Fanghur Rahl

Just like Preservation can be regarded as an ‘absence’ of change; the precedent for a null intent, so to speak, is already canon. Like I said, Apathy is exactly to Love and Hate what Preservation is to Cultivation and Ruin; if that spectrum has a null, why not the emotion/passion spectrum as well? And in a sense, Apathy often can inform your behaviour to at least some extent. How you interact with things you have no real emotional investment with (no pun intended) will clearly differ from things you either love or hate. The problem though is that it would be an incredibly broad intent, possibly even more so than Autonomy.

Maybe, although I still think that theory has a number of problems with it, not least of which being Odium actually being naive enough to fall for it. Frankly, from what we know about him, I think he probably would have turned on her the instant he was finished with her. Not let her go off to start spreading across the Cosmere like a virus and making it all the more inconvenient when he eventually turns his shardicide against Autonomy.

Clearly not so limited as to be unable to hold Trell off. Either way, I'm pretty sure that the relative power difference between Harmony and Trell would be at least an order of magnitude greater than the difference between Vin and Elend; Elend wasn't that much stronger than Vin after all.

What do you guys think about the identity of one of the remaining six Shards being 'Apathy' or 'Indifference'? The way I see it, it would at least make thematic sense for there to be one of that Intent, since we already have ones for both extreme ends of the passion spectrum - love (Devotion) and hatred (Odium) - and Apathy would be in the middle of that spectrum, much as Preservation (stasis) was in between Ruin (net regression/decay/disorder) and Cultivation (net progression/growth/refinement) in the 'change' spectrum, that and I think it has a nice ring to it as a Shard name. The only real issue I have with it is what kind of role a Shard whose reaction to anything is 'meh, who cares?' could really have in the Cosmere. So it seems to me that there should be a Shard with the intent of Apathy or at least something similar to it, but I don't know whether it would be good for the overall Cosmere story for Brandon to make that one of the remaining six. Anyone have any thoughts?

That still doesn’t explain how a single avatar would be able to pose any kind of threat to Harmony though. Especially if not all of her (does that term even apply anymore?) ‘parts’ agree with Trell’s actions, and presumably they wouldn’t. Even with Harmony’s limitations, he should still be able to banish or ward against him/her/it with little effort, and it certainly shouldn’t take ‘a huge fraction of his power’ to do so.

There is plenty of precedent for something like that in other works of fiction, of an AI being able to make copies of itself, but always imprecisely resulting in the copies never being as good as the original for example. Of course the obvious drawback to that is the potential that it could effectively result in the intent ‘mutating’ across the different avatars. Then again, I guess that if Brandon is setting Autonomy up to be a kind of a virus-like Shard, then that would be consistent with that.

Well, I personally hope that’s not the case. Because quite frankly I think that that would make Autonomy ridiculously overpowered. That and it still really rubs me the wrong way because Investiture is supposed to be conserved and having the ability to spit out many duplicates of equal power to the original Shard strikes me as not at all in line with this.

That’s the weird thing about it, namely that Brandon has said that it’s a Shard we know of (I think), but I don’t see how it can be a full Shard, since they’re all accounted for. The most common theory that I know of is that it’s one of the avatars of Autonomy, though how the hell one of those could even begin to pose any real threat to Harmony is a complete mystery to me.

The thing is though that the descriptions we get of Austre in Warbreaker by people like Vivenna and Siri (spelling?) perfectly match Endowment with the sole exception of the gender, even more so in my opinion than the descriptions we get of the Almighty match Honour.

That’s brilliant!

Yeah, well, Brandon also said that Ruin was merely a personification of entropy, which is trivially false. At any rate, insofar as what people usually mean by terms like ‘evil’ or ‘malevolent’, I think Shards can certainly be meaningfully called that. I personally can’t think of any realistic scenario in which the Shard Odium wouldn’t turn its vessel into a monster eventually, and the same goes for hypothetical Shards like ‘Jealousy’ or ‘Avarice’ or ‘Chaos’. I personally like the name ‘Aptitude’ for that. I think it has a better ring to it than “Ingenuity”.

Cthulhu Shard? lol.

Already been done, it's called the Yellow Lantern Corps. lol. In all seriousness though, Brandon has said that if he were ever going to do a horror story, it would be of the Lovecraftian, Eldritch Nightmare variety; I certainly wouldn't want to live on that particular Shardworld. That would be absolutely terrifying. Honestly, my prediction for the intent of the so-called 'Survival Shard' is 'Prudence'. I think that sounds like a great name for a Shard, and it would certainly be in line with it wanting to give Odium a wide berth.

Yeah, but pride isn’t intrinsically bad though, and quite frankly I have a hard time seeing how the intent of ‘Pride’ could lead to a Shard being some malevolent monster like Odium or Ruin. Jealousy or Avarice are easier to picture.

The only problem with that line of reasoning is why would she exclude the other Shards from that logic? Having multiple Shards technically wouldn't make an interconnected Cosmere any less 'autonomous', not unless they were doing the kind of thing Bavadin is doing. That and I can't fathom how she would think allying herself with Odium (or at least being sympathetic toward his goal) would support that goal.

Well yeah, I mean some are a lot more clear-cut than others. Like Jaddeth is clearly for all intents and purposes Dominion and Merciful Domi is Devotion. Honestly, I’m quite shocked that Austre isn’t just another name for Endowment considering how similar they are. Cause Bavadin. Like I said, I don't know exactly what it is, but Brandon clearly has something really weird planned for Bavadin.

Well, perhaps. Like I said, I don't rule out the possibility that there might be some kind of contrived way of explaining away her counter-intuitive behaviour simply within the framework of the intent of 'Autonomy', but I don't see any problem in exploring alternative possibilities. Autonomy is certainly the weirdest Shard we know of so far after all, I think. Brandon definitely has something weird up his sleeve with regard to her. Honestly, I'd be quite disappointed if he didn't after all the hype.

Well, actually, in the case of the Shards that seem to embody various aspects of humanity, like Honour, Devotion, and presumably Ambition, the intents ARE self-applied as well. Honour couldn’t break oaths, Devotion was by all accounts a very benevolent, loving being herself, and Ambition was presumably, well, ambitious. I don’t really know whether Autonomy would be in the same class as these other kinds of Shards, but if so, I don’t see any real reason to a priori assume that she wouldn’t object to herself violating others’ autonomy. I mean, maybe she wouldn’t, but I don’t think we can just assume it. And even if she didn’t, wouldn’t just interdicting the planets be enough?

Well, I admit I never thought of it that way, But I have a hard time believing that Brandon would put something like that in the series. I think it would go against the over all theme of the Shards as a concept.

Wouldn’t that essentially make Bavadin a Shard who lacks an intent, for all intents and purposes (no pun intended)?

To quote Oromis from ‘Eldest’: “You cannot gainsay a word’s [concept’s] inherent meaning. Guide it? Yes. Shape it? Yes. But not contravene its definition to imply the very opposite.” In my opinion at least, that very well might be what one would have to do to reconcile Autonomy’s action with the intent itself; there’s only so far you can stretch the concept of pure autonomy before it turns into something else entirely.

Yeah, maybe. It’s just always seemed really incongruous to me for a Shard who by all rights would naively be assumed to be a promoter of freedom and independence to instead go around subjugating worlds, stopping them from expanding, and manipulating them into worshipping her. My gut says that something else must be at play here, even if it isn’t this particular theory, and like I said, I’m by no means convinced that this is correct.

I'm going to just say right off the bat that I am by no means convinced that this is even likely to be true much less that it actually is, and it only just finished coming together in my head a few minutes ago in another one of my posts in which Autonomy was brought up. So for all I know, this is demonstrably false, but I thought I'd just put it out there. So for a while now, I've been trying (and failing) to wrap my brain around just what the heck is going on with Autonomy and why she seems to be acting so contrary to at least reasonable conceptions of what her intent would seem to indicate. What we seem to know about her is that 1) she's 'spreading' from planet to planet and installing avatars of her Investiture on them, whatever exactly that means, 2) she tends to discourage if not outright forbid in the case of Taldain any access to or from the planets under her dominion (pun definitely intended), and 3) that she tends to inspire or deliberately set herself or her avatars up as objects of worship among those on her planets. This has always struck me as extremely bizarre behaviour for the Shard of Autonomy, for which really only (2) could be argued as unsurprising. But then I remembered that there was a WOB in which someone had asked Brandon whether Autonomy was involved in the splintering of Devotion and Dominion, and Brandon answered in the affirmative, albeit only after they rephrased the question to be extremely broad to prevent him from RAFOing it on the spot ("was Autonomy involved in any way), which is so vague as to be compatible with practically anything, but oh well, just consider that one of the unproven assumptions of this theory. What occurred to me is that it almost seems like Autonomy is displaying behaviour consistent with and expected by Dominion and Devotion (albeit interpreted in the sense of 'subservience' and 'sycophantism' rather than 'love and compassion' as Aona seems to). That is to say, I don't think any of us would have been at all surprised to have learned that Dominion liked to spread from planet to planet and claim them for itself, or that a less benevolently-interpreted Devotion would like to set themself up as an object of worship and reverence, but that Autonomy would do those things is, at the very least, somewhat more surprising simply by virtue of it not being as expected given that Shardic intent. So my question is this: IF we assume for the sake of argument that Autonomy was in some way involved with the deaths of Devotion and Dominion, or of disposing of their 'remains' afterward so to speak, is there any chance that the uncontained Investiture of Dominion and Devotion could have in some sense 'contaminated' Autonomy's own Investiture (and maybe even Odium too for all we know, since he's really no different, just even worse) to some extent and instilled into her these tendencies that would be more expected for those two Shards? I mean she clearly doesn't hold their full Shards, that's not what I'm suggesting, but it doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility that when the Investiture of two Shards comes into contact, for lack of a better term, some limited degree of melding occurs (it certainly did in Harmony's case, admittedly through completely different means). Looked at in this way, Autonomy's behaviour would no longer seem quite so counter-intuitive. She'd effectively be a single Shard in terms of power, but possess in addition to her primary attribute, a limited extent of two other Shards as well. Though admittedly, an obvious inconsistency with this theory is that Ruin and Preservation's Investiture had clearly been 'in contact' before and yet neither of them displayed any sort of 'intent blending', so clearly if this has any merit at all it would require the additional assumption that something different and possibly unique occurred on Sel that simply hasn't occurred since. Exactly what this is, I don't know. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Well Brandon has implied that Dominion managed to take a part of Odium down with him before getting splintered, so I think that description is probably pretty accurate. As for Autonomy... well, let’s just say part of me thinks she must have somehow acquired a piece of Dominion’s Shard, because her behaviour makes absolutely no sense to me otherwise given her Shardic intent; she sounds exactly like what I would expect someone holding both Dominion and Autonomy to do.

Well he certainly could have fooled me, since Austre is known as the ‘God of Colours’ who bestows gifts/skills/etc. upon the worthy (or at least that’s how Vivenna described it in her internal monologues and Siri to Susebron), and Endowment’s magic system is based on colours and she does literally that exact thing more or less. So I have a very hard time imagining the concept of Austre not at the very least being strongly influenced by Endowment even if they aren’t technically one and the same. But yeah, from what little we’ve seen of Dominion, I think it’s probably pretty safe to assume he probably wasn’t a paragon of moral virtues. He is basically the god of subjugation after all.