Fanghur Rahl

I stand corrected. I wonder if Brandon envisions the Cosmere universe having an overall cyclic cosmology too. It would seem to be consistent with that.

I suspect that Nightblood doesn’t destroy the ground for the same reason ghosts never fall through the ground in movies: it’d be problematic for the story if they did. lol.

Has Brandon actually said that? Because in the WOBs I’ve seen relating to the subject, he basically implied that it’s like thermodynamics. Because technically Investiture never ‘leaves’ the Spiritual Realm, does it? It has all three aspects at all times.

I know, and insofar as it has any truth to it, I agree with you. I just think it's rather misleading.

That’s one of the reasons I very much dislike the claim of Shards having infinite power; if it has any truth at all, it may as well not since having power it’s impossible to use is functionally equivalent to not having it at all. The way I interpreted it was that burning the Atium rendered that Investiture unusable, either by sending it back to the Spiritual Realm or the Beyond to eventually be restored, or just the equivalent of the 2nd law of thermodynamics with respect to Investiture. Either way, it did clearly weaken Ruin to some extent, or at least make him unable to get to full power.

What about in the case of Elend weakening Ruin by destroying all the stockpiled Atium?

I don’t think it actually destroys Investiture, since Brandon has said that like energy Investiture is never created or destroyed. I think Nightblood just absorbs it, utilizes it to power itself, and in so doing renders it incapable of doing any more work.

Yeah, I guess a weapon capable of making a star go supernova in moments or effectively turning an entire planet into equal parts matter and antimatter hardly qualifies as ‘conventional’ by most definitions. But hey, desperate times, right? lol.

If a Shard has infinite power then how did Preservation end up ‘weaker’ than Ruin by giving his humans sentience and remain that way even after having thousands of years to ‘call’ more if its power to it? Infinity divided by or minus anything is still infinity. So that WOB would seem to lead to some continuity issues. At any rate, my thinking is that while the Shards are post-physical beings, they technically do still have a physical aspect, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to interact with the physical realm. So it seems that if they concentrated enough of that aspect in one place, they should in theory make themselves more vulnerable to an albeit ludicrously powerful physical assault; maybe it couldn’t kill them outright, but perhaps at least temporarily weaken their connection to the physical realm. Like if in Mistborn Era 4 a Shard invests most of itself into a star like Autonomy (or an aspect of Autonomy) has in the Taldain system, and the Ones Above use some weapon like Peter F. Hamilton’s nova bombs on the star, which effectively convert most of the center mass of the star directly to energy, setting aside the fact that this would probably make even the largest hypernovas look like less than firecrackers by comparison and sterilize the entire Cosmere galaxy, I’d have to think that at the very least the Shard would be affected in some way (obviously I don’t think anything remotely likely this is actually going to happen; this is purely meant as a hypothetical). Kind of like how Ruin was temporarily weakened by Elend and the others burning up all the Atium, only taken up a few orders of magnitude.

Probably another question that we’ll never get any kind of canonical answer to, but I was wondering whether or not it would at least in principle be possible to damage or even splinter a Shard using what might be called ‘conventional’ means? For example, Brandon has said that the island Patji on First of the Sun is in some sense a Shard, presumably one of Autonomy’s avatars. So what would happen if you physically obliterated the whole island? If the Ones Above for whatever reason decided to drop a micro quantum buster on it or something. Or probably more reasonably, if you somehow managed to catch a Shard’s physical manifestation (which incidentally is what the term ‘avatar’ probably should actually mean in this context) by surprise. If Szeth managed to impale Odium’s ‘avatar’ with Nightblood or a Shardblade, or again someone just dropped a doomsday bomb on it. Is it possible for a purely physical attack of any kind to harm a Shard, do we think? Or is it an “only a god can kill another god” type of situation?

Fecundity (noun): the ability to produce an abundance of offspring or new growth; fertility. That’d make for a pretty fun Shardworld. lol. The only problem is that it might be a little too similar to Cultivation for it to be a separate Shard.

Fair enough. I remember someone asking if the Singers’ gemhearts are in any way related to the Fain life, and Brandon said that they were. At least I think.

Do we actually know that for a fact? Because like I said, the Singers are kinda like a hive mind (or at least share some characteristics of one), and Brandon has said that they’re related to the fane life (I think).

Well that’s actually a valid point, since the Singers kind of have a hive mind of sorts, and I think Brandon has said that the Singers are related to the fane life in some way, and I think the Sho-Del are a species of fane life. So who knows?

Personally, I think ‘Fecundity’ would be the best for the lust/desire possibility.

Not officially, no. Lots of people like to think that she may be a dragon.

Well, technically Growth would not currently be something Harmony could create, because ultimately he is incomplete; he only has two out of three Shards of the change trinity, Ruin and Preservation, and the sad thing is that I think out of the three of them, Cultivation probably fits his personality the most, and it’s the one he lacks. Sazed always wanted to change things for the better, always was striving to build people up and refine their thinking into something better. That may be part of the reason he has trouble as Harmony, because while he may have been wise enough to see how Ruin and Preservation were two parts of a larger whole, there’s still a fundamental disconnect between his core personality and the two Shards he holds. My personal opinion is that if you were to be holding Cultivation as well, which I actually hope happens sometime, he would be a lot less cognitively unstable. Both because he would then be complete, and also better able to follow his desired goals.

That’s what I meant; the implication clearly seemed to be that Dominion managed to ‘wound’ Odium in some way prior to his death.

I know, that’s precisely why I think ‘Prudence’ is a plausible intent for it; avoiding needless conflict is certainly a prudent course of action.

Or ‘Conflict’.

That’s what I thought he had done, but I don’t understand why in Secret History Kelsier literally observes Ruin physically confined to the Well (or some ‘place’ beyond the Well). I mean, was that just supposed to be some kind of a metaphorical observation? Even Hoid implied that Ruin made using the Well perpendicularity very dangerous, which is weird considering that prior to that he was using Ruin’s own perpendicularity.

That sounds like a very Brandon sleight of hand.

The thing to remember though is that not all intents even have complete 1-to-1 polar opposites, at least not unless you want to take the intent and and just add a 'dis' prefix to it. I mean, sure, you could argue that Dominion and Autonomy are in some sense 'opposite' in the sense that they can't really co-exist harmoniously, but you can't say that they are literally 'opposite' in a mathematical sense. But it's a different story with what I'm dubbing the 'change trinity' and the 'passion trinity' if Apathy or something like it does turn out to be a Shard. If I only knew that Ruin and Preservation existed, and made the connection that they are basically regression and stasis, respectively, I would have predicted the existence of Cultivation (though probably not the name), because the set (and by extension Adonalsium) would be obviously incomplete without it. Likewise, if I only knew about Devotion and Apathy, I could easily predict that there should be one for hatred as well for the same reason. But I don't necessarily know whether I could have done the same with respect to Preservation or *Apathy* (or whatever equivalent alternative you prefer) if I only knew about Ruin and Cultivation. As I think those two could probably form a complete pair without Preservation technically needing to exist to bridge that gap. However, given that Preservation does exist to bridge the two ends of that spectrum, I think it's at least plausible to predict that the same might also hold true with this as well. And I think something like Apathy or Dispassion or Objectivity or Detachment or Equity could quite plausibly serve this function. Like I said, it's not just for thematic reasons, although I certainly think that those exist.

I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying that if you really wanted to, and you didn’t care about the drawbacks, you could probably do it in principle. I mean if nothing else you could certainly do it musket style.

Not really. The most we’ve ever really seen aluminum put through any kind strenuous treatment is Vasher using Nightblood, aluminum sheath and all, as a weapon. But really, that wouldn’t be expected to do that much damage; humans aren’t really tough after all. You could easily make a stabbing weapon out of aluminum if all you wanted to stab was unarmored flesh.