Hoid's Intent??

[+Extesian he/him]

For my 1000th post I'm going to do.........

..................

a silly little speculative theory about Hoid  

So we know that Hoid was there for the Shattering of Adonalsium, and we know that he did not take up a Shard, but he was offered one. I'm basically interested in what Shard he rejected, and what limited things we can speculate about him from that.

From this interesting little WoB, we know that it was not one of the Shards that we have been 'shown', as of January 2015. I see 'shown' as meaning either we have read of its world, we have read of its effects generally, we have read of its direct action or we have been told its name. I think it's the second or third option, its effects generally or its direct actions.

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The Only Joe

Was Hoid offered one of the Shards we know about.

Brandon Sanderson

You know, I can't remember which Shard I've shown you, Wait, no I haven't shown you that one.

Source

Ruin, Preservation, Honor, Cultivation, Odium, Dominion, Devotion are clear. But we did not know the name of Bavadin's Shard, Autonomy, until later that year. If he's talking about the actual name of the Shard, Autonomy wouldn't count. Additionally, we only had the White Sand unpublished edition then, not the graphic novel, so he could also mean that we haven't officially been shown even the world Autonomy is on. So Autonomy could be one we hadn't been shown yet, but now know.

The other candidate is Ambition. I believe the first we knew of Ambition was the publication of Arcanum Unbounded. I've certainly seen nothing about it as soon as January 2015. So Ambition is definitely one we didn't know at the time, but do now.

I'm not going to speculate about the names of other Shards we don't know, there are other threads for that and it's a fool's errand in this case  I mean, this is already a bit of a fool's errand, I just find it fun. 

But I could see Hoid being offered either one of those. I don't know if the others actively wanted him to become a Shardholder, or if the offer was just because he was integral in the Shattering, but either way it would make sense to me that he would be offered a Shard that matches his personality. Autonomous he is, and Ambitious he certainly is. (Of course, it could have been any other ones, but let's ignore that for now ). 

The question is why he rejected it. I suspect it's because he didn't want to be limited by the Intent of a Shard, he wants to be his own person and achieve his goals with flexibility. But we also have this!

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QUESTION

If Hoid were tempted by a Shard, which one would it be?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Endowment.

Source

That of course doesn't mean that had he been offered Endowment, he would have accepted, but it's saying that's the most likely one he would accept.

So my simple little idea is this; Hoid was offered Autonomy or Ambition because the others wanted him to take up a Shard, wanted to confine him to that Intent, and they thought he'd accept it because they thought that's who he is. They were wrong. Sort of. Hoid is those things, and definitely does bad things (Brandon said so), and may even be a bad person. But he wants to be good and he wants to help the Cosmere. He knew if he took up Autonomy he would be unable to interfere in the way he wanted, or if he took up Ambition he would probably hurt people and the Cosmere generally. The only Shard he would have been interested in was Endowment, because the only way he could responsibly take up that power would be to limit himself in a way that benefits people.

Hoid is a bad man who wants to be good, who is afraid that his ambition will crush too many innocent people. So what did he do? He magically bound himself in a way that made him unable to inflict physical harm

The. End.

[Jonathon]

As you said we know that Hoid was "offered" a shard, but what I want to know is, what exactly does that mean? If the shards were just laying there waiting for someone to come along become the bearer, then why wouldn't any of the originals have tried to take multiple shards? What if when the shattering occurred and Adonalsium was split into sixteen intents, for a split second before they were taken up by one of the shatterers (is that a word?) they each tried to gain sentience as we know loose investiture will try to do. Then with their sentence they each sought out and offered themselves to select individuals amongst the shatterers because the shards believed them to be the best suited. That could explain why Rayse, who was already cunning and dangerous before the shattering, could have ended up with a shard like odium, if odium chose him knowing that his cunning would be useful. We also know that Ati wasn't very attuned to ruin before taking it up so that could mean that if the shards got turned down, they might've turned desperate for a holder. Perhaps one of the shards such as autonomy or ambition (or maybe even one of our unknowns) offered itself to Hoid, but for some reason or another (likely the ones you stated) Hoid refused it so it had to choose another holder. If this situation played out with ambition it could explain why ambition *fled* from odium which isn't a very ambitious thing to do, regardless of whether you know you'll lose or not. 

Basically, I'm agreeing with parts of your theory and adding a bit of my own. 

[Ari he/him]

6 hours ago, Jonathon said:

As you said we know that Hoid was "offered" a shard, but what I want to know is, what exactly does that mean? If the shards were just laying there waiting for someone to come along become the bearer, then why wouldn't any of the originals have tried to take multiple shards? What if when the shattering occurred and Adonalsium was split into sixteen intents, for a split second before they were taken up by one of the shatterers (is that a word?) they each tried to gain sentience as we know loose investiture will try to do. Then with their sentence they each sought out and offered themselves to select individuals amongst the shatterers because the shards believed them to be the best suited. That could explain why Rayse, who was already cunning and dangerous before the shattering, could have ended up with a shard like odium, if odium chose him knowing that his cunning would be useful. We also know that Ati wasn't very attuned to ruin before taking it up so that could mean that if the shards got turned down, they might've turned desperate for a holder. Perhaps one of the shards such as autonomy or ambition (or maybe even one of our unknowns) offered itself to Hoid, but for some reason or another (likely the ones you stated) Hoid refused it so it had to choose another holder. If this situation played out with ambition it could explain why ambition *fled* from odium which isn't a very ambitious thing to do, regardless of whether you know you'll lose or not. 

Basically, I'm agreeing with parts of your theory and adding a bit of my own. 

It could also be that the people involved in the Shattering actually knew in advance what shards were going to result, I wouldn't entirely discount that option. In which case, there would be an interesting tension between looking for volunteers for certain shards and looking to get certain people into their group. I wouldn't discount the possibility as well that Hoid was simply opposed to the very idea of the Shattering in some respect and wouldn't have participated no matter what they offered him.