The final-scenario question

[Ripheus23]

OK, there's a WoB about the Ghostbloods that testifies to the virtue of our endeavors on this site

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Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Yes, or no. With all of the cosmere books that have been put out, do we have enough information to deduce the Ghostbloods' motives?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Ummm... *laugher* I would say yes, but it's not like you are a fool if you haven't gotten it.

Robert Jordan once answered a question like this saying, "Well, the answer should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer." Which I never thought was fair. Like, no, it was not. Szeth, some people guessed it. And some people will guess this. A lot of the foreshadowing in my books, it's this weird thing where, when you do proper foreshadowing, and then people have three years between books, they're gonna figure some things out. Which presents a really interesting challenge to me as a writer, because, like, there are big things that get revealed in Oathbringer, that people who have been steeped in the world for the last seven years... they kinda knew this would happen. We get the beta readers, and they're like, "So? Doesn't everyone know that?" But at the same time, the casual reader, beta readers were like "Holy cow! This is a huge revelation!" And books need to work both for the person who has been really steeped in it, and the person who's reading along that maybe doesn't want to go get all the spoilers from all the fan guessing. So it is this weird balancing act that, as a writer, you have to perform, particularly with the longer books in the longer series, where you want to make sure they're engaging to the hardcore fan, but not overwhelming to the person who maybe hasn't reread the books since the last one came out. And I don't know that I have that balance figured out, but it is something I think about a lot...

source

(Another member quoted this in a different thread.) So, going off the analysis-of-obscure-details aspect of this, I will argue that the Ghostbloods' symbol is an image of their goal: to bring about the first tri-Shard. They are working the Roshar angle due to the presence of three Shards in the system. If Kelsier is or will be affiliated or otherwise involved with them, I think it will be because they also have logged Scadrial as a candidate world for the emergence for a tri-Shard, if Autonomy is Trell and is able to be more fully "drawn to" that world and then potentially inducted into Harmony.

Now, here are three ways I think this theme could play out until the end of the entire Cosmere saga:

ONE. The x-Shard

This depends on x as a number that is, per the story, the maximum that a Vessel will or can hold. The most conservative narrative option is to have all the currently Vessel-less Shards picked up by either a new Vessel, or some given Vessel, minus Honor. I think Rayse will be forcibly bound to the Shard of Honor and this will resolve him through the SA interlude, after which I believe Cultivation will eventually defeat Rayse to become the first tri-Shard, fulfilling the Ghostbloods' plan to whatever extent. So that leaves us, as far as I know, with Devotion, Dominion, and Ambition. So let's say a new Vessel picks up those and becomes another tri-Shard. Then the stage will be set with possibly one di-Shard and two tri-Shards (I have a feeling it's possible for Harmony to fail to bring his Shards into enduring balance---not necessarily so, but just possibly---in which event he might die. It would be ironic for Harmony to self-destruct and destroy Scadrial in the process, and also provide one of the motives for the future Scadrian space forces to engage in whatever search it is for whatever they're looking for (let's say Trell causes Harmony's ultimate imbalance)). Or we might have a di-Shard, a tri-Shard, and a quadri-Shard, if instead of a new Vessel it's some other holder of a Shard who takes the vulnerable three.

Of course, it's also possible that Honor might be picked up by the same being, so the problem as such would be a penta-Shard. If Odium's Vessel dies we might even have a hexa-Shard to deal with. And if some other Shard dies in one or another book, however many more die and aren't taken, might be taken by the problem character in question later. (And who knows whether a Shard could ever voluntarily give their divine portfolio to another? (Although I will hesitantly suggest that Dalinar will take up Honor but when the void of Odium devours Kaladin, in an act of ultimate humility Dalinar will give his Shard to the Child of Honor, and while being devoured Kaladin will force Rayse to take up Honor's Shard.)) But I would say the strongest conservative gloss of this option is a quadri-Shard, who is (A) already a holder of a Shard and (B) able to sum up the overarching narrative significance of books like Elantris and the future Threnodite novel. That is, the build-up period story of the Shards would be the Story of those Shards who died and thus "paved the way" for the quadri-Shard.

Sanderson has said it's unclear whether a single Vessel could hold all the Shards or become Adonalsium, or whether Adonalsium can even recombine as such at all. (Unclear from the POV of the audience, anyway.) I can't remember why but I was thinking that a 15-Shard might be possible for some special reason, though. However, the process that would most likely result in this event leads me to theory #2.

TWO. The cataclysm of Adonalsium

It is odd to me that Rayse is afraid of other Shards in terms of what would happen to his Intent if he picked them up. You'd think the obvious solution is, well, hey bro, just don't pick them up! Also if they're being held by someone else, that drastically reduces the chance of them being held by Rayse, so he could save himself twice the trouble if he didn't kill other Shards in the first place. Moreover, there has to be a reason for the 17th Shard to think that no good can come of Shards dwelling together. My intuition tells me that the reason for all this is that the Shards as Shards, not as the Vessels, have a natural dynamic whereby they will coalesce back together unless actively restrained. The sheer Spiritual gravity of the Investiture will draw them together, maybe. This might take ages of ages to come about but from the vantage of a Shard's Vessel, this could seem a more present threat.

Now, if Adonalsium is reforged, and yet if it is not clear whether Adonalsium could return to the Cosmere, I'm going to guess that this would be the case not because the sheer Investiture of all the Shards cannot be drawn back together into one, but because this density of power would either have no Vessel (possibly unlike the original Adonalsium) or its sapience would not be personally identical to the original Adonalsium's.

Why would this be a problem, though? Let us suppose such an incident took place as the successor of all the lesser cataclysms in the Cosmere since the Shattering. Investiture will be diffused in many and strange ways across scores of worlds. There is a chance that something like a Cosmere-spanning superperpendicularity would arise, cycling objects between Realms in a crescendo. If you've read The City at the End of Time, I'm talking something like the Typhon's emergence and devouring of the universe.

Of course, maybe Adonalsium's second coming wouldn't have such terrible consequences, but someone would fear such an outcome and would him- or herself pose a massive threat to the Cosmere, say by trying to annihilate the whole region in an attempt to preserve the rest of the Physical cosmos, or whatever.

But...

THREE. He already wrote the Last Battle...

Sanderson has already written what is arguably the greatest magic battle scene in history, the finale of the war in The Wheel of Time. Since the "opposition to Adonalsium" is not, so far as we know, a parallel divine being, it does not seem as if the Cosmere has a Dark One of its own, nor will it. However, in my thread based on the book Answer to Job I presented what I think to be some of the religious background for the Cosmere, namely the story of the vessel-shards of God, in which goodness and darkness are intermixed. Either it's pure coincidence that Jewish mysticism is deeply relevant to the Cosmere and that the core narrative of Jewish mysticism involves references to vessels and Shards of God, or else Sanderson's theme of the Shards involves an implicit reference to that narrative. But if this is so, then by applying the sliding-scale-of-villainy trope to the sum of Sanderson's writing to date (and what we can reliably project him to have eventually written), we can infer a possible ultimate antagonist, here, in the form of the darkness of Adonalsium itself. That is, instead of two divine beings, one of Whom is good and the other of which is evil, there is (was) just one divine being, and its Shattering was perhaps meant to forestall the emergence of the evil side of this one being. But let us suppose that the Shards have not purged the darkness within them, and indeed have oftentimes cultivated it, so that the Shards as a system of reality are becoming corrupted---for if power corrupts, and if absolute power corrupts absolutely...

FOUR. "All of the above"

There's nothing stopping Sanderson from including all of the above kinds of scenarios in the Cosmere endgame, is there? (Along with entirely other scenarios besides!) He could set the stage/red-herring the audience with the x-Shard situation, which becomes the prelude to the reforging crisis, and in the process of being reforged, the power of Adonalsium (if not the person too) casts its inherent shadow across the stars.

[Leyrann]

What I dislike about this theory is that it feels too... random. I mean, they're all viable ideas that might occur, but there's no reason why this would occur, and not something else. Compare (WHEEL OF TIME SPOILERS) how the body swap between Rand and Moridin was foreshadowed through their bond and a number of other things to the point that basically everyone in the fandom was already convinced it would happen, and the question one of how it would happen, and some of these things (like the formation of the bond) go back all the way to book 7, which would be roundabout the point where we are in the Cosmere timeline; with the difference that Brandon is even more of a planner than Robert Jordan, and will therefore likely have even earlier foreshadowing.

So I'd kind of want to see WoBs or possible lines from the books that foreshadow something like this.

[Ripheus23]

The tri-Shard thing is the strongest element on its face and at least has the opening WoB of this post on its side (vaguely); Autonomy is at least possibly in a position to become an x-Shard, and if there's a reason for there to be the Cosmere books there are, an integrated narrative flow that is, while also a sliding-scale-of-villainy to consider (if not to apply...), well... I don't know if there are WoBs about Investiture tending to coalesce over time, so that theory is based on Rayse's attitude for the most part. Adonalsium having a dark side is suggested by the overly-coincidental wording of the Shard situation in the Cosmere compared to the mystical Jewish story of the shards of God.

[Solarserpent]

I'm still of the belief that they are people who hunt secrets and that Kelsier is their leader, running the scheme from Scadrial (since he hasn't found out how to disconnect from Scadrial's investiture). the 3 diamonds represent the 3 realms, aka perpendicularity. Their name matches well with Kelsier's current state. Kelsier definitely wanted to know more about the cosmere so it seems like the next step for Kelsier to try to go out into the Cosmere and gather information using surrogates. He was able to get people from the southern continent to build a large temple in the cold mountains and then kill themselves to protect its secrets so he is able to create fanatics to do his bidding. He might have sent out those that he trusts to set up operations on different planets to send back Cosmere information. He would eventually have found out about Silverlight and sent people there to get more information and more recruits. Don't know if there are any WOB's that work against this theory. We will probably find out by or in Mistborn Era 3 so just wait 7-10 years.

[Ripheus23]

On 10/12/2018 at 2:08 PM, Solarserpent said:

so just wait 7-10 years

*Screams like someone in Szeth's mind*