Eahlendell

I’ve been wondering why Odium stripped the intent from Ambition and how all that investiture changed polarity. Did he murder Aona and Sami first and learned from that experience. Fascinated by the evil. Was also wondering if a type 1-6 invested entity is just a type 1 invested entity and allocated the number six for ambition.

Isn’t an Avatar of a shard also a shard… wouldn’t this mean Patji has enough investiture to prerecord the three realms and create a perpendicularity

I was thinking more around that Harmony is in a unique position in that he controls two of the shards. When Honor attacks Odium he feels the creation anti-light, and we now see that Ambitions splinters are composed of entirely anti-investiture. I was theorising in my head that he could use one shard to help flip the polarity of the other.

This idea started brewing after I saw two questions on the forum recently. One asked what was Harmony the only living shard to have , and another speculated on anti-investiture. That combo lit a fire in my brain. We know from Rhythm of War that anti-Investiture exists and behaves like antimatter to Investiture, annihilating its counterpart on contact. But so far, we’ve only seen it in very specific contexts: the splinters of Ambition lingering around Threnody. These aren’t cognitive shadows—they’re splinters, and they’re saturated with anti-Investiture. That’s important because it shows that anti-Investiture isn’t just theoretical. It’s real, it’s dangerous, and it can persist. So what happens if a full Shard starts flipping its own Investiture? I think Sazed might be the first to do it. Harmony is a precarious balance between Ruin and Preservation, and we know from The Lost Metal that Sazed is struggling. There’s a line in the book that hints at Discord emerging, and I think that’s the key. If Sazed has begun to flip some portion of his Investiture, maybe in response to external threats like Trell or Autonomy, or just as a desperate attempt to maintain balance. Then he’s not just Harmony anymore. He’s actively manipulating the polarity of his power to preserve equilibrium. Imagine Preservation starts to dominate. Sazed might convert a portion of Preservation’s Investiture into anti-Investiture to counterbalance it. It’s not destruction; it’s inversion. A kind of spiritual counterweight. But once you introduce anti-Investiture into the system, you’ve created a new dynamic. It doesn’t just sit quietly—it interacts, interferes, and destabilizes. You get a feedback loop. The Shard starts compensating again, maybe flipping a bit of Ruin to match. And so on. What began as a small correction becomes a slow, inevitable chain reaction. Over time, more and more of Harmony’s Investiture flips, until the original balance is gone and something new has taken its place. That something could be Discord. And here’s the twist. Discord wouldn’t be a failure of Harmony. It would be a transformation. A new Intent born from the interference pattern between Investiture and anti-Investiture. A Shard whose power is no longer locked in stasis, but capable of decisive action. Harmony is paralyzed by contradiction—Ruin wants change, Preservation wants stasis, and Sazed is stuck trying to honor both. But Discord, paradoxically, might be freer. If the Investiture is polarized, then the Intents themselves could mutate. So what would that look like? Preservation, when flipped, might no longer seek to maintain what is. It could become a force of negation. Not stasis, but erasure. A desire to prevent existence itself, rather than preserve it. Ruin, when flipped, might shift from decay and entropy to outright annihilation. Not change through destruction, but obliteration without transformation. Harmony, as the synthesis of these two, would no longer be about balance. It would become Discord—a dynamic, unstable Intent that thrives on tension, contradiction, and interference. And unlike Harmony, Discord could act. It wouldn’t be bound by the need to maintain equilibrium. It could choose, even if that choice came with risk and instability. Which brings us to the prophecy: they shall call him Discord, and they will love him for it. That line only makes sense if Discord is not just a collapse, but a rebirth. A Shard that can finally move, finally choose, finally lead. Maybe not in perfect harmony, but in passionate, purposeful discord. And if Sazed is the only Shard to have done this, it makes him uniquely vulnerable—but also uniquely powerful. He’s experimenting with a form of Investiture manipulation that no other Shard has dared to touch. Maybe that’s why Autonomy is so interested in Scadrial. Maybe she sees the potential—or the threat. Anyway, just a theory, but I think there’s something there. Would love to hear other takes, especially if anyone’s spotted WoBs that hint at Shards interacting with anti-Investiture or if there’s more on the nature of Discord beyond what we got in The Lost Metal. And finally I wonder what Mercy did to poor Ambition.

Maybe it’s two spree, a radiant spree is the gun and the voidspren manifests as the magazine.

Doesn’t gain life haven’t sets of arms. Why would Cusicesh share theirs feature? When I was reading this book my mind also connected Both types of these entities.

I found most puzzling was this: if no Shard resides in the system, then there shouldn’t be a perpendicularity. That’s typically how it works. I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case—because if perpendicularities can exist on shardless planets, it opens the door for worlds like Tress’s to access the Cognitive Realm without a Shard being present. The other possibility is that people underestimate Patji’s nature. If Patji is truly an avatar of Autonomy, then perhaps Autonomy has always been present in the system—long before the arrival of those from the Forests of the Sun. It’s still unclear which explanation is more likely, but both raise fascinating questions about how Shards interact with their systems.

What happened to Autonomy: I get the impression that she no longer around.

I understood that was due to the additional godmetal used in that process. (New to Posting so unsure how to add spoiler fields). I have been wondering that if Ettmetal is used up by the process of lifting an airship, that would be using the metal to access preservations magic system would it leave atium as a waste product? I feel like it will be one or the other.

What is left over when it reacts. What is Brandon referring too. Something significant to the Cosmete and Scadrial. What is the waste product of ettmetal?

Do you think Wind, Night and Stone existed on different cosmere planets. Not so sure about Truth?

Thanks for your responses. i have also had the idea that Ado created the small cluster of stars that is the Cosmere.otherwise its a very limited and young “universe” so to speak. The aethers believe that they predate Ado and that may be the case. In terms of the future I often wonder what will become of the shards and the races. All these attributes of god without context are always going to prove a challenge for humanity.

On my third reread I noticed this comment from on Wit I have been assuming that the Dragons who had a mighty civilisation when Humans were not as developed on Yolen that the only thing that would predate them would be Ado himself. Who would these gods be? I always remember the WOB about an opposing force which I do understand could have been the original vessels. Ado in my opinion can’t represent a being like the Anrahamic God as he would be omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent and much means he either planned the Shatterting or he didn’t. Could there be some smaller gods running around or more Like Ado himself!

If I remember the sort correctly she climbs the steps and find a world living in light. Could this be Urithiru? The wall being the barrier the Sibling and Navani created

My head cannon since the Nalthis essay is that the cognitive anomaly is what is left of Nalthis 1.0 and that the current planet was Endowments second attempt. I’m unsure why I came to that conclusion but it’s stuck in my head!