Ruin and Odium

[Tesh]

I am currently reading WoR for the fourth time, and I am thinking less about the storyline, and more about the Cosmere, and how Roshar fits into all of this.

I thought about this at one point, as Jasnah said that seeing the future is of the voidbringers. Or Odium.

Ruin's body is Atium, a metal that allows certain Allomancers to see a very short way into the future.

I feel like this is very important, but I don't know how.

[Fezzik]

Seeing into the future is a manipulation of Fortune, just like Lerasium artificially increases Connection to Preservation. Both manipulate cosmere-wide mechanics. I wouldn't read much into it.

[King Cole]

I  thought the same thing, but it doesn't really mean that much in the long run

[Toaster Retribution]

Both are antagonistic Shards affiliated with future sight. If I remember correctly, Ruin himself was pretty bad at seeing the future though.

[The One Who Connects]

Anyone with enough power to peer into the Spiritual Realm can see the future(provided they can actually make sense of the information they see).

We've seen/heard about 5 Shards doing so in the books themselves. Honor(who isn't good at it), Preservation(Terris prophecies), Cultivation(Honor says so), Odium(OB related) and Harmony(the radio comment). Per WoB, Ruin isn't very good at it, but his God Metal is(for some reason), and Elend uses it in HoA.

Atium, like Ascension, expands the user's mind slightly so they can deal with the extra information. This is why Elend's method worked, while our friend in MB:SH only gets a minor glance.

Seeing the future itself is not evil. However, Moelach(an Unmade) is the main/only example of future-sight on Roshar. Moelach's association with Odium(who appears kinda evil) is why they consider it evil. Cultivation is just as good/if not better than Odium at future-sight though, so it'd be interesting to see how the Vorin faith feels about that.

[recneps]

I'd say that Atium is good at Futuresight - when Ruin is not - because Atium is made by Preservation. Leras took a large portion of Ruin's body, swapped out two metals from the 'natural' Metallic Arts, and put Atium/Malatium in their place. Preservation made Atium - it uses Ruin's power, but was designed by Preservation. Ruin had some degree of foresight, so something designed by Preservation to use Ruin's power wouldn't be starting from scratch - it would be making more efficient use of some existing talent.

[RShara]

I discussed this in my Dangers of Seeing the Future thread, if you are interested

 

[Strifelover]

11 hours ago, recneps said:

I'd say that Atium is good at Futuresight - when Ruin is not - because Atium is made by Preservation. Leras took a large portion of Ruin's body, swapped out two metals from the 'natural' Metallic Arts, and put Atium/Malatium in their place. Preservation made Atium - it uses Ruin's power, but was designed by Preservation. Ruin had some degree of foresight, so something designed by Preservation to use Ruin's power wouldn't be starting from scratch - it would be making more efficient use of some existing talent.

Preservation didn't make Atium, it's the distilled, physical form of Ruin's Investiture that occurs naturally just like Lerasium. What Pres did was swap in atium in the snapping of mistings, and in the general knowledge of allomancers. It's mentioned in MB:SH that atium mistings is a new concept, timed specifically so that they will burn up Ruin's body/power right when he needed it to complete the destruction of the planet. That's his grand plan.

The fact that atium grants limited futuresight is more because it grants some access to the spiritual realm, which we see through other means in other books. It's more just a fundamental power in the cosmere, than it is necessary associated with good or evil. In the context of SA it just happens to be more associated with the Shard that is evil from our heroes' perspectives.

[user613]

On 1/6/2018 at 11:28 AM, The One Who Connects said:

Anyone with enough power to peer into the Spiritual Realm can see the future(provided they can actually make sense of the information they see).

We've seen/heard about 5 Shards doing so in the books themselves. Honor(who isn't good at it), Preservation(Terris prophecies), Cultivation(Honor says so), Odium(OB related) and Harmony(the radio comment). Per WoB, Ruin isn't very good at it, but his God Metal is(for some reason), and Elend uses it in HoA.

Atium, like Ascension, expands the user's mind slightly so they can deal with the extra information. This is why Elend's method worked, while our friend in MB:SH only gets a minor glance.

Seeing the future itself is not evil. However, Moelach(an Unmade) is the main/only example of future-sight on Roshar. Moelach's association with Odium(who appears kinda evil) is why they consider it evil. Cultivation is just as good/if not better than Odium at future-sight though, so it'd be interesting to see how the Vorin faith feels about that.

I'm not sure I agree that the radio comment means Harmony is seeing into the future.  It could just be a good understanding of physics, and the knowledge that they have all the pieces and haven't put them together yet.  Like maybe they have Maxwell's equations but haven't made the jump to waves.

Edited January 29, 2018 by user613

[Podman]

13 minutes ago, user613 said:

I'm not sure I agree that the radio comment means Harmony is seeing into the future.  It could just be a good understanding of physics, and the knowledge that they have all the pieces and haven't put them together yet.  Like maybe they have Maxwell's equations but haven't made the jump to waves.

Yeah, I don't think the radio comment was seeing the future either. From what I understand, Scadrial pre-TLR had radios, and Harmony is doing some math to say, since you got this technology this long ago you should've gotten this technology that long ago.

[Calderis]

4 minutes ago, podman36 said:

Yeah, I don't think the radio comment was seeing the future either. From what I understand, Scadrial pre-TLR had radios, and Harmony is doing some math to say, since you got this technology this long ago you should've gotten this technology that long ago.

Scadrial pre-rashek was at steam technology. I don't believe they had developed the radio yet.

Quote

Tyran Amiros

How technologically advanced was the society before the Final Empire? You reference gunpowder, and certainly the current day seems to have technologies like canning and clocks, so how much did Rashek destroy?

Brandon Sanderson

They had steam technology, and were just about to hit the railroad era. Something near early 1800s in our world.

source

 

[Podman]

6 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Scadrial pre-rashek was at steam technology. I don't believe they had developed the radio yet.

 

Ahh. I think when I first read that I saw that they were in railroad, just out of steam. Thanks for clearing that up!

[Weltall]

On 1/6/2018 at 8:28 AM, The One Who Connects said:

We've seen/heard about 5 Shards doing so in the books themselves. Honor(who isn't good at it), Preservation(Terris prophecies), Cultivation(Honor says so), Odium(OB related) and Harmony(the radio comment). Per WoB, Ruin isn't very good at it, but his God Metal is(for some reason), and Elend uses it in HoA.

Atium is only 'good' at future-sight for a couple of seconds, in the immediate vicinity of the person burning it. The example in HoA didn't look that much farther ahead, on the timescale of minutes probably. Ruin's future-sight presumably went a lot farther than that, it just wasn't as good as Preservation's own abilities in that respect. So I'm not really seing anything strange in the properties of atium versus Ruin.

Related to Shardic foresight, while we don't see it happening directly, we can assume it to be the case for Endowment and all indications are that she's quite good at it. The Returned all see visions of the future before they're sent back and the one example we witness personally involved events that wouldn't happen for five or so years. They could possibly extend much farther if at least some of what Vasher saw before his Return is still in the future, as of Stormlight Archive's timeframe.

Harmony has the combined powers of Preservation and Ruin so we could deduce that he has future-sight without having to see it. But Brandon did mention that the radio comment is a combination of future-sight and Ascension providing an understanding of the universe.

In terms of indirect Shardic foresight where one of them is empowering it in others is Wyrn in Elantris. Brandon has mentioned that he's associated more with Dominion. Also, OB spoiler

Spoiler

Riino is Elantrian and thus more associated with Devotion and he's got some form of future-sight. This was foreshadowed in Secret History when the Ire mentioned the mechanic of Fortune.

And we can add Autonomy to the list of Shards that are indirectly granting future-sight, with the WoB that Patji is related to her in some way. That means that the only Shard that we haven't seen either seeing the future directly or granting some form of it in others is Ambition.