Hey, new to the forum (found it yesterday from the wiki, which I was reading from curiosity) and I'm flipping through this section to get a feel for what's going on in this background story. I've missed a lot of this (though I've only gotten to a second read of WoK so far) so take my observations with a grain of salt. I just saw the previous post and something about this stuck out to me:
Based on the completely indefensible assumption that each Shard must have a polar opposite, I have done my best to throw together the following:
Preservation vs. Ruin
Odium vs. Devotion
Endowment vs. Dominion
Honor vs. Deception/Treachery/Corruption/Treason/Cowardice/etc.
Apologies for not figuring out how to quote yet (probably html). But anyway, on to the observation itself
Preservation (female) vs ruin (male)
Odium (male) vs devotion (female)
Endowment (???) Vs dominion (male)
Honor (male) vs ??? (???)
Now, I seem to remember seeing a quote somewhere about not all shards being paired, but if that's not the case and this pairing is correct (which I personally think this pairing seems logical) we may have a gender for endowment, and if we can find a pattern for gender / intent pairing, that may give us hints at what shards would be paired with honor or cultivation.
Darn it, I felt like there was so much more information there before I typed it out. Either way, I think I'll start trying to join discussions here and see if I can see the overarching plot a bit better now.