Fanghur Rahl

Can they not access it at all, or can they just not bring anyone back from it? Because Preservation at least seemed to know what it was even though he refused to tell Kelsier, which implies that they at least see into it if nothing else.

Huh, that’s interesting. I had always assumed that Szeth’s hearing the screams of those he killed was just his own conscience and inner guilt over what he’d done misinterpreted through the lens of his religion/cultural beliefs. I didn’t think it was anything mystical. It begs the question then: was it actually Evi that Dalinar heard, or was it just a poetic way for Brandon to effectively portray Dalinar forgiving himself?

I’m just curious, do we know if there’s any way a person’s soul or ghost or cognitive shadow or whatever you want to call it can resist being pulled into the Beyond other than a Shard facilitating it? Like how Fuzz was able to keep Kelsier from passing into the Beyond because even he couldn’t resist for long. Because at the end of Oathbringer once Dalinar opens Honor’s Perpendicularity, he hears what I can only assume was Evi’s ghost speaking to him and telling him she forgives him before presumably moving on (I don’t think Brandon intended it to merely be a hallucination), but how exactly was she able to linger all that time? The only thing I can think is that Cultivation kept her from passing on until the culmination of Dalinar’s boon/curse had occurred, though if that’s true then her future sight truly is nothing short of astounding.

Maybe. At any rate, I think that ‘stasis’ is probably the better term. But yes, that’s how I view them. Ruin is regression, entropy and disorder; Preservation is stagnation, stability and stasis; and Cultivation is progression/evolution, growth, and refinement. (And yes Calderis, I realize that all three of these descriptions are likely significant oversimplifications of what the Shards are, but I think they capture the basic gist). I actually think that Calderis’ interpretation of Autonomy is reasonably plausible as it goes, although I do think it has a few problems, not least of which being the blatant hypocrisy and almost cartoon villain reasoning I see it requiring of Bavadin for it to work, but it’s the most plausible theory of Autonomy I’ve yet heard.

@Tglassy Inertia isn’t the term I would use, though I suppose technically it works. I got the impression that Preservation was more about stagnation anything else, or at least that was certainly the way Ruin described it.

But the two Shards are still in direct ‘contact’ with each other in Harmony; Ruin and Preservation fused together without annihilating each other. And they explained precisely why in the end of Hero of Ages, namely that the two forces weren’t meant to be independent, but rather were opposite sides of the same coin. Now I personally think that Cultivation belongs in that group as well, but regardless, Harmony proves that even highly conflicting Shards can be held by a single Vessel, albeit with some difficulty as Sazed has implied.

I have a very hard time believing that Bavadin would be deranged enough to sincerely consider killing everyone to be protecting their autonomy though. That would be a bit like Endowment turning out genocidal because she doesn’t consider it murder, but rather the act of ‘endowing the Nalthians with death’. It certainly doesn’t rank very high up on the plausibility scale of possible interpretations of the Shard.

Actually, technically Ruin doesn’t really ‘destroy’, at least not in the philosophical sense. As far as I know, no Shard truly has the power of either ex nihilo creation or destruction ex nihilo. Ruin just breaks things down into simpler and simpler forms. I’m guessing the ability to create from or destroy into nothing is a power reserved for the God Beyond. At any rate, I agree with your point at the end. The closest thing Ruin has to a true ‘opposite’ among the Shards is Cultivation.

Honestly, I think the fact that she is so brilliant, practical, and logical are some of the best reasons why she should be queen; Adonalsium only knows we could all use way more of those qualities in most of our leaders (yes, you all know who I’m talking about). And the fact that she’s so powerful is another thing in her favour, as I think even Szeth would have had a hard time assassinating her.

One other thing I think I should add is that assuming your interpretation of Autonomy is correct, it isn’t just Endowment that it’s most opposed to (incidentally, that makes it rather odd that Nalthis seems free of Autonomy’s meddling), but Dominion as well, since all of the Cosmere is presumably Adonalsium’s ‘child’, the only thing Adonalsium really could dominate would be its ‘children’, so to speak. That might be why it’s been hinted that Autonomy has some role in Dominion getting splintered. Though like I said, it’s a little strange, then, that Nalthis is seemingly free from her interference (I highly doubt Endowment would tolerate Bavadin meddling in her affairs given what little we know of her).

Agreed. But then again, the only people who would even know about what little he’s said about Trell are those hardcore fans like us, so who knows? At any rate, I agree with you in this instance.

I agree. Not to mention the fact that Bavadin (or one of her avatars) pretty much told Hoid to take a hike, so I think it’s probably safe to assume that they aren’t going to play any kind of direct role in Stormlight. At least with Harmony there’s a slight chance. But to be fair, the overwhelming majority of our knowledge regarding Shards and Cosmere backstory does come in the form of WOBs rather than from the books directly, so we shouldn’t discount meta-knowledge as having any relevance.

Well, regardless, I still think it’s more likely than not that he got the name if nothing else from the TC series. I admit I hadn’t thought of the parallel @Calderis pointed out earlier, so that could well be the case.

Touché. Though I don’t think it’s quite the same thing. My thinking though was that Trell in Thomas Covenant ended up having an extremely ‘discordy’ feel about him toward the end, both externally and internally. And Discord IS a Shard that has been canonically referenced, and we generally assumed it referenced Sazed, but maybe not?

Incidentally, one thing I thought might be worth mentioning is that the only other place I have ever heard the name ‘Trell’ used is in another fantasy series that I’m pretty sure Brandon has read, namely The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. He was a character in the first trilogy who basically has a complete psychological breakdown brought on by the cognitive dissonance of having sworn a so-called ‘oath of peace’ and yet nevertheless both desiring to and having tried to kill Thomas Covenant for what he did to his daughter Lena, ultimately completely giving in to his despair and nearly destroying the equivalent of Urithiru as a result. I have no idea if anything can be drawn from this or not with respect to the Cosmere Trell, it the name may just be a complete coincidence, but honestly I don’t think so. As I understand, Brandon has referenced this series at least once before on one of his talks. Anyway, I just thought I’d put that out there.

Honestly, the other possibility is that at some point Brandon hyper-covertly mentioned some as yet unseen Shard and it’s that one that’s the real ‘Trell’. Then it technically wouldn’t be a lie. Off the top of my head, the only thing that I could maybe see as being this is ‘Purity’ (the entirely incongruously named moon in the Roshar system). I could certainly see a Shard of Purity being peeved at Sazed for mixing two different Shards like he did. Either that or maybe ‘Wisdom’, if we interpret what Hoid said in Oathbringer about him and Wisdom ‘not always seeing eye to eye’ (or something to that effect) as him naming ‘Wisdom’ as a Shard. I doubt this is the case, but I don’t think we can completely rule out the possibility.

Would Nightblood technically even be directly related to Harmony though? If Harmony was formed only of the Investiture that Leras and Ati were in command of on Scadrial, as opposed to all of it in existence, then technically Ruin and Preservation individually would be independent from the merging that occurred in the Scadrial system. Assuming Harmony truly is (or at least is becoming) a Shard unto itself.

Is Sazed even ABLE to use Ruin’s Investiture or Preservation’s Investiture alone? Aren’t they fused together now? I don’t think he would necessarily have to anyway; one could argue that the purpose of a sword is to preserve by destroying, so theoretically the command ‘Destroy Evil’ would imply elements of both.

If anything would produce Discord, I think it would be that. Either way, I think Odium is probably in almost as much conflict with Preservation as Ruin is, albeit in a more tangential kind of way. At the very least, it’s probably much more complementary with Ruin than it is with Preservation. It’d certainly be a weird combination to say the least.

It is true though, it’s a topic I love discussing.

Fair enough, though I don’t think I would put it like that though. More that the defining characteristics of each of the 16 influenced the way in which Adonalsium shattered. But like I said, I’m not convinced either way.

I oughta just make a separate thread for the ‘Harmony + Cultivation = ?’ discussion. If you’ll pardon the pun, it’s certainly a topic I’m ‘passionate’ about. lol.

I agree that that very well could be the case. I’m just putting it forth as a possibility. The fact that Brandon has said that it’s possible that if different people had Shattered Adonalsium then the resulting Shards may have been different suggests, at least to me, that the Vessels had at least some effect on the Shards though. How significant an effect though is still up in the air.

Yeah, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Like I said, I don’t think the Vessels actually did ‘create’ the intents of their Shards, but even if they did, it could still be the case that the intent caused a kind of positive feedback within the Vessels, increasing the attribute they imprinted it with until they are unable to go against it. But like I said, I don’t think it’s that simple.

My favourite is Harmony + Cultivation = Potency. Sazed has been impotent WAY too long.