What If Ruin Had Succeeded on Scadrial?

[Confused]

I suspect Ruin - the Shard of "intelligent decay" - would have tried to destroy other planets – and possibly the entire Cosmere – once his investiture was freed from the destroyed Scadrial. This suggests that Odium may want to splinter Harmony for reasons other than his fear of the double Shard’s greater power: Odium may fear the possible destruction of the Cosmere, including himself if Harmony for whatever reason drops his Ruin component. Odium can’t be the “last Shard standing” if Ruin remains capable of destroying everything.

 

I'm aware of the WoB that "Harmony" is now Scadrial's Shard, or will be when fully integrated. But that doesn't mean the power of Ruin, subject still to a destructive mandate (intent), wouldn't operate as it did before if freed from Harmony.

 

Thoughts?

[Oversleep]

Well, destroying other planets was the reason for giving his Inquisitors spikes which allowed them to Compound age - if he succeeded on Scadrial, he would already have an army of koloss and a group of powerful Metalborn.

Odium fears Harmony because Harmony is way more powerful than him. I can't imagine an event which would cause Harmony to separate into Preservation and Ruin - there is a WoB that if Sazed was killed, he would drop not Preservation and Ruin, but Harmony. So even killing the Shardholder wouldn't cause them to separate.

[Observer]

It does make me wonder Rayse was planning to do about Ruin if he succeeded. Because it feels like Ruin would win in a knock down drag out fight with Odium, just from comparing their intents.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Observer

[The Sovereign]

It does beg the question of what Rayse was planning to do about Ruin if he succeeded. Because it feels like Ruin would win in a knock down drag out fight with Odium, just from comparing their intents.

 

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. If you have read Secret History, then you know why. If you would like to talk about it, feel free to PM me as an elaboration on this here would be against the Secret History spoiler policy.

[Voidus]

 

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. If you have read Secret History, then you know why. If you would like to talk about it, feel free to PM me as an elaboration on this here would be against the Secret History spoiler policy.

SH can be discussed here in spoiler tags now, it's only if the entire topic is spoilers  that it needs to be in the subforum.

[The Sovereign]

SH can be discussed here in spoiler tags now, it's only if the entire topic is spoilers  that it needs to be in the subforum.

 

Good to know, thanks Voidus!

SH Spoiler:

I was referring to Kriss' conversation with Kel where she says that Ruin cannot splinter Preservation because he either doesn't know how or does not have the power to do it.

[DreamEternal]

Good to know, thanks Voidus!

SH Spoiler:

I was referring to Kriss' conversation with Kel where she says that Ruin cannot splinter Preservation because he either doesn't know how or does not have the power to do it.

Sh spoilers

She was unsure if that was the reason, however, and fully destroying Scadrial would free half an planet worth of investiture for Ati, so power would be a non issue if he won.

I prefer to think that Ruin couldn't splinter Preservation because the inherently opposed nature of the powers would make a full force surprise strike impossible, since Preservation would push back with the same force and both would die, like what ended up happening with Vin. So he had to apply force slowly and carefully, strangling life out of Leras to them pick his Shard apart.

[Nashan’Elin he/him]

SH Spoilers:

In the book, after Fuzz died, he said: "Kelsier, he's splitting my power. He's breaking it apart. It will be gone... Splintered... He'll destroy it."

So clearly Ruin could and would Splinter Preservation, if the power had remained mindless.

[Oversleep]

And so it starts again... I think we should record every spoiler conversation and give prizes for the longest.

[Observer]

And so it starts again... I think we should record every spoiler conversation and give prizes for the longest.

 

Alright. So what we know is that

(WOK Spoiler)

Odium has killed Honor and splintered him,

and that

(Elantris/WoK Spoiler)

he also killed Dominion and Devotion,

and that on top of all that

(Chicago signing speculation spoiler)

Threnody might be the fourth shard Odium splintered making a total of four dead gods,

which is really impressive all things considered. But given that Ruin is, you know, the embodiment of making things die and wither away in the most efficient way possible, it seems like he'd have a really good chance to winning against Odium if it came down to nothing but a pushing match. The issue of whether or not

(Secret History Spoilers)

Ruin can splinter a shard is resolved by the fact that later in he seems to be doing exactly that, indicating that the only thing stopping Ruin was a lack of power to do so, or a lack of power to do so safely given the circumstances. 

Of course, we really shouldn't forget that

(Hero of Ages Spoilers)

 literally half the Investure in all of Scadrial comes from Ruin. He's not even close to being at the top of his game, which is the main advantage Odium has at the moment.

From this I'd assume even a living embodiment of hatred would still lose if it came to a raw Investure vs Investure battle, just thanks to the absurd power of intent. But this is Rayse we're talking about and it's not like

(Common Cosmere Knowledge Spoiler)

you wind up killing four of the most powerful beings in existence

without being clever. Furthermore, since we know from secret history that

All of the sixteen "worked together" to kill Adonalsium, they probably knew that Rayse was a pretty awful person, and probably knew he was picking up a bodycount as he went along.

This implies that Rayse had a plan and a method for killing other Shards and he probably wasn't just making it up as he went along. Given how everybody treats Ruin destroying Scadrial as a foregone conclusion, it's safe to say Odium had a plan for dealing with him in the event that he got loose. Knowing how absurdly unlikely it seemed that Preservation would win, there's no way Rayse took the thousands of years he had to plan and just totally overlooked Ruin. 

This implies either waiting for Ruin to Invest himself someplace to destroy it before attacking, waiting for Ruin to weaken himself killing everything, waiting for Ruin to do his job for him in destroying everything and then killing him, or maybe he just has some really awesome trick that lets him kill Shards without too much personal danger. 

It's also possible that

(Bands of Mourning Spoiler)

The whole "red haze" thing we see in BoM was part of Odium's anti-Ruin countermeasures and it just happened to work just fine on Harmony as well. Honestly said haze doesn't even need to have anything to do with Odium, it could just be something totally unrelated that Odium was counting on to distract Ruin if it came down to it.

 

One way or another, this may not even be relevant at all, because Odium isn't even in position to mess with the rest of the Cosmere anyway so far as we know. This leaves Ruin's most likely enemies as being one of the other five-odd shards we haven't seen yet, the aforementioned BoM spoiler, or one or all of the many worldhopping organizations we've seen around. We have no idea what circumstances allowed

(Secret History Spoilers)

Sixteen people to kill Adonalsium of all things, and if it were easy then it would happen far more often. But that's not to say that the Ire or the Seventeenth Shard wouldn't have been able to kill Ruin the same way, it just makes it more unlikely.

 

All in all though, the buildup to Ruin's escape was so long, taking up thousands of years, that it's unlikely the various factions of the cosmere had failed to prepare for it. Even if the moment of truth kept coming every thousand years and then getting pushed off, they had to know Scadrial was falling apart at the seams. So if I had to throw in a guess, I'd says that Ruin would have been met with lots of things to destroy, lots of success in destroying them, followed by getting himself destroyed because

(Fate series/Cosmere Similarity Spoiler)

people die when they are killed

and they don't really like it when that happens.

 

(Okay I'm going to stop now)

Edited February 25, 2016 by Observer

[natc]

That last spoiler though.

Is actually proven wrong in its own context a lot

[Observer]

That last spoiler though.

Is actually proven wrong in its own context a lot

 

It's proven wrong in BOTH contexts as it happens, which just makes it all the more perfect. And spoilery.

 

 I think we should record every spoiler conversation and give prizes for the longest.

 

So....do I win?

Edited February 26, 2016 by Observer

[Ari he/him]

It does beg the question of what Rayse was planning to do about Ruin if he succeeded. Because it feels like Ruin would win in a knock down drag out fight with Odium, just from comparing their intents.

 

I believe you mean it raises the question. Begging the question is when you effectively assume something's true as part of your argument that it's true.

 

Odium would probably have won a fight with Ruin, as Ruin had invested a fair amount of his power, and then had even more hidden away as Atium. Odium is focused on Splintering shards. Ruin wants to destroy everything, all the way up to speeding up the eventual entropic heat death of the universe, and didn't even know how to Splinter Preservation.

[Observer]

Ah, yes. My need to diversify my speech often leads to incorrectly using phrases like that, apologies. 

I believe (aw man here comes another SH spoiler tag, be usin' this stuff up faster than Atium)

Preservation himself made it fairly clear that Ruin really could splinter him, and that the only thing keeping him from doing so was either not having enough power or fear of being left too weak to act after doing so, since he apparently does try to splinter Preservation the moment Leras dies.

If Odium were ever in a position to fight Ruin in this scenario, it would be because Ruin succeeded on Scadrial and had reclaimed so much Investure from the planet that it could only be measured using a horrifying amalgamation of the metric system and human feces.

He would probably get the Atium as well if we're assuming a full success. Under those circumstances, Ruin would be back to his full power, or near as he could get. If he was thinking far ahead, and he probably would, he'd also be bringing an army of Inquisitors and Koloss, since he proved that having autonomous agents is one of the best ways to get things done in Shard to Shard combat. In this regard, I think Ruin would win if the goal of the fight was nothing more than destroying the opponent. Ruin has agents to counter any that Odium might have, and to hate something is not quite the same as to destroy it.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Observer

[Oversleep]

So....do I win?

It's not about the amount of spoiler tags, really. It's about the amount of posts in conversation consisting of almost only spooiler tags. So your "spoiler conversation length" is 1, since it's only one post. I'm talking about people discussing something spoilery; then somebody who doesn't want to read the spoilers has almost nothing to read. Then he writes down the number of unreadable posts. That's the SCL.

[Observer]

I'm well aware, I was joking. To continue said joke,

Do we by any chance know if 

(SH Spoilers)

That's exactly what the Ire were doing on Scadrial? Their own little part of a plan to help negate Ruin?

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

I think Odium would win, purely how Rayse has been described and Ruin's inability to see Preservation's plan, as At I had most likely become warped by the Intent. I think we should all have been very scared if Rayse had picked up Ruin instead O.O