dawnshard CREM Operations Theory of Dawnshards [Discuss]

[PanLin they/he]

EDIT: This theory's out of date; I've made a newer, more robust one here

 

What's one more Dawnshard theory between friends?

tl;dr (because I do ramble a bit):

My theory is that the four Dawnshards operate on 2 axes, each a core component of what it means to exist in the Cosmere: Connection (Merge vs Change ) and Identity (Exist vs Reduce ). There is no inherent morality, only applications of the Commands. The contextual applications of the Commands each gives rise to four Shardic Intents:

Change: Decrease Connection: Autonomy, Invention, Valor, Reason

Reduce: Decrease Identity: Mercy, Ruin, Whimsy, Odium

Exist: Maintain Identity: Ambition, Endowment, Preservation, Honor

Merge: Increase Connection: Virtuosity, Dominion, Devotion, Cultivation

The average CRUD fan

Anyway, the theory. One type of theory I really resonated with was trying to map the CRUD operations of data management: Create, Read, Update, Destroy. It's neat, it has relevance in the real world, and the nicely formatted data structures work well with the super hard magic systems Sanderson loves to develop. We even have two confirmed names: Exist (read) and Change (update).

However, 'create' feels like it's on the realm of Adonalsium themself, not the individual Shards. Preservation and Ruin had to work together to create, which may be unique to them, or may imply that individual Shards lack the power/command to truly create. I'm inclined to believe that it's a mixture the two, seeing as Scadrial (and its people) is the only planet confirmed to have been created from scratch by Shards. Either way, if 'create' isn't quite there, then its natural opposite 'destroy' can't quite exist in that form either. Also, what does it actually mean to create and destroy things, especially in a reality where we know nothing is truly created from scratch or entirely destroyed.

 

The average CREM enjoyer

My current theory is that the four Dawnshards can be considered as the CREM operations of the Cosmere, much like the CRUD theories that inspired this.

To adapt a quote from the actual Dawnshard book, they can be considered as the will of a god to...

remake things, to demand they be better. The power to CHANGE.

splinter things, to continue the flow of both entropy and time. The power to REDUCE.

protect things, to bring order and enforce stasis. The power to EXIST.

unite things, to increase connection between all things. The power to MERGE.

 

You may disagree on the specific names for Reduce and Merge, and that's ok, variety is the spice of life, but gosh darn it I really wanted to make CREM work. Sue me. I do think the concepts hold, whatever you want to call them:

REDUCE / split / break / fragment (also 'feel' but not really)

MERGE / bind / unite / connect

However you name them, I really feel like these better describe the essential Commands behind each Intent. None of the Shards essentially create, or even destroy (for example, Ruin increases entropy, an example of REDUCING something). I also know there are popular theories around having FEEL and/or THINK as Dawnshards. I kind of get it and wouldn't be disappointed if that were true, but they just don't have the same essential impetus than the ones I've arrived at. If you must, you can map CRUD to those consciousness-related ones as follows:

• Change: Think
• Reduce: Feel
• Exist: Act
• Merge: Bind

Once I had these, I tried to work out how they fit in with each other. It seems natural (and following the mural Risn saw) to assume four quadrants, which each get split a further four times. This would give each Dawnshard two neighbours and one opposite.

For a while, I had EXIST and CHANGE as opposites (this was when I was matching it to the original CRUD theories more closely, with Make and Remove as the other two letters to satisfy my ridiculous need to have CREM as the abbreviation) in order to make sure Preservation and Ruin stayed perfectly opposed to each other, but it made everything else trickier to sort of squeeze in around them.

(splitting into parts because, as I said, I ramble)
 

The what and the why

The breakthrough was in re-remembering that the Dawnshards are Commands, and the Shards are Intents. This means we can view each Dawnshard as what each Shard does in a very stripped back, context-free way, and the Shardic Intent is why each Shard does that.

After that, I tried to think about what the Dawnshards actually mean in Cosmere terms, and came to the following conclusion:

To EXIST is to maintain Identity.

• To protect an oath, or hold onto one's own sense of self; to survive and defend.

To MERGE is to increase Connection.

• To unlock potential, or find meaning in one's relation to others; to grow and bind.

To CHANGE is to decrease Connection.

• To challenge authority, or rationalise a harsh but utilitarian path; to rupture and question.

To REDUCE is to decrease Identity.

• To sacrifice for others, or lose oneself to their whims and desires; to fragment and weaken.

  

There is a natural push and pull between the axis here, too—Identity and Connection aren't opposed, but if you dedicate yourself to one fully, you will naturally weaken your sense of the other. This is also why Investiture and Fortune aren't here; they are core forces, but you can't really dedicate yourself to being lucky (Hoid might disagree), and the pursuit of more investiture is always going to be a pursuit of either power (stronger Identity) or spiritual Connection.

For example, Preservation and Honor both follow the command to Exist (well, they did, and kind of still do if you stretch your definition of 'exist'), but for different Intents: Preservation acts to survive and protect the self at all costs in order to maintain pure stasis; while Honor binds itself to others through oaths in order to enforce law and order above all else as a way to keep the world stable.

(This also satisfies the condition that one Dawnshard is different, in two different ways: either Exist maintains, where the other three modify; or Reduce is a temporal/hybrid Dawnshard, where the other three map nicely to the three realms)

  

Identity? In my Dawnshard?

It's more likely than you think.

I've seen a lot of discussion around the idea of existing as just this passive state rather than a force, but that never struck me as suitable for a Command. Preservation, the most Exist-y a Shard can get, actively put plans in place in order to bring Scadrial away from Ruin and toward his ideal stasis. He also absolutely adored the Lord Ruler, purely because of the way Rashek actively maintained his life, rule and identity as a stable, consistent ruler, even though the guy was constantly enacting Change and Reduce all over the place.

Exist isn't about stasis (although Preservation might be), it's about keeping Identity (whether of a physical, cognitive, or spiritual self, or of a system) intact and ordered, diametrically opposed to the loss/sacrifice of Identity or the chaos of shards like Whimsy and Ruin.

I'll go into more detail with each individual Shard, but quickly on emotions, Identity and Odium (I predict some pushback on this part): Sometimes it may feel like Odium strengthens others' sense of Identity by numbing or amplifying their emotions. My counter to that is that emotions are both a core part of someone's Identity, and a feature of conscious life that reduces one's sense of self (or ego, without relying too much on Freud here) if they get too out of hand (as someone with clinical depression, I understand what it means to feel no emotions as well as too many; I will die on this hill). Odium either removes emotion to psychopathic levels or amplifies emotion to self-destructive levels; both of those threaten Identity, they don't strengthen it.

It's also worth remembering here that Shardic Intent doesn't necessarily map nicely to a mortal human's understanding of each word. Each Intent is also shaped by its vessel and current circumstances. My mappings here try to imagine what different applications of each Command might lead to philosophically and then finding the Shard that fits that definition best, rather than trying to retrofit the Shards into four categories first, with the assumption that the Intents of the 16 vessels unintentionally warped the Shards themselves away from a perfect web with perfect symmetry and perfect opposites.

 

We know from WoB that Preservation/Ruin is the only true opposite pair, but the CREM theory accounts for that. As far as we know, Adonalsium was split into 16 parts of roughly equal power, so it stands to reason that the Intents were also roughly equal.

In a perfect world, with perfectly aligned Intents among the killers of Adonalsium, I suspect the Intent would have been perfectly split 16 ways and we'd have ended up with 8 perfectly opposed pairs. As it actually happened, the split ended up being balanced overall, with drift introduced to each Shard's exact placing based on their Intent and each vessel's influence. Sure, there's only one 'true' pair, but I posit that that's because 14 of the Shards have wobbled a bit from the ideal cardinal points, rather than them just being 14 random aspects of the universe with no relation to each other.

Look, the Shards were essentially a bunch of fallible mortals (well, the humans were, at least) with their own desires each holding a piece of broken divinity that they carved out using a barely understood god-killing weapon that (as far as we know) was immediately separated and hasn't been used since—I'd be more surprised if the grid were perfectly balanced.

  

Dude, where's my Shards?

Yes, yes, I'm getting there. The final piece was how to fit each group of four shards into each Dawnshard. Do we split them by the four Dawnshards again, as I've seen in some theories? Preservation is a perfect candidate for Exist/Exist. It's certainly a pleasing way to imagine 4 sets of 4, and sort of fits the mural Risn saw, although that diagram only had the four quarters splitting further, it didn't explicitly show the original four quarters resplitting each other.

But then, partially inspired by my most recent reread of Secret History, I was reminded that Preservation intentionally set up 16 allomantic metals as a symbol of or reference to divinity. Surely that's not a coincidence. I decided to give each Dawnshard a group of four unique combos of pull/push and internal/external, and the rest just fell into place.

Well, Valor had me stumped for a while, but we know very little about her so I'll let her off.

For the below summary, it's worth defining the terms we're using:

Internal: affects the self or an internal system

External: affects others or an external system

Pull: implies movement away from the target and toward the self

Push: implies movement away from the self and toward the target

  

There's also a soft leaning that Push Shards tend to be more active and cause things, where Pull Shards tend to be more passive/guiding and allow/encourage things (for anyone who remembers Homestuck, it struck me while writing this bit how similar this ended up being to the active/passive class distinctions in, for example, Thief/Rogue and Lord/Muse).

For example, Dominion is a Shard whose intent is to build empires and lead them by force as a dictator, which we know from the Shu-Dereth religion: Unity of all mankind under the rule of one nation.

It is categorised here as Merge, external, push because:

• It increases connection (Merge)
• It forces that greater Connection on an external system (external)
• It's characterised by motion away from the dictator onto the empire (push)

If the motion of Connection were from others to the self, it would be Cultivation (encouraging growth for a system by carefully Connecting oneself to that system in a careful pattern of manipulation).

If it brought Connection to the self, it would be Virtuosity (enhancing one's own Connection in order to perfect and stabilise (side note, if Virtuosity and Dominion were to merge (unlikely), it would be Discipline)). "But Pan, that sounds like an increase in or manifestation of Identity". Great challenge, thank you, but the Exist/internal/push Shard is Ambition, which much better fits a description of personal Identity.

Dominion binds others; Cultivation connects other to itself; Virtuosity binds the self; Ambition empowers the self.

Again, these definitions aren't perfect, but that's because we're not working with a perfect system. We're mapping each slot to what it should have been if it hadn't been warped by all the circumstances I listed above.

  

Get to the point

CHANGE (decrease Connection)

Internal push: Autonomy (prioritise independence over the collective)
External push: Invention (enact change by creating new things and questioning old ones)
Internal pull: Valor (stand up and do the right thing even in the face of an opposed majority)
External pull: Reason (detach the self first and rationalise others to adopt that detachment)

REDUCE (decrease Identity)

Internal push: Mercy (super straightforward: sacrifice the self in place of others)
External push: Ruin (hasten and enforce entropy and decay on the world)
Internal pull: Whimsy (lose oneself in whims and emotions)
External pull: Odium (encourage others to abandon Identity in favour of emotional void or excess)

EXIST (maintain Identity)

Internal push: Ambition (manifest one's own sense of self)
External push: Endowment (empower others to strengthen their Identity)
Internal pull: Preservation (keeping oneself in a state of pure stasis)
External pull: Honor (holding others to the rules and oaths they make)

MERGE (increase Connection)

Internal push: Virtuosity (control and bind the self to a singular purpose)
External push: Dominion (impose connection and cohesion through force)
Internal pull: Devotion (strongly connect others to oneself)
External pull: Cultivation (manipulate others to achieve growth (according to her own definition of it))

  

Conclusion

Visualising it like this brings up a bunch of assorted but interesting observations:

External shards do for others what Internal shards do for the self (Ambition empowers the self, Endowment empowers others)

Pull shards imply direction toward the shard, and Push shards imply direction away (Dominion pushes Connection on others, Cultivation invites Connection with herself)

While none quite fit as neatly as Preservation and Ruin, there are strong thematic opposites:

• Ambition (Exist, internal, push) and Odium (Reduce, external, pull). It's not as clean a complement as Preservation/Ruin, but there's absolutely a tension there between increasing one's own Identity against controlling others' Identities
• Dominion (Merge, external, push) and Valor (Change, internal pull). Obviously we know comparatively little about Valor, but dang if that pairing doesn't feel thematically satisfying
• Honor (Exist, external, pull) and Mercy (reduce, internal, push). "The law must be followed with no exceptions" (basically where Nail was for a long time) versus "I will sacrifice rules I previously held sacred in order to help you avoid a loss of Identity"

Because we've laid it out like this, some of the allomantic matches are spot on (Ambition (Exist, internal, push) to Pewter (Physical, internal, push)). Not all of them are perfect (not sure how thematically matched Cultivation and A-Chromium are), but I don't know whether to read too much into that. After all, the metals themselves don't fully match thematically across the three metallic arts

Honor, Cultivation and Odium all ended up as external pull Shards, which wasn't intentional, but Roshar has suffered from an awful lot of manipulation from those pesky meddlers

 

All of that said, this obviously isn't perfect and I've been working on it in the echo chamber that is my own head, so I'd welcome any criticism or questions.

Edited March 10 by PanLin

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, PanLin said:

However, 'create' feels like it's on the realm of Adonalsium themself, not the individual Shards. Preservation and Ruin had to work together to create, which may be unique to them, or may imply that individual Shards lack the power/command to truly create. I'm inclined to believe that it's a mixture the two, seeing as Scadrial (and its people) is the only planet confirmed to have been created from scratch by Shards. Either way, if 'create' isn't quite there, then its natural opposite 'destroy' can't quite exist in that form either. Also, what does it actually mean to create and destroy things, especially in a reality where we know nothing is truly created from scratch or entirely destroyed.

A few Shards could create like Ruin and Preservation could all on their own, but most could do it with the help of one other Shard.

Some would need a third Shard.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/538-fanx-2024/#e16683

Questioner

My question is about Ruin and Preservation creating life. Is that an example of two individuals having a super team up? Or is there some co-influence, cross-influence that let them do something that would be outside of themselves?

Brandon Sanderson

Rephrase that for me. Talk around a little bit. Let me see if I'm gonna get the right answer, okay?

Questioner

Ruin ruins, and Preservation preserves. If they're creating life, well, that takes a little of everything, right? Is that an influence, like Ruin being in proximity to Preservation and vice versa? Would their co-mingling happen... and how would that influence other dual or triple Shards?

Brandon Sanderson

I get what you're saying. Each of the Shards has certain strengths and weaknesses, and they're capable of certain things and not other things. Some of them can do what was done by Ruin and Preservation on their own. Most cannot. Most combinations of two could; some would need three. So, it really kind of depends on the situation and the Shard. Each pairing and grouping of Shards will have different sort of augmentations to what they can accomplish, and things like this, because the Shards aren't all-powerful, they're just part of something that once was, if that makes sense. (That's not how math works in infinity, but it is how infinity works in the cosmere.)

 

[PanLin they/he]

7 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

A few Shards could create like Ruin and Preservation could all on their own, but most could do it with the help of one other Shard.

Ah dangit.

Still, if the four Dawnshards were used together by Adonalsium to create all things, I really doubt one fragment of that will straight up be CREATE.

[Trusk'our he/him]

4 hours ago, PanLin said:

Ah dangit.

Still, if the four Dawnshards were used together by Adonalsium to create all things, I really doubt one fragment of that will straight up be CREATE.

Personally, I kind of doubt it too.

Change and Exist feel like they'd make Create, but that leaves two remaining Dawnshard Intents.

I've toyed briefly with the idea they may be Feel and Think, though it's a pretty loose framework and it hinges on Dawnshards each aligning with 4 of the Shards' Intents. 

[PanLin they/he]

7 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I've toyed briefly with the idea they may be Feel and Think

Yeah I've seen this too, but I really don't think we'd get both. I could see Feel for my current Reduce quadrant, and I've seen some compelling arguments for Unite (or Merge in my example) for the final one.

 

10 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Change and Exist feel like they'd make Create, but that leaves two remaining Dawnshard Intents.

Mayyyybe, but again, the four together were used to Create everything. Unless any combination of one increasing and one decreasing Dawnshard results in the same? Like four different flavours of creation, as it were, but all four Dawnshards need to be brought together for true, universe-level creation that one might ascribe to an actual God.

Exist + Reduce = physical creation

Exist + Change = cognitive creation

Merge + Reduce = emotional creation

Merge + Change = spiritual creation

So then we end up with four sort of emergent abilities. I don't know how coherent or relevant this line of thinking is, considering I should be in bed, but it tracks that Preservation (Exist) and Ruin (Reduce) could only create the physical world of Scadrial. Preservation had to splinter his power to directly imbue the people with thought and feeling; neither of them were able to create it:

Quote

Preservation's desire to create sentient life was what eventually broke the stalemate. In order to give mankind awareness and independent thought, Preservation knew that he would have to give up part of himself—his own soul—to dwell within mankind. This would leave him just a tiny bit weaker than his opposite, Ruin.

Like, it's not a case of "only specific tools can create", it's more "if you have the power and Intent, you can do it, but the tools you use will influence what and how"

[Nitpicking]

Orthogonally, how about "Fate" and "Free Will"?

The Cosmere does seem to have a real tension between future prediction and unpredictability.

[PanLin they/he]

3 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Orthogonally, how about "Fate" and "Free Will"?

I mean, Fate is a tricky one—even the most powerful entities can't see a single path laid out before them. It could be related to Destiny though!

In fact, I would actually suggest that Fate/Destiny is a form of temporal Connection. A sort of affinity that pulls your soul toward certain futures based on how Connected or aligned with them you are. I don't know how much that starts to interfere with Fortune.

As for Free Will, that's pretty much covered with my reading of Exist as the urge to maintain one's Identity

3 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

The Cosmere does seem to have a real tension between future prediction and unpredictability.

I agree, but the more I think about this, the more I feel like so much of the Cosmere boils down to the interplay between Identity and Connection.

[PanLin they/he]

On 2/15/2026 at 3:20 PM, Nitpicking said:

Orthogonally, how about "Fate" and "Free Will"?

The Cosmere does seem to have a real tension between future prediction and unpredictability.

This sent me on a whole rabbit hole, and I think you might actually be onto something. Thanks!

On 2/15/2026 at 6:58 PM, PanLin said:

In fact, I would actually suggest that Fate/Destiny is a form of temporal Connection. A sort of affinity that pulls your soul toward certain futures based on how Connected or aligned with them you are. I don't know how much that starts to interfere with Fortune

I've changed my mind. I think Fate/Destiny is exactly Fortune. As Hoid has said, it's something he uses to guide him toward where he's meant to be.

(Please excuse me, I love a good spreadsheet)

So instead of having only two axes, and have two of the Commands be decreases of something, I tried to imagine them all as increases. After all, they are powers of creation.

Change: Instead of reducing Connection, this increases Fortune

Reduce: Instead of reducing Identity, this increases Entropy

It still fits the same quadrants, I've just sort of shifted my perspective on the purpose of each one. It also fits super well with the methods by which each Shard grants access to its Invested Art(s).

This even further satisfies the idea that one Dawnshard is a bit different to the others: Identity, Connection and Fortune are core elements of conscious existence; Entropy is not.

Edited February 16 by PanLin

[a Bookwyrm]

I would note that Autonomy's god metal acts in a similar manner to Allomatic Copper on a shardic scale, especially when used as a hemalurgic spike (it hides the bearer from the sight of Shards).

[PanLin they/he]

On 2/16/2026 at 10:20 PM, a Bookwyrm said:

I would note that Autonomy's god metal acts in a similar manner to Allomatic Copper on a shardic scale, especially when used as a hemalurgic spike (it hides the bearer from the sight of Shards).

It sure does! While the parallel is there, A-copper is only a cognitive effect, similar to the cloaking aviar on Patji.

Trellium goes beyond that; it repels Investiture, can split god metals, and hides spiked people spiritually as well as cognitively, maintaining a Connection only to other entities invested with Autonomy. Just like Autonomy itself, that sounds like a perfect rejection of Connection in favour of Fortune.