Dor Shard

[SpeakoftheDeval]

So I get that Odium splintered D and D so that no one would be able to pick up the shard. But what was it that prevented somebody from individually picking up the various bits of investiture and becoming a super shard like Harmony? I guess maybe it's a little harder now because a lot of the investiture has developed its own unique identity but what about before?

I'm probably missing something really basic here, aren't I?

[Calderis he/him]

Odium didn't fully understand how to splinter a Shard at the point that he killed D&D. They were his first kills. Rather than leave them where they would be able to be picked up, he shoved their investiture into the Cognitive Realm. 

It's not that there weren't suitable Vessels available to pick up the Shards. The problem was that the Spiritual Realm is location independent, so when you pick up a Shard normally, it's all in one place to grab. 

By shoving that power into the Cognitive Realm, it has to be gathered up. The Dor itself is the Shards. It fills the entirety of Sel's Cognitive Realm. The loose investiture is chaotic and dangerous. Entering the Cognitive Realm there can literally rip a person apart. This is also why the Dor magics are location dependant. 

So in order to piece together the Shards into a form that could be used to ascend, you'd have to somehow either move all that investiture back into the Spiritual Realm, or somehow gather it all together without being destroyed. Both of these options are massive enough undertakings that a Shard may be required to achieve them. 

[Landis963 he/him]

42 minutes ago, MadhavDeval said:

So I get that Odium splintered D and D so that no one would be able to pick up the shard. But what was it that prevented somebody from individually picking up the various bits of investiture and becoming a super shard like Harmony? I guess maybe it's a little harder now because a lot of the investiture has developed its own unique identity but what about before?

I'm probably missing something really basic here, aren't I?

Probably the only thing in the way is the lack of potential Vessels at the time.  We don't know what the "half-life" of undirected Investiture is, especially when forced into the Cognitive Realm as the Dor is.  (Although a lack of connection to the Spiritual Realm probably means that, w/r/t the Dor, it is a discrete segment of linear time, and not instantaeous)

[Yezrien]

No, I think you've raised a valid question. It's not that you've missed something, there's just a lot we still don't know about Shards and investiture.

But, from what we've seen, I don't think people can just "pick up" any old scrap of investiture and control it the way a shardholder does. Shards aren't just huge masses of investiture; they have some kind of structure that allows a human to bond with them and take control of all that power. But when a shard is shattered, that mechanism is lost or destroyed.

Spoiler

I think we saw this mechanism in Hero of Ages; it was the concentrated ribbons of white and black investiture that Sazed touched in order to ascend. The mysterious Ire orb from Secret History might have been an attempt to artificially duplicate it.