Harmony's being overbalanced towards Ruin

[goody153]

 

Quote

 

RAGS

How is Harmony balanced when a part of Preservation's power is expended on human sentience? Isn't that what caused all the trouble to begin with?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Indeed. Hm... What could Sazed be doing with that extra power...

 

 

I've been intrigued by this WoB for a very long time. I had two theories but i kinda gets crushed with some thoughts as well.

• Theory #1 : Sazed didn't actually reclaim the rest of Ruin and left the Atium so that both Shards are balanced. Problem with this theory is that its clearly stated(WoB) that Marsh has the last set of Atium. And we would've heard about the Atium after his ascension but we didn't(or he just hid it really well).
• Theory #2 : Sazed using that extra chunk of Ruin's power outside of Scadrial. We know shards can poke around things and stuff (we know that Sazed has some knowledge over This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules is going on in Roshar(WoB) since it happened after his ascension ) and that a Shard could possibly influence outside his domain(Mr. Sanderson prolly just meant that through his agents not actually from his touch )
• Theory #3: Could also count as theory 2 but to be more specific Sazed is using that part of Ruin's power to test out  doing Hemalurgic testing on other cosmere planets. We know this is happening(WoB). I mean he's trying to learn about the Cosmere and he must be spiking people or trying to to infiltrate better and stuff.
• Theory #4 : It could also be that in a WoB it is mentioned that  Sazed is not the seventeenth shard(the one where demoux and those dudes who are chasing) BUT whether he's a member of the organization is another question.

Thoughts ? : ) 

[Yata]

I think the first is the more likely.

The Atium made during the Ash world was nealy all burned by Allomancers. Some remain, probably the Marsh's one was the more relevant amount in the world.

But the Atium's production was stopped by Kel who destroyed the Crystals... It was stated that it took some centuries before the Pits will produce Atium again.This mean that everybody searched something impossible to find, because there isn't any Atium for the first centuries of Elendel's History. The Atium began to become quite a legend and the effort to find began to decreese (also because without Mistborn is quite useless).

When one day the Pits will spawn Atium again(if it hasn't already started).. probably quite nobody will find it (also because Harmony moved quite everything during his re-making of the World)

[Magestar]

I've heard some rumors that this bit of ruin might have something to do with the Sovereign, but that seems a little odd to me.  I think it's more likely that Sazed just invested it in the planet somewhere, like maybe the roughs. 

Minor SH, BoM spoilers.

Spoiler

However, if Kelsier is really the sovereign, I could see him having taken some extra Ruin, maybe.  I don't know.  I would have to look into it further.

 

[Oversleep]

4 hours ago, Magestar said:

I've heard some rumors that this bit of ruin might have something to do with the Sovereign, but that seems a little odd to me.  I think it's more likely that Sazed just invested it in the planet somewhere, like maybe the roughs. 

Minor SH, BoM spoilers.

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However, if Kelsier is really the sovereign, I could see him having taken some extra Ruin, maybe.  I don't know.  I would have to look into it further.

 

So you're saying that

Spoiler

Sazed chopped off a part of Ruin to balance himself and somehow Kelsier Ascended to it (maybe he hijacked it or Sazed gave it to him)? Or bonded, or merged a'la Returned?
Since it's not a full Shard, he would not vaporize... And he'd be even more godlike, a Fullborn with a big splinter of Ruin. Interesting.

 

[Jondesu]

3 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

So you're saying that

  Hide contents

Sazed chopped off a part of Ruin to balance himself and somehow Kelsier Ascended to it (maybe he hijacked it or Sazed gave it to him)? Or bonded, or merged a'la Returned?
Since it's not a full Shard, he would not vaporize... And he'd be even more godlike, a Fullborn with a big splinter of Ruin. Interesting.

 

That's an incredibly terrifying thought…

Spoiler

Kelsier's already attuned to Ruin more than Preservation anyways, in a lot of ways at least, and him being a Splinter of Ruin is ridiculous.  I wonder how much influence Ruin's Intent would have on him in that case?  We've never seen someone take up a large chunk of power like that and hold onto it.  Vin and Rashek both released it or used it up within a short time, and while they were considered Splinters because of that, they didn't really retain any of that power.  If Kelsier somehow is holding onto a large portion of Ruin's power (enough to balance out Harmony), he'd almost certainly have to be influenced by that in some way I'd think, but would also simply have some incredible power at his disposal.  I wonder if he has to somehow hold onto it and not use it in order to keep it from being returned to Harmony/Sazed, though.  That would be an amazing struggle for him to fight, and only someone with his force of will could do it (which would be why Sazed gave it to him, if this is indeed what happened).

jW

[Oversleep]

21 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

That's an incredibly terrifying thought…

  Hide contents

Kelsier's already attuned to Ruin more than Preservation anyways, in a lot of ways at least, and him being a Splinter of Ruin is ridiculous.  I wonder how much influence Ruin's Intent would have on him in that case?  We've never seen someone take up a large chunk of power like that and hold onto it.  Vin and Rashek both released it or used it up within a short time, and while they were considered Splinters because of that, they didn't really retain any of that power.  If Kelsier somehow is holding onto a large portion of Ruin's power (enough to balance out Harmony), he'd almost certainly have to be influenced by that in some way I'd think, but would also simply have some incredible power at his disposal.  I wonder if he has to somehow hold onto it and not use it in order to keep it from being returned to Harmony/Sazed, though.  That would be an amazing struggle for him to fight, and only someone with his force of will could do it (which would be why Sazed gave it to him, if this is indeed what happened).

jW

I'm not sure about that idea.

Spoiler

Would he even be able to do something like saving Southeners with a Splinter of Ruin on him? I mean, the Intent would do some things to him and saving a hemisphere full of people does not invoke Ruin to me. At all.

What if Sazed redirected that additional part of power and forced atium to produce, but Kelsier hijacked some of that power when he came across that Shardpool in Cognitive Realm?
If he had a body ready and Hemalurgy figured out, he could have used that Ruin power to do to his soul whatever it is that Feruchemists have, becoming a Feruchemist in the process while keeping his status as a Mistborn, becoming a Fullborn?
And since he was around the place the atium is produced, he grabbed a lot of it.

Or perhaps he did merged with the Ruin's Splinter... could he balance it out by Compounding a lot of nicrosil? I mean, humans have Preservation's Investiture in them as well, he could Compound it, right?

Edit: Wait, at that point he already is a Sliver of Preservation. His soul is already expanded to hold a Shard. Could he somehow use the residue Preservation's Investiture to balance out the Splinter of Ruin?

Man, that's interesting.

 

Edited August 29, 2016 by Oversleep

[goody153]

2 hours ago, Jondesu said:

That's an incredibly terrifying thought…

  Hide contents

Kelsier's already attuned to Ruin more than Preservation anyways, in a lot of ways at least, and him being a Splinter of Ruin is ridiculous.  I wonder how much influence Ruin's Intent would have on him in that case?  We've never seen someone take up a large chunk of power like that and hold onto it.  Vin and Rashek both released it or used it up within a short time, and while they were considered Splinters because of that, they didn't really retain any of that power.  If Kelsier somehow is holding onto a large portion of Ruin's power (enough to balance out Harmony), he'd almost certainly have to be influenced by that in some way I'd think, but would also simply have some incredible power at his disposal.  I wonder if he has to somehow hold onto it and not use it in order to keep it from being returned to Harmony/Sazed, though.  That would be an amazing struggle for him to fight, and only someone with his force of will could do it (which would be why Sazed gave it to him, if this is indeed what happened).

jW

This theory might also work but there are problems with it 

Spoiler

It does make sense since Kelsier is actually more Ruin than Preservation even his ways are naturally Ruin just changing stuff around. First that Sazed knows Ruin i mean he's half Ruin after all, so there's no way Kelsier wouldn't be overwhelmed by the intent Ruin(that super tiny piece of preservation he has is not gonna stop it) and i don't think he could use Ruin's power to help really , i mean Rashek couldn't use the little preservation he held to kill that Terris dude who refused him during his ascension i suspect Kelsier couldn't use it to help as well. Also Kelsier holding a piece of Ruin sounds disasterous to me

 

I think Kelsier might only be balanced with that chunk of Ruin if the power of preservation was still there but it isn't and even if it still was i don't think that is large enough to whatever remaining part of Ruin was on the pits. He would still be overbalanced and gravitate towards Ruin. Sazed would probably see that in his shard future vision thing.

 

14 hours ago, Yata said:

I think the first is the more likely.

The Atium made during the Ash world was nealy all burned by Allomancers. Some remain, probably the Marsh's one was the more relevant amount in the world.

But the Atium's production was stopped by Kel who destroyed the Crystals... It was stated that it took some centuries before the Pits will produce Atium again.This mean that everybody searched something impossible to find, because there isn't any Atium for the first centuries of Elendel's History. The Atium began to become quite a legend and the effort to find began to decreese (also because without Mistborn is quite useless).

When one day the Pits will spawn Atium again(if it hasn't already started).. probably quite nobody will find it (also because Harmony moved quite everything during his re-making of the World)

There's a WoB that did say Marsh had the last atium bag in the world. And i really don't buy this issue with Kelsier destroying the pits back in the Final Empire to have carried over. I really doubt Harmony couldn't do something about it considering he is both double shard of opposite sides with nobody interfering with him in Scadrial in his ascension. I don't even think Kelsier's information about the atium geods stop being fully functional over 300 years is true. Ruin was not even worried about it.

I think it's more like he moved the pits if the case was it fits with the spoilery title of book 4 "The Lost Metal" is that somebody found where he hid the new mines of Atium.

Edited August 29, 2016 by goody153

[Ari]

Yeah, I'm with Goody here that Sazed has probably moved Ruin's perpendicularity, and thus the relevance of Era 2 Book 4's title. The only way to "safely" stash away a part of Ruin is either as Atium or as dark Mists. Either way, you potentially risk someone burning it, which could still end up having some pretty Ruinous effects.

[Lightning]

Are we really asking the right question?

 

Spoiler

Why wouldn't Sazed just re-absorb the well of ascension to make a balance?  Apparently, the well will still serve some purpose...

 

[kenod]

1 hour ago, Lightning said:

Are we really asking the right question?

 

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Why wouldn't Sazed just re-absorb the well of ascension to make a balance?  Apparently, the well will still serve some purpose...

 

The reason for the imbalance isn't the Well of Ascension, it's the extra bit of Preservation that every human has so they are sentient

[goody153]

19 hours ago, Lightning said:

Are we really asking the right question?

 

  Hide contents

Why wouldn't Sazed just re-absorb the well of ascension to make a balance?  Apparently, the well will still serve some purpose...

 

Like Kenod said the well of ascension isn't enough to balance Ruin. Ruin is literally stronger due to the parts of preservation that Leras sacrificed to give sentience to humanity. Overall it's like this Preservation only contains like 87% power of a full shard(this is just hypothetical number in order to make comparison) and Ruin is like 97%(cause you know know Ruin has essence all over scadrial after all) something like that. (again this is not a real number just a hypothetical number to portray the status of both)

[Lightning]

So does does the amount of preservation-investiture being used to grant sentience grow and shrink with the population changes?

Or did Leras only need to use a little bit more on the original people, and now it is a self-perpetuating cycle?

[kenod]

Just now, Lightning said:

So does does the amount of preservation-investiture being used to grant sentience grow and shrink with the population changes?

Or did Leras only need to use a little bit more on the original people, and now it is a self-perpetuating cycle?

My guess is that it's self-perpetuating, mainly because the difference in Investure doesn't need to be that big. Ruin can defeat Preservation even if he only has about 0.0000001% more Investure. See it in this way, each Shard receives the same amount of damage, but Ruin has 1 HP more, which means that he will always win.

[goody153]

Yeah pretty much Kenod says. I think as long as it doesn't clash with the intent and the vessel holding the shard isn't has 100% control over the power in a straight up 1v1 shard to shard clash(no tricks or weakening what not) like what Vin(Preservation) did with Ruin, it's pretty much who has the more power is gonna win even with the slightest advantage i suppose.

[+hwiles]

On 8/28/2016 at 8:42 PM, Oversleep said:

I'm not sure about that idea.

  Hide contents

Would he even be able to do something like saving Southeners with a Splinter of Ruin on him? I mean, the Intent would do some things to him and saving a hemisphere full of people does not invoke Ruin to me. At all.

What if Sazed redirected that additional part of power and forced atium to produce, but Kelsier hijacked some of that power when he came across that Shardpool in Cognitive Realm?
If he had a body ready and Hemalurgy figured out, he could have used that Ruin power to do to his soul whatever it is that Feruchemists have, becoming a Feruchemist in the process while keeping his status as a Mistborn, becoming a Fullborn?
And since he was around the place the atium is produced, he grabbed a lot of it.

Or perhaps he did merged with the Ruin's Splinter... could he balance it out by Compounding a lot of nicrosil? I mean, humans have Preservation's Investiture in them as well, he could Compound it, right?

Edit: Wait, at that point he already is a Sliver of Preservation. His soul is already expanded to hold a Shard. Could he somehow use the residue Preservation's Investiture to balance out the Splinter of Ruin?

Man, that's interesting.

 

Remember, Splinters have their own Intent, a Splinter can have an Intent attached to it that only very distantly and vaguely resembles that of its parent Shard.  There's some gray area here, but it's conceivable Sazed Splintered part of Ruin's power away from himself, granting it to someone else.  Whether the person who picked up that Splinter would then be a Splinter, or a Sliver, I leave to the Cosmere scholars and philosophers to decide, but the fact remains that they wouldn't necessarily have to be cursed with the Intent of Ruin if it was done correctly.

[Jondesu]

@hwiles, I'm curious, do we have confirmation somewhere that "a Splinter can have an Intent attached to it that only very distantly and vaguely resembles that of its parent Shard"? If so, and assuming Sazed could choose that Intent, at least to some degree, he could totally have given Kelsier a Sliver with an Intent that could make him Sazed's weapon against other Shards (not the Shards directly, of course, but enough to go and mess things up for them). That's something I think Sazed would be fine with doing, considering how he's used Wax.

jW

[+hwiles]

@Jondesu Well, we don't have a specific WoB that I'm aware of, if that's what you're asking.  However, I believe we do have confirmation that the Radiant-spren of Roshar are Splinters of either Honor or Cultivation.  I'll admit, I'm injecting a little bit of opinion into the issue here, but I consider Liespren, whose entire live seem dedicated to the study of the identification of patterns, complex mathematics, and human psychology, to be, at most, only distantly related to the intent of Honor and/or Cultivation.

It may seem counter-intuitive that what is essentially a piece of a shard would have such a wildly different primary Intent than the thing that created it, but remember, all of the Shards were created by being broken off of a greater being.  I would think that all of the Shards contain at least trace amounts of all of each of the others' intents deep down.  For example, Honor's intent might really be made up of 99.9% Honor and 0.1% all other intents.  In this way, he could, in theory anyway, generate a splinter with virtually any Intent.  I would speculate that the less in common a Splinter has with its parent Shard, the less Investiture it is likely to have, but this doesn't really need to be the case since we're dealing with things that are, by their very nature, effectively impossible to quantify, and pretty wide open to interpretation.

WoB has it that the Holder of a Shard gets to interpret the meaning of the Intent to at least some degree.  If someone truly believed deep down in their soul that the best way to exemplify the Intent of Odium was through passive aggression and isolationism, they could theoretically master the Shard and build up and focus on their own planet without ever going after the other Shards.  They'd probably have high walls and an itchy trigger finger, but, if left alone, they'd probably keep to themselves, which is wildly different than the Odium we've all come to know and love.

[Jondesu]

Thanks for clarifying. I'm generally of the same opinion, I've just learned not to try my opinion as fact. Hopefully we'll get clarification in a future novel or WoB.

jW

[goody153]

There's a problem with the Splinters of Ruin since it is confirmed that there are no splinters of Ruin or Preservation around era 2 confirmed with a WoB.

Quote

INTERVIEW: Oct 5th, 2013

Steelheart Signing Report - Argent (Paraphrased)

QUESTION

Are there still no Splinters on Scadrial, after the events of The Alloy of Law?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, there are no Splinters on Scadrial. Unless they've been brought. There are no Splinters of Ruin or Preservation.

Also though splinters may have slightly different intent i don't think it would be far off the original shard. Like Honorsprens are splinter of Honor and even other Radiant sprens are somewhat honorable on some level or some sense but are still splinters like Syl didn't see Pattern as evil even though she's disgusted with pattern.

[Jondesu]

2 hours ago, goody153 said:

There's a problem with the Splinters of Ruin since it is confirmed that there are no splinters of Ruin or Preservation around era 2 confirmed with a WoB.

Also though splinters may have slightly different intent i don't think it would be far off the original shard. Like Honorsprens are splinter of Honor and even other Radiant sprens are somewhat honorable on some level or some sense but are still splinters like Syl didn't see Pattern as evil even though she's disgusted with pattern.

That could have been some wiggling, though, if Kelsier and his Splinter aren't on Scadrial.  Note that he said that there are no Splinters of Ruin or Preservation in the context of saying there aren't any Splinters on Scadrial.  He's tricky like that, so it's possible he's disguising something.  It's also just as likely that a piece of Ruin split off and not sentient wouldn't be considered a Splinter (the WoB we have on that seems explicit but also seems to ignore some things like the Divine Breaths, so I wonder if even Brandon hasn't 100% nailed down his definition of a Splinter), so it could be that Kelsier is carrying around some form of a chunk of Ruin's power that isn't considered a Splinter by Brandon.

jW

[goody153]

Yeah the " Yes, there are no Splinters on Scadrial.  " might be a classic misdirection by Mr. Sanderson. I'll keep that in mind.