About Ambition..

[James The Big Cheese]

I think ambition could have empowered his/her peeps to advance their technology the fastest out of all the shards.  Wit noted when ambition died, several worlds were destroyed in the process. 

Also, Odium has a great way of inciting civilizations to self destruct. So it seems likely that Ambition was in the lead of the tech race, had already established space travel as well as the production of "anti-light" and Odium snuck in and tricked people to push all the wrong buttons and blow everything up. 

 

Couple of questions this begs:

1. Is the graveyard of ambition a place to find remnants of advanced technology? 

2. Is the power of ambition going to coalesce and find a new host? 

2.1 if so, will the power remember what had happened? 

2.2 if so, could ambition easily assimilate the leading tech of other shards civilizations and then become the biggest threat to the cosmere again? 

3. If not, could automony assimilate the power of ambition? 

[RedBlue]

15 hours ago, James The Big Cheese said:

Is the graveyard of ambition a place to find remnants of advanced technology? 

I doubt it. Even if Ambition was tech-focused (and I don’t think there’s any textual evidence that this is the case), this all happened very early in the timeline. Even with Shardic intervention, civilisations can only develop so fast. It takes time to get to the tech level that Roshar and Scadrial are currently.

 

16 hours ago, James The Big Cheese said:

Is the power of ambition going to coalesce and find a new host? 

My impression is that the point of Splintering a Shard is that the power isn’t going to fix itself and can’t be picked up. It’s permanently broken. Maybe there is some way to reverse this, but I think it would require significant effort from a powerful being (like another Shard). But Ambition won’t be doing anything if left to its own devices.

 

16 hours ago, James The Big Cheese said:

If not, could automony assimilate the power of ambition? 

I don’t think Autonomy is the type to assimilate another Shard, due to Autonomy’s Intent, but maybe another Shard will make an attempt at some point. 

[TheoreticalMagic]

Tbh I don't think we know enough about Splintering a Shard (with the intent of killing them) to know yet what happened with Ambition. We know that Odium had MORE of an idea what he was doing when he caught up with her again and killed her after killing Aona and Skai....but we also know that when he killed those two on Sel, he stuffed them in the Cognitive Realm specifically to STOP what ended up happening BECAUSE he stuffed them in the Cognitive Realm. Aka the Dor over time becoming self-aware, its own power not in need of a host.

So we do know that Odium had more of an idea how to go about his end goal of permanently ridding himself of a rival Shard when he killed Ambition. But we have no idea if that actually means it did the trick. For all we know at this point, although Ambition is Splintered, its Vessel dead and gone....there could over time in the Threnodite system be large enough pieces of Ambition's power to grow their own Intents.

So Ambition might not be possible to reform, its conclusively finished.....but there could be Splinters that almost act as smaller Shards OF Ambition now....things like Conquest and Acquisition and other aspects of Ambition. And even if you could combine all of them back into a single Shard again, what you end up with might not be the equivalent of the Shard that was originally Splintered, because we know the Shards CAN change and grow in various ways - that's the whole point of Honor merging with Odium as part of Dalinar's gambit. To see if the power of Honor can learn something as part of Retribution. So if the pieces of Ambition - separate from each other - change in ways that mean by the time anyone COULD try and put them back together, you'd never get the original Shard back again because now the ingredients comprising it would be slightly different.....then that could still satisfy the various claims Brandon's made about Ambition definitely being dead.

[Nitpicking]

On 1/16/2025 at 9:02 AM, TheoreticalMagic said:

Tbh I don't think we know enough about Splintering a Shard (with the intent of killing them) to know yet what happened with Ambition. We know that Odium had MORE of an idea what he was doing when he caught up with her again and killed her after killing Aona and Skai....but we also know that when he killed those two on Sel, he stuffed them in the Cognitive Realm specifically to STOP what ended up happening BECAUSE he stuffed them in the Cognitive Realm. Aka the Dor over time becoming self-aware, its own power not in need of a host.

I'm not sure what you mean. Where (in Brandon's writing) do we see the Dor becoming self-aware?

[Ripheus23]

54 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

I'm not sure what you mean. Where (in Brandon's writing) do we see the Dor becoming self-aware?

An example from the Arcanum:

Quote

 

Questioner

Can holders of Shards give them up voluntarily? If so, what would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, a Vessel for a Shard of Adonalsium can give up their power if they wish.

As for what would happen...well, there are some variables in there. Kind of like the variables in what happens to a bucket of water if you dump it out. Depends on where it falls, how strong the wind is, what the air is like.

Power dropped like this, if left alone, could end up Splintering and turning into something like spren/seons. It could become something more like the Stormfather--a large, self-aware entity. It could become something like the Dor or many of the Unmade--something proto-aware, but not truly an individual. There are other possibilities as well, depending on lots of factors. (Are sapient beings involved? what is being done with the power--is it concentrated in the Spiritual Realm as normal, or is it being pushed somewhere else?)

FAQFriday 2017 (June 9, 2017)

 

I think somewhere in the Arcanum/according to the Coppermind, they mention that Rayse's plan to prevent Dominion and Devotion Shards from "returning to life" has not proven as successful as he wished.

 

 

[AlmightyGir]

On 1/16/2025 at 12:58 PM, RedBlue said:

My impression is that the point of Splintering a Shard is that the power isn’t going to fix itself and can’t be picked up. It’s permanently broken. Maybe there is some way to reverse this, but I think it would require significant effort from a powerful being (like another Shard). But Ambition won’t be doing anything if left to its own devices.

I might be wrong, but throughout pretty much all of Stormlight it's been assumed that Honor was splintered, and it took Dalinar pulling them together, or at least enough of them, for the power of Honor to be taken up again.

Some of Wind and Truth changes my opinion on that, I don't think Honor was truly splintered during the death of Tanavast, and I do find it curious that Rayse/Odium deliberately didn't splinter the power after Tanavast died, I imagine it would have been his highest priority in that moment... To not do so would have been a huge oversight on his part and very much against what we know of Rayse and his goals.

Going on Sanderson's words about giving up a shard, it's likely that Honor was at least partially splintered, if not entirely, but that those splinters still retained or even grew some form of collective sentience over time.

This could also be the case for the other splintered shards, if the right person with the right Intent were in the right place at the right time, maybe they could pull the shard back together. After all, their Investiture still exists. The power still exists. And power can be collected.

Whether the shard is the same after being reformed is an entirely more interesting question, however.

[RedBlue]

2 hours ago, AlmightyGir said:

Going on Sanderson's words about giving up a shard, it's likely that Honor was at least partially splintered, if not entirely, but that those splinters still retained or even grew some form of collective sentience over time.

My understanding was that the ‘splinters’ of Honor that form the spren came from Tanavast deliberately Investing while he was alive. Honor isn’t Splintered like we originally assumed, just shoved into the Spiritual Realm without a Vessel.

2 hours ago, AlmightyGir said:

I do find it curious that Rayse/Odium deliberately didn't splinter the power after Tanavast died, I imagine it would have been his highest priority in that moment... To not do so would have been a huge oversight on his part and very much against what we know of Rayse and his goals.

I think this is because of the destruction caused by forcibly Splintering a Shard. Rayse did that with Ambition, and it messed up a whole solar system. He didn’t want Roshar to end up the same way, perhaps especially so because he was stuck there. Maybe he should have realised that time was ticking and he needed to choose between dealing with a new Honor or dealing with the fallout of a Splintering, but Rayse was never a good strategic thinker.

[alder24]

22 hours ago, AlmightyGir said:

Some of Wind and Truth changes my opinion on that, I don't think Honor was truly splintered during the death of Tanavast, and I do find it curious that Rayse/Odium deliberately didn't splinter the power after Tanavast died, I imagine it would have been his highest priority in that moment.

He couldn't have done this because he made an Oath with Honor preventing him from attacking first, but he can use his powers in self-defence. He could kill Tanavast because when he did it, he was no longer the Vessel of Honor. WaT ch 122:

Quote

“THESE TWO POINTS,” RAYSE SAID, “I AGREE TO: I WILL LIMIT MYSELF TO NEVER ATTACK YOU FIRST—YET I WILL NOT HOLD YOU TO THE SAME LIMITATION; IF YOU DECIDE TO ATTACK ME, I MAY FIGHT BACK. AND I … I WILL AGREE TO A CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS, IN THE FUTURE, IF SPECIFICS CAN BE ARRANGED AND AGREED TO. NOW, CAN YOU DEAL WITH THIS SPREN OF MINE? REMOVE HER?”
MY POWER DID NOT LIKE THE IDEA, BUT IT DID RATIFY OUR AGREEMENT, BINDING US TO IT.