cometaryorbit

I think the design is going to be closer to an Allomantic table than Roshar's double-eye, given the importance of 16 on Scadrial. "Belief" might be another term for, or part of, what I called the "Think" Dawnshard (which is almost certainly not going to be the right name). I think Ruin was just talking about escaping his imprisonment, though I also thought about a model with an "Unbind/Separate" Shard, leaving the "Change" Dawnshard for more positive change (Cultivation, Endowment, Invention, and maybe Whimsy) - largely because there seemed to be more than four "Change" Shards (Cultivation, Endowment, Invention, Whimsy, Ruin, and arguably Odium depending on how Division-y you think its true Intent is). Eh, I don't think that quote is relevant in this context. Besides it being a pretty biased character's view, that's about unifying people against something - it's still ultimately an "opposition" approach on the larger scale, though it's "unifying" locally. Well, for my model, because there can only be four Shards under "Change", so one or two of the five or six Change-ish Shards have to go somewhere else. Also, if there's really a Wisdom/Prudence Shard, it has to go under something. (A mental focused Dawnshard - my "Think" - makes the analogy with the Allomantic table a bit closer, but that wasn't really the reason why.) It could also work if you split out the unbinding type Shards from Change - Endowment, Cultivation, Invention, Whimsy under Change; Ruin, Odium, Autonomy, and an unknown Shard under something like "Unbind". Then Wisdom/Prudence would go under "Be" where I put Autonomy.

Sort of a splinter of the 'hypothetical magic systems' topic... While we don't understand avatars, it seems that an avatar is a mind/personality distinct from the Shard's Vessel holding a sub-set of that Shard's Investiture (by WOB, Bavadin is always aware of the relationship, but not all of Autonomy's avatars are necessarily aware they are avatars - not sure if that would apply to all Shards). That sounds... really a lot like a Splinter. And we know Splinters can show up on other planets than their own Shard's, though lots of Investiture can make travel hard. We've seen a Seon [with a Splinter of Devotion] and a Returned [with a Splinter of Endowment] on Roshar. Perhaps the difference between a Splinter and an Avatar is the method of creation, Avatars being made from "ambient" pre-Shattering Investiture that became assigned to that Shard at the Shattering? Maybe an Avatar is some kind of merging of a regular person and a Splinter, if the presence of a human named Trell in White Sand is a hint? I wonder if the presence of an Avatar of Autonomy on First of the Sun doesn't really have greater significance than the presence of a Splinter of Endowment or Devotion on Roshar. That would explain the WoBs describing First of the Sun as having no Shard in residence, "natural" magic, etc.? (Maybe the perpendicularity, Aviars/worms/fruit, etc. were all pre-existing and Bavadin/Autonomy just used the already present concentration of Investiture to create an avatar?)

What I was trying to say there is that I'm not convinced that the 'Shard Intent influences how you access the magic system' (Initiation) rule applies to "magic in the environment" worlds like First of the Sun and Threnody. I don't think people on either world have an Initiation in that sense at all, since they aren't really using the Investiture at all. (IE, I don't think Sixth of the Dusk is drawing any Investiture, either from himself like Feruchemy/Awakening or from the Spiritual Realm like Allomancy/AonDor - even the little bit a Sand Master is using. Getting withered into a shade by a shade is similarly "passive" - the shade seems to be doing something with Investiture, but I don't think the human is.) So I don't think Autonomy really has anything to do with the Aviar bond at all, or at least not its origins & fundamental nature (as opposed to meddling going on after the fact). Neutral vs positive depends on what system you are looking at. Preservation tries to Preserve the world, even at its own expense - so it depends on whether you are considering the power of the Shard itself as part of the system. End-positive etc. is an in-world terminology anyway, which applies to human-used magic systems, not Shardic actions. Ruin and Preservation being unable to create alone I think is more about Intent limitations than end-positive/end-negative magic system limitations. (Investiture is ultimately conserved; everything is neutral if one considers the entire Cosmere, including the Shards themselves, as the system. Even converting the Shards' raw investiture to "create" matter is still neutral in that "conservation laws" sense.)

Yeah, Preservation is not necessarily "end neutral" in Intent. Preservation tries to Preserve everything, even at the cost of itself (Leras - shaped by the Intent of Preservation - couldn't even try to kill/destroy Ruin, but he could sacrifice himself to imprison him in order to Preserve Scadrial). That's why the "end positive" nature of Allomancy fits - Preservation is giving of itself to Preserve the users of Allomancy (they aren't using up their own strength like Feruchemy, or stealing the powers of others like Hemalurgy). Preservation isn't necessarily good, but not because it's inherently "end neutral" - because Preservation's ideal is ultimate stasis, where nothing is destroyed or dies, but also nothing changes or grows or truly lives. EDIT: I am not sure the Aviar and Shades are going to follow the rule of 'how you access the magic system connects to the Shard's Intent' - I am not sure these are Invested Arts in that sense, they're more "magic in nature" set-ups than "magic systems" in the full Invested Art sense. Yes, the Aviar bond seems kind of similar to the spren bond on Roshar, but a Knight Radiant uses the Surges personally, though access to them is granted by the spren bond - the Aviar seems to use the power itself, though its benefit goes to the bonded person ... Sixth of the Dusk can see shadows of his possible deaths, and his mind is hidden from others, but he doesn't seem to do anything actively to use the powers (no equivalent of burning metal or tapping metalminds or using a Surge or Awakening with a Command or drawing Aons).

I don't think TLR wanted to die (at that point) - he knew the Well was about to refill and he definitely (from Secret History) intended to use the power again - he says he would have "again ransomed this undeserving planet". I think he was basically an Atium Compounding Savant, and when his bracers were removed, not only did he suddenly begin dying of super accelerated old age, but I think his spiritweb was messed up too.

Since putting a finite amount of Investiture into humanity imbalanced Ruin and Preservation, I think they aren't truly infinite in the mathematical sense - subtracting a finite amount wouldn't diminish infinity* - just so immensely Invested that they seem infinite for all practical purposes, compared to anything other than another Shard. (Ruin and Preservation together created an entire planet, and a fraction of Preservation's power in the Well of Ascension moved it to another orbit. Changing a planetary orbit is an absurd amount of energy. (If Ruin and Preservation actually converted Scadrial's mass from Investiture, rather than "just" assembled the planet from pre-existing asteroids, proto-planets etc., that's even more crazy.) The power also returns when used, as @HSuperLee says, so it seems even more infinite. *Also, Shards can be Splintered, and their Splinters are definitely not infinite & differ in quantity of Investiture - e.g. the Stormfather is the greatest Splinter of Honor.

There's one reference to something called the "Deepest Ones" as a larger threat than normal shades... maybe they have something to do with the temporary, morbid perpendicularities?

I think it's kind of both... Vin just seems to know the name Ruin after encountering it at the Well (I think she even implies Ruin was her personal name for it, something like "the force she called Ruin" or something - but it clearly calls itself Ruin also). I think a Shard is so strongly a manifestation of its concept that the name is just obvious. Did Odium choose that name? I thought he wanted to be called Passion but uses Odium because everyone else does.

I actually wondered about this when OreSeur/TenSoon talked about how the kandra were forced to serve humans because of their fear of Allomancers... it occured to me that kandra's extreme shifting ability would let them survive in places humans can't, including underwater. That made me think of a villain for the Mistborn RPG who was a Rogue Kandra who hid out as a fish for centuries while everyone assumed he was dead, went crazy due to adding extra hemalurgic spikes plus centuries of isolation, and turned into a weird chimeric shark-man monster who terrorized shipping in the Southern Islands dominance.

I would argue Autonomy would be more directly opposed to Dominion than Devotion, but that depends on how you interpret Autonomy's Intent ... I would think freedom from external control vs. rule by force would be pretty nearly direct opposites. Odium and Devotion might be direct opposites, depending on whether Devotion is interpreted simply as "love" or more like "loving service" (which might be more directly opposed to an Intent like Conquest or Tyranny). They're certainly mostly opposite. Mostly... but I don't think Cultivation is as purely addition/growth as all that. Cultivation usually means the control of growth, which involves pruning undesired growth as well as fostering desired growth. I think people tend to see Cultivation as more purely positive than it probably actually is. "Most compatible with" Ruin I don't think means "direct opposite". I think it means they'd combine well... probably better than Preservation and Ruin (less heavily impeding the Vessel's actions). Yeah, I agree... only some have direct opposites (and I'm not even sure the external/internal dichotomy applies either). Yeah, possibly - if Ruin and Cultivation created a world together they might polarize in the same way. But if Ruin/Preservation or Ruin/Cultivation just met up "on neutral ground" without a previous relationship they might not be polarized.

Yeah, there's not much "leadership" in the ones we know so far. Someone else suggested it might be something like "I will teach others to protect themselves", IIRC.

Ivory's "play soldier" comment does seem to imply that she is doing it for not entirely rational reasons. I think ancient Bondsmiths could do the Stormlight recharge thing too. Though obviously smaller scale battles without a Bondsmith present would be different. (And perhaps that's a large part of how the Fused fought - attacking "normal" human populations in various places to force Radiants like the Windrunners and Edgedancers to go all over the place to protect them. If there are only two or three Bondsmiths and fighting is happening in a ton of places, not all the battles could have a Bondsmith present. That is, however, why I actually think the Radiants would have a greater advantage in a less technological, smaller population world - fewer "fixed targets" to have to defend, and Radiant population is limited by spren.)

Bronze and zinc/brass have clear obvious benefits when boosted (pierce copperclouds, control hemalurgic constructs). Pewter and iron/steel are very powerful already, so boosting them means lots of power, but yes, a Lurcher or Coinshot with super-strength would be at great risk (without a Mistborn's ability to burn pewter to strengthen the body). I agree any of the near-instantaneously burning metals can't usefully be enhanced much. Certainly not aluminum and duralumin. Chromium might have a niche benefit - letting you Leech highly Invested people quicker (so you don't have to touch a super dangerous enemy for a few seconds). Electrum is tricky, and poorly explored. Apparently increase in power won't give you much - a little farther future but not much - until you hit a threshold and get Spiritual Realm vision (like duralumin+atium) but electrum has much more "interference" getting to that point than atium, so I am not sure you could actually spike yourself to that point. Gold is so poorly explored that I really have no idea if it would have any benefit or not.

I imagine he asked Spook to feed his bones to a mistwraith, once he figured out how to make the "re-embodiment" thing work. The only problem here is the idea that Mistwraiths are possibly extinct post-Catacendre. I don't really know why Sazed wouldn't have turned them back into Cognitive-unblocked humans anyway, given that he didn't want more people to be killed to make kandra spikes. (But then, why didn't Sazed turn koloss back into humans? Their whole life cycle, even now, involves Hemalurgy and lots of pain with the whole skin-splitting bit. And the koloss were never allowed to develop a culture of their own... they had like two years of freedom between TLR's death and Ruin control. Unless Sazed thought the glimmerings of renewed humanity they showed were worth letting develop? Still, that seems really questionable to me. Even if he wanted to leave koloss distinct from humanity, seems like he could have removed the reduced mental capacity, skin-splitting bit, and fatal indeterminate growth, and just left them as blue extra-strong people. Unless he feared they'd eventually out-compete humanity with the disadvantages removed?)

I think that most Shards probably have several which would be "natural pairs" in this sense, especially as Vessel personalities apparently make a difference. Cultivation is "most compatible" with Ruin per WOB, sure, but Ruin/Preservation are also in some sense a natural pair - it's referenced repeatedly in the Mistborn annotations. That might be more a result of them creating that planet together, so it's kind of polarized between their two poles - but it still worked, so I think there's some broader truth to it. I think Ruin could also pair well with Valor (creating an Intent like The Thrill), Autonomy (creating something like "Anarchy"), or maybe even Endowment (unbinding and dividing in both positive and negative senses). Now I'm questioning whether my hypothetical "Judgment" being a distinct Shard from the Wisdom one, btw... if the Intent was really something like "Prudence", Wisdom and Judgment could be two sides of it - understanding, and acting wisely on that understanding. EDIT: Re: Preservation and Change - I see Preservation belonging to a "Be" or "Remain" Dawnshard which is diametrically opposed to the "Change" Dawnshard. Natural opposites. I feel like the Dawnshard I'm calling "Think" should be a natural opposite to the Binding one, but I don't have the right concept for those yet. Perhaps binding is really just a function of it, not the Command itself, and it's really something like Enact (with its counterpart being Envision)?

One storing and one tapping might cancel out to normal, but it might also mean no Connection if one stored all the way down to zero. OTOH, do we know if "ability to form Connections" is actually what storing/tapping Connection does? The use of it in the medallions in Bands of Mourning makes me think it is literally storing Connection itself (Allik talks about "blank Connection" which has to connect to someplace - implying that normal non-blank use of Duralumin stores a specific Connection?) rather than the ability to form them.

Yeah, compatible probably not the right word... but they are a 'natural pair' in some sense. Preservation I think is quite literally the exact opposite of Change, it is stasis, the prevention of change.

The Stormfather says that "each rebirth further injures their minds", so I think the Fused are primarily damaged because of rebirth itself - though time might be a factor as well. The Heralds are probably a combination of rebirth and breaking the Oathpact (plus time). Well, the Returned only Return once, and most of them don't live that long as Returned.

Yeah, it's a really interesting question whether you can draw directly from the Spiritual when surrounded by aluminum. I would tend to think that should work since the Spiritual is location-independent, and I think emotional Allomancy (blocked by aluminum hats) is more Cognitive... but who knows. Perhaps an Elantrian couldn't use AonDor, since that power source is Cognitive Realm, but an Allomancer could burn metals, since that is Spiritual Realm?

I don't see Devotion and Dominion as being opposites in the sense Preservation/Ruin are. I think those were only able to unite because of being held by a person who was unusually equally Connected to both (Sazed's Connection to both is called out specifically in Mistborn: Secret History). Since the Dor merged without a Vessel, I think they're more "naturally" compatible. Devotion and Dominion are opposed in a sense, but really similar in another - they're both about unity. Ruin and Preservation are direct opposites - entropy vs stasis, destruction vs protection, decay vs preservation. Devotion and Dominion are pretty opposed in terms of people's behavior (rule by force vs unity by love) but not so much conceptually. I think seeing Devotion as just "love" may miss the point, looking at how Seons behave - I think Devotion may also contain a component of "service". Devotion's style of love doesn't necessarily imply romantic love or a relationship of equals; one can be Devoted to a ruler or a cause or a religion, something one sees as above oneself and holding Dominion.

Personally, I doubt the parallel with the metals is that exact. I took it mostly to just mean four quadrants of four, potentially further divided into pairs. I am not sure that WOB means that there is an External/Internal divide, either, just that Shard Intents in general are not self-directed. Compatible, definitely... but so are Ruin and Preservation, and if one of the Dawnshards is "Change" I don't see that Ruin and Preservation can belong to the same Dawnshard.

I kind of see it (and storing wakefulness and maybe nutrition, etc.) as being between the first and second options - closer to the second. I don't think "need to breathe" is really a Spiritual thing, but I see it as more of a realmatic edit to the Feruchemist's physical state/body. When storing, every other breath (or whatever) has zero physical effect on the body, it's treated like it didn't happen. When tapping, the body is treated like it is breathing, even when it's not. But I don't think it's overtly Temporal in the sense that time itself is altered. More like editing the body's current state. It might be kind of a "programming language" thing, where the Feruchemy works at a higher level than the "binary code" of individual chemical reactions and molecules (if that analogy makes any sense).

I am not sure this is strictly a matter of Connection. Kelsier is strongly connected to Ruin and weakly to Preservation, from Secret History: that doesn't make him an unusually weak Mistborn. Vin was born Snapped, but the epigraphs suggest she got unusual allomantic strength from breathing in bits of mist during times without her earring, so she wasn't necessarily born stronger than the average Mistborn. (Vin's ability to breathe in the Mists does seem to be a special Connection to Preservation. But I don't think it's as simple as stronger Connection = more Allomantic power.)

The annotation is titled "the sliding scale of allomantic potential", not "power". I think the difference is important, because from the text Elend clearly has significantly more raw power than Vin. I think that annotation is basically distinguishing three groups: - not Snapped normally ("100%") - Vin born Snapped, Elend through lerasium - normal Allomancers, who Snap through mundane trauma in later childhood through adulthood ("50%") -those who have insufficient potential to Snap from mundane trauma, but can be Snapped by the Mists ("20-30%") Otherwise we'd have to argue that Vin is not only as strong as Elend but even as strong as TLR since 100% is the maximum...

I think it is additive, the 'double strength, triple if flaring' WoB likely means that the added strength is about equal to that of a reasonably strong normal human, or twice that if flaring. Normally being naturally strong is better since if you are stronger to start with and both people get the same addition*, you are still stronger after the addition. But since Vin is small, when she adds on a regular sized person's strength x2 when flaring (plus a bit more since her allomantic strength is high) she is still only moving her own small mass - thus the pewter jump she does when training with Ham. *while Allomantic strength does vary, it seems to be a pretty small variation excluding things like lerasium and Hemalurgy. EDIT: yes, Vin is clearly stronger than the average Allomancer (according to the HoA epigraphs, apparently due to absorbing small bits of the Mists). But maybe not by all that much, the normal variation in strength seems quite small. And in HoA she is clearly weaker in raw power than Elend (though way more skilled). I think the "100%" WoB is more about how she was born Snapped, since it is talking about actualizing the Allomantic potential- both Vin and Elend didn't Snap the usual way.