To Kill a God

[A Windspren he/him]

While rereading WoK for the 100000th time, I had an idea on how Adonalsium Shattered, and how Shards can be Splintered. On Roshar, when a fabrial or Surgebinder draws Stormlight out of a gemstone too quickly, it shatters. This is probably due to the rapid removal of Investiture damaging the structure of the gemstone, causing it to shatter.

 

Now, about Adonalsium. We know that he had an enemy, and that enemy created a weapon. What if the weapon quickly drained Adonalsium's Investiture, causing him to Shatter? The resulting Shards would have been created from the Investiture that the weapon drew out, leaving them for 16 Yolenese (IDK what else to call them) to pick up.

 

For Shards, you could use the same principle of forcibly drawing Investiture, but there is another way, which, I think, is how Odium Splintered Honor (and possibly Devotion and Dominion). Odium, with the Desolations, was causing huge amounts of people to die. Honor combated this with the Heralds, and the Radiants later arose from spren bonding people. Odium's original plan may have been to trick Honor into expending a massive amount of Investiture into stopping all the Desolations at once, but Honor instead allowed them to come every once in a while, relying on the Heralds (whose Honorblades would have taken comparatively little Investiture to make) and human soldiers to fight during Desolations, akin to letting water past a dam a small amount at a time. Eventually, Odium caused a disaster which would have wiped out nearly everyone on Roshar, and Honor was forced to stop it with sheer force. This massive draw on his Investiture would have Splintered him.

 

However, there is a problem with this theory: Odium didn't Splinter when he caused that huge disaster. My solution to that is Odium "saved up" for a while, probably by slowing the amount of Desolations, before unleashing it all at once in the disaster. After Honor was Splintered, Odium again began to save up, this time for the Final Desolation.

 

Please tell me your thoughts on this!

Edited February 19, 2016 by Kevino36

[Stormgate he/him]

My Theorysense started tingling when you talked about the draining of Investiture by the weapon. I think that the weapon was aluminum, which fits in with your theory. I love it.

[A Windspren he/him]

Thanks! I don't know if aluminum was the weapon, as it just seems to do something special with Investiture, not negate it. But it might be possible, if the Other One (what I call Adonalsium's opposition) Invested aluminum to do that.

[Ari he/him]

Aluminium and silver are inert to investiture. I would think it would make more sense as armour or a shielding system than as a weapon itself.

 

If Shattering happens through rapid investiture drain, what you're really looking for as the weapon is some sort of innate investiture equivalent to allomantic Chromium so you could leech away Adonalsium's power.

 

I'm not convinced that's how Shattering works, however.

[Voidus]

Yeah Shards don't really have a physical body so I'm skeptical that the weapon would just be Aluminium.
 

 

Aluminium and silver are inert to investiture. I would think it would make more sense as armour or a shielding system than as a weapon itself.

 

If Shattering happens through rapid investiture drain, what you're really looking for as the weapon is some sort of innate investiture equivalent to allomantic Chromium so you could leech away Adonalsium's power.

 

I'm not convinced that's how Shattering works, however.

Aluminium is, silver isn't except on Thredony.

[Three1415]

The theory of "saving up and then unleashing all at once" seems to be supported by the dates we see in one of the Diagram epigraphs; there is a long period of regular intervals between the numbers, and then a massive gap between the next two (I can't find the dates themselves, sadly), but the book strongly implied they were somehow related to the Desolations. 

 

This delay could also have been responsible for breaking the Heralds, as they would have been continuously trapped on Braize for the entirety of the interim period. 

[Pathfinder]

Yeah Shards don't really have a physical body so I'm skeptical that the weapon would just be Aluminium.

 

 

Aluminium is, silver isn't except on Thredony.

I didn't know that because silver kills shades on Thredony, that that meant it was inert on that planet alone. I thought it was just that silver couldn't be burned allomantically but it could be pushed or pulled on. Is there a quote or WoB on this? Not contradicting you, just wanted to know the source so I can learn something new 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Are we sure we know when honor was shattered? For that matter, do we know if cultivation was also shattered?

 

At any rate, I think you are approaching this the right way. This is the sort of thing that poses a threat to shards.

 

However, I think the method of killing shards may be slightly different. Rather, I think the reason to draw out a shard's investiture is simply because doing so will weaken them. If you are relatively less invested than the other shard, you might be able to defeat them, killing the shardholder.

[A Windspren he/him]

We know that Honor was around to see the Recreance, because one of Dalinar's visions shows it and Honor states that he was there. Cultivation is fine, according to a WoB. Silver isn't really special in terms of how it affects Investiture. It was originally planned to be one of the metals (with electrum as its pair), but gold won for some reason.

 

The danger of using massive amounts of Investiture at once seems to explain why we don't see Shards doing crazy things like making everyone immortal with super-intelligence, and why Shards tend to use humans to fight proxy wars (Heralds + Radiants vs Voidbringers, and Preservation choosing Vin as a successor to fight Ruin). It could also explain Honor's advise of choosing a champion to fight Odium indirectly, I'm guessing that 2 champions from both sides fighting it out could serve as a mock Shard fight, so that both Shards don't have to expend a bunch of power and risk Splintering themselves.

 

Has anyone asked Brandon if the way gemstones shatter when Stormlight is quickly drawn from them is similar to a Shard/Adonalsium Splintering/Shattering?