Theory: Man Made Adonalsium

[ROSHtaFARian2.0]

Spoilers for all cosmere works including Words of Radiance, as well as the first couple chapters of Liar of Partinel Brandon posted years ago, with the understanding that the latter is not official canon and the eventual published version will probably bear little resemblance to it.

 

One thing in particular jumped out at me in the epigraphs in Words of Radiance.  In the dragon's response to Hoid's letter, there was this bit, paraphrased as I don't have the book in front of me at the moment:

 

'Haven't we caused enough destruction already?  The worlds you now tread bear the mark and design of Adonalsium....'

 

The phrasing of this struck me as extremely significant, because the arrangement of those words place the idea that the Shardworlds bear 'the design of Adonalsium' under the umbrella of destruction the dragon believes he and Hoid are responsible for.  As in, the two of them are in agreement in considering Adonalsium's influence on these worlds to be a bad thing.

 

We've speculated for a long time that Hoid was not only present at the Shattering of Adonalsium, but that he played a part in it.  We also know that Adonalsium was opposed by a force or by an individual or individuals, and this opposition according to Word of Brandon is still around today.  We've speculated that this opposing force might be the Great Evil spoken of on the world Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell is set on.  I propose that the dragon's response strongly hints that he and Hoid were actually the opposition, or at least part of it.

 

We also know that there is a force possibly greater than Adonalsium in the cosmere (the God Beyond?), and at a recent signing Brandon said the opposition to Adonalsium once created a great weapon that is still around.

 

Finally, let's look at the word Adonalsium.  Adonai means Lord or God in Hebrew.  The suffix ium can be meant to denote an element, metal or synthetic compound like barium or helium, it can signify a place like gymnasium, or it can be a derivative of personal nouns, often denoting the associated status or office.  Point being, it sounds less like a name, and more like something ASSOCIATED with god or being godlike.  Even though its doubtful the word Adonai has any significance in the cosmere, and its use is most likely a play on words, I think the intent behind its use is the same.

 

So with all that said, here's what I think happened.

 

In the few chapters Brandon posted of Liar of Partinel years ago, Yolen was depicted as a world where the gods were dead and the planet itself was in a state of slow decay, with all life being threatened by an unstoppable blight that was slowly consuming and transforming anything it came into contact with.  Humanity huddled in cities built within dwindling circles of protection.  Maybe the blight was a symptom of the gods being dead, maybe it was the work of the cosmere's Great Evil, maybe it was a completely natural force.

 

Again, its possible all of this will change in the published version of Liar of Partinel when Brandon finally returns to it, but I think the basic setup there might still be similar.  Picture a world whose people are faced with an evil slowly strangling the life out of their planet, with no hope of divine intervention, because all their gods are dead.

 

So they decide to make a new one.

 

Somehow, using some complicated bit of realmatic trickery, they harness the power of creation, tapping into the spiritual realm where it resides most fully and creating a physical manifestation of it, so it can directly manipulate the Physical Realm.  They call this synthetic god Adonalsium.  Maybe its a metal like atium, maybe its a place where the power can be concentrated, maybe its made up of little pieces of the world's dead gods, who knows.  But like everything in the cosmere, it needs to exist across all three realms.  It needs a cognitive aspect, someone to sit in the driver's seat.  Someone needs to BE god.

 

And this is where Hoid, the dragon and the rest of the opposition, including the original sixteen Shard holders come in.  They're not all friends, some of them hate each other's guts, but they're all in agreement about one thing.  Nuh uh, they say.  No way.  No one human can be trusted with the power of God.  They're not going to just stand idly by while some human with delusions of grandeur ascends to godhood and remakes the whole universe according to his or her whims.

 

They can't stop Adonalsium from being made, but they can make it less effective.  They build a weapon that shatters it, splinters the power-of-creation-made-physical into sixteen Shards.  Sixteen of them each become caretaker to a Shard, dedicated to keeping it safe and preventing it from falling into the wrong hands, lest anyone put Adonalsium back together again.  Rayse ends up with Odium because truthfully, nobody else wants to go near that particular Shard.  Hoid protests, but his concerns are ignored - it doesn't help that he'd abstained from taking a Shard, he didn't want that responsibility.  With their newfound power, the Shardholders discover they aren't limited to this one little world anymore.  They scatter around the cosmere, the better to keep the Shards apart from each other.  Like Brandon always said, they have some choice on where they each end up, but not complete freedom as its decided that Ruin and Preservation should go somewhere together, in the hopes their opposing Shards will cancel each other out....Devotion and Dominion go somewhere together in the hopes their complementary Shards will balance each other - Devotion's presence softening Dominion's absolute tyranny even as Dominion's presence gives Devotion a slightly obsessive edge....Endowment's considered safe to be left on his or her own, and so on and so on.

 

Time passes.  They all, Hoid included, realize their mistake too late.

 

They got their Realmatic Theory wrong.  From the moment Adonalsium manifested a presence in the Physical Realm, it had a Cognitive aspect, even before bonding with a human mind.  Like a spren in the Physical Realm without a Nahel bond, it didn't have full sapience, a personality of its own, but it had its own idea of what it meant to BE Adonalsium, to be God.  When it was shattered, that fledgling cognitive aspect shattered too, becoming sixteen specific Intents.  A spren bonded with a human mind is never going to overwhelm that human mind with its own cognitive aspect, because its too small a piece of Adonalsium.  Its only a tiny splinter of a single Shard, its own identity not enough to supplant a human's idea of what it means to be him or herself.  But a full Shard?  No single human mind could compete.  Eventually, every Shardholder's cognitive aspect warped, remolded until only the Shard's Intent remained.  As the dragon said in his response, they, like Rayse, became more force than personality.

 

And so, despite Hoid, the dragon, and the sixteen Shardholders' best intentions to prevent someone becoming God and ruling absolutely, they ended up with sixteen little gods and multiple worlds reshaped according to Adonalsium's designs, with countless billions of human lives rendered insignificant in the face of the Shards' grand power struggles and single-minded dedication to their Intents.  Hoid hops from world to world desperately trying to do damage control while working towards some endgame he hopes will make things better.  The dragon just wants him to butt out like he himself has so they don't make things even worse.  Meanwhile, the 17th Shard, a collection of humans with knowledge of Adonalsium are convinced they know the secret 17th ingredient/Intent Adonalsium's original creators forgot to include, and if they can just put it back together again and add their extra 17th Intent (perhaps 'humanity'?) they can make everything right, but to do that they need Hoid to sit still and stop meddling.  To which Hoid says 'oh you adorable little toddlers.  I remember being that young and naive.  Go play in the Purelake, the grownups are busy.'

 

And that's what I think is going on.  

Edited March 9, 2014 by ROSHtaFARian2.0

[TheOneKEA]

This is a very interesting theory. Someone should ask Brandon if any large collection of Investiture in one place can ever self-organize and gain a functional cognitive aspect, and if the mindless powers on Sel are capable of doing this. If he answers in the affirmative (or what passes for that with some WoB) then I think this theory has some legs.

[Argent he/him]

Brandon mentioned recently that any sufficiently large pile of Investiture will eventually gain sentience. I am paraphrasing here, but he said that even Endowment (Nalthis' Shard) were Splintered, it would still kind of reform eventually and people will start Returning again, but not exactly the same way.

[Armless writer he/him]

Perhaps Andonalsium was forged out of the dead gods in partinel this is where the starting investure could be from.

[MisterGuess]

After reading this, the thought immediately came into my head that Hoid might have volunteered to take up the role of God with the specific intent to allow himself to be shattered. I have no idea if Hoid's powers or history have been addressed in terms of having ever held a shard, but I like the theory above so much that I want to use it as a basis for his apparently unique combination of abilities.

[Trevalion]

Impressive theory.  When I finished what we have of Liar of Partinel, I thought Yolen must have been site of the shattering of Adonalasium and it was the 16 shards, fallen to the planet, that created the safe zones and it was the destructive/shattering power that left the skullmoss behind.  But it seemed as if Brandon's characters, and so perhaps he himself thinks, that any god who could be shattered is no God at all, so a powerful construct, made in the image of the "God Beyond" could make a lot of sense.  Nice job!

[Observer]

Brandon mentioned recently that any sufficiently large pile of Investiture will eventually gain sentience. I am paraphrasing here, but he said that even Endowment (Nalthis' Shard) were Splintered, it would still kind of reform eventually and people will start Returning again, but not exactly the same way.

 

Because if you pull somebody apart piece by piece, bloody chunk by bloody chunk and all that jazz, odds are you won't get the same thing when you put Humpty back together again. Depending on what Adonalsium was like when it was around, Hoid's point could either be for or against its reassembly. I honestly can't help but wonder if every member of the Seventeenth Shard doesn't want to throw themselves in, make a mind strong enough to resist being molded. No matter what, their name has a much deeper meaning to it.

 

Solid theory, I like it.

[Asha'man Logain]

I must say I clicked on this theory prepared to dislike, disprove and disavow it. Wow.

 

I quite like it. I find this very plausible and surprisingly well reasoned. You did a good job sir to put all this together from so little. Up-vote for you!

[Youngy he/him]

Have we ever asked if Hoid is a Sliver?

[Trevalion]

Yes, we have a WOB that Hoid is not a Sliver.

[HydrogenAlpha he/him]

We should ask Brandon if Hoid himself is/was the weapon, because he seemed to know each one of the shardholders personally, but somehow he didn't end up with a shard himself .. there has to be a reason for this.

[ROSHtaFARian2.0]

We should ask Brandon if Hoid himself is/was the weapon, because he seemed to know each one of the shardholders personally, but somehow he didn't end up with a shard himself .. there has to be a reason for this.

 

I don't know if there needs to be a reason other than personality, really.  Like I said, if they ended up with more people than Shards that needed holders, it totally fits Hoid's personality to stand back and let the others take up the Shards.  He's not the sort who seems to like the idea of being tied to anything - I think he'd dislike bonding with a spren, let alone a whole Shard.

[Rowsdower]

I am a bit confused then why, in WOR, when Hoid is talking to Dalinar, he says that if Odium catches him (Hoid), that he will be shattered into pieces that cant be reassembled. Sounded like Hoid was a shard to me.

[Tazren he/him]

I saw that as Hoid just being very vivid in his explanation. We don't really know what Hoid is; we do know that he's powerful and difficult to kill, judging from his conversation with Jasnah. Perhaps he cannot die like a regular human, but Odium could likely put him in a state equivalent to death. 

[king of nowhere]

I haven't read wor yet, but maybe hoid is just using shardic terms because they sound ominous.

And anyway that furtherproves that he's not a shard, cause if hoid had a shard, then 1) he would be able to resist odium at least for several millennia, and 2) even if he was shattered, he could be reassembled.

[Observer]

Sounds to me like he's saying that:

1: He can, to some extent, "evade" Odium.

2: He can die.

3: If Odium catches him, he won't just crush his heart or something. Rayse will personally take Hoid's spiritual aspect and tear it to shreds, ensuring a death that even Hoid cannot heal himself from.