Fanghur Rahl

Forget gamma rays. Honestly, I think that if Cosmere physics is similar to real-world physics, then Soulcasting could quite possibly be the the single most potentially destructive magic system in the entire Cosmere, to the point that a lone Soulcaster could potentially obliterate huge portions of a planet. If someone were to inadvertently Soulcast a sizeable object into antimatter, if that’s even possible, and I see no reason to assume it isn’t, you’d basically have a Peter F. Hamiltonian quantumbuster on your hands.

The Ones Above probably belong somewhere on that list as well, even if their ‘power’ is mostly technologically-based rather than magic-based.

Actually, we know quite a bit about him. He’s American, born December 19, 1975, brought up as a practicing Mormon, and is best known for the creation of the universe known as the Cosmere. In all seriousness, I’ve always thought it was pretty obvious that the so-called ‘God Beyond’ was Brandon. lol.

I like to believe that Harmony + Cultivation = Potency, just because of how poetically fitting it would be for Sazed, impotent all his life, to finally become potent again.

I quite honestly have no idea what any of that meant; I know literally nothing about Magic Cards. But regardless, I think that while avarice and ambition are in many ways closely related, they are not synonymous and have generally very different connotations, and they also aren’t necessarily mutually-dependent. One can be ambitious without also being greedy by most definitions. I don’t think Brandon would have chosen to call the Shard ‘Ambition’ unless that was actually what the Shard was. I think that ‘Ambition’ and ‘Avarice’ would likely need to be two separate Shards. Though admittedly, it would at least make sense of why Endowment seemed to hold them in such contempt, since Endowment and Avarice would essentially be polar opposites.

Lately I was thinking, what exactly would the effect of holding the Shard Ambition be on a person? Or if hypothetically the remnants of Ambition re-coalesced into a sentient, Vessel-less Shard? Because ambition is not something that can really exist in a vacuum, it’s a relational attribute. Ambition in the absence of anything to be ambitious about is effectively meaningless I think. So what exactly does the term mean in the context of the Shard? I would guess that if one were to hold Ambition in addition to another Shard, it would likely have a similar effect to a Blue Lantern Corps member being near a member of another Corps, namely it would act as an amplifier of whatever that Intent is and effectively make them even more fanatical about it (or at least I think that’s a plausible hypothesis), but what about if one was just holding Ambition? It seems like the landscape of possible ways that particular Shard could be channelled is effectively endless, depending on what its Vessel happened to be ambitious about.

The confusion also arises in that Brandon often refers to the Shards alone and the Shards + their Vessels as if they were synonymous, so it’s unclear exactly which he’s referring to sometimes. Because Rayse is certainly evil, with or without holding Odium, but the books just call the Vessels by their intents.

Actually, in the early show it was at least implied that Death personified natural decay as well. But I agree that if we’re going on Supernatural analogies, Ati-Ruin is far more analogous to the Darkness than he was to Death. My point was just that if Ruin truly was just a personification of natural decay as Ati claimed, Death would be the kind of being I would expect it to be like. Instead, he was an omnicidal psychopath who could care less about the natural order.

I dunno, do you consider yourself to have free will? Because ultimately all of us are in the same position as the Vessels, just not nearly in such an overt way. Ultimately, all of us are manifestations of matter obeying the laws of physics, and our will emerges from that. I personally would say that as long as we aren’t coerced to act in a way against our own desires, then we do have ‘free will’ (the technical term for this position is ‘compatibilism’). And Ruin certainly seemed to enjoy what he was doing, as does Odium. So it would seem that by that definition, the Shards have as much ‘free will’ as we do. The only difference is that the range of possible desires they can possess is much more limited than ours.

Honestly, I’ve always said that the only way this can be true is if we arbitrarily hold the Shards to a completely different standard of morality than we do literally anyone else. I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t readily agree that if a person did even a fraction of the terrible things that Odium and Ruin did, that that person qualifies as being evil. So quite frankly, I see no justification in excluding the Shards from deserving the label too, unless we effectively render the term meaningless.

Whatever Odium claims about her, I don’t think that Cultivation actually is apathetic about the kind of growth she causes. I think it’s pretty clear that she does care. Otherwise, I think she would be pretty much identical to the Shimmer from the movie Annihilation, which incidentally is almost exactly how Odium incorrectly describes her. So I don’t find it at all improbable that her relationship with Honor helped determine the way she channels her intent, or vice versa. Technically, Honor doesn’t have to cultivate honor in others. He could instead merely have enforced it. Like Nale for example. His ‘intent’ (not literally, just an analogy) is justice, but he couldn’t care less about making others value it too outside of his Skybreakers, he only cares about enforcing it.

Technically Kelsier didn't do that himself, Preservation had to nullify the Beyond's pull on him, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to resist much longer.

As I understand it, the resealers basically for all intents and purposes had to clone his brain. Getting an arrow through your brain would pretty much be invariably fatal (unless you’re either ludicrously lucky or are Shallan/Veil, though I honestly think that Brandon put that in there purely for the lulz). So yeah, he would have been dead, and as Calderis said, his soul would have moved Beyond.

I know, but the philosophical question remains: if two things are identical, and one is destroyed to make the second, are they really different in any meaningful sense? I personally think yes, at least as far as people and consciousness are concerned, but there’s certainly precedent in fiction for people disagreeing. So who knows? Maybe Hoid would consider something analogous to what Shai did as being equivalent to true resurrection. I have no idea how that would help him since he doesn’t have any Aonic magics as far as we know, but who knows? When Hoid is concerned, I don’t think we can make any assumptions.

Well, actually, I guess one might argue that Shai kinda-maybe-sorta brought Ashravan back from the Beyond... kinda. Depending how you wanna look at it. Though personally I think it’s probably more akin to cloning from the movie 6th Day than true resurrection.

Anyone who accepts a challenge to duel Adolin (though technically they wouldn’t die, but still).

Hasn’t Brandon said that that is flat-out impossible? Or at least that that’s his current position on the matter regardless of what Sazed said?

Is it possible that there may literally have been a small degree of blending of their Intents from their ‘being together’ as Shards, assuming Shards are even capable of doing that?

I know, I misspoke. I was using the term too generally, but I just meant in terms of breaking promises they make. At any rate, as for Ingenuity, I completely agree that something like that should be a Shard, I just don’t like that particular label for it because I think it sounds dumb when used as a name. Though I suppose he could do worse. But I prefer Inspiration both because it’s a near-synonym of Ingenuity, it sounds much less awkward as a proper noun, and there’s overwhelming precedent for people ascribing that attribute to their Gods. So it’s all around a good name for a Shard.

Sorry, that’s what I meant. I meant that they couldn’t lie in the sense of breaking their promises.

When Dalinar was asking him about the whole contest of champions thing. I can’t recall the exact quotes, but Dalinar asked him if gods always have to keep their word, and the Stormfather answered in the affirmative. And I know they aren’t; I’ve said on multiple occasions that I consider those Shards, at least as expressed by Rayse and Ati, to be flat-out evil. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Adonalsium also channelled them towards what we would consider ‘evil’ ends as well.

Either that or the Stormfather was simply incorrect about the inability to lie being a trait all Shards share as opposed to just one of Honor.

Well regardless, the Stormfather did pretty explicitly state that Shards can’t lie, at least not outright. And technically speaking, hatred in of itself is a morally neutral attribute, what gives it its moral status is what it is channeled on. After all, hating and wanting to end evil are two perfectly benevolent manifestations of Odium and Ruin. As you yourself have said, any attribute stripped from all context has the potential to be a bad thing.

I don't really think that 'cunning' works as an attribute of the divine, since it has an implication of deceitfulness implicit in its definition (though admittedly, it might be very mild, but still). And I think it's probably safe to say that if the Shards are incapable of lying, as the Stormfather indicates, Adonalsium likely was as well. 'Inspiration' or maybe 'Aptitude' work much better as usable synonyms. Honestly, I think 'Inspiration' sounds like an awesome Shard name; it's definitely the kind of attribute a benevolent deity would possess.

I was just thinking, do we think that because Honor and Cultivation were lovers that they influenced how each of them ultimately came to express their respective Intents? Because from what we've seen of each of them individually, it does seem that they each express at least a minimal degree of the others' Intent as well, with Honor trying to groom (i.e. 'Cultivate') the Rosharans to be more honorable and grow as a people, and Cultivation through the Nightwatcher seeming to tailor her boons/curses to the individual and at least in the case of Dalinar actively cultivating him into a much more honorable man over time. Is this just a coincidence, or is there some kind of direct causal influence occurring between the two of them as far as this is concerned? Because as far as we know, nothing similar to this occurred in the case of Ruin and Preservation or Dominion and Devotion, though admittedly in the case of the latter we simply lack any sufficient information to say one way or the other.