What was Adonalsium like?

[elihaun]

So, we know that the shards used the dawnshards to break Adonalsium, but what was Adonalsium like?  Was it a good god, a malevolent god, or just... there?  What got me thinking of this is now that we have seen 2 of the shards merge, and they are having huge internal struggles to DO anything that goes against their merged intent.  Well, it seems that all of the shards put together would cause Adonalsium to just... do nothing.  It could not create with cultivation because of ruin, it could not act due to counterbalanced intents.  So, is that why it was shattered? because it was capable of doing NOTHING other than simply existing?

[Quantus he/him]

We barely had confirmation that Adonalsium was a sapient being, and almost nothing beyond that, Im afraid.  

But this WOB does imply that having Four might be a more balanced experience than Two:

 

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Dairetron

In Dawnshard, when Rysn's looking at the mural, it's exploding the sun into four pieces and then each of them is broken into four from there. Based on this, would it be reasonable to assume four Shards of similar Intent could be able to form like a super-Shard without the issues Sazed is encountering? For example, say Honor, Valor, Mercy, and the last maybe unknown Shard like Wisdom or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a correct line of theorizing.

Tampa Bay Comic Convention 2023 (July 28, 2023)

 

 

Edited January 15, 2025 by Quantus

[SpartanBrigade He/Him]

WARNING: Minor spoilers for Wind and Truth

We know Adonalsium was able to act due to the existence of worlds and races that predate the Shattering (such as Yolen, Hoid's home world). Thanks to new information in Wind and Truth we also learn that Adonalsium fought back against the 17, although at the end he gave up in order to prevent the destruction a clash of godly powers would cause, allowing himself to die. This means Adonalsium was both sentient and at least in some capacity a "good" God. As far as Intent goes, the reason the Shards struggle to act is because they're incomplete. Adonalsium, was the whole and had multiple aspects and emotions (odium, ruin, honor, devotion, etc). Odium alone only knows how to hate. Ruin only knows to destroy. Honor alone only knows how to make and keep oaths without any nuance or gray areas. When you have something like Adonalsium, you have a whole capable of nuance; everything eventually needs to come to an end (Ruin), but there's more than wanton destruction and things also need to be grown and nurtured(Cultivation). Some things such as evil or injustice should be hated (Odium) but it needs to come from a place of love (Devotion) to truly care about the people who suffer. Essentially, Adonalsium is nuance, something the Shards lack as they're isolated and stunted parts of a whole. Rather than being unable to take any action, Adonalsium and the combined shards should be able to function normally with nuance and recognition that the world is not black and white.

[Oraiyu]

As I read and discuss more and more, I'm increasingly convinced Adonalsium was not merely a being comprised of 16 parts. It was more like a single, whole entity consisting of a spectrum of Intents.

To illustrate:

Consider the electromagnetic spectrum. It's not made of parts, rather it's one big gradient. There's almost no segment that is truly blue or yellow or x-ray, there is only the spectrum. Those colors (wavelengths, really) are there, sure, but their true manifestations are microscopic, probably just about infinitely small. What we - meaning the layman not talking in values - would practically call the blue in the electromagnetic spectrum is really a swath of infinite colors of the blueish variety - on one side fading yellow, and on the other fading red. 

Consider this musing by Odium himself:

[WARNING: Minor Wind & Truth spoilers] 

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... Though it should have been all emotions - and his predecessor had insisted that was his purview - the power did not like subtle emotions. It liked loud ones... 

... Things such as love and contentment felt like the purview of other gods. They had taken some slices of its... portfolio, so to speak, during the Shattering. 

[WaT] 

An organic whole is going to function far, far better than a conglomerate of mostly disparate parts. I'd say it's the difference between functional and not truly functional. 

In terms of good vs. not so good:

Adonalsium seems to have held back from preventing the shattering - sacrificing itself - in order to prevent unimaginable cataclysm, as @SpartanBrigade mentioned above. 

Adonalsium was also described by the Wind as caring:

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[Tanavast] And a god who cares? 

[Wind] You killed that god. 

(Though admittedly, as a splinter of Adonalsium, the Wind might possibly be a little biased. I think it's probably at least mostly right in this instance though) 

So I'd like to think Adonalsium leaned towards good. 

Edited April 23, 2025 by Oraiyu
Changed "a little bit right" to "mostly right"

[AFdooda]

Khriss seems to think Adonalsium was a being and not just a force of living Investiture.

Now I don't think someone Ascended to Adonalsium because that seems... Extreme, but God may have had morals/thoughts/ideology of its own outside the division of the Shards.

Also, note that Adonalsium could have split into a different number of different Intents. The Shards do not perfectly reflect what God was.