Make bets on alliances in the shard war

[Atlas333]

Book 5 is clearly ramping things up and setting the stage for the war between the shards as everyone's reacts to Retribution forming. I'm curious though what alliances will be struck during the war. 

What I'm trying to get at is that I find it incredibly unlikely that it's going to be every shard v Retribution (while Dalinar did refer to it as the Sunmaker's gambit I feel like Retribution would likely lose against that many shards). So, who's going to team up with Retribution? Or Harmony? And who do we think is going to stick to the sidelines and do their own thing?

If I had to place bets I think these will be the sides

Harmony: Valor (is hiding from Odium but not Harmony), Sel & Threnody (I'm sure there'll be a grudge for shattering their shard)

Retribution: Mercy (has worked with Odium in the past)

Neutral: Endowment, Cultivation, Reason, Invention, Whimsy, and Autonomy (I could see Autonomy playing both sides against each other).

 

Personally, I think it's unlikely so many shards will be neutral (I just didn't know where to put them), so I would love to hear other's thoughts and bets.

[logicless.bt]

I have a feeling Whimsy will be antagonistic. A major theme of the series is how power shouldn't be concentrated in one fallible/Intent-driven person, so having a god who is incapable of consistency sounds like a horror show

[coolsnow7]

2 hours ago, Atlas333 said:

Retribution: Mercy (has worked with Odium in the past)

Retribution and Mercy are about as opposite intents as is possible. Not happening.

Autonomy and Odium seemed to have been working together a bit; at the very least, operating under a sort of “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” arrangement. I think they will continue to do so. Frankly it’s hard to see anyone properly allying with Retribution since he’s explicit about his goal of eliminating everyone else.

The sense I got from Endowment’s letters is that she was really all in on “he’s not a problem”. Now that he is a problem I expect her to join the Good Guys.

Edited December 25, 2024 by coolsnow7

[Lord Ruler Sylphrena He/Him]

26 minutes ago, coolsnow7 said:

Retribution and Mercy are about as opposite intents as is possible. Not happening.

Depends on what you consider being Merciful. Mercy killing is a thing.

[Argenti he/him]

39 minutes ago, Lord Ruler Sylphrena said:

Depends on what you consider being Merciful. Mercy killing is a thing.

1 hour ago, coolsnow7 said:

Retribution and Mercy are about as opposite intents as is possible. Not happening.

We already know mercy helped kill someone, so why not again?

[TheoreticalMagic]

I wouldn't be so sure about Harmony's placement, because given where Roshar's timeline intersects with the Mistborn timeline, its very possible that Harmony will be giving way to Discord just as things start to heat up with Retribution, and that could really shake up the gameboard.

[teknopathetic he/him]

I think Endowment will be forced to team up with Harmony. Nalthis seems to be very close to Roshar in Shadesmaar, so she will might see her world as next in line for war. 

Edited December 26, 2024 by teknopathetic

[scudalarm]

Shards:

• Harmony - Sus as hell, Kelsier might had "encouraged" Sazed to become Discord so he can proactively defend Scadrial.
• Whimsy - Agent of chaos, will piss every faction equally, lots of agents doing stuff in the background. (I feel that Whimsy have a similar vibe with a character from another Intellectual Property named "Aha the Elation")
• Virtuosity - ???? - might had already self-splintered.
• Valor - Against the Odium part of Retribution, and is willing to fight.
• Reason - True neutral, might had been the founder of Silverlight but no longer resides there.
• Mercy - Pissed off at what happed to Honor, not happy with Cultivation, willing to work with Retribution with the intention (of backstabbing them) Edit: granting Retribution a twisted version of Mercy's clemency.
• Invention - double agent, the power likes the invention of new things on all sides.
• Endowment - Wants to stay out of the war, but as the resident shard of the origin planet of Nightblood, seen as siding with Retribution.
• Cultivation - In hiding, currently the number one on Retribution's hitlist.
• Autonomy - fun situation, some of the avatars might pick opposing sides, and Autonomy is fine with it.
• Ambition - are the splinters of power of Ambition truly out the game?
• Retribution - will initially come out ot the time dilation at a technological disadvantage, wants to play pokeshards and catch em all, thinks he can pick up the previously splintered shards.

Planets without Shards in Residence:

• Threnody - the mercenary force Night Brigade will be a major threat on their own, current employer unknown.
• Sel - Retribution will target the Dor, and the threat within will be exposed, the Ghostbloods will help in dealing with the issues and thus will have a mutual defense treaty with Scadrial.
• Aether(s) - feels that they are not part of the conflict and that they are above it. 
   

Edited December 25, 2024 by scudalarm

[a Faceless Immortal he/him]

I feel like Autonomy is either strongly with Retribution or strongly against. We know that they seem to be the first Shard to make any big moves after Retribution forms, but whether they were trying to claim Scadrial as a show of good will towards Retribution or out of fear that Harmony was too hamstrung to properly act as the centre of a coalition remains to be seen.

[MagicMaggot]

I really don't see why we would expect alliances. Retribution is a powerful force, set on killing ALL of the shards. So everyone will be planning to stop, kill or neuter him in some way, even if that doesn't stop their ongoing plans of interfering with other shards, like Autonomy's actions after Retribution's emergence show. Some of these plans might include cooperating with other shards, but I don't expect they usually will. Banding together isn't really their thing, and they are mostly invested in very different places and projects, so they don't even necessarily have the capacity to work together helpfully. 

 

[RedBlue]

I think ‘alliances’ might end up being the wrong word to describe it.

Some Shards will move against Retribution now that he’s a credible threat. Other Shards will, presumably, continue to remain neutral for much the same reasons as before. It remains to be seen whether the Shards moving against Retribution are going to work with each other, or if they will pursue their own schemes (possibly resulting in scheme pile-up chaos).

Thoughts on individual Shards:

• I don’t think Harmony will exist in the same form by the time Stormlight 6 rolls around. It looks like Mistborn Ghostbloods is going to happen during the Stormlight timeskip, and I don’t anticipate a major Mistborn trilogy ending without a major shake-up of the status quo on Scadrial.
• Endowment seems very, very opposed to the idea of getting involved. I don’t think anything short of an encroachment onto her territory would convince her to get involved.
• Valor is obviously being teased as a Shard who will be fighting against Retribution.
• I think Cultivation is too involved to just run away. She has to continue to be relevant, so she will be doing something against Retribution.
• If we’re looking for a dark side of Mercy, I would expect that to be along the lines of never holding anyone accountable or stopping them from doing bad things. I don’t expect Mercy to attack Retribution.

[MagicMaggot]

16 hours ago, Argenti said:

We already know mercy helped kill someone, so why not again?

Could you elaborate on that? I knew from the Epigraphs that she was somehow involved (and wounded) in the fight that killed Ambition, and that she worried Sazed somehow, but I wasn't aware we knew her role in the event. 

 

1 hour ago, RedBlue said:

• Endowment seems very, very opposed to the idea of getting involved. I don’t think anything short of an encroachment onto her territory would convince her to get involved.

I'm not so sure about that.

"If Rayse becomes an issue, he will be dealt with. And so will you." and "I have plans to deal with Odium, as I told you before. I will not explain them to you." from the epigraphs don't really sound that passive to me. I think Endowment was perfectly happy with Odium in his cage, but Dalinar triggered the conditions for her to bring her plans into action. 

1 hour ago, RedBlue said:

• I think Cultivation is too involved to just run away. She has to continue to be relevant, so she will be doing something against Retribution.

Also, she still has too way many pieces on Roshar, and she'd just look like a total incompetent idiot, if everything she did came down to nothing at all. Not impossible that it might come to that, but that would be very dissatisfying to read..

[RedBlue]

34 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

"If Rayse becomes an issue, he will be dealt with. And so will you." and "I have plans to deal with Odium, as I told you before. I will not explain them to you." from the epigraphs don't really sound that passive to me. I think Endowment was perfectly happy with Odium in his cage, but Dalinar triggered the conditions for her to bring her plans into action. 

Endowment’s letters place a lot of emphasis on the informal agreement between the Shards to stay separated and not get involved with each other. She seemed to think that Devotion and Dominion deserved what they got, and her reaction to Ambition’s death was ‘good riddance.’

Until Odium arrives on her doorstep, he’s not her problem. I’m sure she has ‘plans,’ but I don’t think she’s about to put them in motion.

[Argenti he/him]

1 hour ago, MagicMaggot said:

Could you elaborate on that? I knew from the Epigraphs that she was somehow involved (and wounded) in the fight that killed Ambition, and that she worried Sazed somehow, but I wasn't aware we knew her role in the event. 

Yeah that's what I was referring to. She helped kill Ambition.

[MagicMaggot]

7 minutes ago, Argenti said:

Yeah that's what I was referring to. She helped kill Ambition.

That's not what I was saying, though. Being involved in the fight in some undefined way, and being allied with Odium to kill Ambition, are very different claims. I only knew about the first one, and am curious about the second. 

Edited December 25, 2024 by MagicMaggot

[Argenti he/him]

2 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

That's not what I was saying, though. Being involved in the fight in some undefined way, and being allied with Odium to kill Ambition, are very different claims. I only knew about the first one, and am curious about the second. 

It seems to me that, being involved with a fight that leaves disturbing effects on the spirtual and being "troubling" to harmony, lends itself well to the theory that mercy is not a "good" shard. 

The logical jump is mercy helped odium somehow, Mercy rarely comes from the loosing side. 

Maybe it was a mercy killing?

 

[MagicMaggot]

16 minutes ago, Argenti said:

It seems to me that, being involved with a fight that leaves disturbing effects on the spirtual and being "troubling" to harmony, lends itself well to the theory that mercy is not a "good" shard. 

 

Ah, so it is a fan theory based on that. Thanks for clearing that up!

And no, I wouldn't say that it's a logical jump. A possible one, sure, but I can think of different explanations. 

Edited December 25, 2024 by MagicMaggot

[Argenti he/him]

29 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

Ah, so it is a fan theory based on that. Thanks for clearing that up!

And no, I wouldn't say that it's a logical jump. A possible one, sure, but I can think of different explanations. 

I'm curious, what's your theories?

[MagicMaggot]

7 minutes ago, Argenti said:

I'm curious, what's your theories?

The one I'd find obvious considering the name of the shard, would be Mercy getting involved in the fight by trying to stop it or its deadly conclusion, and failing, and getting injured in the process. Or, considering the multi-system-nature of the conflict, she might just have been in the line of fire, when 2 fighting gods flew by some of her investments. Just at the top of my head.

On Sazed's worry, I find we have too little information on her to narrow it down at all. That could really have been anything. Maybe she pleaded for Mercy for Odium. Maybe she made some worrying prophecies. Maybe she made remarks on him taking up 2 shards. And yeah, maybe she said that the death of the shards would be a mercy to the cosmere, why not. But we're just guessing wildly, aren't we? 

And I'm not really getting more out of it, if I try to guess what the author's intent in giving us these vague stuff might have been. I guess I can see it preparing us for Mercy being a strange egg, but that could go in many different directions as well...

I'm not saying that she can't have actively helped Odium. I am saying that getting that from these 3 remarks is way too much of a stretch for me to take it as a premise.

[Elite01]

Oustide of where mercy stands I have a few thoughts

- I think that the shards generally don't like to team up but will be forced to in the war. If they are fighting a double shard the main way to beat it would be through teaming up(or becoming a double shard but that seems like it would take a long time). I think Retribution will have the least allies but could still have some people encouraging him.

-I'm thinking Autonomy will be all over the place with avatars. Generally I think they will be against all double shards because that's against the intent of the shard. So she could have avatars on both sides manipulating them to fight each other, weakening them for a chance to strike.

 

Spoilers from Isle of the Emberdark/the preview chapter Brandon has read a few times

Spoiler

Dusk gets a visits from the ones above and then is later offered to join a different army by a Radiant right? That makes it seem like it will boil down to two sides. Join army A or B, probably Scadrian or Roshar.

But I do think Dusk will start a coaltion of smaller planets who don't like those options. Like First of Sun, Nalthis and maybe other planets like Canticle, Komashi or Lumar. I am not sure what they will do once the coalition is formed though. 

 

[Acolyte of Radiance]

I believe two sides would form on threnody and that the smaller side will leave to canticle, and the other side becomes the midnight brigade and joins sazed but then either betrays or helps them beat retribution and then leaves.