[All Cosmere] Questions about Shards, vessels, the metallic arts
[All Cosmere] Questions about Shards, vessels, the metallic arts
I wanted to ask everything in one post instead of multiple, so I divide this one.
Shards and Vessels
It's known that a Shard's Intent eventually overpowers the agency of the vessel. It's mentioned in the Stormlight epigraphs that Ati, the vessel of Ruin, was once a kind man.
I've been wondering about this process. Does the amount of time it takes for the vessel to lose agency depend on the shard and the vessel? For example:
- If the new vessel is already a sliver of the same shard, will they lose agency faster?
- If the new vessel is already a sliver of a shard with opposing intent, will they lose agency slower?
- If a vessel (as in the case of Sazed) holds two shards with opposing intents, are they able to maintain their personality forever, the different intents "cancelling out"?
- Do shards that seek change (Ruin, Endowment, Cultivation) in the most general way influence their vessel faster than the more passive intents (Preservation, Honor) who want to maintain?
Do the 16 shards divide neatly into eight pairs of opposing shards? I think we've only seen Ruin and Preservation as complete opposites, though it could be argued that Devotion/Dominion also works.
If a person held all the shards (assuming the Splintered ones are somehow fixed, and that no one managed to stop them in the process), what would happen? How about holding all the dawnshards as well? Would any mortal being be able to handle such a great amount of investiture?
What level of control, if any, does a shard have over their associated magic system? Could Sazed decide to "turn off" allomancy for the day?
Related somewhat, what shards is surgebinding associated with? It looks like it can be performed with any one of Stormlight, Voidlight and Lifelight. Does surgebinding with one of these constitute a separate magic system? If so, what actually are the Surges? If not, what's common to Honor, Cultivation, and Odium?
The Metallic Arts
In Allomancy, the metal that is burned is not the actual source of the power (investiture), but rather a key which determines which kind of investiture is drawn from Preservation.
The Lost Metal
We've seen in era 2 that Allomancers can also draw upon alternative sources of investiture, such as the Dor and whatever Autonomy's portal is made out of.
This is all fine for Mistings, but how can Mistborn (or Hemalurgists) decide which ability they want, if they have no metals?
In Allomancy, even non-Allomancers can burn the God Metals, whereas in Feruchemy, unkeyed nicrosil seems to be the only kind of metalmind that non-Feruchemists can access. Why is this?
And, when saying that anyone can burn God Metals, what does "anyone" mean? Is it any living creature who can digest them? Or do they have to be Scadrians, having some of Preservation's own investiture in themselves?
Ditto for Feruchemical nicrosil.
Can a Rosharan human (the species existed before the Shattering) burn lerasium or drain nicrosil?
Why
The Lost Metal
did Harmony make Wax and Wayne burn some lerasium instead of making them Mistborn directly, as with Spook
?
And lastly, is the cosmere-wide story arc just Autonomy and Odium being jerks to everyone?
Can't answer all of your questions, but I'll give at least a few of them a go:
- In the specific case of Sazed, it should be noted that Preservation and Ruin don't perfectly cancel each other out. In the second era, it's made comment that Harmony has trouble acting as time has gone on as the two oppose each other, but several characters talk about Saze becoming more like Ruin over time. I think this is probably because Preservation gave up part of their power into humanity and so is just generally weaker than Ruin (same reason Preservation lost influence in the world over time)
- I don't think it's nearly as clean as 8 vs 8. To date we've only really seen 3-4 "negative" shards: Odium, Autonomy, maybe Ambition, and maybe Dominion. For example, one of the shards is Whimsy, and there isn't one like "Seriousness" or anything like that
- Presumably if someone held all 16 shards, they would be like Adonalsium. Dawnshards are less clear. After the Shattering, its said the Dawnshards changed form somewhat, so who knows what holding them all would do
- I don't think shards have that level of control over their respective magic systems. At most, I think they can just restrict access to using it
- The 10 surges are associated with Honor, Cultivation, and Odium. I would say that most often, they're all associated with Honor as the vast majority of surgebinders use stormlight to access them. Lift I think is the only character in the books that uses lifelight, and that required direct intervention from Cultivation. Navani only is able to use towerlight due to her bond with the Sibling. The fused access the surges through voidlight, but even then they can only use 9 of the surges as Adhesion is more intricately related to Honor than either of the other two. I don't think they technically constitute different magic systems, but to my mind the surges are more fundamental to the foundation of magic usage within the entire Cosmere as surgebinders are essentially just slinging around raw investiture (in the form of the lights) and only gain access to them by the Nahel Bond with splinters. Presumably if there was a "higher" version of the spirits on Komashi, they may be able to form a Nahel Bond (the spirits from rock stacking highly resemble creationspren)
- Brandon Sanderson has actually talked about how it's a mistake in his books that Atium can't be burned by non-allomancers. Atium can only be used by Mistborn and Seers (atium mistings). Brandon's mistake actually makes it more confusing, but assuming that it's corrected and non-allomancers can use Atium, it makes sense because God Metals, unlike the other metals, are the actual source of investiture being the condensed investiture of the various shards. Lerasium, Atium, Trellium, and Ettmetal aren't considered part of the 16 metals because of this. So theoretically, anyone could swallow a chunk and access that investiture. Similarly, that's why anyone can use unkeyed nicrosil, it's storing raw investiture, so you would be bypassing the "through Preservation" bit. And anyone means anyone, I'm pretty sure at one point Hoid takes some Lerasium to gain access to allomancy
- At least so far that's the gist of the Cosmere arc, but honestly at this point it's too close to call. There's going to be at least 6 more Stormlight books, one or two more eras of Mistborn, sequels to Elantris and Warbreaker, a Threnody series, the fabled Dragonsteel series, and who knows what else given that he's only just started to flesh out other parts of the universe like dawnshards and aethers. He's brought on at least one other author (Dan Wells) to write Cosmere novels too. Even after 7 Mistborns, Elantris, Warbreaker, White Sand, Tress, Yumi, 4 Stormlights, and all the novellas/short stories, something tells me we're only in the beginning stages of the full ark
Hopefully this answered some of your questions.
It would be interesting to know what Sazed would drop if he died - would it be a single shard or two? - did they actually merge?
I don’t think it’s nearly as clean as 8 vs 8. To date we’ve only really seen 3-4 “negative” shards: Odium, Autonomy, maybe Ambition, and maybe Dominion
Negative is relative. If Preservation was on a wold on their own, many would consider them to be 'negative' (depending on situation). We don't know that Cultivation is actually 'good' I can imagine that if you got pruned for the greater good, you wouldn't consider it to be a good shard.
Do the 16 shards divide neatly into eight pairs of opposing shards?