with short-term future sight? Always win in battle, and that's about it. This substance is perfectly of Ruin.

So, Zas, thank you. This is brilliant. It elegantly and easily explains problem with Ruin's future sight. I simply can't give you enough upvotes for this. (Well, I guess in the Austre is Endowment topic, I already gave you two upvotes, and now another one here, but still )

And now, food for thought: what do you think Odium is? I could go either way, really. I'm hoping he's more like Ruin--with more focusing on hatred right now--than something who bides his time, seeing into the future and making the best plan to exert his hatred for the long time. Someone is impulsive is predictable, and Ruin was predictable in this way. If Odium can see into the future... wow, we are so screwed.

Then again, Odium isn't like Ruin, and Odium is biding his time very well. Only two Shards killed and Splintered, over centuries or millennia. Many, many Desolations. Like the back of the hardcover of the Way of Kings says, "Perhaps they saw that the heat and the hammer only make for a better grade of sword. But ignore the steel long enough, and it will eventually rust away." That... seems like a lot of foresight on Odium's part.

Crap.

EDIT: Well, I suppose Ruin plans too, but with Odium it seems like planning on a much vaster scale. That scares me.

Edited March 25, 2012 by Chaos

[Voidus]

I'm really hoping that Odium can't see the future too well either, but yeah given how much he seems to scheme everything I think he has to be reasonably good at it.

[Odium's_Shard]

Hatred, as in Odium, is the very essence of patience. Revenge is best served cold, for example. If you hate something that much, as Odium hates everything, then it is more important to you to win the war instead of the battle, to annihilate your enemy completely. Odium is the kind who would wait for the opportunity to wage a massive scale desolation of the populace, as opposed to taking every potshot he can to kill anything.

After all:

The best revenge is to survive.

[Aradel he/him]

Part of me thinks Odium left Scadrial alone because he foresaw their battle, and was willing to let them resolve their own conflict before sweeping in to finish off the victor. He can't have as good forsight as preservation though, or else he would have understood the prophecies and acted instead of letting Sazed take up both shards.

[Sweetness she/her]

Sazed holding both means Odium only has to go after one target. And, this has probably been pointed out before, but it could be possible that Odium has more than one shard. I mean, we've identified what, half of them?

(Although, frankly, I still think holding multiple shards is dangerous to the host.)

[Chaos he/him]

Hatred, as in Odium, is the very essence of patience. Revenge is best served cold, for example. If you hate something that much, as Odium hates everything, then it is more important to you to win the war instead of the battle, to annihilate your enemy completely. Odium is the kind who would wait for the opportunity to wage a massive scale desolation of the populace, as opposed to taking every potshot he can to kill anything.

After all:

The best revenge is to survive.

I agree completely. We're doomed.

Part of me thinks Odium left Scadrial alone because he foresaw their battle, and was willing to let them resolve their own conflict before sweeping in to finish off the victor. He can't have as good forsight as preservation though, or else he would have understood the prophecies and acted instead of letting Sazed take up both shards.

I think that's likely as well.

Sazed holding both means Odium only has to go after one target. And, this has probably been pointed out before, but it could be possible that Odium has more than one shard. I mean, we've identified what, half of them?

(Although, frankly, I still think holding multiple shards is dangerous to the host.)

Recent quotes directly contradict the idea that Odium has multiple Shards. He doesn't want multiple Shards, because their intents would affect him. He has a Shard that is well matched for his personality, and doesn't want to change. Instead of collecting Shards, he wants to be the only Shard left.

[Odium's_Shard]

We're doomed.

Don't worry, Kaladin will save us all! And if he dies:

We're doomed.

But if the fails, we still have Siri and the God King! But, then, if they kick the bucket:

We're doomed.

Even so, I'm sure Harmony's not going to just sit around and...

We're doomed.

[Chaos he/him]

http://www.moviewavs.com/php/sounds/?id=bst&media=WAVS&type=Movies&movie=Star_Wars_Episode_IV_A_New_Hope&quote=weredoomed.txt&file=weredoomed.wav

Also.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHHQRodF88

[name_here]

I posted a precognition theory a while back.

Anyways, I wouldn't read excessively much into Preservation being more successful at predicting the future than Ruin. His superiority at prediction is partially an illusion caused by Rashek's concerted effort to make the prophecy come true. Sure, he might have predicted that, but he might also have simply been hoping someone would read the bits he'd slipped into the prophecy and work it out. It's quite possible that Preservation didn't win because he was better at seeing the future but because he was better at predicting how people would act without the aid of precog and so could get one layer further up the IKnowYouKnowIKnow tree after they both reached the limits of their precog.

Come to think of it, metal must have fouled up both Scadrial Shards' precognition something fierce, given how TLR's Atium gambit worked out despite it eventually being discussed out loud by that Second Generation Kandra. Also by Elend, but by my theory his Duralumin-fueled Atium would probably have given their future sight fits anyway. I guess it's theoretically possible Ruin didn't have any future sight at all, but Preservation didn't out-maneuver him to a sufficiently absurd degree for that to seem likely.

[Windrunner he/him]

Nice one Chaos! I personally believed Odium left Scadrial alone because there was nothing for him to really do there for millenia. Ruin was imprisoned for what might as well have been forever, and Preservation was all but mindless. Scadrial had made itself the way he wanted it to be, there was no one there to challenge him there.

Now that Sazed is there, who knows what odium will do. One one hand Sazed has two Shards, and Odium has only one. However Ruin and Preservation aren't full powered Shards. Ruin put himself into the creation of life on Scadrial, and Preservation did the same only more so. It's possible that Sazed may not be all that much stronger then Odium. I think that Odium hasn't done much of anything that would tie up his powers, or he has followed his intent so closely that power hasn't "been expended in a way he was hesitant to do". If Odium corrupts the creatures that other Shards have made, to become the Voidbringers, rather then making his own, he could still be near or at full power.

Regardless, if Brandon ever writes a conflux book, Scadrial better be ready as well.

[Aethling he/him]

I still do not see where Preservations foresight was all that good. Other than figuring it would take a creature of both Ruin and Preservation to end the conflict, almost everything else went to pot.

1. The prophecies were completely hijacked by Ruin to tempt someone into releasing him. If Preservation had decent foresight, why create the prophecies at all?

2. Preservation's pawn was fairly well controlled by Ruin for most of the trilogy. It was Ruin's mistake in killing Elend that caused his downfall.

3. The main thing that kept Ruin from ultimate power was that he could not find his body. This had nothing to do with the prophecies

4. Preservations ultimate purpose is directly opposite to all of the deaths that took place under TLR.

5. Preservation created the mists that Ruin then corrupted to create a reason to resort to the prophecies.

6. Even before the Alendi's death, his status had already caused war to run rampant.

Because of Preservation's "foresight", the planet was moved from its goldilocks zone to one that was inhospitable to life. The remain population was placed under a millenium of oppression and genocide. A thousand years of cultural and technological advances were lost or hidden. That is the equivalent of going from Rome to William the Conqueror. The people had to be genetically changed to even allow their survival through the disaster that was Preservation's plan.

If anything, Preservation's goal was reached inspite of most of its actions.

Preservations very name means basicailly staying at the status quo. Why would something that had a goal of remaining the same have a powerful ability to see into the future? Cultivation on the other hand has a reason to have powerful foresight as it's goal is growth, not remaining the same. Odium could be double edged. Like someone said, it could entail the revenge aspect. More likely to me, is "blind hatred". Its hatred would be so intense that it wouldn't even care about the future, only the present. That might explain why it killed Devotion-its direct opposite, Honor-something that often prevents hatred from taking over, and Dominion-good rule is generally antagonistic to hatred.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Aethling

[Voidus]

Because of Preservation's "foresight", the planet was moved from its goldilocks zone to one that was inhospitable to life. The remain population was placed under a millenium of oppression and genocide. A thousand years of cultural and technological advances were lost or hidden. That is the equivalent of going from Rome to William the Conqueror. The people had to be genetically changed to even allow their survival through the disaster that was Preservation's plan.

Well it is still better than universal annihilation.

[name_here]

Yeah, Preservation did win the Shard duel with Ruin, despite coming from behind due to investing a larger portion of power into Scadrial and being forced to lobotomize himself to imprison Ruin. I mean, it could have gone better but could also have gone a whole lot worse and Preservation was virtually incapable of thought during most of the critical events as well as being overmatched in terms of power. Plus, the prophecy was accurate on some details about Sazed that could not reasonably be considered to be requirements for creating Harmony, specifically him being neuter and estranged from the rest of the Keepers. So he had at least some precognition. I figure Ruin did as well, and Preservation wrote down a prophecy referring to the segment of the giant cloud of possible futures he prefered, with some critical details only obliquely referred to so Ruin would miss them and edit the clearer parts.

[Chaos he/him]

Preservations very name means basicailly staying at the status quo. Why would something that had a goal of remaining the same have a powerful ability to see into the future? Cultivation on the other hand has a reason to have powerful foresight as it's goal is growth, not remaining the same.

I do think Cultivation would be better at future sight than Preservation, but I don't see the inconsistency with Preservation and future sight. Preservation doesn't want to preserve just now, he wants to preserve things for all time. That immediately suggests more future sight than Ruin, who doesn't care about destroying later, but just wants to destroy right now. If Preservation didn't take some measures, Scadrial would be completely destroyed. Of course he would be thinking how to preserve everyone much later. Wouldn't you, in Leras's position, knowing that Ruin is highly likely destroy what you've built, and you're so driven to preserve them and keep them alive?

Preservation, being alive for so long, has seen many, many people die. Moreso than any sentient being ever has the business to see. So while Preservation certainly knew things would be very bad right for the Lord Ruler's reign, he made a value judgment that life had to survive, no matter the cost. That was his gambit. Given his Shard's intent, I can't say I blame him about that.

The fact of the matter is that regardless whether the Terris Prophecies were effective (and you bring up good points, though I agree that Preservation did the best he could. In fact, he did change Allomancy to make atium that temporal metal, so he really did do effective things. His goal was to beat Ruin in order Preserve what he made, and he won.), he certainly accurately predicted the Hero of Ages. That's no small feat with Ruin's manipulations. Preservation's got some very epic future sight, given how we hear Honor talking about how hard it is. How long did Preservation see into the future? Over two millennia, at least. That's a big deal.

[Aethling he/him]

I can't really credit Preservation for the prediction of the HOA. He set the prophecies to be vague enough that anyone might fall under the heading. After Ruin got his hands on them, they helped Ruin more than they advanced Preservations goals.

Vin only won the battle because of Elend's death. At that point she had nothing to lose. I do give Preservation credit for realizing that it would take a creature of Ruin and Preservation to defeat Ruin, but that would have been all for naught if Ruin hadn't had Elend killed.

Given Preservation's intent, I can't see him sacrificing that many lives. That sounds much more like Ruin. Ruin actually states that sometimes he builds to facilitate later destruction.

[name_here]

Uh, the prophecies only appeared to be vague enough that anyone might fall under the heading, at least once Ruin was through with them. It clearly refers to a Feruchemist, for one thing.

[Chaos he/him]

Given Preservation's intent, I can't see him sacrificing that many lives. That sounds much more like Ruin. Ruin actually states that sometimes he builds to facilitate later destruction.

Really? When your two options are 1. Everyone dies or 2. Some people dies, but world still exists, as Preservation, you'd seriously choose Option 1?

The Shards are not mindless, on some level, your personality does get to interpret the Shard's intent. Ruin can build up to later destroy. Well, you know, Snapping kills people. Preservation can hurt something to later preserve. However, Preservation could never directly destroy Ruin, nor could Ruin preserve the world.

As such, if I'm Preservation, it would literally forever damage my conscience if the world was destroyed, and I'd try everything to try to keep it preserved on a permanent level. Psychologically, this perfect sense to me. If your options are "Everyone dies" and "some people dies, but the world survives" if Preservation chooses Option 1, Preservation completely fails. He could not live with that. (Turns out his plan couldn't work if he chose Option 2, either, but whatever )

[Odium's_Shard]

Perhaps what Odium was waiting for all this time on Scadrial was for a new Shardholder to inherit at least one of the Shards, because as a newish Shardholder, Sazed is minimally influenced by the Intent of the Shard, and so can Create, Destroy, and Preserve in equal measures, among any other options: he is given temporary windows of free reign over the power of a Shard. And so, when Odium comes, Preservation, as in Leras, would rather sacrifice himself for the protection of the Realm, whereas Sazed might fall easily, as is both sitting on a counter-Shard balance, as well as having a minimal understanding of how to operate the Shard, and because he is currently not heavily influenced by the Shard's Intents, he cannot act instinctively to stop Odium, as Leras could have.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Chaos
It's "Scadrial" ;)

[Triasmus]

Vin was brand-new and she was able to kill ruin (although she died in the process). It was a power vs power and since they were equal they both died. harmony has a whole shard more than odium (most likely).

If odium comes along, Sazed can turn it into a power vs power and win.

Edited April 1, 2012 by Lantern13