cosmere Shard Combination Attack Against Odium

[Zennix]

 

I have been wondering for some time why the Shards have not been working with one another in order to defeat Odium. I mean, if even opposites like Ruin and Preservation could work together, then why didn't Devotion and Dominion do the same to each other. Even though we might think that it's because their nature might have  prevented them from working together (which I doubt because of the Ruin/Preservation example), then what about Honor and Cultivation? 

 

We also know that Shards can travel to other systems and planets. Why don't the others all travel to Roshar and deal with Odium once and for all. I think that some tag team or triple tag team Shard action might end him for good. 

[DeTess]

6 hours ago, Zennix said:

We also know that Shards can travel to other systems and planets. Why don't the others all travel to Roshar and deal with Odium once and for all. I think that some tag team or triple tag team Shard action might end him for good. 

The problem here is that they actually can't. Once a shard has spend a significant amount of time in a star-system, it starts to become stuck. If it actually invests it's power into the system it becomes almost impossible to leave. This leaves a Shard immobile, and with a significant amount of its power bottled up in creating things like the local magic system they are vulnerable to attack by another shard. It is inf act quite likely Devotion and Dominion fought together against their Odium, but they wouldn't be able to fight at their full strength. It doesn't help that Autonomy likely aided Odium in his fight on Sel.

Edited March 19, 2017 by randuir

[kenod]

49 minutes ago, randuir said:

The problem here is that they actually can't. Once a shard has spend a significant amount of time in a star-system, it starts to become stuck. If it actually invests it's power into the system it becomes almost impossible to leave. This leaves a Shard immobile, and with a significant amount of its power bottled up in creating things like the local magic system they are vulnerable to attack by another shard. It is inf act quite likely Devotion and Dominion fought together against their Odium, but they wouldn't be able to fight at their full strength. It doesn't help that Autonomy likely aided Odium in his fight on Sel.

This hasn't been confirmed, in the WoB itself was actually told that this could even be interpreted as Autonomy aiding Odium by simply not intervening. We have no confirmation on active assistance.

[Spoolofwhool]

57 minutes ago, randuir said:

The problem here is that they actually can't. Once a shard has spend a significant amount of time in a star-system, it starts to become stuck. If it actually invests it's power into the system it becomes almost impossible to leave. This leaves a Shard immobile, and with a significant amount of its power bottled up in creating things like the local magic system they are vulnerable to attack by another shard. It is inf act quite likely Devotion and Dominion fought together against their Odium, but they wouldn't be able to fight at their full strength. It doesn't help that Autonomy likely aided Odium in his fight on Sel.

My opinion is, and I believe it has been implied to be, that they can leave the system after becoming invested. The only issue is that they wouldn't be able to access the investiture invested into the world once a sufficient distance away, so would be marginally weaker if they did go to another system.

Additionally, the power invested into the world is still accessible by the shard as it's all still connected spiritually.

[+Extesian]

Yeah there are a couple of relevant WoBs I know of on this.

Quote

QUESTION

If a Shard were to divest itself from a planet, would the perpendicularity there disappear?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Normally the shardpool would cease to exist, but there are circumstances that could prevent the shardpool from disappearing.

This shows a Shard can divest (I'm assuming it doesn't just mean if the Shard is splintered).

Quote

ARGENT

Which is segue to Shards Investing in Shardworlds. So is it kind of a...passive...the more a Shard stays on a world, the Investiture kind of seeps…

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, it does. Once you’ve got a Perpendicularity, you are starting...That’s trouble for going other places. But you’ve gotta remember, going other places means multiple things to someone actually holding a Shard. They can exist in the Spiritual Realm, where all things are one. And they can even kind of comprehend it.

This makes it sound to me like 'going' somewhere really is a problem for an invested Shard, but sure they can go somewhere on the Spiritual realm. But Shard-battles are on all three realms so I feel a Shard that has properly invested in a planet could not easily leave to attack another Shard. Hence Odium avoiding investing until he got trapped. And as we know the Shards all had more or less equal power at the beginning and Preservation's small sacrifice to invest more of himself on Scadrial humans led to an imbalance that let Ruin overcome him, I think it will now be very hard for a Shard to go to battle Odium. A bunch of them together perhaps?

[Farnsworth]

Odium's power probably comes partially from the fact that he has never really invested himself into a planet. He has probably been weakened by his time on Braize.

[Yata]

Probably they could recover their invested Power to move. But I suppose It's a slow process and they have to manage the conseguences in doing this.

For Harmony recover his Power means the Scadrial annihilation with every living being native of It.

For Endowment Will mean private all the humans of Breath and saw the conseguences.

In this context I didn't considerate the Shard's Intent that could forbid to a Shard to leave or going aganist Odium.

On this last point, if Odium waited for a while before starting his rampage. It's possible some Vessel were already too influenced by the Shard's (to say Preservation for example)