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Harmony


Jujueyeball

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Why does everyone assume Sazed can't actively use his Shards?

He is the vessel of Preservation and Ruin. If his corner of the cosmere faced a direct threat, what prevents him responding?

I would argue that Sazed could unleash the power of both Shards against the threat. It would be a Harmonious action in line with the intent of Preservation and Ruin. Protection of Scadrial, destruction of foe. 

I think this is why Odium fears Harmony. 

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I think the problem is, he can't Preserve or Ruin something individually, because that wouldn't be Harmonious. So he can't Ruin something unless he also Preserves it, which negates the whole thing.

(Also, yeah, this should probably go to the Mistborn section.)

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Two reasons: 

Spoiler

1) is predecessors decided to Create a new planet instead of settling on an existing one, so a huge chunk of each Shard's Power is dedicated to maintaining the existence of the planet and it's population.  2) Like two opposing Magnets, the two Intents of the shards are fundamentally opposed and antagonistic to each other (Entropy and Stasis), so it's taking most of Harmony's effort to simply keep them in the same container.

 

Edited by Quantus
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Welcome to the Shard!

We know Harmony has trouble using his power because he tells us so, explicitly and on multiple occasions. Relatedly Odium fears Harmony because of his raw power but part of this fear is because he doesn't realize how much trouble Sazed is having directing those two opposing powers:

Quote

Questioner

You've mentioned before that Odium is scared of Harmony. Is it only because of the raw power of the two Shards? Or is he scared of what Harmony represents? (Meaning the possibility of merging two Shards.) Was he aware that this was possible?

Brandon Sanderson

He, on one level, was aware. But it was more of awareness of this as a possibility. It actually happening is part of what has him scared. It's the idea of the two merging Shards both being more powerful and finding a harmony. (Which Sazed is actually having way more trouble doing than Odium realizes.) Those two things really have Odium scared. Because, partially, this means he has to find a way to destroy or split Harmony without taking up a second Shard himself, because Odium knows if he takes up a second Shard, terrible things will happen. And so he doesn't want to do that. (Terrible things as he views them.) And so he's gotta find a way to split this apart, or somehow otherwise defeat.

Now, the more he learns about Sazed's actual state, the less afraid he'll probably be. But that's an advantage that Sazed has right now.

San Diego Comic-Con@Home 2020 (July 23, 2020)

Basically, Sazed is getting a temporary advantage from information asymmetry (which he's usually on the other side of vis a vis the big picture) but that's not a sustainable position.

Edited by Weltall
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