A Thought About Feruchemy

[Chaos he/him]

Yeah I agree, entropy does not a shard make. But for the same reasons as you quoted, Ruin is not entropic merely ruinous...yeah lol.

I know. Rather, it's directed chaos, so to speak. And since all Shards are a directed some-and-such, the closest we could get to an Entropy Shard is, in fact, Ruin.

[happyman he/him]

I would like to state here that technically, entropy is a purely statistical quantity.

Stated another way, there are an enormous number of states the universe can be in. By sheer statistics, most of these states (by an astronomically large margin) are ones humans would call disordered. However, it is observed that our universe seems to have started with a great deal of order, and the observed increase in entropy is simply the inevitable march towards a more likely state.

That entropy thus corresponds to chaos and disorder and destruction is simply because creation, order and construction are so blasted unlikely to occur spontaneously. (Don't get any wrong ideas from this, though. It's entirely possible for order to spontaneously appear during the wind-down from a low-entropy state as long as enough more entropy is created elsewhere as a side-effect. No bogus evolution debates on my watch, thank you kindly.)

So I have to agree. Ruin isn't really entropy. It's Ruin. Entropy would just be one of the tools He could use, but He appears to be an even more fundamental force.

[FellKnight he/him]

Huh, I don't know about that. The way I envision in it my mind, the Shards are each a fragment of creation. Their Intents are sixteen different aspects of creation. I would doubt that there are Shards which are kind of mixtures. Shards are fundamental, as far as I know.

Hi Fell!

I suppose it is possible. The existence of such a quadrant would largely depend on where Ruin lies. So, here's some food for thought: if Ruin and Preservation are in separate quadrants, what made them such great opposites that those two had to be together? Meaning, why couldn't Ruin balance another Shard in the quadrant Preservation is in?

No reason why it couldn't balance another Shard in the same quadrant, but I also see no real reason why it should have to. Perhaps quadrants, as being part of the same overarching order, would not be able to oppse each other, but would be able to oppose Shards in the opposite Quadrant, as with this:

Phys | Enhan

|

------|------

|

Dest | Ment

This way, we may even be able to predict future conflicts. We have Odium in Destruction, and we know he has visited Sel and (presumably) that he was the one to splinter Aona and Skai (Devotion and Unity?) Seems to me that Odium would be more the opposite of Unity than Honor, as some have suggested. Perhaps Odium went to Sel to splinter Unity (this is his first target in chronological order as we know it, I think), and had the opportunity while there to take out another Shard at the same time.

The way I see it, there is a deeper significance to Ruin and Preservation's pairing, and I think a model which inherently pairs them from the beginning explains that significance much better than "well, they are in separate quadrants but there was something else which drew them together." Might as well reduce a degree of freedom.

(Plus, Preservation does not seem to enhance things. I suppose you could argue that Allomancy enhances an Allomancer, but that's bad logic, because pretty much any magic enhances its users )

Well, Allomancy uses the focus of metal to enhance the abilities of the Allomancer. One could argue that it is the act of conversion of the focus into power which is the enhancement aspect. Of course, if we continue to assume that Endowment is also in the Enhancement quadrant, then this seems rather dissimilar in that BioChroma is a lot more of a neutral magical system (like Feruchemy), than an Enhancement system per se.

So yes, I may be arguing myself out of my own hypothesis Or, maybe the Shards are grouped in some way (Enhancement, Neutrality, Destruction), rather than as an exact replica of the Allomantic table.

I'm rambling too much, I'll quit while I'm ahead!

The way I read it, Ruin is Entropy, and an Entropy Shard wouldn't be distinct enough to work.

That's why I said above that Ruin effectively == Entropy

Fell

[Zas678 he/him]

Although I disagree with this theory of quadrants, I have a quote from WoK for you about Opposite Shards. (Although it is in-Cosmere, so it may not be entirely accurate)

[shallan about Voidbringers:]"Who made them? I mean the Almighty wasn't likely to have 'created something form hate.' So what made them?"

[Kabsal:]"Everything has its opposite, Shallan. The Almighty is a force of good. To balance his goodness, the cosmere needed the Voidbringers as his opposite."

Now, I believe that there aren't quadrants. I just haven't seen any textual evidence to support it. I believe that some of the Shards were placed together to accentuate their differences. Mostly because redundancy is silly. Why have Endowment and Cultivation on the same world, when they seem to describe the same sort of thing? And also, I think that Hoid, (or whoever, whatever placed the shards) wanted the best chance of survival and of thriving for mankind. Or maybe they placed themselves.

So to balance out Odium's hatred and destruction, Honor was placed with him. And to make sure that people actually came out of the fight, Cultivation was with them too. Endowment was left to herself, because she didn't need an opposite to do well. Ruin was placed with Preservation so that there was something to do. Like has been said, Preservation realized that he couldn't just have the planet stay the same. Neither of them could do anything without the other.

[Chaos he/him]

Although I disagree with this theory of quadrants, I have a quote from WoK for you about Opposite Shards. (Although it is in-Cosmere, so it may not be entirely accurate)

Now, I believe that there aren't quadrants. I just haven't seen any textual evidence to support it. I believe that some of the Shards were placed together to accentuate their differences. Mostly because redundancy is silly. Why have Endowment and Cultivation on the same world, when they seem to describe the same sort of thing? And also, I think that Hoid, (or whoever, whatever placed the shards) wanted the best chance of survival and of thriving for mankind. Or maybe they placed themselves.

So to balance out Odium's hatred and destruction, Honor was placed with him. And to make sure that people actually came out of the fight, Cultivation was with them too. Endowment was left to herself, because she didn't need an opposite to do well. Ruin was placed with Preservation so that there was something to do. Like has been said, Preservation realized that he couldn't just have the planet stay the same. Neither of them could do anything without the other.

It is certainly possible that there is no quadrant structure. I definitely agree with you there. Of course, I like organizing things, so I'll continue to do that. But I wouldn't be immensely surprised if there is no such structure like this.

Those quotes are quite interesting.