16 Shards

[Youngy]

So I spotted the following in the Q&A with Brandon Sanderson topic, and kind of ran a bit with it... Grouping the Shards in my head. Just going to throw it out there to see what people think...

 

Quote

2) In the Mistborn trilogy, the base 16 Allomantic metals separate into different groups like the Enhancement metals, etc. Given that there are 16 Shards, do they also separate into different groupings as well? For instance, are Shards like Honor and Devotion part of one 'grouping', with Shards like Cultivation and Endowment part of another?

Good question.

...

RAFO

 

Groupings:

Like with the Allomantic Metals, I have grouped the Shards in several different ways. Four categories, three of which I am content with, Internal and External... and I am missing the fourth kind of grouping... but it works like this..

 

Internal/External:

Internal Shards: These are generally characteristics that people show, or about the self. Examples of this would be Honour or Survival (one of the Shards just wants to survive, was something Sanderson said).

 

External Shards: These are about doing things to others. Odium, Dominion, Endowment, Preservation are all about the other.

 

The Four Categories:

Growth: These are all about creation and destruction. Ruin and Cultivation are perfect examples of this, destroying other things, or prompting other things to grow.

 

Emotion: These are all about the base emotions currently. Odium and Devotion are perfect examples of this, hating others or loving others.

 

Control: These are about control... Or lack of maybe. Dominion, the control of others... and possibly Honour, the control of self (not certain, it doesn't quite fit the bill)

 

I am unsure how to label the last category, but its about either keeping things as they are, or changing them through give/take...

 

The Last Division:

I am unsure how else to divide them... But it does seem like there is a selfless and a non-selfless split. Giving compared to keeping. Hating compared to loving. Destroying compared to creating. Lack of control instead of control.
 

See the attached file for the current image.

 

Anyway, would certainly be glad to hear what you think about it.

 

Youngy.

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2013 by Youngy

[Kurkistan]

Interesting.

 

...

 

RAFO.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Pechvarry]

The self-destruction shard could work pretty well with the theory on the front page about Hoid being a former shard... a rock that became useless for his wearing it.

[WeiryWriter]

You might find this thread useful, it is another thread that proposes allomantic style groupings for the Shards.

 

As I mention in the other thread, I would find it very unlikely that the Shards would use a grouping similiar to allomancy, mostly based on this question.  The allomantic groupings were ascribed to them by scholars, and so are not inherent characteristics.  I could see Shards being grouped "allomantically" if those groupings were inherent (though I would be kind of disappointed by it) but I find it much more likely that Shards are grouped in some new manner we do not know yet.

 

Nice theory though, liked the visual.

[Youngy]

The Allomantic metals are separated into four quadrants. Do the Shards have classifications as well, in groups of four?

BRANDON SANDERSON

This division, the Allomantic division is a thing researchers and scholars placed upon it.

Yet, the way they have been grouped really does seem the most logical straight forward method of categorization them. Is what he was implying here that the powers weren't necessarily formed that way? That they just fell out like that rather than breaking apart nicely?

 

Or was he implying that although this lot came out that way, there was no real underlying concept why they should.

 

I don't know, the big thing that stands out to me about the Shardic Intents is that there are several clear opposites.

 

Devotion - Odium

 

Cultivation - Ruin 

(Although I would really like to know whether Cultivation implies just growth or rather giving something and then having it grow)

 

The whole Preservation-Ruin duality never struck me as right. They're not opposites... Preservation is just an inaction. Maybe change would make a better opposite to it..

 

 

 

The other thing that struck me, and still does is the 

 

Preservation - "One that just wants to survive."

 

relationship. Maybe I am seeing things that aren't really there, but survival does seem very 'Self-Preservation.' I guess the big problem is that we wont discover any new Shards until we see new Shardworlds (or we get some more nice information like The Letter).

 

 

And the other thread is certainly interesting. I'd never considered grouping them as Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual, Temporal. I did try for a 

 

Devotion - Apathy - Odium

Cultivation - Preservation - Ruin

 

style of grouping, but the problem is that threes don't go into 16 nicely.

[Senor Feesh]

Preservation isn't simply inaction; if I take no action then Entropy ensures things will change. Preservation requires effort to protect and preserve things the way they are.

 

Also, the intent isn't self-preservation - the Shard wants to preserve others.

 

Josh

Is Preservation is a force of stability?

[Eric's note: Sorry, this is my bad. I emailed Josh these questions and um, I clearly did not complete my sentence... Now it's just a stupid question. Oops.]

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it's unchangingness. It's the opposite of Ruin.

source

 

 

Eric Lake ()

It's a little odd that Preservation would inherently give up its power to fuel Allomancy, because you'd think he would preserve himself, you know? Does that make sense?

Brandon Sanderson

Preservation, as a Shard, is about preserving life, people, and the like. Not about self. No more than Ruin is about destroying self, or Cultivation is about growing herself.

source

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Cultivation - Ruin 

(Although I would really like to know whether Cultivation implies just growth or rather giving something and then having it grow)

Actually, Ruin and Cultivation aren't opposites at all.  They're a very compatible pair.

 

NEPENE:

Would Ruin be more compatible with Rayse, would he pick up that shard had he visited Scadrial and shattered him? All the shards we have seen that he has shattered seem rather different in intent than him- Honor, Cultivation, Love, Dominion. But Ruin seems more in line with Odium. Rayse has ruined the days of quite a few people.[/size]

 

BRANDON:

Technically, Ruin would be most compatible with Cultivation. Ruin's 'theme' so to speak is that all things must age and pass. An embodiment of entropy. That power, separated from the whole and being held by a person who did not have the willpower to resist its transformation of him, led to something very dangerous. But it was not evil. None of the sixteen technically are, though you may have read that Hoid has specific beef with Rayse. Whether you think of Odium as evil depends upon how much you agree with Hoid's particular view.

That said, Ruin would have been one of the 'safer' of the sixteen for Rayse to take, if he'd been about that. Odium is by its nature selfish, however, and the combination of it and Rayse makes for an entity that fears an additional power would destroy it and make it into something else.

[Kurkistan]

It's also of note that the Allomantic divisions of the metals is partially based on how they "feel" to Seekers. When Marsh is tutoring Vin, he says that you can identify Internal/External, Mental/Physical, and Pulling/Pushing based on various attributes of the pulses. The combination of these attributes is how you nail down a specific metal (IIRC, it's fast vs slow, long vs short, and <I can't remember>). He even says that this was used as part of the basis for why Tin is known as a Pulling metal. So there is definitely something right about the metal's division, even just using in-universe evidence.

Edited June 14, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Yeah, but I don't see any particular reason why the allomantic divisions should be more important than the hemalurgic or feruchemic distributions of sixteen. 

[Kurkistan]

It tells us that there are real, fundamental connections and relationships between the Allomantic powers. You're right that, for all we know, the metals might break down differently for any given magic system. I doubt it, though, given the rather accurate Realmatic division along the same (in groups of 4) lines that Feruchemy achieves. Mostly, though, I was just replying to WeiryWriter's "[t]he allomantic groupings were ascribed to them by scholars, and so are not inherent characteristics" point.

[Youngy]

Preservation isn't simply inaction; if I take no action then Entropy ensures things will change. Preservation requires effort to protect and preserve things the way they are.

 

Also, the intent isn't self-preservation - the Shard wants to preserve others.

Sorry, I was referring to the shard that Brandon said 'Just wants to survive', rather than Preservation's intent. I meant the intent of this other shard.

 

Ruin compatible with Cultivation? What are the current thoughts on the intent of Cultivation though? Is it not to grow something through effort? Which really seems almost the reversal of Ruin's entropy-like intent.

[ROSHtafARian]

Compatible doesn't mean similar.  It means they complement each other in some way.  As Brandon described in the above linked quote, stripped of moral relativity, Ruin's intent is entropy, that there is a natural end or conclusion to all things.  Cultivation's intent is complementary, in that it grows or evolves things as far as possible, at which point entropy sets in.  Cultivation isn't a perfect opposite to Ruin like Preservation is, rather, Cultivation and Ruin are part of the same life cycle, one follows the other.  You cultivate a garden to fruition, at which point it must inevitably wither and die, so that new crops can grow in its place.

[Leuthie]

In other words, both Shards' Intents could have been fulfilled with no fighting had Cultivation and Ruin ended up on the same planet.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

The metric for compatibility in that quote is clearly 'similarity of intent'.  Ie: which shards combined with Ruin would be less likely to alter Ruin's personality.

[ROSHtafARian]

Although that does make me wonder.....the letter indicates that Ati was once a decent man, but that holding Ruin twisted him as he was altered by the Shard's Intent.  I wonder, if he had held both Ruin and Cultivation, would more of his original personality have been preserved, as the combined Intent would have had more of a focus on the whole of the natural cycle of things rather than just the end negative side?

 

And on an entirely different note, we've seen that some Shardholders like Ruin were made worse due to the Intent of their Shard, and some were already pretty compatible like Rayse seems to have been with Odium.  Now I'm wondering if any of the Shardholders were made better due to the Intent of their Shard.  

Edited June 14, 2013 by ROSHtafARian

[skaa]

Now I'm wondering if any of the Shardholders were made better due to the Intent of their Shard.  

 

That got my imagination going! What if the holder of Endowment wasn't very nice at first? When I first read Warbreaker, I thought the concept of selling part of your own soul and buying others' was slightly disturbing. Perhaps the holder of Endowment just became more compassionate over time.

[happyman]

 Now I'm wondering if any of the Shardholders were made better due to the Intent of their Shard.  

 

I wonder what Honor was like, once upon a time.  Note, though, that Honor can be taken in multiple ways, some of them quite dangerous.  Kaladin probably reflects, very faintly, on the nature of the human who became Honor.

[Jaaaaaade]

This is a really good idea!  I just don't think that Internal/external is one of the divisions. I kind of assumed that all the shards are external. If a shard was only acting upon itself, I would have thought it would be useless. Honour is the only Internal one you've put down, but I think it could work both ways; Honouring others, and being honourable yourself.

 

Also, I was wondering today if the Shards of Adonalsium be sort of like the attributes of the christian God. Then a book (by another author) mentioned "honour and glory", and now I'm willing to bet that Glory is a Shard that we'll see soon.

 

EDIT: I'm less sure, but there could also be a Shard named Liberty or Freedom; you could slot it under Internal Chaos in your graph there. It's magic could grant it's people the ability to fly or have out-of-body experiences, perhaps.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Jaaaaaade

[Youngy]

This is a really good idea!  I just don't think that Internal/external is one of the divisions. I kind of assumed that all the shards are external. If a shard was only acting upon itself, I would have thought it would be useless. Honour is the only Internal one you've put down, but I think it could work both ways; Honouring others, and being honourable yourself.

Yeah, I'm struggling with that one a bit - because we don't have any other 'internal' shards known at the moment. My biggest reason for that split was the fact that each of the others is all the others affect others. Dominion, Cultivation etc, where as Honour is very much an attribute that a person can have you can be Honourable, but you cant be Ruinable, Endowmentable, Dominionable etc,

It's a characteristic of a being rather than a concept.