king of nowhere Posted June 22, 2012 Posted June 22, 2012 A major plot point of book 2 was that the prophecies were manipulated by ruin. But, at the end of book 3, the phrophecies (the real ones, not the modified version) end up fitting sazed. On the annotations is mentioned that the first prophecies came from preservation, who gave some generic prophecies like "in the end all will go well". As far as I know, no one in the cosmere ccan see the future: Sazed said something about it becoming more blurred the fartes in the future you go. Preservation had schemes in motion, but he certainly had no way of guessing that sazed would have been an eunuch, or that he would bring copperminds on his arms or stuff like that. So how did the prophecies ended up describing saze perfectly? How did they happen to be right? My best explanation so far is a coincidence, but don't seem a good one.
Eric Posted June 23, 2012 Posted June 23, 2012 Warning: Speculation follows. Self-fulfilling prophecy. In the same way Ruin tried to make them fit Alendi, Preservation tried to make someone who would fit them, and the Slivers were subconsciously guided by the power to make sure it could happen when needed. The Worldbringers and the Keepers after them were manipulated en masse to make sure there was always someone who could do it when the time came. Viewed this way, much of what Rashek did, including the atrocities, becomes necessary for the good of the world. I like it because it makes Rashek an anti-hero. YMMV. 1
Triasmus Posted June 23, 2012 Posted June 23, 2012 Shards can see the future. Honor talks about Cultivation being better at it than him. Endowment shows visions of the future to at least some of the Returned. Burning atium (essence of a Shard) lets one see into the future (admittedly not very far). Sazed just might not be the most awesomest future sighter person (or he just hasn't practiced enough ). 1
Aeshdan he/him Posted June 23, 2012 Posted June 23, 2012 Shards can see the future. Burning atium (essence of a Shard) lets one see into the future (admittedly not very far). +1 for pointing out the connect between atium and futuresight.
king of nowhere Posted June 23, 2012 Author Posted June 23, 2012 +1 for pointing out the connect between atium and futuresight. Yes, I can see that, but one thing is seeing a few seconds ahead, another is seeing thousands of years. Even (was endowment the one of warbreaker?) could only see for a few years. And it was uncertain: if i remember correctly, Lightsong was told that "he may have a chance of preventing the war" when he was offered the chance of returning, and I take it that even the shard was not sure. Preservation gave his prophecies hundreds, or maybe thousands, of years before rashek was born. I always thought that future in the cosmere is not set. You can predict the near future based on your knowledge, and a shard has a much greater knowledge and intellect that a person so would be able to make much better predictions, but in the end future is uncertain because there's too much random stuff piling up in the long run. If preservation knew exactly what was going to happen, it means that the future is already written, and I'm not sure I like the implications for the books.
Morsk he/him Posted June 24, 2012 Posted June 24, 2012 There's this Shardic Future Sight theory that suggests Preservation's prophecies are the extreme high-end of what shardic future sight can do, because the Intent of Preservation is very forward-thinking. (The link goes to General Theories, which has spoilers for the whole cosmere since it uses examples from all books.) I find the prophecies less bothersome if only 1 of 16 Shards is able to do this. Preservation is a pretty boring intent anyway, and it wasn't even able to create a world without Ruin's help. It's almost a consolation prize that it has this one, really powerful ability.
Triasmus Posted June 25, 2012 Posted June 25, 2012 +1 for pointing out the connect between atium and futuresight. There's a chance that the only reason I was able to point that out is because I read it somewhere.... (Maybe the shardic future sight theory) A piece of atium is such a small amount of the power/body of Ruin that it'd make sense for a full Shard (Ruin really doesn't count during mistborn because he doesn't have most of his power) to see a fair distance into the future with basic 100%-ness. Getting 1000s of years into the future starts to make it really difficult (or just 100s). And then it would make sense that Preservation Could see a lot better than Ruin because Ruin ended up getting trapped (chess game. Ruin likely saw that he was gonna get trapped hundreds of years before he finally was, but there was nothing he could do to stop it) and Preservation was able to make pretty accurate prophecies. I feel like I lost where I was going... Oh. and Duralumin + atium allowed Elend to see the end result of his actions (or close enough).
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