Retribution?

[ConfusedCow]

I don't like Retribution.  Shocking I know. 

What I mean is I think Honor + Odium, or Honor + Passion, ought to not equal Retribution.

Retribution is a petty, small minded feeling, unbefitting of a shard let alone two.  Incongruous with Taravangians' sweeping plans and philosophy.  It is focused on narcissistic goals of getting even or some naive sense of fairness.   It has none of the grandeur of Honor nor the consuming force of Odium.  This one detail really irks me about the book, which I think is the weakest in the series.   It undermines and cheapens this great calamity.  Oppression, Enmity, Contempt, Pride/Hubris, or even Storm would have been better.  

[Ookla she/her]

58 minutes ago, ConfusedCow said:

I don't like Retribution.  Shocking I know. 

What I mean is I think Honor + Odium, or Honor + Passion, ought to not equal Retribution.

Retribution is a petty, small minded feeling, unbefitting of a shard let alone two.  Incongruous with Taravangians' sweeping plans and philosophy.  It is focused on narcissistic goals of getting even or some naive sense of fairness.   It has none of the grandeur of Honor nor the consuming force of Odium.  This one detail really irks me about the book, which I think is the weakest in the series.   It undermines and cheapens this great calamity.  Oppression, Enmity, Contempt, Pride/Hubris, or even Storm would have been better.  

I guess that depends on how you're used to the word retribution being used. To me, Retribution is kinda like Justice--but in a more vengeful, hateful kind of way. I did a quick dictionary search and one of the definitions was punishment, which seems fitting enough. So at least for me, calling it Retribution works just fine, but if you're working off a differently-nuanced head-definition, then it might not be the best Shard-name for how your brain works. 

[Ashbringer he/him]

I don't know if titling a thread "Retribution" is a spoiler, but generally you can't have spoilers in the titles because they'll show up in the front page.

 

Retribution is more the feeling of "payback", and too me it fits pretty well. It's not strictly the enforcing of Oaths that Honor was, and it's not necessarily the sheer wrath that Odium was, but it is wrath in the enforcement of Oaths, or Wrath against Oathbreakers. It also fits well, I think, the current mindset of the two Shards - Odium wants retribution for having been bound and unable to progress its goals for so long, while a part of Honor wants retribution for having been betrayed by humans (Tanavast and Dalinar) despite trying to determine if that's really what it wants. And it notably doesn't fit Taravangian... which I think is partially the point. The two Intents are much more aligned than Harmony, but I wonder if they'll begin to clash as Taravangian vs Retribution vs proto-Honor fight for their will.

I personally was hoping for the name of War, if this occurred, but that may have been too on the nose (and would have been a better fit had Dalinar taken the two shards, not Taravangian).

[LeondeBowa]

Shards are defined by their holder. Retributions holder has always had a chip on his shoulder and when given the combined drives of odium and honour the feeling he could define was the feeling to get back at those who wronged him, so retribution

[Treamayne]

6 hours ago, ConfusedCow said:

I don't like Retribution.  Shocking I know. 

What I mean is I think Honor + Odium, or Honor + Passion, ought to not equal Retribution.

Retribution is a petty, small minded feeling, unbefitting of a shard let alone two.  Incongruous with Taravangians' sweeping plans and philosophy.  It is focused on narcissistic goals of getting even or some naive sense of fairness.   It has none of the grandeur of Honor nor the consuming force of Odium.  This one detail really irks me about the book, which I think is the weakest in the series.   It undermines and cheapens this great calamity.  Oppression, Enmity, Contempt, Pride/Hubris, or even Storm would have been better.  

I think it is supposed to feel slightly "off" - because it's an indication of how Taravangian interprets the combined intent - not how the combined intent would naturally align. I think we are supposed to have a raised eyebrow at this, because it foreshadows future problems to Harmony's (whose problem wasn't the interpretation, but the failure to combine intents at all). It's also telling that Ret's Rhythm is Rhythm of War/WarLight not Rhythm of Retribution. WaT Ch 146:

Spoiler

He had been a farmer many thousands of years ago, and was now chatting with them—animated in a way he hadn’t been before. Venli ran past him to the building where, using Retribution’s gifted Light, she’d secretly made a passage downward, and had found the underground pool to be empty.

Now, with her mother and Bila, she reached the pool and found the strange too-thick liquid returning. Welling up from the ground. The color was different, a brilliant black-blue. A new tone accompanied it, pulsing to a new rhythm. The … Rhythm of War? She knew its name instinctively.

 

4 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

I don't know if titling a thread "Retribution" is a spoiler, but generally you can't have spoilers in the titles because they'll show up in the front page.

Admins and mods can weigh-in, but it should be fine because it lacks any other data to indicate a Shard name (so only those that already know would get the reference).

[CognitiveShadow he/him]

Wrath and Justice were the two that I had seen proposed most often ahead of the book release when discussing what a combination of those two shards would be. I actually like Retribution though. It feels like the right interpretation Justice/Wrath that (a) Taravangian would take and (b) the current Honor intent would lean towards.

As Honor (the shard/power itself) continues to learn and change due to the intended Lesson that Dalinar gave it, I could see the guiding/inherent Intent of that investiture to start to lean away from an obsession with oaths and more towards what we typically consider to be acting with Honor. That slight shift could be enough to gradually turn Retribution into something more like Justice. Which is still a dangerous intent and has a lot of potential to be a villainous figure, regardless of who holds the shard.

Part of the point of the whole setting of the Cosmere is that none of the shards is inherently good or evil necessarily - they are all likely to be negative forces since they don't have the balance of the other shardic intents to keep their own intent in check.

[Nitpicking]

Is it worth mentioning that Retribution is more limited than Honor or Odium? It channels the powers into a very narrow set of possible actions. For instance, Retribution can't betray (like Odium does).

[LeondeBowa]

19 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

Is it worth mentioning that Retribution is more limited than Honor or Odium? It channels the powers into a very narrow set of possible actions. For instance, Retribution can't betray (like Odium does).

You may be overstating here, the shard may become unhappy if they are made to act against their purpose, but that does not mean they can't, and Taraviangian has already managed to persuade honour that an action isn't dishonourable when it was unhappy.

[Earless Jaks he/him]

13 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Is it worth mentioning that Retribution is more limited than Honor or Odium? It channels the powers into a very narrow set of possible actions. For instance, Retribution can't betray (like Odium does).

I agree with this. This idea seems to hold true for both Harmony and Retribution. I think with each Shard they gain, they will also become more limited in how they can use this increased power without upsetting one or more of the Shards they hold. This makes sense because every action they take can't contradict any of their Shards' Intents without dissatisfying at least one of them and risking losing the Shard

Personally, I think this increased limitation might outbalance the benefits of increased power until they gain at least 4-5 shards. As they gain more Shards, it should become harder and harder to justify any action they take, but once they do justify it, they can throw a ton of power into that action.

[Nitpicking]

17 hours ago, LeondeBowa said:

You may be overstating here, the shard may become unhappy if they are made to act against their purpose, but that does not mean they can't, and Taraviangian has already managed to persuade honour that an action isn't dishonourable when it was unhappy.

We've already had Odium and Ishar both say that the power binds you more strongly, the longer you hold it.

[LeondeBowa]

32 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

We've already had Odium and Ishar both say that the power binds you more strongly, the longer you hold it.

And it took honour thousands of years to lose his shard despite multiple at best questionable actions

[Espella]

19 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Is it worth mentioning that Retribution is more limited than Honor or Odium? It channels the powers into a very narrow set of possible actions. For instance, Retribution can't betray (like Odium does).

The book didn't explicitly state it but when I was reading I assumed this was the secondary goal Dalinar had when giving up Honor (the primary goal being to force all the shards to focus on dealing with Taravangian immediately). Obviously we haven't seen a huge difference in the short term but it did keep him from lashing out at Azir and Urithiru after the deal was broken and might help temper the hatred and rage that comes from Odium's power. The conversation Dalinar had with Honor's power before giving it up felt to me like he was setting it up to start changing from the rigid "keep your oaths" view of Honor, and I can see the power starting to object to Retribution's utilitarian methods down the line and start to give him the same types of problems that Harmony has been having with the powers contradicting each other. Odium and Honor work far better together than Ruin and Preservation do, but I would expect in general that any combination of two shards will be more limited than before because you are essentially bound to two Intents instead of one.

 

[Nitpicking]

3 minutes ago, Espella said:

... it it did keep him from lashing out at Azir and Urithiru after the deal was broken and might help temper the hatred and rage that comes from Odium's power ...

You just made me think that El should be the next Vessel. He's the calmest person in the Cosmere, and the most self-controlled.

[Ashbringer he/him]

49 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

You just made me think that El should be the next Vessel. He's the calmest person in the Cosmere, and the most self-controlled.

Depends if El has a good amount of control over his emotions (like Taravangian does, or other candidates like Jasnah) or if he doesn't have much emotion (like to some degree Szeth). Odium likes people to have emotions, and while being emotionless would help control the impulses of Odium, you run into the same problem of Odium maybe leaving for someone more emotional. We haven't seen too much of El, but he feels fairly muted as a person, and notably doesn't seem to want Retribution on the Heralds due to any personal grievances.

[bmcclure7]

On 3/13/2025 at 11:53 PM, ConfusedCow said:

I don't like Retribution.  Shocking I know. 

What I mean is I think Honor + Odium, or Honor + Passion, ought to not equal Retribution.

Retribution is a petty, small minded feeling, unbefitting of a shard let alone two.  Incongruous with Taravangians' sweeping plans and philosophy.  It is focused on narcissistic goals of getting even or some naive sense of fairness.   It has none of the grandeur of Honor nor the consuming force of Odium.  This one detail really irks me about the book, which I think is the weakest in the series.   It undermines and cheapens this great calamity.  Oppression, Enmity, Contempt, Pride/Hubris, or even Storm would have been better.  

Not sure why you think retribution is petty it’s the same as saying, revenge or judgment. But even if it is, it makes sense for the shard odium means hatred because of a fault, honor means consistency order. Combined them to together you would have retribution or something similar perhaps wrath could also be a choice

[Ripheus23]

Think of the difference between philosophical theories of restorative vs. retributive justice. I think that's one of the fundamental bases of Sanderson's word choice in this case, and could be a build-up towards a tri-Shard of Damnation (if Retribution absorbs Dominion (a difficult task, for it would require filtering Dominion's tones and Light out of the plasmatic mass of the Dor) or Ambition, perhaps, if not both!).

So it also hearkens back to Stephen R. Donaldson's dichotomy of redemption and punishment as spelled out via the "restoration vs. retribution" dialectic at the end of The Last Dark and reflected throughout the preceding Covenant novels in various ways, some of which we know that Sanderson is familiar with in turn.

[ConfusedCow]

12 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

Not sure why you think retribution is petty it’s the same as saying, revenge or judgment. 

          Retribution has the word tribute in it, a payment that's due.  To me it has a transactional quality.  You hurt me this much so now I have to hurt you the same.  As Ripheus23 points out, a system of justice based on retribution is particularly cruel and ineffective.  I hope we agree that an eye for an eye is not justice.  Revenge by contrast is more of a feeling than a principle.  Revenge may be violent and pointless, but it has a kind of honesty to it.  The person seeking revenge isn't trying to get justice or a balance a ledger, they're  acting out of pain and loss.  

            Honor isn't about a consistent set of rules.  Nale is wrong.  I think Honor is mostly about being bigger than yourself and your own needs.  Which is the exact opposite of retribution.  

 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

28 minutes ago, ConfusedCow said:

As Ripheus23 points out, a system of justice based on retribution is particularly cruel and ineffective.  I hope we agree that an eye for an eye is not justice.  Revenge by contrast is more of a feeling than a principle.  Revenge may be violent and pointless, but it has a kind of honesty to it.  The person seeking revenge isn't trying to get justice or a balance a ledger, they're  acting out of pain and loss. 

No, we do not agree. An eye for an eye is justice. As a form of justice to be practiced in a community it has obvious disadvantages. But it has these disadvantages precisely because it elevates justice above everything else. That is the very point why Shards are a problem. They set their Intent above everything else. "God's divine wrath without anything tempering it" (from memory). Odium is necessary. Retribution is necessary.

That is also true for justice. Sometimes you have to tolerate injustice for practical reasons. But that does not change the principle that an eye for an eye is the closest you can get to justice. That goes both ways by the way. You don't mutilate people although they would deserve it, but you also at some point decide that a career criminal shall not live among the general populace and lock them up for life for any crime.

[AlmightyGir]

5 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

No, we do not agree. An eye for an eye is justice. As a form of justice to be practiced in a community it has obvious disadvantages. But it has these disadvantages precisely because it elevates justice above everything else. That is the very point why Shards are a problem. They set their Intent above everything else. "God's divine wrath without anything tempering it" (from memory). Odium is necessary. Retribution is necessary.

That is also true for justice. Sometimes you have to tolerate injustice for practical reasons. But that does not change the principle that an eye for an eye is the closest you can get to justice. That goes both ways by the way. You don't mutilate people although they would deserve it, but you also at some point decide that a career criminal shall not live among the general populace and lock them up for life for any crime.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. While you could see it as a form of justice, it isn't fair, and more importantly, it's an emotional response.

That's what Retribution is. Emotionally charged justice.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

47 minutes ago, AlmightyGir said:

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

It is impractical. That is the reason it isn't used. Nale does explain this to Lift.

That it would leave the world blind, however, is not based on logic. By that reasoning locking up people for crimes would end up with everybody in prison.

48 minutes ago, AlmightyGir said:

While you could see it as a form of justice, it isn't fair,

It absolutely is fair. You could say that it is too mild, because the one who breaks a rule needs to suffer more than the one who is harmed. But if the punishment for the crime is milder than the consequence of the crime, you do not have justice.

52 minutes ago, AlmightyGir said:

 it's an emotional response.

That's what Retribution is. Emotionally charged justice.

Any form of justice is based on emotion. From a practical perspective in most cases prosecuting or even reporting a crime is not worth the effort. We do it to shore up our reputation. For this to work we need to become angry to act in an irrational manner.

Now, yes, to be just we need punishments based on the severity of the crime. The worse the crime, the crueler the punishment. That is why it is Retribution, not Revenge. Revenge is a passion. You do as much as you can to those you are angry about. This works to shore up your reputation. For the community this is problematic, as it removes the incentive to moderate criminal activities.

[AlmightyGir]

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

It is impractical. That is the reason it isn't used. Nale does explain this to Lift.

That it would leave the world blind, however, is not based on logic. By that reasoning locking up people for crimes would end up with everybody in prison.

I think you're misunderstanding the point of that quote.

And eye for an eye means that if you cut someone, they can cut you. If you take their cow, they get their cow back and get one of yours. If you murder someone, their family gets to murder you.

The quote indicates that, if you continue down that path, everyone just kills everyone else in the end, it escalates.

The purpose of a judicial system, involving juries and trials, etc. Is that the victim is removed from the process of administering justice, and a person or group of people who have no personal stake in the outcome do it instead, thereby removing (as much as humanly possible) emotion from the process.

[bmcclure7]

1 hour ago, AlmightyGir said:

I think you're misunderstanding the point of that quote.

And eye for an eye means that if you cut someone, they can cut you. If you take their cow, they get their cow back and get one of yours. If you murder someone, their family gets to murder you.

The quote indicates that, if you continue down that path, everyone just kills everyone else in the end, it escalates.

The purpose of a judicial system, involving juries and trials, etc. Is that the victim is removed from the process of administering justice, and a person or group of people who have no personal stake in the outcome do it instead, thereby removing (as much as humanly possible) emotion from the process.

 

don’t mistake Justice system for justice. Justice system often balances Justice with other more hedonistic (that’s philosophical hedonism not the common kind) virtues sush as mercy, forgiveness, and redemption.  Non other these have anything to do with justice.

justice is simply the understanding that those who do good deserve good and those who do bad deserve dad. 
 

as for emotion no moral system can complete be separate from emotion since morality produces emotional responses but of course that doesn’t mean that it’s only emotion response of course but emotion we always be a factor.

 

9 hours ago, ConfusedCow said:

          Retribution has the word tribute in it, a payment that's due.  To me it has a transactional quality.  You hurt me this much so now I have to hurt you the same.  As Ripheus23 points out, a system of justice based on retribution is particularly cruel and ineffective.  I hope we agree that an eye for an eye is not justice.  Revenge by contrast is more of a feeling than a principle.  Revenge may be violent and pointless, but it has a kind of honesty to it.  The person seeking revenge isn't trying to get justice or a balance a ledger, they're  acting out of pain and loss.  

            Honor isn't about a consistent set of rules.  Nale is wrong.  I think Honor is mostly about being bigger than yourself and your own needs.  Which is the exact opposite of retribution.  

 

Eye for eye literally is Justice by definition . Is it cruel yes but justice is cruel sometimes 

 

Revenge is Just with out regarding balance or fairness odium without honor. 

Edited March 16, 2025 by bmcclure7

[Ashbringer he/him]

4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Any form of justice is based on emotion.

Waves vaguely in Nale

(Not as much Justice as Law, but still)

[+Oltux72 he/him]

9 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

Waves vaguely in Nale

(Not as much Justice as Law, but still)

You are showing an example of emotion. Nale has sworn on his honor to uphold the law. If you want an example of a rational actor, look at Batar.

[Ashbringer he/him]

5 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

You are showing an example of emotion. Nale has sworn on his honor to uphold the law. If you want an example of a rational actor, look at Batar.

… I don’t quite follow?

Waves even more vaguely in Battar