[OB] Shard questions

[Fakeout]

So Brandon was in Houston today, a half hour away from where I live, but I wasn't able to go  so I wanted to see if anyone had any answers or theories about some questions I have after reading Oathbringer, specifically ones I have relating to the shards.

I compared a lot of what Odium was doing to what we have seen from Preservation and Ruin in the first Mistborn trilogy, since that was previously where we had seen the most direct Shardic involvement. Now I'm really confused about the capabilities of a shard though. t seems like Odium is much stronger/capable than Preservation of Ruin were. Here's what I noticed--

• So Brandon has said in the past that shards don't control what magic system arises from their investiture, but their intent does influence how you obtain that power. Preservation "preserves" people by fueling the power for them, Honor requires sworn oaths, and Breaths must be "endowed" to the person who uses them. However, Odium seems to be able to create an expanding repertoire of different uses of his investiture. As far as bonding Fused or with trying to corrupt Dalinar and Amaram/Amaram's soldiers, he seems to need the individual to accept him and "give him their pain" before he can influence them and give them his investiture, so that would be they way they gain access, and what stays constant between both Honor and Odium is that they gain access to the Ten Surges. So this would be the natural magic system that manifested on Roshar. But Odium also has other unique things he creates: the Unmade, each having their own unique abilities, and the Everstorm, a new construct of his Investiture. Why couldn't Ruin do things like this upon escaping the Well? All we saw him do was manipulate the Inquisitors and Koloss in to expanding their numbers, and directing them as his army. However, they were both designed by TLR. Shouldn't Ruin be a master of his magic system and been able to create new horrors like the monsters in Shadows of Self? And why couldn't he have found new uses for his investiture? Also, why does Roshar have so many Spren, and could the other shards do something similar in the Cognitive Realm of their planets?
• Also, where was Odium this whole time? He didn't interact like at all until this book where he seems very present and involved in everything.
• Another thing is shouldn't Odium be weaker than he is? He has splintered off a lot of himself to create so many spren, the Unmade, and the Everstorm, and he has fought and killed four shards that we know of, and those battles have left him weakened. Comparing this to Preservation, he put a piece of himself into the planet and every human to provide sentience, created the mists at night, and locked ruin in the Well. This left his mind broken and him dying. Odium seems to have used much more of himself without the same kind of consequences.
• And finally, are there restrictions or something to what shards can do? The Lord Ruler held only a small piece of Preservstion and was able to rearrange continents and shift the planets position in orbit around get sun. With only a small amount. Full shards like Ruin, Odium and Honor should be able to just destroy planets and the like on their own, and sweep away armies. But they don't. Kelsier describes Ruin as ripping open the Ashmounts and causing earthquakes in SH, but couldn't he have just destroyed the whole place in moments, or at least just destroyed Vin or someone?

Yeah, that's most of what I've got, and is pretty indicative that I'm missing a lot of Realmatic knowledge, but hopefully you Sharders might be able to help me out with some of it 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

However, Odium seems to be able to create an expanding repertoire of different uses of his investiture.

Fabrials can duplicate both Surgebinding and Voidbinding, in addition to the various things we've seen them do. I don't think his expanding repertoire is a sign of anything other than ingenuity or a desire to experiment. Honor could probably do a number of fancy tricks if he wanted to, but it doesn't seem like the thing he'd do. Cultivation seems the type to "try something new and improved," but we don't have any examples yet.

In the end, I think the main reason he's got all these fancy things when nobody else seems to is because Brandon decided to write them in first. For example, the Mistborn Series will discover magically powered FTL travel in the future, which isn't in the normal wheelhouse of the Metallic Arts, but they haven't yet because Brandon hasn't written it yet. AonDor is programming reality, where the possibilities are literally endless, but that's for the future. Eventually, something has to be for "the now," and this is what Brandon picked.

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

All we saw him do was manipulate the Inquisitors and Koloss in to expanding their numbers, and directing them as his army. However, they were both designed by TLR. Shouldn't Ruin be a master of his magic system and been able to create new horrors like the monsters in Shadows of Self? And why couldn't he have found new uses for his investiture?

Ruin is the one who showed TLR how to create Inquisitors, Koloss and Kandra. If he hadn't straight up told TLR how, they never would've come into existence. That's the reason why the Inquisitors made next to no headway with Hemalurgic experimenting for the 1,024 yrs that the Empire stood. So they were designed by Ruin.

Ruin could easily have made new horrors with his magic, but why would he? He wanted to destroy the world itself. The people on it were of little consequence unless they got in his way. Additionally, he's got infiltrators(Kandra), heavy infantry(Koloss), and specialists/leaders(Inquisitors). Why create new monsters when the ones you already have work just fine? (This was also partly on Brandon, as adding entirely new stuff in book 3 of 10 is fine, but in the middle of book 3 of 3?)

As for new uses, remember that his magic system steals things from others. He's limited by what's in his environment to steal. He did give several of the Inquisitors access to Feruchemy via spikes, so he expanded what was currently being done with his Investiture. But beyond that, there wasn't much else for him to take.

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

But Odium also has other unique things he creates: the Unmade, each having their own unique abilities, and the Everstorm, a new construct of his Investiture. Why couldn't Ruin do things like this upon escaping the Well?

Ruin still had Preservation blocking him. Reread Secret History, or the HoA chapters after Vin ascends. Ruin and Preservation can hardly do anything because the other is constantly blocking them. Cultivation does not appear to be doing this as directly as R&P did, and Honor isn't in a position to prevent it. So Odium is getting away with some things.

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

Also, why does Roshar have so many Spren, and could the other shards do something similar in the Cognitive Realm of their planets?

Seons and Skaze are splinters in the same vein as Spren, but Roshar has so many Spren because that's how it was created. Adonalsium personally grew the planet, and much of that ambient Investiture of his that permeated it became Spren. Assuming they had a choice when they made Scadrial, R&P decided to do it differently.

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

Also, where was Odium this whole time? He didn't interact like at all until this book where he seems very present and involved in everything.

He's been involved in everything for a long time. He's just been exercising subtlety for the past 4,500 years, but now that the Desolation is here, he felt like it was time for him to return to center stage.

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

He has splintered off a lot of himself to create so many spren, the Unmade, and the Everstorm, and he has fought and killed four shards that we know of, and those battles have left him weakened.

For killing the other Shards, we have a WoB that he needs time to recover from that, and he's had at least 2 millennia since Honor kicked the bucket. I'll let him slide a little on this front. The vast amount of Spren isn't a big thing either(to me at least). There were a good number of Nahel Spren back in the old days too, so they appear to be able to occur without incurring too much of a power drain on the Shards.

As for the rest, the Unmade are only 9 Individuals. It's probably a little more Investiture than Honor put into the Honorblades, but it's not some immeasurable amount. I don't have enough details about the Everstorm for me to speculate.

Preservation physically ripped a portion of Ruin's power from him. What Preservation did is "kind-of" splintering, so that's gonna tax him quite a bit more than the mundane things we've seen Odium do. Additionally, Preservation "ruined" Ruin, which was against his Intent. We don't know what kind of effects acting against the Intent would have in the long run. Our only other example(Vin) died shortly after and didn't have to deal with the repercussions of it, so we still don't know.

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

And finally, are there restrictions or something to what shards can do? The Lord Ruler held only a small piece of Preservation and was able to rearrange continents and shift the planets position in orbit around get sun. With only a small amount.

In terms of restrictions, there are a few. They can't touch The Beyond, there are the mysterious "rules they are bound by" that Honor mentioned, and a select few other things. But in general, the main restriction hitting the Shards is when another Shard is blocking them.
Regarding TLR, it's a bit more than a "small amount".

Quote

eri_pl

Is Jezren a Sliver?

Brandon Sanderson

Jezrien is one of the Heralds, but has never held the power of an entire Shard himself. (So no, not a Sliver.)

He held a substantial amount of power, but he only held it for a small amount of time.

17 hours ago, Fakeout said:

Full shards like Ruin, Odium and Honor should be able to just destroy planets and the like on their own, and sweep away armies. But they don't. Kelsier describes Ruin as ripping open the Ashmounts and causing earthquakes in SH, but couldn't he have just destroyed the whole place in moments, or at least just destroyed Vin or someone?

Bringing it back to R&P, they can choose to use their power to prevent the other from doing something. I'm fairly certain we see Ruin and Kelsier do just that in Secret History at one point. And in HoA, when Vin started changing things after ascending. Ruin stopped her third or fourth action because he chose to let the first two happen. You really think Honor would just let Odium crack the planet in two, or that Odium would let Honor just "sweep away" his armies?

Vin had Preservation's eye from the start. Ruin would never have been able to destroy her via his own power, so he was forced to act through pawns to kill her the conventional way. The same is likely true on Roshar. The Parshendi summoning the Everstorm is a good example. Odium would've blocked any attempts by Cultivation to destroy the Parshendi, and Cultivation could've blocked any attempts by Odium to destroy Dalinar's armies.

[Fakeout]

@The One Who Connects thank you for giving me a very complete response. I didn’t know that Ruin had told TLR how to make the things he did, I had assumed that he had learned it while he held the power or something like that. I think I had read a WOB that had said the power at the well was relatively small compared to the full shard, but you did explain it was more about the stand off between shards and the mystery rules that bind shards according to Honor. Also, I do like the explanation that it was because Preservation went against his intent that he was hurt so much. On Roshar, it does seem like spren allow for lots of experimentation. Do we know if the shard specific spren were created by the shards of if they have simply been influenced and are originally of Adonalsium’s design? 

Thank you again

[yahas he/him]

8 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

He's been involved in everything for a long time. He's just been exercising subtlety for the past 4,500 years, but now that the Desolation is here, he felt like it was time for him to return to center stage.

Are you sure about this? My sense was that Honor (and maybe Cultivation?) were able to trap Odium on Roshar somehow using the Oathpact. I assumed that Odium was less able to influence the world (similar to Ruin), except he was able to get release when the Everstorm was released.

That also explains the huge gap between the last desolation and the coming of the Everstorm: he was using that time to design the Everstorm and getting it right, so that he could make use of it as soon as Taln cracks.

[Fezzik]

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/77-shadows-of-self-lansing-signing/#e6819

7 hours ago, yahas said:

My sense was that Honor (and maybe Cultivation?) were able to trap Odium on Roshar somehow using the Oathpact.

sorry, not quite.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

7 hours ago, yahas said:

Are you sure about this? I assumed that Odium was less able to influence the world (similar to Ruin), except he was able to get release when the Everstorm was released.

Ruin was mostly focused on influencing TLR, since TLR influenced everything else. Roshar is not so centralized, so Odium has to do more work. Ruin's lack of influence in other things isn't a sign of inability, it's a sign of picking and choosing.

Maybe "involved" was the wrong word for me to use, but just because Odium is less able to influence things does not mean he could not influence things. And over the course of 5 or 6 millennia, he could pick and choose just about anything to influence.

Quote

wilde4fitness

Are the Ghostbloods associated with Odium?

Brandon Sanderson

Odium has his fingers in a LOT of things.

This WoB is from 2013, before WoR(and thus, Pre-Everstorm).

As stated, Odium has been influencing many things, presumably for a long while. He also has the Unmade, which I would count as him influencing things(albeit indirectly).

13 hours ago, Fakeout said:

I had assumed that he had learned it while he held the power or something like that.

You're not the first to think that. The easy way to remember it is that Hemalurgy is of Ruin, while the Well is of Preservation. Preservation's power wouldn't know anything about Ruin's magic. Preservation himself.. maybe, but his power on it's own, no.

13 hours ago, Fakeout said:

Do we know if the shard specific spren were created by the shards of if they have simply been influenced and are originally of Adonalsium’s design? 

Um.. maybe? I don't know about "created by the Shards," but I'm somewhat positive there are Spren that don't contain ambient Investiture from Adonalsium. Best I can find on Arcanum is this WoB, which is.. semi-relevant.

Quote

Questioner
Spren. The phenomenon that creates spren. Is that Roshar-specific or is that a general effect?

Brandon Sanderson
Well, yes and no. The general fundamental rules that create spren are cosmere-wide. Spren are pieces of Investiture, usually pieces of Investiture that come straight from one of the Shards of Adonalsium, split off in some way, that because of human or other sapient creatures thinking about it or interacting with the power, the power starts to take on a life of its own. Develops personalities and comes alive, so to speak. And this can happen on any pla-- in any place where there is Investiture. So it could happen on any planet in the cosmere with significant amounts of free Investiture. The places you've seen this happen most commonly are on Sel and Scadri-- err Roshar. You haven't seen it on Scadrial, and you've seen little kind of hints at it on Nalthis, but not quite. And so-- But it's possible for it to happen anywhere. Seons and spren are basically the same thing with different powers-- powers kind of pushing them in different-- growth out of them-- That said, the non-sapient spren, so the spren that are not quite as-- They're not going to stand up and talk to you. Those all existed-- not all, but most of them existed on Roshar before the Shattering of Adonalsium.

It's that "free Investiture" that's throwing me off. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

[SpeakoftheDeval]

1 hour ago, The One Who Connects said:

It's that "free Investiture" that's throwing me off. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Free investiture just means investiture that is not being directed by a mind- bits of shards don't randomly attain sentience while part of the shard because they have the mind controlling them. When devotion and dominion were splintered however, there wasn't a mind directing a lot of the investiture and so bits organically gained sentience to become the seons and the skaze 

[teknopathetic he/him]

Before the shattering there was a lot of investiture placed hither and tither on different worlds, and a lot of that investiture has started to pool and become a little more sentient. Sel is doing this (sort of) on its own now that D&D have been shattered, and Odium isn't too pleased about it.