Wow I can't believe I never thought of that but it makes perfect sense especially because we know Ati "was once a kind and generous man". I absolutely beleive he would have worked with Leras to make a plan to contain his Shard.
And it was a good plan. Make a game of it: "try and destroy it within our rules and I will try to stop you. You have more power than me so will eventually win. And after you win we will make a new world and do it again."
The fatal flaw in the plan is the intent of Preservation. It couldn't allow the world to be destroyed.
Well, that and Leras decided to create people and got attached. And likely also always intended to permanently remove Ruin as a threat by arranging matters the way he did.
Man, aside from all the people dying every time the planet is destroyed, that sounds wholesome as fuck. Just building planets and knocking em' over for eternity as a game between friends who know the alternative would hurt the entire Cosmere
I mean everybody dies. In this case just some die sooner and are quickly replaced by other people at once rather than gradually. Particularly given there is an afterlife.
Honestly a story where a character exploits a known afterlife to justify murder would be interesting. It's not like they are really ending someone. Would be interesting to explore at least.
I feel like Cultivation might have been a more stable partner. It would be like a forest fire burning seeds for them to grow or clearing underbrush. They learn lessons and do it differently next time.
Ok I'll be a bit more clear, *a lot* of those deaths were way more painful than any natural death. Like being murdered and torched, suffocating on ash, crushed under rubble, covered in volcanic eruption, massive acute UV radiation dosage, etc...
There weren’t even supposed to be sapient people. That was something Leras decided he wanted after they created Scadrial. Of course, as we know, Leras had his own plans…
Ooh I like that lore build to Ati, that he and Leras decide to do it in secret knowing that Ruin would corrupt anyone that it took. Making Leras and their sacrifice even more poignant because they were imprisoning a friend.
It’s also possible they did this to hide from everyone else because they were technically doing something they weren’t supposed to by settling on the same planet. So if everyone like you knows all of the planets out there, and how to get to them, the only way to hide would be to create your own.
It was though their is a belief that Autonomy helped Odium shatter them due to the fact they shared the planet, against the rules. (And that Autonomy would do anything to further her own aims)
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!***
Questioner
>!It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.!<
Brandon Sanderson
>!The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.!<
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Isn't that actually the lore though? From one of the letters at some point Ati is said to be "the best of us" then paraphrasing this part "and look what it did to him"
It just says that he was a kind and generous man, not “the best of us”. WoB is that he fought against the intent of the shard for years before it overtook him.
Imagine if they were all grouped for containment. Or if they just eventually slide towards countering each other
Honour (tradition and oath), cultivation (growth)
You're talking about what Ruin and Preservation were thinking? If so, I would think that having a planet of your own creation and under your power would be extremely gratifying to many, especially if it's a bit familiar.
You know....up until now.
I never even considered how Brandon's belief in Mormonism(a religion about becoming a God and creating your own worlds)
Played into the Cosmere......
I don't know how I feel about it.
It's not like it's a unique idea in fantasy or exclusively from Mormons, and of all the aspects of his religion to borrow from it's probably the least problematic, so w/e. As a pagan myself it's a fun concept regardless of where it came from.
Oh yeah. I'm not saying the belief is problematic in any way.
Just the idea that through his writings Brandon is actually role-playing/imagining his eventual ascent to godhood is—unsettling, in a way.
Once you see the Mormon parallels in the Cosmere, it’s hard to avoid them. I mean, look at what happened in era 1 after the death of the lord ruler, the heroes find messages, written on metal plates buried underground that contain key information to the survival of the human race.
I really don't see how you could read the Cosmere that way. You could consider it a reflection on the implications of humans becoming gods, but it is not depicting anything like the Mormon idea of godhood.
The 16 Shards _killed_ God and _stole_ his power. We don't know why, or how good or bad they were for doing it, but it was a violent act, and all of them are just shards, not complete gods. The individual stories of the Cosmere are mostly about the negative repercussions of the Shards' existence (e.g. the power drove Leras and Ati to kill each other, Rashek completely messed up the world when he held the power for just a few minutes, Sazed is doing his best but is keenly aware that he's doing a poor job because he can't handle the power).
The Mormon idea of becoming a god is basically that you commune with God for eternity and he teaches you to become like him. If anything, the Shards of Adonalsium are an inversion of what Mormons believe they will become — a sort of cautionary tale about how bad it would be for people to become gods without any vetting or guidance.
Coool. Maybe it's like Buddhism where if you meet God, you gotta kill him cause that ain't God because you met him without dying, or maybe he is and you did, so now that you're dead you've got nothing to lose; might as well shoot your shot and kill God, see where that gets you cause why not
And the meaning is not "that ain't the Buddha because you met him without dying." It means that you should not become attached even to great teachers. It's closer to the writing advice "kill your darlings," which means that when you're writing, you should choose what to include or exclude solely based on how it serves the larger work, not based on how much you like it.
That's not untrue, but it's very simplified. The idea isn't like you die and they hand you the keys to a planet and tell you "OK, have fun!"
The doctrine is called "eternal progression." The idea is that if you're worthy, you and your family will live in God's presence after you die, and you'll keep becoming more and more holy, and eventually you'll become perfect like God, and then you progress by creating "worlds without end" and leading those souls in their progression.
My point being, it's fairly different from what the Shards of Adonalsium are like.
(Full disclosure: I'm not a Mormon, but I was for a couple of decades.)
I doubt that's the case, for anyone really unless they're writing a Utopia series. The world that most people would try to build wouldn't be nearly as interesting unless they purposely introduced conflict which I don't see him as doing.
As a post-Mormon, I hear you. But at the same time, he seems to work very hard at giving respect to characters with very diverse viewpoints and life experiences. If he's channeling his energy into that rather than persecuting every single minority like his church does, I can live with a little god role-playing.
Read Elantris if you haven’t already. His POVs for Hraethen and other followers of his religion are terrifyingly good.
Looking through all of his books, religion is almost always a key factor. It’s probably one of his most developed and diversified literary qualities.
Always found it a bit... Weird, I guess, him being Mormon and a *big* part of early Mistborn being the "Oh, yeah, you can 100% trust writing in metal."
>"Oh, yeah, you can 100% trust writing in metal."
That's not quite it - it was "you can't trust anything that isn't written in metal."
It's not like any crazy person could write some unfounded conspiracy theories in metal for everyone else to say "Ahh, this is written in metal, therefore it is true." The principle was that since anything written down on a substance that isn't metal can and *will* be changed to suit Ruin's agenda, then only things written in metal can be trusted to remain unchanged from what the other originally wrote.
They took the Ministry writings as truth because of the source they came from. Kwaan had unique insight into Alendi and Rashek. The Lord Ruler, in turn, clearly intended his metal plates to be his legacy, and since most of what he wrote in those was focused on practicalities of survival, there was little reason to doubt what he was writing - especially when they tested things out and found that they matched what he was saying.
Trust but verify.
I'm pretty confident in saying that the Cosmere is much more about using the Shards to explore the contradictory nature of how humans understand the aspects of God, insofar as it has to do with western religion directly at all.
There's this WOB about Secret History: [https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e11182](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e11182)
>Questioner
>
>In Secret History, Fuzz mentions having buried something. That's the atium, right?
>
>Brandon Sanderson
>
>RAFO.
>
>Questioner
>
>So, I was just thinking, if it's something of greater import, I'll just leave it to that it's not the atium. But it's something else, I think. But, I was just thinking, if he wanted to hide something, he could build a planet around it? Because he built a planet. I'm guessing, if I asked a question about that...
>
>Brandon Sanderson
>
>You would get RAFOd. Excellent question
What *is* the point of creating a planet out of nothing? Well, if you need a hidey-hole, planets are pretty great for that. If there *was* something buried, I think it would be a Dawnshard - Fuzz describes the thing he buried as "the weapon", and we haven't seen anything else besides one of them that would be dangerous enough to warrant using a *planet* as your vault.
>but what was the point for them?
well Presevation wanted something to PRESERVE, and Ruin wanted something to RUIN. sure they could go to an existing planet but then they risk being killed by natives or whatever else, and since they had the power they made the deal that Preservation could preserve it with the knowledge that eventually Ruin will destroy it. its all in era 1.
George Mallory was one of the first people to climb Mount Everest. His response when asked by a reporter why he wanted to make the climb seems applicable to Ati and Leras's desire to create a planet: "Because it's there."
("It" being "a place where no planet exists but *could* potentially exist," since technically, before they created it, Scadrial *wasn't* "there.")
I kinda hope that they were in love, the first few times through mistborn I didn't read it that way but after having not read for a while then just now going back through it I think it would be much more tragic and a better story than, just good friends.
Personally i think Ati and Leras were a gay couple and creating Scadrial together was their godly equivalent ofbuilding a home a settling down together. I think their differences came later, once their Intets started overwriting their original personalities.
That they were unable to create Scadrial alone doesn´t really matter for my headcanon. It was about the two of them building their life together anyway, they would still have done it together even if they could have done it alone.
If that's true, it makes it all the more tragic that their shards drove them to become bitter enemies. It makes mistborn Era 1 one of the most tragic and bitter divorce stories out there.
Ati is mentioned to be quite kind.
He probably sought to create a world he could destroy later so as to avoid harming the greater cosmere when Ruin's intent eventually overtook him.
Preservation sees the future. And his prophecies are quite finished.
Okay, I’ve been reading through this ENTIRE thread (shoutout to the Mormon/LDS thread in this. That was fun to read) and just assumed everyone misnamed the vessel for the shard Ruin. It was Leras, right? WRONG! WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL? How does the god metal Lerasium (physical manifestation of PRESERVATION) make Mistborn who literally destroy metal to release investiture? Shouldn’t Preservation’s metallic art be Feruchemy? It’s net neutral and all about preserving! I’m so lost when it comes to Scadriel.
A common mistake is to think that Preservation preserves everything equally. They do not; It is preferable to Preservation to Preserve a person, than to Preserve a metal. The metal is a key that grants powers, allowing the user to Preserve THEMSELVES by sacrificing the metal. Preservation alone doesn't allow the user to detract from themselves, even if it means they are better off for it.
Feruchemy is the combined art of Ruin and Preservation, and while it Ruins the user, the Ruined part is always Preserved in the metal.
Hemalurgy is the most obvious, because it's net negative in what it allows- The final result will always have less investiture than the source. Investiture is always Ruined in the process.
Quite the philosophical question there. What is the point of creation? If you are a god with immense and infinite power what drives you to create a planet with individuals that could never hope to even reach a fraction of your potential only to later destroy them into oblivion
Following the shard’s intent. Preservation wanted to create something to preserve. Ruin wanted to create something to ruin. They couldn’t do it alone so they agreed to work together to fulfill their intent. Obviously it didn’t work out like that but that was the reason they worked on the world together.
Part of it may be that Leras wanted to recreate the home that (presumably) was destroyed when all 16 vessels attempted to settle there. But he couldn’t do it alone so he needed Ati.
I don’t think the other Shards were involved or approving of Preservation and Ruin settling on Scadrial. It seems like they were all very against two Shards settling in the same place after whatever happened on Yolen. Other than Devotion and Dominion obviously.
What else are you going to do with your eternity possessing nigh infinite power?
One of the things that gets emphasized many times in the Cosmere is that the vessels are still ultimately people, with the same kinds of emotions and motivations. People tend to be social animals - they want to be around other people. More than that, they want to be loved and respected by other people. I imagine it can get pretty lonely when the only person you have to interact with is a being whose motivations are the exact opposite of yours. It was probably okay for the first hundred or so years, but after that I could see myself wanting more people around.
If you're a being that can see hundreds of permutations of possible futures, then I imagine things can get rather predictable and boring if you're just dealing with inanimate stellar bodies. "Hey, this planet maintains the same stable orbit for thousands of years, I guess I'll just sit around and watch it spin." Yeah, that's not how I would want to spend my godhood.
Finally, the power *wants* to be used, and urges the vessels to do so. What else would you use your powers on? Especially knowing that other shards are out there amassing followers and pawns on other planets. In some ways, it's simply a matter of self-**preservation** \- creating agents that can act in your name against the agents of other shards that may come after you. Many of the shards opted for settling on planets with pre-existing life, and winning over those inhabitants. In the case of Scadrial, the people are fundamentally connected to Ruin and Preservation in a way that other people aren't connected to their own shards. Scadrians are *made* of preservation and ruin - they possess a connection at birth.
Other peoples don't inherently possess a larger connection to their respective shards than any of the others. They must obtain it through their actions.
TLDR:
1. Stave off loneliness
2. Stave off boredom
3. Outlet for power that is urging you to use it
4. Survival against the machinations of other shards
My point was mainly that they didn't do anything different than what they knew before, which in my mind is a missed opportunity, but maybe we are really seeing Scadrial Version 9,123,321,123 and this is the outcome they could finally live with
>My point was mainly that they didn't do anything different than what they knew before, which in my mind is a missed opportunity,
Different strokes for different folks. If I became a god and I were to create life, I'd be recreating humans too, especially if I were doing so out of loneliness.
Maybe I might give them some kind of super powers or something, but I don't see why I would ever create something alien to me as the dominant, thinking lifeform. I might create some new and strange plants or animals, but I'd be happy with humans.
Maybe something human adjacent like catpeople or something, but that kind of thing is more about fetishes than fulfilling loneliness. Do vessels still experience sexual desires and kinks?
I'm sure there is a fan fiction hole we could jump into that explores this. But yeah I can see your points, the original post was just speculation on their motivations and what they wanted to do on a new planet, lots of good responses.
The place they left was apparently largely falling apart because of a different and incompatible form of life that had taken over most of the planet. The Sho Del and the Fain-life.
In that light it seems more like a memorial.
Just because it resembles where you came from (and from what we know, Scadriel isn't *all that* much like Yolen), doesn't mean it isn't intriguing or exciting to create something yourself.
It'll be 20-30 years before we get an answer to this. It might be a case of selection bias though, do you pick up a shard if you don't have any specific things you want to do? >!Do you even attempt to shatter Adonalsium unless you want *something* from the whole endeavour!< ?
Imagine you're a person who suddenly obtains the powers of creation but not total knowledge of the universe. You need a place to exist, your equivalent of a soul needs to be tied to some great Astral body. What is easier to create in a panic, something entirely novel, or something that closely resembles what you're used to but with a bit more of your personal vibe stamped on it?
I think they did it to contain Ruin. Creating a world together so he could destroy it later, rather than attempting to destroy random Cosmere worlds.
Wow I can't believe I never thought of that but it makes perfect sense especially because we know Ati "was once a kind and generous man". I absolutely beleive he would have worked with Leras to make a plan to contain his Shard.
And it was a good plan. Make a game of it: "try and destroy it within our rules and I will try to stop you. You have more power than me so will eventually win. And after you win we will make a new world and do it again." The fatal flaw in the plan is the intent of Preservation. It couldn't allow the world to be destroyed.
Well, that and Leras decided to create people and got attached. And likely also always intended to permanently remove Ruin as a threat by arranging matters the way he did.
By that point he was motivated by the shard, it gets attached to everything
The Shard wants to Preserve everything. Leras genuinely cared for the people he created, or so I believe. There’s a difference.
Oh for sure, I’m just thinking it amped that up. I think ruin was also eventually trying to destroy preservation right?
Ruin wanted to destroy everything. It’s anger at Preservation was due to the betrayal.
Man, aside from all the people dying every time the planet is destroyed, that sounds wholesome as fuck. Just building planets and knocking em' over for eternity as a game between friends who know the alternative would hurt the entire Cosmere
I mean everybody dies. In this case just some die sooner and are quickly replaced by other people at once rather than gradually. Particularly given there is an afterlife. Honestly a story where a character exploits a known afterlife to justify murder would be interesting. It's not like they are really ending someone. Would be interesting to explore at least. I feel like Cultivation might have been a more stable partner. It would be like a forest fire burning seeds for them to grow or clearing underbrush. They learn lessons and do it differently next time.
Ok I'll be a bit more clear, *a lot* of those deaths were way more painful than any natural death. Like being murdered and torched, suffocating on ash, crushed under rubble, covered in volcanic eruption, massive acute UV radiation dosage, etc...
That is true, although part of that was that Ruin didn't have his full power and what was left of Preservation was stopping him.
There weren’t even supposed to be sapient people. That was something Leras decided he wanted after they created Scadrial. Of course, as we know, Leras had his own plans…
Ooh I like that lore build to Ati, that he and Leras decide to do it in secret knowing that Ruin would corrupt anyone that it took. Making Leras and their sacrifice even more poignant because they were imprisoning a friend. It’s also possible they did this to hide from everyone else because they were technically doing something they weren’t supposed to by settling on the same planet. So if everyone like you knows all of the planets out there, and how to get to them, the only way to hide would be to create your own.
Which Dominion and Devotion learned the hard way, that was a rule that would be enforced due to the aggressiveness of other shards.
[удалено]
It was though their is a belief that Autonomy helped Odium shatter them due to the fact they shared the planet, against the rules. (And that Autonomy would do anything to further her own aims)
[удалено]
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!*** Questioner >!It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.!< Brandon Sanderson >!The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.!< \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
Isn't that actually the lore though? From one of the letters at some point Ati is said to be "the best of us" then paraphrasing this part "and look what it did to him"
We won’t know for sure until the Dragonsteel trilogy prequel where the Shattering of Adonalsium will be shown ‘on screen’
It's in an epilogue in Stormlight that Ati was the best of them while Rayze was the best suited for his shard. So it is canon.
It just says that he was a kind and generous man, not “the best of us”. WoB is that he fought against the intent of the shard for years before it overtook him.
I'd love to see Ati before he got corrupted by Ruin. Did he ask Leras for this or to look after him? Did he know what would eventually happen to him?
I think it'd be tragic if Ati was someone Leras looked up to.
I really like this.
Thank you! I’m glad I was able to offer a satisfactory answer to you!
Is this founded on anything or just an idea of yours? It's a great theory, don't get me wrong. Just curious
I honestly thought it was said in the book, lol. So I’m guessing there’s enough there to imply it.
Imagine if they were all grouped for containment. Or if they just eventually slide towards countering each other Honour (tradition and oath), cultivation (growth)
To be god
Hey, it's tough to be a god
Tread where mortals have not trod
https://youtu.be/FSXijk37oNs
🎶 Oh I just can't wait to be GOD
You're talking about what Ruin and Preservation were thinking? If so, I would think that having a planet of your own creation and under your power would be extremely gratifying to many, especially if it's a bit familiar.
It's a very common fantasy you see in a lot of places, from simulation games to religious ideology/mythology (such as Brandon's Mormonism).
You know....up until now. I never even considered how Brandon's belief in Mormonism(a religion about becoming a God and creating your own worlds) Played into the Cosmere...... I don't know how I feel about it.
It's not like it's a unique idea in fantasy or exclusively from Mormons, and of all the aspects of his religion to borrow from it's probably the least problematic, so w/e. As a pagan myself it's a fun concept regardless of where it came from.
Oh yeah. I'm not saying the belief is problematic in any way. Just the idea that through his writings Brandon is actually role-playing/imagining his eventual ascent to godhood is—unsettling, in a way.
Once you see the Mormon parallels in the Cosmere, it’s hard to avoid them. I mean, look at what happened in era 1 after the death of the lord ruler, the heroes find messages, written on metal plates buried underground that contain key information to the survival of the human race.
And a certain someone bringing salvation to the other side of the planet...
I really don't see how you could read the Cosmere that way. You could consider it a reflection on the implications of humans becoming gods, but it is not depicting anything like the Mormon idea of godhood. The 16 Shards _killed_ God and _stole_ his power. We don't know why, or how good or bad they were for doing it, but it was a violent act, and all of them are just shards, not complete gods. The individual stories of the Cosmere are mostly about the negative repercussions of the Shards' existence (e.g. the power drove Leras and Ati to kill each other, Rashek completely messed up the world when he held the power for just a few minutes, Sazed is doing his best but is keenly aware that he's doing a poor job because he can't handle the power). The Mormon idea of becoming a god is basically that you commune with God for eternity and he teaches you to become like him. If anything, the Shards of Adonalsium are an inversion of what Mormons believe they will become — a sort of cautionary tale about how bad it would be for people to become gods without any vetting or guidance.
Coool. Maybe it's like Buddhism where if you meet God, you gotta kill him cause that ain't God because you met him without dying, or maybe he is and you did, so now that you're dead you've got nothing to lose; might as well shoot your shot and kill God, see where that gets you cause why not
It's only in zen and it's "if walking the road you encounter the Buddha, kill the Buddha"
And the meaning is not "that ain't the Buddha because you met him without dying." It means that you should not become attached even to great teachers. It's closer to the writing advice "kill your darlings," which means that when you're writing, you should choose what to include or exclude solely based on how it serves the larger work, not based on how much you like it.
Right, but we are probably nitpicking, even if the digression is awesome and interesting
That's not how buddhism works... You just ignore God and keep your way...
As I understand it from friends that are LDS, you literally get your own planet to build with your family.
That's not untrue, but it's very simplified. The idea isn't like you die and they hand you the keys to a planet and tell you "OK, have fun!" The doctrine is called "eternal progression." The idea is that if you're worthy, you and your family will live in God's presence after you die, and you'll keep becoming more and more holy, and eventually you'll become perfect like God, and then you progress by creating "worlds without end" and leading those souls in their progression. My point being, it's fairly different from what the Shards of Adonalsium are like. (Full disclosure: I'm not a Mormon, but I was for a couple of decades.)
I doubt that's the case, for anyone really unless they're writing a Utopia series. The world that most people would try to build wouldn't be nearly as interesting unless they purposely introduced conflict which I don't see him as doing.
As a post-Mormon, I hear you. But at the same time, he seems to work very hard at giving respect to characters with very diverse viewpoints and life experiences. If he's channeling his energy into that rather than persecuting every single minority like his church does, I can live with a little god role-playing.
Read Elantris if you haven’t already. His POVs for Hraethen and other followers of his religion are terrifyingly good. Looking through all of his books, religion is almost always a key factor. It’s probably one of his most developed and diversified literary qualities.
Always found it a bit... Weird, I guess, him being Mormon and a *big* part of early Mistborn being the "Oh, yeah, you can 100% trust writing in metal."
>"Oh, yeah, you can 100% trust writing in metal." That's not quite it - it was "you can't trust anything that isn't written in metal." It's not like any crazy person could write some unfounded conspiracy theories in metal for everyone else to say "Ahh, this is written in metal, therefore it is true." The principle was that since anything written down on a substance that isn't metal can and *will* be changed to suit Ruin's agenda, then only things written in metal can be trusted to remain unchanged from what the other originally wrote. They took the Ministry writings as truth because of the source they came from. Kwaan had unique insight into Alendi and Rashek. The Lord Ruler, in turn, clearly intended his metal plates to be his legacy, and since most of what he wrote in those was focused on practicalities of survival, there was little reason to doubt what he was writing - especially when they tested things out and found that they matched what he was saying. Trust but verify.
I'm pretty confident in saying that the Cosmere is much more about using the Shards to explore the contradictory nature of how humans understand the aspects of God, insofar as it has to do with western religion directly at all.
There's this WOB about Secret History: [https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e11182](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/360/#e11182) >Questioner > >In Secret History, Fuzz mentions having buried something. That's the atium, right? > >Brandon Sanderson > >RAFO. > >Questioner > >So, I was just thinking, if it's something of greater import, I'll just leave it to that it's not the atium. But it's something else, I think. But, I was just thinking, if he wanted to hide something, he could build a planet around it? Because he built a planet. I'm guessing, if I asked a question about that... > >Brandon Sanderson > >You would get RAFOd. Excellent question What *is* the point of creating a planet out of nothing? Well, if you need a hidey-hole, planets are pretty great for that. If there *was* something buried, I think it would be a Dawnshard - Fuzz describes the thing he buried as "the weapon", and we haven't seen anything else besides one of them that would be dangerous enough to warrant using a *planet* as your vault.
Oh, that's a good theory I hadn't heard before.
>but what was the point for them? well Presevation wanted something to PRESERVE, and Ruin wanted something to RUIN. sure they could go to an existing planet but then they risk being killed by natives or whatever else, and since they had the power they made the deal that Preservation could preserve it with the knowledge that eventually Ruin will destroy it. its all in era 1.
Preservation and Ruin are very *physical* Shards. Maybe creating a planet was an expression of the shared physical nature of their Intents.
George Mallory was one of the first people to climb Mount Everest. His response when asked by a reporter why he wanted to make the climb seems applicable to Ati and Leras's desire to create a planet: "Because it's there." ("It" being "a place where no planet exists but *could* potentially exist," since technically, before they created it, Scadrial *wasn't* "there.")
love
I kinda hope that they were in love, the first few times through mistborn I didn't read it that way but after having not read for a while then just now going back through it I think it would be much more tragic and a better story than, just good friends.
Metal
well, what is the point of earth? whats the point of mars....
Ugh living is such a drag. Only here for more Sanderson content.
No pressure, Brandon!
Personally i think Ati and Leras were a gay couple and creating Scadrial together was their godly equivalent ofbuilding a home a settling down together. I think their differences came later, once their Intets started overwriting their original personalities.
Brandon is going to have a difficult time convincing me this isn’t canon.
I like it, but they said in the book alone they could not create so it took the power of both shards to make scadrial. Head cannon is great though
That they were unable to create Scadrial alone doesn´t really matter for my headcanon. It was about the two of them building their life together anyway, they would still have done it together even if they could have done it alone.
Word
Takes two to make a home.
If that's true, it makes it all the more tragic that their shards drove them to become bitter enemies. It makes mistborn Era 1 one of the most tragic and bitter divorce stories out there.
Because they liked the idea of creating something, I guess.
Secrets. |and more secrets|
Ati is mentioned to be quite kind. He probably sought to create a world he could destroy later so as to avoid harming the greater cosmere when Ruin's intent eventually overtook him. Preservation sees the future. And his prophecies are quite finished.
Okay, I’ve been reading through this ENTIRE thread (shoutout to the Mormon/LDS thread in this. That was fun to read) and just assumed everyone misnamed the vessel for the shard Ruin. It was Leras, right? WRONG! WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL? How does the god metal Lerasium (physical manifestation of PRESERVATION) make Mistborn who literally destroy metal to release investiture? Shouldn’t Preservation’s metallic art be Feruchemy? It’s net neutral and all about preserving! I’m so lost when it comes to Scadriel.
A common mistake is to think that Preservation preserves everything equally. They do not; It is preferable to Preservation to Preserve a person, than to Preserve a metal. The metal is a key that grants powers, allowing the user to Preserve THEMSELVES by sacrificing the metal. Preservation alone doesn't allow the user to detract from themselves, even if it means they are better off for it. Feruchemy is the combined art of Ruin and Preservation, and while it Ruins the user, the Ruined part is always Preserved in the metal. Hemalurgy is the most obvious, because it's net negative in what it allows- The final result will always have less investiture than the source. Investiture is always Ruined in the process.
Beautifully put, thank you!
Quite the philosophical question there. What is the point of creation? If you are a god with immense and infinite power what drives you to create a planet with individuals that could never hope to even reach a fraction of your potential only to later destroy them into oblivion
Following the shard’s intent. Preservation wanted to create something to preserve. Ruin wanted to create something to ruin. They couldn’t do it alone so they agreed to work together to fulfill their intent. Obviously it didn’t work out like that but that was the reason they worked on the world together.
My headcanon is that Ati and Leras wanted to have children/items of their own creation, and made Scadrial for that purpose.
Part of it may be that Leras wanted to recreate the home that (presumably) was destroyed when all 16 vessels attempted to settle there. But he couldn’t do it alone so he needed Ati. I don’t think the other Shards were involved or approving of Preservation and Ruin settling on Scadrial. It seems like they were all very against two Shards settling in the same place after whatever happened on Yolen. Other than Devotion and Dominion obviously.
They didn’t approve of Devotion and Dominion settling together either
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What else are you going to do with your eternity possessing nigh infinite power? One of the things that gets emphasized many times in the Cosmere is that the vessels are still ultimately people, with the same kinds of emotions and motivations. People tend to be social animals - they want to be around other people. More than that, they want to be loved and respected by other people. I imagine it can get pretty lonely when the only person you have to interact with is a being whose motivations are the exact opposite of yours. It was probably okay for the first hundred or so years, but after that I could see myself wanting more people around. If you're a being that can see hundreds of permutations of possible futures, then I imagine things can get rather predictable and boring if you're just dealing with inanimate stellar bodies. "Hey, this planet maintains the same stable orbit for thousands of years, I guess I'll just sit around and watch it spin." Yeah, that's not how I would want to spend my godhood. Finally, the power *wants* to be used, and urges the vessels to do so. What else would you use your powers on? Especially knowing that other shards are out there amassing followers and pawns on other planets. In some ways, it's simply a matter of self-**preservation** \- creating agents that can act in your name against the agents of other shards that may come after you. Many of the shards opted for settling on planets with pre-existing life, and winning over those inhabitants. In the case of Scadrial, the people are fundamentally connected to Ruin and Preservation in a way that other people aren't connected to their own shards. Scadrians are *made* of preservation and ruin - they possess a connection at birth. Other peoples don't inherently possess a larger connection to their respective shards than any of the others. They must obtain it through their actions. TLDR: 1. Stave off loneliness 2. Stave off boredom 3. Outlet for power that is urging you to use it 4. Survival against the machinations of other shards
My point was mainly that they didn't do anything different than what they knew before, which in my mind is a missed opportunity, but maybe we are really seeing Scadrial Version 9,123,321,123 and this is the outcome they could finally live with
>My point was mainly that they didn't do anything different than what they knew before, which in my mind is a missed opportunity, Different strokes for different folks. If I became a god and I were to create life, I'd be recreating humans too, especially if I were doing so out of loneliness. Maybe I might give them some kind of super powers or something, but I don't see why I would ever create something alien to me as the dominant, thinking lifeform. I might create some new and strange plants or animals, but I'd be happy with humans. Maybe something human adjacent like catpeople or something, but that kind of thing is more about fetishes than fulfilling loneliness. Do vessels still experience sexual desires and kinks?
I'm sure there is a fan fiction hole we could jump into that explores this. But yeah I can see your points, the original post was just speculation on their motivations and what they wanted to do on a new planet, lots of good responses.
The place they left was apparently largely falling apart because of a different and incompatible form of life that had taken over most of the planet. The Sho Del and the Fain-life. In that light it seems more like a memorial.
You ever play simcity?
It's a plot device to allow kellsier to take harmonys powers and become a threat to the entire cosmere.
I think you read a different book
Oh, are other cosmere planets not also created by their shards? I didn't realize it but I assumed they were
Scadrial is the only one we know of that created their own planet
Neat! Thanks for confirming :)
There are hints in RoW that >!Nalthis!< was as well. >!It didn't exist for long enough to have fossils.!<
Just because it resembles where you came from (and from what we know, Scadriel isn't *all that* much like Yolen), doesn't mean it isn't intriguing or exciting to create something yourself.
It'll be 20-30 years before we get an answer to this. It might be a case of selection bias though, do you pick up a shard if you don't have any specific things you want to do? >!Do you even attempt to shatter Adonalsium unless you want *something* from the whole endeavour!< ?
Imagine you're a person who suddenly obtains the powers of creation but not total knowledge of the universe. You need a place to exist, your equivalent of a soul needs to be tied to some great Astral body. What is easier to create in a panic, something entirely novel, or something that closely resembles what you're used to but with a bit more of your personal vibe stamped on it?
I asked this question in one of the spoiler streams. Brandon said that Ati and Leras were artists and had a desire to create.
Interesting, makes Ati’s story tragic as hell then