If Ruin Had Destroyed Scadrial

[Philomath she/her]

So if Ruin had successfully destroyed Scadrial before getting his body back from Atium, would he have permanently maimed himself? Could he have actually completely destroyed the world while still invested in it or would that have hurt him?

[+ILuvHats he/him]

33 minutes ago, Philomath said:

 

So if Ruin had successfully destroyed Scadrial before getting his body back from Atium, would he have permanently maimed himself? Could he have actually completely destroyed the world while still invested in it or would that have hurt him?

 

First, to clarify, Ruin has investiture trapped in the atium, and he also has investiture trapped in Scadrial since he helped create it and is thus highly invested in the planet. I see no reason why he couldn’t reclaim the investiture from the atium while he’s destroying the rest of the planet, as long as he finds where the atium is at. And if Ruin destroyed Scadrial, he would have released the investiture he’d used to create the world, and he could then reclaim it instantly. It is likely that Odium wishes to destroy Roshar/Braize for this very reason; so he can recover his investiture. The reason atium keeps Ruin from using it after it’s burned is that it sort of dissipates and gets spread out, so it needs needs to coalesce as a metal before he could reclaim it. But if Ruin destroyed Scadrial, even if the atium was somehow destroyed during the process, there is no longer a perpendicularity for it to coalesce at, so the investiture would have eventually returned to Ruin.

[Elegy he/him]

15 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

And if Ruin destroyed Scadrial, he would have released the investiture he’d used to create the world, and he could then reclaim it instantly. It is likely that Odium wishes to destroy Roshar/Braize for this very reason; so he can recover his investiture.

Oathbringer spoilers:

But if so, why did he make that deal with Taravangian to keep people from Kharbranth alive?

[+ILuvHats he/him]

Spoiler

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But if so, why did he make that deal with Taravangian to keep people from Kharbranth alive?

l misspoke. My fault. 

Since Odium isn’t too invested in Roshar specifically, I don’t think he needs to obliterate it to free himself from the system, though he may or may not have to do that to Braize. Recovering his investiture from the Unmade, the Fused, and the Voidspren, which encompass most of his investiture on Roshar, shouldn’t have a huge negative impact on the planet.

But needles to say, Odium’s victory will still be terrible for the world and likely result in the death of all life on it. One theory is that Odium’s victory will result in Roshars destruction because he is probably planning on erasing all spren, not just voidspren. He mentions in OB during his talk with Dalinar that his transformation of this realm will be substantial, so we know he’s gonna do something to Roshar. Also, he says he now realizes he can no longer leave Honors remains alone. Or he says something to that effect (I don’t have my copy of OB right now). Maybe the presence of the spren make it likelier Honor will unsplinter and get picked up again? Who knows. Anyways, destroying all spren would wreck Roshar’s ecosystem, and would eventually result in the eradication of both singers and humans. So even though Odium can’t directly harm Kharbranth, they’ll all probably die anyway if he wins.

But that’s a tangent. I just didn’t think through my previous post well enough. 

 

Edited April 21, 2019 by ILuvHats

[Calderis he/him]

A shard can simply divest. 

Quote

PallonianFire

If a Shard were to divest itself from a planet, would the perpendicularity there disappear?

Brandon Sanderson

Normally the shardpool would cease to exist, but there are circumstances that could prevent the shardpool from disappearing.

Arcanum Unbounded Fort Collins signing (Nov. 29, 2016)

Ruin wanted to destroy Scadrial. But if unopposed, he didn't have to. 

[Will Arbit]

11 hours ago, Calderis said:

A shard can simply divest.

Once Vin released the power of Perseverance's Perpendicularity, Perseverance's power wasn't trapping Ruin any more, but he didn't instantly divest himself from the planet.

Instead he began doing all kinds of rust that would ruin the collapsing societies and also force people to find the atium for him. I'd guess, based on that, that he can't divest himself from something without knowing where it is.

I think it's important to note that destroying Scadrial was his goal, not a thing he was doing to find the atium. He is Ruin; he destroys things. Since he didn't just destroy Scadrial, I'd guess he must have not wanted to destroy the atium by accident.

Which would suggest that doing so would hurt him, to return to the original question.

[Calderis he/him]

@Will Arbit I stand by what I said.

Ruin could have simply divested, but that would have taken time and effort which would have exposed him to attack from Preservation (or more likely, considering his opponentwoild have allowed Preservation to try and repair things while he was distracted. 

It also has absolutely nothing to do with the atium. It would have pulled his power out of the planet itself, but the atium was not "invested," it was split away from him to the extent that even once burned and release from its Physical form the power was still inaccessible to him.

The annotations make it even more clear, if the story didn't do it well enough, that if Ruin found the atium the power balance would have instantly shifted enough once reclaimed that Ruin would have won. So that power stripped away with him put him on too much of an even playing field to try and take the time and effort to withdraw himself from the world, and finding it would have been an instant game over. 

Under all that... Same thing. A shard can simply divest. Ruin didn't want that. He wanted to destroy. 

[Philomath she/her]

@Calderis So to my original question then. Not having the Atium does make him weaker somehow. So if he had just divested as you say, he would have permanently lost that part of himself? And been more open to be hurt himself since he was weaker?

[Calderis he/him]

8 minutes ago, Philomath said:

@Calderis So to my original question then. Not having the Atium does make him weaker somehow. So if he had just divested as you say, he would have permanently lost that part of himself? And been more open to be hurt himself since he was weaker?

Yeah. The atium made up the difference in the excess portion of power that Preservation gave up in making Scadrians.

With the atium, Ruin would have been outright stronger and won the fight. Without it, they were back on even footing. 

Divestment without reclaiming it would have left him weakened. 

Edited April 22, 2019 by Calderis

[Philomath she/her]

23 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Yeah. The atium made up the difference in the excess portion of power that Preservation gave up in making Scadrians.

With the atium, Ruin would have been outright stronger and won the fight. Without it, they were back on even footing. 

Divestment without reclaiming it would have left him weakened. 

Thanks! Just wanted to make sure I understood you clearly.