Tell Me If I'm Wrong

[Superman he/him]

So, when one has to read from about fifteen different books (and eventually more), it becomes difficult to figure out a storyline. So, I'm gonna sum up what I think I've picked up from all of these stories as best I can, and Ya'll tell me what I've got wrong.

So, there's this dude (God) called Adonalsium, who's killed by sixteen other dudes & chicks, who are conveniently named after emotions and qualities. These deified Dudes and Chicks go to certain planets and reside. And one of the Dudes called Odium (aka hatred?) keeps killing off all of the other Dudes and Chicks, and none of the living Dudes and Chicks do anything about it. But, the only people who seem to be aware of the situation are the Scholar Chick in White Sand (who has a name that I don't remember) who writes all the Ars Arcanum stuffs, and Hoid, who somehow doesn't ever die, and also finds a way to travel everywhere all the time, and still show up as a main character in the Stormlight Archive. And when the Dudes or Chicks die, it's called Splintering, which means something. 

The thing is, when Odium causes a Dude or a Chick to Splinter, he doesn't ever actually take their power, he just leaves it lying around to cause surgebinding or something similar that will harm him. 

Another question: is one of the Sixteen Shards named Stupidity? or Ignorance? That would amuse me. 

[Pagerunner he/him]

Looks pretty good. Remember, this isn't the main story - each book has its own self-contained story, and there's something deeper hidden in the background. So, yes, some of it has been intentionally obfuscated.

A couple points of clarification:

• The technical term for a Dude or a Chick is a "Vessel." We called them Shardholders for a while, before we knew the official name for them.
• It's possible to separate the Deified part (Shard) from the Dude or Chick (Vessel). Odium is the Shard, and Rayse is the Vessel. The Shard influences the Vessel's behavior (as we see in Mistborn: Secret History). Odium is killing the other Shards in two ways: murdering the Vessel (who controls and guides the power), and Splintering the Shard (which makes the power unusable, so nobody else could become that Shard's Vessel). He can't destroy their power completely, and he doesn't want to take it up himself. (A wise choice, if you recall Harmony, where we see someone holding two Shards starts to act pretty funky.)
• We don't know if anybody is actively opposing Odium. Honor might have started the fight between them, trying to stop him. Some other Shards may have fought back, and been killed. (We don't know the exact number of Shards that Odium has Splintered.) Some people think Bavadin (who holds the Shard of Autonomy) is actively helping Odium. The only other Shards we've seen in-depth, Ruin and Preservation, were busy with their own business in Scadrial, and didn't seem terribly involved in the rest of the cosmere at large.
• There's a whole worldhopping community, a place called Silverlight that Khriss vaguely references. There will eventually be a novella or full book written about it, but for now, we've only seen a few people from there. Khriss is one, Iyatil (Creepy Stormlight Chick with a Wooden Face) is also from there. If you look closely, you can see other people crossing from world to world: there's someone named Nazh, who helps Khriss (he's been an Ardent watching Kaladin, and he's mentioned in one of the Bands of Mourning newspapers), there are some people trying to track down Hoid (Galladon from Elantris, Demoux from Mistborn, and Baon from White Sand), all working together (we see them in one of the Way of Kings interludes). So, there are a lot of people who know about the overall cosmere, but we just haven't met them yet.
• There are 6 Shards who we don't know the name for yet. It's possible one of them could be Stupidity, but to make a good guess, we first need to ask: what is the pattern to the 10 Shards we know? Some of us believe they are all Divine Attributes, literal pieces of the mind of a god to go along with the power. (Even ones that seem bad, like Odium, are corruptions. If there's only one true God, then the commandment "Don't worship other gods" makes sense. But if there are 15 other Gods, well, there's only one thing to do... eliminate them all.) I don't know any serious religious views that view their own god as being stupid, so I don't think it would make a very good Shard. But you never know...

[The One Who Connects he/him]

9 minutes ago, Superman said:

who's killed by sixteen other dudes & chicks, who are conveniently named after emotions and qualities.

They have actual names, but are usually referred to by the name of the Shard(portion of Adonalsium's power) that they hold. The person holding Preservation was names Leras, but he never had a reason to tell anybody that, so nobody knew that. it's a minor nitpick that doesn't affect much, but people have mentioned one of the 16 without us realizing until we connect the names.

As a general understanding, you have it mostly right though. I will say that some of the other 16 know what is going on too, they just aren't doing too much about it. Its not just Hoid and Khriss(White Sands) who know, but they seem to know the most.

14 minutes ago, Superman said:

And when the Dudes or Chicks die, it's called Splintering, which means something. 

Adonalsium got Shattered into 16 pieces. The 16 get Splintered into lots of smaller pieces, so I think that's the main difference. Splinters are just smaller pieces of godly power.

17 minutes ago, Superman said:

The thing is, when Odium causes a Dude or a Chick to Splinter, he doesn't ever actually take their power, he just leaves it lying around to cause Surgebinding or something similar that will harm him. 

This is where it may start to go over heads a bit. Basically the reason that the 16 are named after emotions/qualities is because the power itself has that mindset, independent of who is holding it. So from earlier, "Leras holding Preservation" can literally be said as holding the power of Preservation. The power itself wants to preserve, and Leras can't use it to destroy because it wont let him. So Odium doesn't pick up the other powers because he likes breaking things and doesn't want to be held back by something that isn't the power of hatred.

22 minutes ago, Superman said:

Another question: is one of the Sixteen Shards named Stupidity? or Ignorance? That would amuse me. 

Not that we know of, but we only know 10 of them so far. I don't think that there would be one, but who knows...?

[Jofwu he/him]

Here's a good, brief explanation of everything: http://www.reddit.com/r/cosmere/wiki/overview

1. Some of the Dudes/Chicks ("Vessels") probably aren't human.

2. The emotions/qualities are "Intents", and are just a word that describes what that Shard wants to do. We/characters use that as a name for the Shard.

3. Odium isn't necessarily working alone. There are hints that he might have partnered up with Autonomy on at least one occasion.

4. I wouldn't say nobody else cares. He's only killed 4 so far. Two happened at once, and the last (Honor) successfully trapped Odium inside the Roshar system before he died. Given his name (Honor), it wouldn't be surprising if he intentionally put himself into that situation, or went into it knowing he might not survive. And we know that Harmony (Ruin/Preservation) doesn't seem to be aware of what's going on away from his world. So it's possible that some of the others don't know.

5. There are lots non-vessels who have an idea of what's going on besides Khriss (the White Sand girl) and Hoid. Hoid wrote a letter to somebody (presumably a dragon, who was around from the beginning) who knows the whole story. This dragon has a whole "team" of people called the 17th Shard who seem to know what's going on. He believes that non-intervention is the best course of action, apparently thinking that Odium can't get out of his current situation and that if they meddle it will make things worse. Furthermore, Khriss currently lives in a city (in the Cognitive Realm) of people who supposedly know what's going on to some degree.

6. Odium splinters the other Shards because he doesn't want to take it for himself (it would change him from Odium to "Odium + something else") and because he doesn't want some other person to come along and take the power.

[Dunkum he/him]

one point of clarification on the death of shards: you can kill the holder of the shard without splintering the shard.  We see this happen twice in Mistborn, first when Preservation Dies and then later when Vin kills Ruin.  in both cases, the shard was left intact (not splintered) so that later Sazed is able to take both shards up.  if they had been splintered, he would not have been able to do that.  Having said that, of the ones we know to have died, at least 3 have been splintered.

[Yata he/him]

On 26/1/2017 at 11:30 PM, Dunkum said:

one point of clarification on the death of shards: you can kill the holder of the shard without splintering the shard.  We see this happen twice in Mistborn, first when Preservation Dies and then later when Vin kills Ruin.  in both cases, the shard was left intact (not splintered) so that later Sazed is able to take both shards up.  if they had been splintered, he would not have been able to do that.  Having said that, of the ones we know to have died, at least 3 have been splintered.

 

 

Yes a Splintering isn't the default outcome of a Vessel's death (unless you actually Splinter the Shard once it has no more a Vessel). But it may also happen naturally, as far as we know (there is a WoB somewhere) a Shard without a Vessel for too long may experience once of these scenarios (luckily in the books when a Shard is dropped, there was always someone who readily pick up it):

1) auto-splintering

2) develops a rudimental sentence

3)  seeks a new Vessel

Actually, it's possible that the point 2 and 3 may be a sequence, the power want to be used and an auto-generate mind works worse than a true living's mind. So the Shard develops a Mind and starts to search a good Vessel.

Notice also that also between the Gods (Shards), how to Splinter another Shard isn't an automatic knowledge. Ruin for example didn't know how to properly do it (and this is ironic...because Ruin is about "turn things apart")

Edited January 28, 2017 by Yata

[thekingofpillowland he/him]

Not to mention there was also another entity that was opposing Adonalsium that we know very little about, which is apparently still lurking around somewhere.

[DeTess she/her]

1 hour ago, thekingofpillowland said:

Not to mention there was also another entity that was opposing Adonalsium that we know very little about, which is apparently still lurking around somewhere.

This theory was based on Brandon confirming that "there was some force opposing Adonalsium". The Person that asked the question had forgotten that the 16 could very easily be considered a force, and they definitely opposed Adonalsium. So there could be an anti-Adonalsium out there, but I don't think we've got any definitive proof for that.

[Spoolofwhool]

Brandon has been nice enough to strongly imply that he meant the group of sixteen when he said force.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

5 hours ago, randuir said:

So there could be an anti-Adonalsium out there, but I don't think we've got any definitive proof for that.

Not even counting Spool's comment that he later points out that "a group of people can be called a force," he has stated that there's an argument to be made that Harmony is the strongest thing in the Cosmere. If an anti-Adonalsium did exist, it would have to be similar to/less than 1/8 of Adonalsium's power, which doesn't seem feasible as a threat

[+robardin he/him]

Picking up a Shard and becoming its Vessel is not just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, though. Vin was "chosen" and groomed, if you will, to receive Preservation's power, and it's implied that Sazed had to go through the emotional wringer with loving and then losing Tindwyl before being able to take up both Preservation and Ruin.

What Rashek did to change the world was more a temporary use of a (large) portion of Preservation's power, retaining his mortal body, and not truly Ascending, which would have destroyed it.

Further, in terms of "Cosmere-aware" groups of people, in addition to Hoid, the Silverlight crew (Khriss/Nazh), the 17th Shard (Demoux and friends at the Purelake), and the Ghostbloods (Iyatil and Mraize on Roshar - who have a few recognizable trophies from other worlds), there are also the I.R.E., whoever or whatever they are.

As seen in Mistborn: Secret History -

Spoiler

they had some kind of object that could be used in the Cognitive Realm to force a Connection to a Shard that otherwise had to be fostered to become a proper Vessel for it. That Kelsier then stole.   But where did they get it, or how did they make it, and are there more of them about?

 

[Spoolofwhool]

Rashek is considered to have ascended. During that time his physical body would have been vaporized, but it would've returned when the power ran out, as Leras and Ati did.

[thekingofpillowland he/him]

Guys! we've all missed the most important piece of Cosmere info! That is, Hoid stole The Lord Ruler's flute and gave it to Kaladin.