17th Shard

[Thanatos]

Forgive me if this has already been done. I was highly recommended to stay away from this site until i read the books plus secrets. Ive now done that and phwaor theres some good theories here. And recaps. 

So i apologize if this has been said.

Brandon says that Harmony is just what Sazed calls himself and that Ruin @ Preservation are still separate Shards. (another story on some rumour on built on that. Re if Sazed died would two Shards ooze out...) Thereby making 16 Shards.

But then again you have Brandon confirming of a potential Harmonium metal.

So if Harmony has Harmonium, that would mean Sazed either has truly combined the two Shards or his in 'harmony' of the two Shards intents.

Thereby being able to create Harmonium.

Would that not make him 'The 17th Shard'?

Would Harmonium bestow upon someone the ability to be a Mistborn Seer?

Coomba98

Edited August 9, 2016 by WeiryWriter
please do not double post, use the edit feature

[Pagerunner]

Welcome to the Shard! Glad you can finally join us.

First, a quick correction: if Sazed died, he would drop Harmony as a single Shard. We have confirmation on that from Brandon himself; the Shards are well and truly intermingled and combined.

But, yeah, if you look at it from a certain point of view, it could make Sazed a "Seventeenth Shard." Although, there's speculation that a similar Shard-melding has occurred on Sel, the world of Elantris, which could mean that the Dor is the Seventeenth Shard and that Harmony is actually the Eighteenth Shard. But when Odium splinters Shards, did they actually become the Seventeen Shard through the Ten Thousandth Shard? And there were also Splinters of Adonalsium before the Shattering, so how do we number them? The terminology of Sixteen Shards refers to the specific result of the Shattering; Adonalsium was broken into sixteen distinct pieces. Those pieces have changed since then, splitting or recombining, but we can still identify the original pieces in splinters (like Seons/Skaze/Spren) or super-Shards (Harmony). (It's sort of like in American College Football, there's a conference called "Big Ten" that has 14 members and a conference called "Big 12" that has 10 members. The name doesn't match the current situation, but it refers to how the conference started.)

But if you're trying to connect Harmony with the in-universe Seventeenth Shard organization... I think that Baon gives us pause. We've seen three members of the Seventeenth Shard: Baon, Demoux, and Galladon. Demoux could easily have been recruited by Sazed. As an Elantrian, Galladon is essentially immortal, so he could still be alive when Sazed Ascended. But Baon is a normal human (at least, as far as we know), and since White Sand is set chronologically before Mistborn, he would have been dead before Sazed ascended. So, I think the Seventeenth Shard predates Sazed's Ascension.

[WeiryWriter]

So the question of whether "Harmony" is one Shard or two is a complicated and there really isn't a definitive answer because it's a little of both. WoB is that if Sazed were to die he would drop a single Harmony, that Ruin and Preservation have co-mingled to an extent that the death of their Vessel would not be enough to separate them. That said Sazed still has to contend with two diametrically opposed Intents (which is why he has difficulty acting). Personally I describe Harmony as "two Shards that, in some ways, act as one".

We know nothing about harmonium beyond it's existence and it's name (and the fact that Sazed didn't like the name sazedium but we won't get into that). As such we do not know if it is a pure metal, or an alloy of atium and lerasium. We do have WoB that alloys of atium and lerasium are complicated and take an understanding of Realmatics that normal people just don't have, so I wouldn't be surprised if harmonium is technically an alloy of atium and lerasium but that it only comes from Harmony so it is effectively it's own thing.

I don't know if I would call him the 17th Shard. Yes it is A Shard (for the same reason a king of two countries is still a king) but it is not one of The Shards, there are only 16 of those. Those 16 have since been broken in some cases and combined in others but I've always thought of "The 16 Shards of Adonalsium" as less of a description of the current state of the cosmere and more a reference to the fact that "When Adonalsium Shattered, it was into these 16 pieces". There is also the fact that there is an in-cosmere group named the Seventeenth Shard and I doubt they would want to go and change their name.

As for whether harmonium would make someone a Seer. Maybe? I personally don't think so though. I see harmonium as a 50/50 atium lerasium mix that would grant Feruchemy in some way (I lean more towards burning it than tapping it but both theories exist). I think a Seer would more likely be created by an alloy with more lerasium and less atium.