Lilamal he/him Posted January 21, 2016 Posted January 21, 2016 What powers do Shards have? Are some more powerful than others, or are they all created equally powerful? Their powers are all different, and some are better at some things than others. Honor admitted that Cultivation was better at seeing the future than him, so does that mean that other shards would be more powerful, but worse at other things? And what are those other things? Why are the magic systems all different, and not the same? After all, they all came from the same thing: Adonalsium. Do the shards all have the individual skills that Adonalsium had? Post your theories here. 2
Clockwork he/him Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 Well, someone told me (I'm not certain who) that if a shard moved to Scadrial, then they could invest to make metal. This would mean the Magic comes from the World, not the shard. The shard simply makes a magic more powerful. 1
Voidus Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 Shards tend to have different specialties but are broadly speaking all more or less capable of the same feats.Magic arises naturally from the interaction of the world and the Shards Investiture, so the world itself defines what the magic is/does as well as what Shard it is. (Though the Shards intent seems to not influence the types of power but merely how they are gained)
Yata he/him Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 (edited) At the Shattering every Shard had an equal amount of Investiture.All Shards are quite allmighty, but their Intent limit them in how they can use it the power of Adonalsium.For example Preservation was better than Ruin in future sight because his Intent is more compatible to the future than Ruin. For the same reason Preservation is capable to move a Planet but He can't destroy a single being with his power. A Magic System is the mortals' interpretation of the Shard's power invested in a ShardWorld. And are something like: Shard's Investiture+Shardworld's Focus= Magic System. When many Shards are on the same planet the interaction between them creates "hybrid Magic System" (As Feruchemy that arose from both Ruin and Preservation). Edited January 22, 2016 by Yata
Eagle of the Forest Path he/him Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 Also, all shards are able to create splinters of themselves. And I believe that the presence of a shard on a world will automatically result in a shardpool there.
Yata he/him Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 And I believe that the presence of a shard on a world will automatically result in a shardpool there. Yes but if I remember right, it took long time. A Shardpool is something like "Shard leaking in that place on the Physical Realm"
DrakeMarshall he/him Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 It would seem that each shard has power that is effectively absolute, except in the case that it is interacting with another shard. However, it would make sense that they have different skills. This is probably linked to the intent. Ruin finds it difficult to see the future because his intent is to make there be no future, through destruction. Honor doesn't really care about the future either, more about doing what is honorable in the moment. Something like preservation has an intent that aligns quite well with future sight. Similarly, the intent of cultivation would necessarily involve foresight. It would seem that the primary reason shards might have different powers is because their intents causes them to manifest differently. As for magic systems, I would guess that each shard more or less has their own magic system. The planet it is on might only effect how the magic is fueled/activated. For example, on Scadrial, magic works through metals. On sel, it works through drawing glyphs. On roshar everything functions through the medium of stormlight.
Weltall Posted January 22, 2016 Posted January 22, 2016 Nah, Sanderson has specifically told us that the Shards don't actively create their magic systems so it's unlikely that if you were to, say, swap Honor and Preservation that you'd get Surgebinding from holding the right metals or Allomancy from... I dunno, stormlight in the right gems I guess. You'd end up with something different. http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727#5
Eagle of the Forest Path he/him Posted January 23, 2016 Posted January 23, 2016 The method of acquiring/accessing the power should remain the same (or similar) though. If Preservation were to go to another planet, the magic would still be fuelled by the shard itself, as Preservation's intent requires it/him to preserve the human's innate investiture. Endowment's magic system would (most likely) still involve granting investiture to another person or object. And so on and so forth. The effects would likely indeed be different. Even the foci would probably be slightly different. Take the Honor on Scadrial example for instance. If Honor were on Scadrial instead of Preservation, IMO there would be 10 allomantic metals, not 16 (since the number 16 was because of Preservation).
natc Posted January 24, 2016 Posted January 24, 2016 Well, hemalurgy also uses 16, and has nothing to do with Preservation at all. I think that part might be natural . . . 1
Yata he/him Posted January 24, 2016 Posted January 24, 2016 Well, hemalurgy also uses 16, and has nothing to do with Preservation at all. I think that part might be natural . . . Probably the "number" is something linked to the Shardworld not to the Shards.
Oversleep Posted January 24, 2016 Posted January 24, 2016 Probably the "number" is something linked to the Shardworld not to the Shards. On the other hand it's heavily hinted that sixteen is Preservation's number - he used that as a sign to the people.
Yata he/him Posted January 24, 2016 Posted January 24, 2016 On the other hand it's heavily hinted that sixteen is Preservation's number - he used that as a sign to the people. Yeah but we don't know if it something intrinsic of Preservation or If Preservation arbitrarily choose the 16 (maybe because it's linked to Scadrial itself).
natc Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 On the other hand it's heavily hinted that sixteen is Preservation's number - he used that as a sign to the people. He could've honestly just done it because it was a fittingly important number.
Stormgate he/him Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 Shards are vectors. Hear me out. A vector is defined as being something with direction and magnitude. The Shards' magnitude needs hardly be discussed, and their direction is what we know as Intent.
Yata he/him Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 Shards are vectors. Hear me out. A vector is defined as being something with direction and magnitude. The Shards' magnitude needs hardly be discussed, and their direction is what we know as Intent. but the magnitude of every shard (using your interpretation) would be the same. Because every Shard has the same amount of Investiture
Oversleep Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 Four dimensional vector, probably. Hm... For example, when dissecting (forgive my vocabulary, I haven't had physics in English) the vector, Ruin and Preservation would be opposite in one direction, but not neccessarily opposite in the others. That could explain them being opposites and agreeing on non-creation.
Seonid he/him Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 Four dimensional vector, probably. Hm... For example, when dissecting (forgive my vocabulary, I haven't had physics in English) the vector, Ruin and Preservation would be opposite in one direction, but not neccessarily opposite in the others. That could explain them being opposites and agreeing on non-creation. You might be interested in a discussion we had a few years ago here. We talked about 4-dimensional (or higher) Intent spaces, and that perhaps any given Intent space was a subset of a higher-dimensional space spanned by Adonalsium. Been a while, but still interesting. 1
Shardbearer he/him Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 Vector: Committing crimes with direction and magnitude!
Oversleep Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 You might be interested in a discussion we had a few years ago here. We talked about 4-dimensional (or higher) Intent spaces, and that perhaps any given Intent space was a subset of a higher-dimensional space spanned by Adonalsium. Been a while, but still interesting. Great minds think alike I figured out almost everything in this thread by myself, though. But I wonder how Autonomy will fit into this...
Ari he/him Posted January 28, 2016 Posted January 28, 2016 (edited) Yeah but we don't know if it something intrinsic of Preservation or If Preservation arbitrarily choose the 16 (maybe because it's linked to Scadrial itself). Well, if you consider the chapter epigraphs in HoA to be a reliable source, (and I do) Preservation chose to make 1/16th Mistfallen as a clue in relation to both the number of Shards and the number of base metals to help them reach the conclusion that the mists weren't simply a mindless force, not because it's some Special Number For Preservation. Edited January 28, 2016 by Ari
Oversleep Posted January 28, 2016 Posted January 28, 2016 Well, if you consider the chapter epigraphs in HoA to be a reliable source, (and I do) Preservation chose to make 1/16th Mistfallen as a clue in relation to both the number of Shards and the number of base metals to help them reach the conclusion that the mists weren't simply a mindless force, not because it's some Special Number For Preservation. The thing is that there are 16 metals because it's Preservation number (or Scadrial's). (And it definitely wasn't intented as a clue towards 16 Shards, because literally nobody would get that.) 16 shows up so often because it's somehow built in Metallic Arts. The question is, is Preservation number 16? If that's so, why didn't Ruin's number influence things? So maybe it's Scadrial's number? But there are only ten Shardworlds, so why is it 16? And so on. It's just like with Ten Surges and Ten Knights Radiant Orders.
Ari he/him Posted January 29, 2016 Posted January 29, 2016 The thing is that there are 16 metals because it's Preservation number (or Scadrial's). (And it definitely wasn't intented as a clue towards 16 Shards, because literally nobody would get that.) 16 shows up so often because it's somehow built in Metallic Arts. The question is, is Preservation number 16? If that's so, why didn't Ruin's number influence things? So maybe it's Scadrial's number? But there are only ten Shardworlds, so why is it 16? And so on. It's just like with Ten Surges and Ten Knights Radiant Orders. The thing is, Preservation didn't necessarily design the system. If there's something intrinsic about preservation that gave him sixteen different goals or purposes, that might be one thing, as we know per WoB that's why the number 10 is relevant to Honour. We know of no such similar subdivision of Preservation's purpose. Besides, only one way of counting the metals gets you 16. (if you count alloys as metals and ignore the god metals) Another gets you 8. (ignoring alloys) Or 20. (including alloys and base God Metals) Or 21. (also including Harmonium) Or 37. (also including Atium alloys) Or 53. (also including Lerasium alloys) It's incredibly arbitrary what the total number of distinct focus metals are, especially when you consider silver's properties may be relevant in some way. But... if you've finished Mistborn: Secret History there's something relevant to our discussion... Preservation says directly to Kelsier that his hint uses the number 16 because there are (at least in his view) sixteen metals. If that number was relevant to him for any other more important reason, don't you think he would mention that instead while he's too cognitively damaged to know better than to discuss his plans? We have it direct from Preservation himself in dialog. (ironically Kelsier has a similar objection to mine above as he points out they only know about 12 metals) I'd say that thumbs the scales to needing some contradictory proof before we start talking about there being any other relevance to sixteen.
Flynn Posted January 19, 2017 Posted January 19, 2017 On 1/22/2016 at 10:55 PM, Yata said: At the Shattering every Shard had an equal amount of Investiture. All Shards are quite allmighty, but their Intent limit them in how they can use it the power of Adonalsium. For example Preservation was better than Ruin in future sight because his Intent is more compatible to the future than Ruin. For the same reason Preservation is capable to move a Planet but He can't destroy a single being with his power. A Magic System is the mortals' interpretation of the Shard's power invested in a ShardWorld. And are something like: Shard's Investiture+Shardworld's Focus= Magic System. When many Shards are on the same planet the interaction between them creates "hybrid Magic System" (As Feruchemy that arose from both Ruin and Preservation). It always seemed to me that allomancy should be the hybrid magic, as it seems to create, while feruchemy is neutral (it preserves). On 1/27/2016 at 2:59 AM, Stormgate said: Shards are vectors. Hear me out. A vector is defined as being something with direction and magnitude. The Shards' magnitude needs hardly be discussed, and their direction is what we know as Intent. I love thinking of things like this as vectors PS: sorry for posting on a topic that's been dormant for a year
Spoolofwhool Posted January 19, 2017 Posted January 19, 2017 7 minutes ago, Flynn said: It always seemed to me that allomancy should be the hybrid magic, as it seems to create, while feruchemy is neutral (it preserves). At a general view yes, but if you take a deeper look at precisely how strict Preservation is, no. Preservation is about keeping something the same always. Allomancy does that, as its usage always means that a person will not personally change themselves at any given point. On the other hand, feruchemy does, because its usage always requires the direct change of someone's attributes.
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