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Fanghur Rahl

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  1. Fanghur Rahl
    No, in the context of how 'Domi' is always talked about, namely as clearly implied as a loving, compassionate, merciful being specifically revered by the Elantrians, one of whom outright prays to Devotion in 'Secret History', I don't think there can be any real doubt that 'Domi' is Devotion. At least in as much as the Almighty "is" Honor.
  2. Fanghur Rahl
    This may well qualify as a 'no duh!' type of a question, but I was just wondering if we have any information on precisely how the Shards relate to the various religions of the Shardworlds? I mean, obviously a few of them are pretty much unambiguously just the Shards by different names, like Jaddeth for Dominion, Domi for Devotion, Austre for Endowment, and of course 'Almighty' for Honor. But what about all the other ones? In Hero of Ages it's implied that most of the Scadrian religions contain common elements related to Ruin and Preservation, so there seems to at least have been influence by the Shards if not actual deification (by the humans at least), but it's a little difficult to tell whether this was deliberate influence on the Shards' part or whether it just sort of happened. Do we have any information relating to this issue?
  3. Fanghur Rahl
    Actually, I disagree with you about that one. I personally suspect that at least one of the remaining five (or is it six?) Shards that we haven't seen yet is probably on the malevolent side as well, since so far only two, at most three if we count Dominion, of the Shards we've seen are unambiguously malevolent whereas the others are either benevolent(ish) or mostly apathetic. Personally, I like the idea of having a Shard of Jealousy or Avarice to go with Ruin, Odium, and possibly Dominion on the list of 'evil' Shards.
  4. Fanghur Rahl
    Plus, I think ‘Calamity’ and ‘Darkness’ would be too similar to Ruin for Brandon to waste one of the remaining Shards as that.
  5. Fanghur Rahl
    Actually, I think arguably if anything he utilized the intent of Ruin more than he did of Preservation, since he basically had to completely remake the entire planet, which clearly would have involved destroying a great many things.
  6. Fanghur Rahl
    Agreed.
  7. Fanghur Rahl
    Brandon has all but explicitly stated that it isn’t called ‘Survival’, and that its desire to hide and survivor is only tangentially related to its intent. I personally think something like ‘Prudence’ could be a pretty good name for it, or maybe ‘Wisdom’, though I don’t think it works as well.
  8. Fanghur Rahl
    My point is simply that it's clearly not true that a cognitive shadow in possession of a Shard is entirely confined to the Cognitive Realm and unable to either manifest in or causally affect the Physical Realm, since we saw Kelsier do both of those things in Secret History. It confused the heck out of me too, since first you have Ruin basically mocking and deriding him, claiming that since he had no body he can't affect the Physical Realm, and then literally a few paragraphs later we explicitly see Kelsier doing that exact thing, albeit far less effectively than Ruin could, but even so, holding back an erupting volcano is hardly a trivial endeavour. This is the kind of thing I meant in our discussion about the nature of the Realms last week, how Brandon sometimes describes them in internally inconsistent ways that make it difficult to pin down precisely what is and is not true about them. But anyway, like I said, going purely on the basis of what we know about Investiture, it doesn't make any real sense to say that an Ascended cognitive shadow would be unable to interact with the physical, since their Shard's Investiture has a physical aspect to it, and thus ipso facto so do they while they're holding the Shard. That and quite honestly, I think it's probably fair to say that the Physical aspect of a human being compared to that of a Shard is probably comparable to a firecracker vs a hypernova, so I have a hard time imagining how a cognitive shadow could be hugely more handicapped than a living person would be. I mean don't get me wrong, if Brandon says it's so, then so be it. But I don't think it's particularly well thought out.
  9. Fanghur Rahl
    The problem with that is two-fold. For starters, we actually know for a fact that this isn’t quite true, since when Kelsier was briefly Preservation, he was in fact able to affect the physical realm, namely he tried to keep volcanoes from erupting, but Ruin was able to exert more power to thwart the attempt and force them back open. Secondly, the logic is faulty because a Shard (as I understand it anyway) is basically pure Investiture tending towards a particular intent, and Investiture is connected to all three realms. Ergo, if a cognitive shadow is able to ascend, it follows that it too should gain a connection to the physical realm as well, namely through the Investiture that effectively becomes its new body. And again, what we’ve witnessed supports the conclusion that they would at least have a ‘weak’ connection to the physical. Why should it matter where the mind controlling the Shard exists? Am I looking at this the wrong way?
  10. Fanghur Rahl
    I thought of it more as being reformed upon the death of the Shard, not as some physical human body floating around in a giant network of Investiture.
  11. Fanghur Rahl
    Oh geez. lol. I thought the Shards were purely post-physical beings? Aren’t their physical manifestations just avatars (in the correct usage of the term)? Didn’t Brandon flat-out say at one point that as soon as Dalinar absorbs enough of Honor’s essence that it vaporizes his body, he’ll truly be the next Honor (or Unity as the case may be)?
  12. Fanghur Rahl
    I voted Elantris 2, because honestly, I’m not finding Warbreaker to be as enjoyable as the other series, at least so far. Please no one crucify me, but the Nalthisian magic system feels like something out of a bad fairytale to me...
  13. Fanghur Rahl
    Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t Brandon said that the individual Shards of Ruin and Preservation no longer exist, as they’ve been merged to become the Shard of Harmony, which would be what he would drop if he was killed?
  14. Fanghur Rahl
    Honestly, I never really understood that. The way I think about it is that Sazed’s intent that results from the merging of Ruin and Preservation is ‘Harmony’, which to my mind tends to imply a much less extreme version of Preservation in which there are equal parts preservation and destruction on average’ (incidentally, if we look at it mathematically, the correct outcome would actually just be a less extreme version of Ruin, since that’s what’s in between absolute destruction and absolute stasis. If Cultivation were in the mix too, then I can see ‘Harmony’ rightly being the outcome, but I digress). ‘Harmony’ as an intent should not paralyze him; it might tie his hands when it comes to him having free reign to do what he morally wants to do, but it certainly shouldn’t prevent him from acting at all. Sometimes to promote harmony, you need to put in a lot of effort; that’s just a fact. So I personally think that this is a rather dumb decision on Brandon’s part; I won’t call it a plot-hole, because technically it’s not, but I do think that it’s rather contrived. Either that or ‘Harmony’ is a complete misnomer.
  15. Fanghur Rahl
    Just lure Odium to the vicinity of a white dwarf star; their cores are thought by some to be comprised largely of diamond (or something like it). lol.
  16. Fanghur Rahl
    Or like Esmer from the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant; for every bit of aid he gives, he also has to offset it with a betrayal, and vice-versa. In Harmony’s case, for every act of preservation, he also needs to ruin something.
  17. Fanghur Rahl
    That’s possible I guess. Though I’m pretty sure that a bunch of Preservation-lites would probably be better for Scadrial than an equal number of Preservation-lites and Ruin-lites. Though I suppose creating an imbalance in how much Preservation and Ruin Sazed’s holding could end very badly, especially if there’s more of the latter.
  18. Fanghur Rahl
    Honestly, I don’t know about that. We’ve already seen that as separate Shards Ruin and Preservation are about as far from ‘harmonious’ toward each other as it’s possible to get. Indeed, I can easily imagine ‘Harmony’ being way more volatile if held by someone not as wise as Sazed was. That’s why I personally think that if he was going to try something like this, he’d have to give it to people very similar to himself, otherwise the inevitable result probably would be counter to his intent.
  19. Fanghur Rahl
    I’m talking about ‘trapping’ in the sense that the Radiants trapped Ba-Ado-Mishram, not just completely nullifying their power by opposing it with its opposite. Preservation didn’t so-much ‘imprison’ Ruin as render him effectively impotent. It wasn’t a literal prison as I understand it.
  20. Fanghur Rahl
    I was just wondering, would it be possible to trap a full Shard in a gem the way you can trap Spren and Splinters? Obviously this is purely academic, since I think it’s probably safe to say that even if it is possible it would probably require a perfect gemstone the size of a mountain or larger, but would it at least be possible in principle? Or are Shards sufficiently different from Spren and Splinters to make it impossible? Are there any WOBs relevant to this?
  21. Fanghur Rahl
    Considering that Nightblood literally vaporizes whoever it hits, I’d think that having a healing factor would be irrelevant; it’s hard to regenerate from literally a cloud of burnt smoke and ashes.
  22. Fanghur Rahl
    That’s what happened in Lucifer. lol.
  23. Fanghur Rahl
    I’ve always thought that there’s probably at least one other Shard out there who leans towards being evil/malevolent, since the majority of the ones we know so far seem to either be morally neutral (Cultivation, Autonomy, Ambition, Preservation) or benevolent (Honor, Endowment, Devotion, Harmony). So far Ruin and Odium and maybe Dominion are ones that I personally would call malevolent (by human standards). That said, I’ve always thought that ‘Jealousy’ or ‘Avarice’ would make a good Shard of less-than-pleasant nature. Other ones I like are: ‘Aptitude’ (I personally think that sounds better than ‘Ingenuity’ or ‘Creativity’). Wisdom Prudence (that might possibly be the so-called ‘Survival Shard’) Compassion (though this arguably would be subsumed into Devotion’s intent). Order Fecundity (though I doubt Brandon would go there; I suspect a Shardworld with that Shard would be very... Bosch. lol.) And one I haven’t seen postulated before; ‘Indifference’ or maybe ‘Apathy’. Which I like because we already have Shards of love (Devotion) and hate (Odium), so ‘Indifference’ would be right in the middle of the two just like Preservation is right in between Ruin and Cultivation.
  24. Fanghur Rahl
    Brute force I guess. Harmony would still be vastly more powerful than any ‘Sharchangel’, and we at least know he doesn’t have any problem controlling his Kandra unless they rip their spikes out. Anyway, presumably he (or any other Shard for that matter) wouldn’t give just anyone that privilege, only those he trusted without reservation.
  25. Fanghur Rahl
    One of the death words literally translates to “Die”, so yeah, absolutely no contest. Eragon is also roughly as fast as Sazed using his speedminds, so even if the Shardblade could go clean through his wards, Kaladin would never be able to hit him with it. At least not unless he got obscenely lucky.
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