The prophecy of the Hero of Ages

[KSub]

I've been thinking about the Hero of Ages prophecy recently and a couple questions have come to mind.

1. Who prophesied the prophecy?

2. When did they do it?

3. Since Brandon likes to mess with us, specifically regarding the prophecy, (did anyone read the final empire and think, "Sazed is the HoA, boom!") what do we believe about the prophecy that may not be true.

This topic has been discussed before and some of the most common opinions for who created the prophecy are Hoid and Leras. Given that they are two of the only three beings seen on Scadrial who are old enough to have written the prophecy( the third being Ati) this makes sense. I don't have any other ideas that aren't just wild speculation, so I will just ask this, do we believe Hoid has the power to make this kind of prediction, and do we really believe it was Leras who made the prediction?

We have no detailed information regarding when the Hero of Ages was prophesied. All we really know is that it was a part of religion during Alendi's time.

Ok, so the belief is that Leras created the prophecy so people would take up his power and keep Ruin imprisoned. This would likely have been several thousand years ago. (Makes you wonder who held the power before Rashek!) With the Deepness, Ruin began to touch the world again and changed the prophecy to state, among many other things, that the hero should give up the power, which is why Rashek killed Alendi and took it for himself. But if you read the prophesies, it clearly implies a Terris worldbringer "He will carry the future of the world on his arms".

So the next question is, did someone change the prophecy again in order to get a worldbringer to take the power, *cough HOID *cough. Or, did Preservation actually have enough future sight to predict that there would be Worldbringers, who would wear copperminds on their arms with the knowledge to fix the world, after Rasher took the power and Ruined the world. That the person who eventually took the power would be shunned by his people, that he would have the power of Preservation and Ruin, that that which was sundered shall begin to be made whole.That his name shall be Discord....

Wait, what? That part of the prophecy hasn't been fulfilled, yet. Is this a prediction for the future, if so can we assume that the previous prediction, "That which was sundered shall begin to be made whole" is not finished? Does that mean Sazed is not the Hero of Ages for Scadrial, but the Hero of the Cosmere?

As everyone in the Cosmere knows, when you get an answer it comes with two new questions. Somebody give me an eye spike, I've got work to do!

[Yata]

The prophecy were indead left by Leras-Preservation. He left a series of prophecy to the Terrismen as a measure to keep his MASTERPLAN (Yeah I need to write it in this way, it's thousands of years or plan after all) about how manage the Ruin's danger to the Cosmere.

 

If I remeber right the Terris's Prophecies talk about a series of Hero who in different time will help Scadrial...Probably there is one or two Hero before Rashek's time, I am not sure about because we don't know how old is Scadrial.

Anyway every 1024 years someone reached the Well and remake the Ruin's prison....but many was lost during and after the Deepness

[aeromancer]

If you read Mistborn Secret Histories, some of your questions might be answered... Hoid doesn't have anywhere near that kind of power, though. He can only see where he needs to be. Nor does he care that Sazed takes the power of the Well.

 

EDiT: Wait, 1024 years? As in, 2^10 years?

Edited March 21, 2016 by aeromancer

[natc]

It would technically be 16*16*4 in this case, but yeah it's 1024 years.

[Erunion]

1024 years? Didn't know, that's a cool tidbit.

 

But yeah, it's a Leras prophecy; HOWEVER, I am so down with Sazed being the Hero of the Cosmere. 

 

Theory: Sazed becomes the new holder of Adonalsium, absorbing more and more shards?

[Yata]

Theory: Sazed becomes the new holder of Adonalsium, absorbing more and more shards?

I find unlikely...unless He manages to pick up pairs of Shards who balance the new Intent.

 

The Harmony's born was possible only under specific events. For example Sazed have to be deeply Connected with the Shards before pick-up them.

[Bugsy]

Perhaps the discord reflects a future conflict between the powers of Ruin and a Preservation within Sazed. It could also reference his place as a terrisman who refused to follow the Synod or could simply reflect a change by Ruin to encourage conflict. On a side note, I find it rather ironic that the definition of Discord is literally lack of Harmony, lol

[KSub]

I find unlikely...unless He manages to pick up pairs of Shards who balance the new Intent.

 

The Harmony's born was possible only under specific events. For example Sazed have to be deeply Connected with the Shards before pick-up them.

 

I disagree. Harmony's creation was only possibile under a specific series of events, but now that Sazed is Harmony I think he has an inherent connection to the other shards.

 

With several hundred (minimum) years ahead of us in the cosmere who can say what will happen. And he doesn't need to grab 2 shards to balance their intent this time. He already holds two. If he grabbed a 3rd, the other two powers would balance it slightly. Lets say for example that he takes up Honor (i realize that it is splintered, but I'm certain they can be remade); we would have an Honourable Harmony. Doesn't sound too bad. Or maybe he picks up another shard, say Autonomy, which creates Discord. 

[KSub]

Perhaps the discord reflects a future conflict between the powers of Ruin and a Preservation within Sazed. It could also reference his place as a terrisman who refused to follow the Synod or could simply reflect a change by Ruin to encourage conflict. On a side note, I find it rather ironic that the definition of Discord is literally lack of Harmony, lol

 

It could be a future imbalance in Sazeds powers, although I've been thinking about that for awhile and I believe that his intent is pretty solidly entrenched at this point, so I don't know if a slight imbalance in his powers is enough to change his intent. And since it was written Discord not discord in the prophecy, Im leaning towards it being a title, and I don't believe any of the Terris referred to Sazed as Discord... just heretic, which is actually stated in the previous line of the prophecy. My favourite theory is the one i just stated above, that Sazed will take up a third shard causing his intent to shift.

Edited March 22, 2016 by KSub

[baby]

I like to think of 1024 as 16² times the square root of 16. 

[KSub]

Do we know for certain that it is 1024 years exactly? Because that is an interesting number. 

 

When i was writing the OP I was going to put in a bit of a timeline estimating how many heroes could have taken up the power of preservation.  But I realized that even though we know 4500 years have passed on Roshar since the last Desolation (not Last Desolation), it doesn't tell us anything about how many years have passed on Scadrial as their years would not be the same length.

 

Im still curious about the other slivers however. In Alendi's time there is no Lord Ruler, so what could have happened to the previous sliver. We hear no mention of it. Plus the world doesn't sound like it was shaped according to an imperfect god. We know that it was green and healthy and the people were similar to other descendants of Yolen. Even Sazed with all of his knowledge made some mistakes while reshaping Scadrial. 

 

Could Rashek have been the first to take up the power? I suppose it is possible that Scadrial is only ~2000 years old, given that Preservation and Ruin created Scadrial, unlike Roshar which already existed. Maybe creating Scadrial was Preservations way of taking Ruin out of the equation.

[baby]

They created it together, and the only reason Preservation was weaker than Ruin was because preservation gave up an extra bit to make humans sentient. Otherwise, from the in world epigraphs we know that everything, except humans, has an equal amount of ruin and preservation in it. And yes, it is 1024 years. I believe Sazed said that in an epigraph in HoA.

[Yata]

KSub the possible range for the Ascended One through the Well is something like 1-9 before the start of Mistborn The Final Empire.

The whole shattering of Adonalsium was happened 10000 years before (it's still not canon but it's a beginning) and if R&P created Scadrial just after that we have the maximum number of Heroes (it's the name of used in the Terris's Prophecies)...But I really doubt that R&P made Scadrial in their first times as a Shards, to me they before went somewhere else and just after a while decided to create a planet.

 

The previous Heroes may have been used the Well in less drastical ways, stopping many Ruin's trick and forcing him to develop new plans to release himself.

[KSub]

They may have used the power less drastically, but I find it odd that we have no indication there was a Hero before Rashek. I'm kind of thinking he was the first, maybe second.