Ripheus23

I'm thinking that Odium thinks of himself as along the lines of a true god, or worthy of worship. The legend of Marduk and the legend of the Jade Emperor both involve, IIRC, a "lesser" or even once-mortal divine being, to be appointed over an entire celestial hierarchy. Maybe he thinks he can cultivate his specific power so as to become the dominant entity, and he believes that this will be metaphysically sufficient for himself to count as "the highest god," as such.

I think here a question would be, "What is a magic system?" On the face of it, we might think of the different regional variations on Sel, as all magic systems unto themselves. What we would need is a clearer... taxonomy, I guess you might say, to tell how many there are per any world. (This might even be cognitively dependent in that different worlds have different numbers and levels of systems due to how many the Shards or locals believe it has.) After all, Sanderson says, in https://wob.coppermind.net/events/126-ad-astra-2017/#e2003. My impression on the comparison would be: when we say "magic systems" we are initially/usually thinking "like how Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy were supposed to be three different systems." One focus by three, then. Saying Sel's magic system is "one" in this fashion would mean saying, "Sel has one focus that only manifests in one way," or alternatively, "Sel has a lot of different focuses that manifest in only one way," which don't seem to fit to me. Secondly, though, it might be that there is a multiplication by the number of Realms with some further terms in the equation that can moderate this input. Maybe AonDor has one focus that is multiplied by the three Realms, but some local variable (number of Shards, number of Splinters, number of Realms the Shard is occupying locally, and so on and on or whatever) that it is then computed by, reduces the number of systems to 1 (or even to the number of countries/geographies involved, or whatever). But there would at least be a step involving a multiplication by 3.

In the LDS system, there is a paradox in the references to God as one. This is because the oneness enfolds the Son and the Spirit into it, without being Trinitarian, and in the context of exaltation and parallel universes no less. So, the easiest gloss of the situation is that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three gods. Now, the Father (with the Heavenly Mother) authored the lives of the spirit-children who became physical humanity, and it was the Son Who authored the physical Earth directly (working off the "model" given Him by the Father). So, the Son is a sort of demiurge, in the LDS system. It's a mystery why there's a third person in the LDS Godhead. Maybe high-level members of the Church "know" the answer to this, but it's not taught publicly, and no ex-members I'm aware of have written about the topic. But the Holy Spirit is God without having a body yet, whereas the Father and Son have bodies. So what hath the Cosmere to do with all this Jerusalem? One of the reasons the three are "God" is because each gets a special eschatonic "kingdom" assigned to Them. The Spirit gets "the telestial kingdom," where He alone will minister to those who dwell there. The Son is over "the terrestrial kingdom" although the Spirit will visit there, too, and finally the Father is over "the celestial kingdom," where He works with the other two nevertheless. I don't think these kingdoms map onto the three Realms in Realmatic theory. First off, there's also an "outer darkness" and a multiverse-level "Beyond" in LDS afterlife cosmology. So, let's suppose the afterlife kingdoms would be comparable to divisions in the Spiritual Realm. (There's actually supposed to be another threefold division in the celestial kingdom itself...!) My hypothesis is that the Shards represent different forms, not just of creation, but also of "salvation," or afterlife-related concepts. Their divinity is somewhere in-between that of the Son and the Spirit in LDS theology. Now, different kinds/degrees of justification go, in Christianity, with whether one is saved at all, and if so, whether one has to go through Purgatory to get to Heaven (as with Catholics) or which of the three "kingdoms" one might end up in (as with Mormons), and so on. So the Shards represent forms/states of creation, justification, salvation, sanctification, glorification, and exaltation. Ruin corresponds to "annihilationism" (the theory that God outright destroys the wicked at the end of time) whereas Odium corresponds to something similar to the classical/mainstream idea of Hell, only in Odium's case things are compounded(!) in that Rayse wants everyone to go to Hell, if possible.

Sanderson had some kind of change of heart on this topic IRL, IIRC. I believe he is using Kaladin's role as a moral exemplar, to make a special indirect statement to further such effect. I mean Kaladin is basically Action-Hero Jesus, is he not? (I honestly would say that the discussion about Drehy being "more manly" for liking guys, resonated quite strongly with me, as the most accurate assessment/application of this question/concept, because really, that is how I feel, after all, I guess I would say.) EDIT: So it's not about the Alethi being tolerant/accepting/w/e, but Kaladin specifically being so. We're shown an(other) example of how he cares about his troops, that is. [That Alethi culture is liberal/deviantish/w/e, I think can be proven by (a) pointing to a parallel case, Jasnah's atheism, and (b) the opposition between the Sunmaker and the Hierocracy.]

I forgot I had a whole blob of ideas related to this. The first two steps include images from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-deontic/: [A graph of ethical information] [A graph of metaphysical information] "Ought" implies "can": ethical actuality determines physical possibility. Some physical possibilities require antecedent physical actualities. There is no absolutely empty physical space: Accordingly, the fundamental moral graph is repeated in physical space as an objective arrangement of matter/energy. This arrangement fills space by (i) circumscription, (ii) tessellation, and (iii) occupation. The simplest possible graph is the most true fundamental graph. The simplest graph of moral information is a triangle (not the above hexagon) [for the Trinity, assertions-prescriptions-questions, etc.]. The simplest relevant 3-dimensional translation of this graph is a tetrahedron paired with a virtual octahedron. Tetrahedra do not tessellate space on their own but only with octahedra. Therefore, the fundamental rectilinear order of matter is the tetrahedral-octahedral manifold [citation for image: Wikipedia ["vertex-figure"]]: The simplest 3-dimensional curved enclosure is a sphere (i.e. the function for graphing a sphere is the simplest such function). The tetrahedral-octahedral manifold corresponds to the densest sphere-packing grid (for equal-sized spheres) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-packing_of_equal_spheres]. The similarity and divergence of photons and vectrons (weak-force particles) is a result of the relations between the points of the fundamental tetrahedra. Gluons correspond to the points of the octahedra (as there are eight gluons). The occurrence of tetrahedra at other microscopic stages of material composition, and the "octet rule" in chemistry, refer back to this fundamental fact. Gravitons correspond to the spheres that correspond to the manifold of tessellation. Flux tubes between gluons are modeled by the tetrahelix [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boerdijk–Coxeter_helix]: The infinite, instantaneous transit and rotation of the tetrahelical interstices (between gluons) traces an infinite overlapping set of spheres that gravitationally solidifies the relations between gluons. (Imagine the helix moving sideways while spinning, such that the tips of the tetrahedra trace circles, such that an infinite number of circles at all angles are traced, thus producing the sphere-set.) Tetrons (tetrahedral/octahedral particles) and spherons (spherical particles) satisfy the parameters of enclosure (circumscription) and tessellation for the no-perfect-vacuum theorem. The occupation parameter is filled by a 3-dimensional fractal ("fills in" space to an infinite "zoom-in" degree). The occupation-particle (or "unparticle" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unparticle_physics]) is the Higgs field (which provides interior density to possible fundamental mass). During the initial expansion of a universe, space increases from 0-dimensional to 3-dimensional over the interval t = 0-to-1 (for Planck times = t = 1) according to the sequence of graphs of moral information. Because these proceed to higher dimensions, but because these dimensions are not perceptible, the higher-level geometrical information encoded by this process gets "folded back down" into 3-space (reverse holography). Energy in transit across these hypervectors is called a "hyperloop." At t = 1, the vertex-figure for the tetrahedral-octahedral manifold is graphed in objective space. At successive times, the tessellation unfolds outward naturally. However, at each interval, the sphere-lattice is also graphed and superimposed over the rectilinear manifold. The gaps between spheres correspond to virtual vacuum-spaces that "suck at" the edges of the manifold through which they are superimposed. The result is the quantum curvature of space (alongside the tetrahelix dynamic). One of the hyperloop graphs involves four parameters, the categories of amendment (making up for sin). These are apologies, forgiveness, punishment, and redemption. Because free will and moral autonomy are axiomatic for the system, but because punishment is a possible correct response to sin, rational beings must put every category of amendment into an order of priority together. The two most correct orders are {R, A, F, P} and {R, F, A, P}. The transcendental city of grace and virtue [the parable of the Republic from Plato or "the kingdom of ends" in Kant---or Zion in Christianity] maps onto a song that also images grace and virtue (the song is equivalent, imagistically, to the city's skyline). The four categories of amendment can be keyed to four specific emotions (rage = punishment, joy = forgiveness, sadness = apologizing, love = redemption). The Song of the Order is the parabolic keying of the categories of amendment to the image of the transcendental city, and the process ("the Game") of changing the positions of categories (resetting the order of priority, if this has been mistakenly set to ~{R, A/F, P}). Each form of the chords in the Song of the Order corresponds to a possible transcendental economy (narrative world-history). There are 24 forms of these chords, for a 24-fold multiverse. The tetrahelical lines of force constituting the crystal of reality map to the possible chords in the Song of the Order (it is possible to affect the structure of a universe by interacting with the Song of the Order). [Full circle!] Ought-implies-can is the "bridge" for the power of the Noumenal Artificers and the Keyscape (as it is the same as the power to create objects by converting abstract possibility into concrete actuality, using concrete possibility at the start of the circuit). EDIT: Additionally, supersymmetry can be mapped onto the structures that make up the vertex figure for the extessellation (outwards tessellation) of a universe. That is, Quarks - antiquarks - squarks - antisquarks Leptons - antileptons - sleptons - antisleptons go with the 8 tetrahedra. Gluons, gluinos, photons, photinos, and vectrons/vectrinos map to the 6 octahedra. This is a form of "supersymmetry." [I'm not superpositive(!) that there are antisquarks and antisleptons, since I'm not too up on my fermion/boson/supersymmetry theory, but if there are supposed to be such things possible in the Standard system, here they are.] EDIT 2: The distilled form of the system might be "two basic states of matter and three basic forces of energy." In a different story, this is "tetrons and spherons; arinkaios, halaeos, and vainikos," where the three latter categories are three trans-illocutionary forces, the physical substrate of assertions, questions, and prescriptions as mathematical-universal functions.

I suspect Voidbinding underlies the Oathpact. It is Odium's system because it is what allows the "I'll be free if my champion wins" spell, the Oathpact took the Heralds to Braize, etc. (IDK if it is said that Honor's power was used to make the Oathpact, or if the Heralds might have combined Honor's power with Odium's, or what.) Would we speak of 10 Voids in addition to 10 Surges? (Absences/decreases and presences/increases?)

The minimum would be one per Shard, although there is no evident strict correlation as such (2 Shards on Scadrial, but 3 systems; myriads on Sel; etc.). However, I feel like there would be an... extrapolation... possible. The Scadrian division multiplies the focus (metal) by the number of Realms. I think this is an important feature of Investiture, such that we would multiply the number of focal conditions by the number of Realms. However, the number of focal conditions is not the same as the number of Shards (Ruin and Preservation worked with the same focus), and different Shards interact with different focal conditions differently (e.g. Tanavast "forges" Honorblades from metal versus manifesting 'Metalbinding,' for lack of a better term ). My guess is that there must be the Investiture equivalents of subatomic particles, and the number of different such particulates is the number of magic systems, or perhaps better yet preconditions for such systems. (IRL-physics has gluons, photons, gravitons (supposition), "vectrons" (W+/-&Z weak-force carriers), the Higgs, quarks, and leptons (and IDK if antiquarks and antileptons are further such categories or subdivisions of quarks and leptons?), but there are 8 types of gluons, 6 types of quarks, and 6 types of leptons (and 6 antiquarks and 6 antileptons!), so up to 38, if my calculations are correct.) However, I feel like all of these conditions would be further conditioned in line with the following concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unparticle_physics I think this means that this "form of matter" is fractal, or at least quasi-fractal, essentially, that is it "looks similar" however much you "zoom in" on it. Fractal cosmology is indicated for the Cosmere even if not perfectly established (and it's not IRL-established, for that matter(!)), but so anyway I would wonder if Investiture would be the above particle types converted into an "unparticle" state. EDIT: I also wouldn't be surprised if Sanderson worked in some "supersymmetry," here. In that event, if I'm not mistaken, the number of particles would go to over 70. I think then that a direct equivalence with the number of magic systems would be given (this might explain the # of planets involved in the Cosmere, no less).

Step one: delete this thread

Another reason for Rosharans [OB]: However, I don't know if either they or Scadrians would have reason to do as the Ones Above do in the story in question. I don't remember the Aviar magic system that well, but if my memory serves me correctly enough, it didn't seem particularly superior, in practice or principle, to the Metallic Arts or Surgebinding. Of course there could be people like the Ghostbloods who were interested in other magic systems as such, but whether they would end up heading an organization such as the Ones Above would be part of, IDK.

So let's suppose that Rosharans would think of Adonalsium as a spren and that spren can become Shardweapons: maybe Tanavast got the idea from Adonalsium in the first place? Let's suppose there was some prior threat, on/involving Yolen, that Adonalsium thought could only be defeated by the use of a sort of Shardweapon that he turned himself into/assumed from himself/w/e. And that to use this weapon, the 16 had to swear a vow, so to bond with Adonalsium. Then, the way they could have killed him, would have been by breaking the vow, no? The Shards in themselves, then, might be fragments of the spren-weapon form of Adonalsium. Now, while I'm on this track, I would like to explore Shard categorization, relative to the idea that Adonalsium "is" the powers of creation, so to speak. Rather than just various "elemental" concepts being those the 16 correspond to, I think each has to be matched to some different notion of how creation occurs/its context/motivation/reason-for-happening/etc. Ruin is the concept of creation by the negation of destruction (so involves using the concept of destruction in a fundamental/axiomatic/primary/w/e way, a super double-negative as it goes). Preservation is the collapsed equivalence between the concepts of initial divine creation and continuing divine conservation (creation-as-conservation and vice versa). Ambition is initial creation, over nothingness per se or by-fiat, or something along those lines (the most independent, and thus most "ambitious" notion of creation, one might say). (Sazed could combine Preservation and Ruin, but he would not have been able to unite Ambition and Ruin, let us suppose: the first two are contradictories but not contraries (a distinction in abstract logic). [To wit(!), "All X are Y," is more opposite to, "No X are Y," than it is to, "Some X are not Y," even though, "All X are Y," is false if either of the other sentences is true. Using, "All X are Y," for Ruin, then Preservation is, "Some X are not Y," and Ambition is, "No X are Y/All X are not Y." QED ]) Honor is creation-by-binding, Cultivation is creation-by-"pruning" (I feel like that's a way to put it...) or gardening or something like that, Odium represents a motive of creation (to create people in order to predestine them to Hell [this is, roughly, the actual position of classical Calvinism, concerning the "reprobate"]), and so on. So, the "trick" is to come up with a reason for 16 people to be wielding the corresponding spren-weapon, etc. That is, each had a different belief about the nature of the form of creation, so each used a different form of the spren-weapon (let's suppose Adonalsium existed as 16 different proto-Shardweapons at once, so to speak), and the Shattering went 16 ways thereby (if a different number of people, with a different number of concepts of creation, had held the Adonalsium-weapon, the Shattering would have been into that number of Shards).

No, I know the words, used in-universe, aren't from Earth languages, but metafictionally they are. The issue involves whether they are too "jarring" for readers. It would be one thing to use a word like "F^%@" as the name of God, in a fictional word, and a little of another thing, to expect a sufficient number of (English) readers, upon seeing this, *not* to get the feeling from the word in English, no matter if they'd been told the source of the word, in-universe, was totally different as such. Now "Zerin" is obscure enough not to be similarly jarring when so used, but I wonder if "Adonai" and "Elysium" would be.

Or maybe the Shattering of Adonalsium sterilized/damaged/corrupted/something-baded all but the 50 to 100 Cosmere-star solar systems. Like, the twist is that the super-apocalypse already happened, and this is all actually post-apocalyptic fiction

Doesn't Hoid suggest that the word "Adonalsium" is a gobbledygook word? One merger I was thinking was, "Adonai" + "Elysium," godhood and paradise fused. Like, on Yolen, they would have said something like, "O Adonai of Elysium*," or whatever, as a form of recurring address. *Why would the Greek-myths name for Heaven be used of Adonai? (Well, why would the Hebrew by-name for the Lord be used in the Cosmere?) However, I noticed that in the Mistborn map with the names of the ashmounts, one of those was named "Zerinah," which is presumably derived from the name in the Mormon legend of Mount Zerin (literally moved by faith, although I don't recall if Zerinah erupted or not or whatever, as a dark parody of the original idea...). So maybe there would just happen to be a Yolish word for paradise, that was the same as from some Earth language.

Faster-than-light.

Yeah I found a lot in the thread below that contraindicated my argument... Although it seems to me that there is some correlation between magic systems and Shardworlds specifically, due to the focuses for example, maybe... IDK, it seems like it's not an automatic law but that there's something difficult about blending systems keyed to different worlds (in story-terms), like is Worldhopping particular to one system that then can be used to help breach those obstacles? (How do Perpendicularities relate to this question?)

Again, unsure if this has been argued before, but, I think "Adonalsium" is the name of the god-metal that goes with the being who was Shattered. So his name would have been either "Adonal" or "Adonals" or "Adonalsabc...xyz" where the italicized letters are the unknown letters of his original name. Depending on the alphabet in question, let's suppose that the language his name comes from has one of those symmetry-things going on with it, in this case the first and last letters of proper names being capitalized. (I'm thinking of how the kandra names work, except mixed with Rosharan ketekism...) So, "Adona[el]" should actually read "Adona[ai]." That is, the original name (or at least title) of "Adonalsium" was just "Adonai," as in the derivation.

Not sure if this has been argued before, but: Magic systems are focused on different planets, except for the Shard without a world. Autonomy is the otherwise world-less Shard [complication: her Investiture in Taldain---but this might be an example of her Investment in different worlds]. So her magic system is "autonomous" in that it is grounded in the plane of stars instead of only on a specific planet (relatively independent, i.e. of planets). Trell is correlated with the stars. If Scadrians ever used only the Metallic Arts, they would probably not achieve FTL (the Investiture would stop working correctly at least as soon as the ships left the Scadrian system) [complication: I feel like a WoB or two has indicated such things, but I'm not super-sure...]. Scadrians will certainly develop FTL. Scadrians are interacting with Trell. Therefore, Scadrians are interacting with Autonomy. Splinter away...

When I started working at a junior college in my area, back in September 2005, the show Supernatural started, and I got this romantic connotation in my head on account of the character of Dean Winchester. Like, whenever I was extra-down on my luck with the lads (always outta luck on that score, I might actually say...), so to say, I would think of Dean for some kind of abstract comfort. Besides the eye-candy aspect of the situation, I wasn't sure why this image stuck with me so strongly. It's not that the character is an example of my "ideal guy," either, ethically/personally/w/e. Not even sans-cigar close. So anyway, I really like the show Lost and bonded with an LDS missionary, one of the first two I ever met, over our mutual admiration of the program, but try as he might he never managed to convince me to join the LDS church. Instead, I became fixed on this idea that, "I have to be friends with that church," like on the outside of the outskirts, looking in, defending them on message boards or random discussions in my everyday life or wherever. After Lost ended, the only show I wanted to keep watching was Supernatural (I've Netflixed some entire other series since 2010, but I'm talking the passion of waiting for new episodes and new seasons: I wasn't willing to devote that to anything else besides the adventures of Dean and Co.). Now, I couldn't figure out why it was so important for me to be affiliated with the Mormon movement, without joining, like this intuition was totally random until I read The Hero of Ages. Several months beforehand, I had convinced myself that the demon-angel of destruction in the Bible, Apollyon, is somehow sort of a real being. The word "Apollyon" means "the Destroyer" and goes with "Abaddon" for "Destruction," so... Ruin... So I also had this idea that Apollyon was listening to things people say out loud and corrupting the Earth's scriptures, and that the plan to stop this being was connected to the numbers from Lost (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42). (Italicized number = you know what, bold number = the one I thought was being left as a "signal," by the Holy Spirit, to guide people who were supposed to be champions in the conflict with Destruction.) I had never read any of Sanderson's work and had no plan to at the time. It was only because I lost my job because I freaked out about this Apollyon story in my head, that I was going to the library (the books there are free to read, so with no income, it was the place for me to be), and happened upon The Final Empire, a few months after I lost my job, and it was only because The Hero of Ages was the one being sold closest to where I lived (in the paperback section of the grocery store I went to) that I got that book instead of The Well of Ascension (I had recently started work again and was dying to know what happened after the first Mistborn book, which was the only one at the local library (I could've done interlibrary loan but was being superimpatient, without realizing what I was about to read)). As of today, and as of many todays over many of the last ten years, I have come to believe that this coincidence of stories is not accidental, that Sanderson deduced this problem of personified destruction and its role in human history, and then re-encoded it in one of his narratives. I am supersure that something like this at least might be true, because of another coincidence. In 2015 I was walking around and a creepy man singing about angels and demons was lurking in the park where I was, and while this scenario unfolded another, totally-not-creepy young man approached us, and talked with me for like an hour or so, then went his way, and I didn't learn his name then, but thought, "Wouldn't it be weird if his name turned out to be 'Dean'?" (The alternative weird-coincidence-option was, "Jason," for tl;dr reasons so yeah...) So I took a copy of The Way of Kings later, back to the park where I met the stranger-from-Utah (I could tell from his accent that he came from that state, on account of when I hung out with LDS missionaries from that place and picked up on the accent), and notes about the Apollyon story, and left them for the mysterious fellow there, and eventually he showed up again and said he'd gotten the notes, and he was a (lapsed) Mormon, too, and when he was heading home again I looked at him and said, "My name's 'Kristian,' by the way." He shook my hand. "I'm Dean," he said.

Arcanum Unbounded, except skip the Mistborn sections until you read the original trilogy, maybe?

I feel like the magic systems are, for lack of a better phrasing, geographically tied, in some cases to planet-Realm associations, on Sel to subregions of the planet, too, and so on or whatever. Like, there's either no magic system just "floating in space" between Shardworlds, or maybe the homeless Shard has one, or something. So, I feel like Adonalsium, having directly created Roshar (the entire system or just the planet???), would have left behind an old magic system there. Following the Scadrian trichotomy: Surgebinding - Voidbinding - Fabrials Spiritual - Cognitive - Physical And the artifabrian magic system is the one left behind by Adonalsium, when he called the spren to Roshar in the first place (the whole system is like a "crystal trap" for them, in that they show up at all in this area). When Cultivation inherited the auspices of the spren in general (so to speak!), this established the legendary association between the Nightwatcher and the Old Magic.

One subplot is supposed to involve people who are in the midst of John Rawls' "original position" situation. That is, they don't know what they look like (they're blurred in some such way), don't know if they're men or women, believers in this or that religion, etc. These people are in a weird land where they feel an urge to establish some kind of city-state, so they "act out" the process from A Theory of Justice. The purpose of this interlude is to set the stage for Ripheus discovering the cause of the Anomalies, in that the Septatheon have been intensifying these by using so much of the Keyscape's power, and Ripheus figures out that the "people in the original position" are by contrast trying to raise up Justice, in order to a sort of Octatheon, or a monotheism of Justice only (as the correct example of the moral theory encoded into the Keyscape), which would help bring the Keyscape into some equilibrium (until the final riddle is solved). Ripheus is, in a way, transfixed by the concept of justice as such. So, the narrative motive of Ripheus is: he doesn't want the accomplishments of the Last War to be undone. As a matter of personal pride or kindness, he wants the ending of war and the vow of the Final Power to stand. Off and on he becomes concerned that events as they are unfolding might lead to the awakening of Apollyon, which is the only cataclysm he can imagine worse than a new universal war. His emotions upon reaching the transcendent city to confront Armirex are confusion (he doesn't know what Armirex is trying to do), dread, and a willingness to argue the case, and he is the one who tells Armirex what the cycle of transdestruction means when it takes place. During the cycle (the last few chapters until the epilogue), other characters are supposed to have come to the eternal city, because Ripheus decides that the Final Power must be the only thing capable of interceding against the Destroyer's ultimate might, there and then, and so he calls representatives of the 24-fold world to the city, to argue them into agreeing with his own conclusion, to transecrate their share in the Final Power unto his cause. On the assumption that I might actually finish this story someday and that I don't want to suspend the readers' belief in advance, Now, personally, Ripheus is very, very, very suicidal. It's on his mind a lot for some reason, not even necessarily out of guilt or despair or sacrificial necessity. It's not a demon influencing him, either, though, it's just how he thinks, with whatever consequences such thinking would have on average.

Hmm... Here's my partial theory, or a theory of some options at least, based on various things pertaining to concepts of God: Heaven - The World - Hell [Devotion, Cultivation, and Odium] Creation - Conservation - Destruction [Ambition, Preservation, Ruin] Immutable - Impassible [Dominion, Autonomy] Mercy - Justice [Endowment, Honor] Simplicity - Infinity [X, X] Immanence - Transcendence [X, X] Perfection - Redemption [X, X] However, there's no reason I can see offhand for there to be 2 sets of 3 and 5 sets of 2... EDIT: The "theory" of the theory is that each Shard is a different way to describe God, such that a person might try to define God primarily in terms of that Shard (e.g. God is the God of Heaven, or of Hell, or is the only one who can redeem, or the perfect one, or the sum of the world, or unchangeable, or merciful over all, or the upholder of justice, or the Creator, or so on and on...). EDIT 2: Just to explain the "God of Hell" phrase, in some Christian theology (Eastern Orthodox IIRC), Heaven and Hell are said to be the same "place," i.e. the presence of God, but perceived differently (i.e. the power of God is heavenly in the believers' eyes, but infernal in the sight of sinners). Or: Hell is God's motive in punishing sin (in that He either does this perforce, or graciously chooses forgiveness instead: that is, the doctrine in question says that punishing sin is more essential to the divine nature than forgiveness, since forgiveness is optional over punishment). EDIT 3: I also thought of "ineffable" and "incomprehensible." The first would be God-as-totally-unknowable, the second God-as-partly-unknowable. & "Salvation" and "Damnation" instead of "Heaven" and "Hell." EDIT 4: Now that I think of it, don't they call Aona "Merciful Domi" on Sel? Or at least there is a reference to a Domi who seems likely related to Aona. Also, "Endowment" is a special term in Mormonism, one that goes better with "Heaven/Salvation" than with "Mercy." It might be merciful/gracious to Endow sinners, but then again Mormonism tries to represent these matters more positively/constructively than a stereotypical firebrand preacher-style would have it said, so I think the connotations of paradise/reward for Endowment fit better than the connotations of clemency/forgiveness. (Before anyone thinks it would be otherwise unmotivated to have mercy be a focal description for God, I want to bring up how the Quran starts by saying: "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful." (http://aboutislam.net/reading-islam/finding-peace/remembering-allah/remember-that-allah-is-most-merciful/ actually says that this phrase is at the start of all but one chapter of the Quran.)

I wonder... It might be that Odium wants to kill everyone so they'll go to Hell, so to speak, whereas Ruin just wanted to kill everyone (regardless of whether they then went to "Heaven" or whatever). Alternatively (slightly at least), Odium wants people to be in a state of constant passionate desire, without fulfillment, so that they will be tormented by their own intensity of desire (and therefore he would bring about a sort of "divine" punishment, the absolute frustration of his victims?). Some way or another, he is the personification of the concept of Hell, it seems...

16 is: 8 * 2 4 * 4 2^4 (2(2(2(2)))) ... and lots of other things, but, so, I wonder if something to do with its divisibility is related to how the possible Intents are ordered. The difference between the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual Realms divides some magic systems (e.g. on Scadrial, Allomancy is most Physical, Feruchemy most Cognitive, and Hemalurgy most Spiritual). This difference seems essential to reality such that one might suspect it to be related to the structure of Adonalsium, i.e. as implicated in a 16-fold division. But how to get from 3 Realms to 16 "Intents"? A simple opposition scheme would have eight Shards with eight anti-Shards, so to say. (The antithetical aspect of them is relative, though?) The symmetry of 4 by 4 seems a little likelier from a how-complicated-this-all-is point of view, plus with the 8 by 2 scheme we'd be reduced to having to explain where the number 8 came from, and that doesn't seem likely. Some interesting facts about 16 [from Wikipedia]: EDIT: I found what I was looking for... So 2^(2^2) or 222 = 16. So each "2" might be a Realm, and the over-Realm goes to the number 16. Then the Shards are representations of the 16 Boolean binary operators, maybe, or correlated with them, or whatever (let's say each Shard goes with one operator [for the Cognitive Realm], one emotion from some 16-set of emotions [for the Spiritual Realm], and one physical kind of matter [for the Physical Realm]).

The background for the Last War has to do with a prior epoch of history during which the Noumenal Artificers ran a sort of "magical college" in the transcendent realm. Students at this college would enter into different parts of the 24-fold world in order to solve some crisis or another here or there as part of their "moral-magical education." The Artificers themselves always had magical power, e.g. being around them causes a feeling of synchronized deja vu until you leave their presence. (I still don't have an explanation for where the Artificers originally came from.) So anyway, during one crisis in one world, the students/affiliated Artificers created an epic story in order to inspire civilization to avoid starting a war involving two kinds of evil weapons, and the world of the story became Earth, a famous location for other tales, so there's a lot of "fan fiction" about Earth, in this setting. [The hyper-prequel would be one where on each page the words arranged to shapes, each shape being one "frame" in an animation you'd get by flipping through the entire book quickly. So there would be three levels of storyline: the demi-animation, the "real world," and the world of the epic story.] The figure of Ripheus was originally in the story, but because he "ought" to exist, he exists, without father or mother or whatever. That is, he became such a popular character that he was copied into the moral imagination of the cosmos, until reality itself commanded his existence in itself. Now, at the time of the two-weapons war, Armirex had disappeared from the scene of history for a long time. There's a special test the Artificers have to take when they reach their stage of greatest power, of putting a four-fold category into correct order, and if they fail this, they become known as Fallen Artificers. There were seven total, including Armirex, and besides Armirex only one other Fallen Artificer survived (the other five killed themselves quickly). Armirex originally could magically cause pain as punishment for sin, and Damnite would torture people in order to cause other magic, so there was a sort of "harmony" between the two for a while, before Damnite accidentally died at his own magic's hands and Armirex went into "hiding." But then when Ripheus came into existence and heralded the days of the Last War, Armirex returned and redeemed himself by using his power to quiet Apollyon, a mysterious foe from the transcendental realm and instigator of many wars (as Apollyon would roam the multiverse, massacring thousands and thousands of thousands of cities, provoking different factions, pretending to align with some, and so on). But the Promise of the Final Power was sworn before the Destroyer's quiescence was accomplished, so Armirex left Ripheus and Co. after the decisive event and then disappeared again after reports came out that he had silenced Apollyon somehow. The concept of the Sea Alone was not necessarily on Armirex's mind at the time he led Ripheus to the ritual of torture. The two men were widely separated for millions of years, and though an image of Armirex helped inspire Ripheus to "wake up" from the demiplane of Apollyon, the two didn't really connect up until the ritual. Armirex just assumed that he and Ripheus would prove to be on the same page, since Armirex judged highly of Ripheus and believed he would understand the alleged necessity of negating the Form of Evil. [The idea for the scene is for it to be one of those "the evil guy reveals his plan" twist scenes, only it's a twist for the evil guy too since he doesn't realize that the "good guy" has no idea what is going on.] Also the Sea Alone is never really drained, or rather draining it does nothing to stop the Anomalies (though why, exactly, Ripheus thinks it would, I haven't thought up yet). [The motives of Ripheus are pure-hearted in a special way, but I haven't fully explored how or why this is so. One aspect of the hyper-prequel was that all the actual characters in the story would be different shades of extremely good, so that the difference between the protagonists and antagonists would be quite subtle. So Ripheus would come off as miraculously virtuous, maybe, but my hope would be to complicate his moral psychology enough for the audience to perceive him as having something along the lines of a "character flaw," though how this would be so would be quite the exotic question...]