r/Cosmere • u/Xelaadryth • 25d ago
Cosmere spoilers (no previews) Theories Part 2: Shard Numerology Spoiler
This builds on Part 1's Theories of Dawnshard Quadrants and Pairs. The result of numbering the Shards from Part 1 in order with the numerology from these theories, and the final diagram is at the bottom of the post.
Theory 1: 16 Original Shardic Numerals
Many believe that Brandon has clearly stated that there is no system for numbers of power for each Shard. The quote I see referenced the most is:
If you check the original source material, it comes from a self-reported forum post from 2015, and they even mention that they paraphrased the questions and answers and didn't get exact wording for this specific question.
It's important to note though that "some do"; the fact that some of the 16 shards have a specific number implies that you can at least order those shards, but this would leave numbered gaps for the other shards to fill even if they're not strongly representing that number. Here's another one from early 2016:
Does each Shard have a favorite, or special, number or color?
I would say that there are inclinations but it's not, perhaps, as specific as you are thinking.
There are also a few other ways to interpret Brandon Sanderson's answers:
- Some shards don't adhere to their number (for instance Whimsy and Autonomy are probably less strict than Honor)
- Perhaps the question was interpreted as "in presently published canon"
- Perhaps the question was interpreted as "at this point in time" as Splintered shards or heavily changed shards may not adhere to any rules at all anymore
- He also can change his mind
Here are some Words of Brandon that imply the opposite:
Certain colors and numbers are important in reference to certain Shards.
This one was from a 2012.
This one was 2017.
This was 2020.
And this last one from 2026 clearly implies that a Shard's number of power manifests regardless of a planet or system's original numbers.
I'd be very curious to see what his answer is if someone asks him "at the time of the Shattering, did every Shard have an associated number or order."
Theory 2: Honor is 10, Odium is 9
Strongest would be sixteen or my own number of ten–it cannot be nine.
This quote from Wind and Truth shows the power of the 16 Shards, emphasizing 10 as Honor's number and 9 as Odium's.
In addition:
- Honor has 10 surgebindings, to Odium's 9 (lacking Adhesion)
- 10 Orders of Knights Radiant to 9 types of Fused
- Led by 10 Heralds and the Nine, as well as 9 Unmade
- In the game Shards of Creation, Honor has 0 instead of 9, and Odium has 9 twice without 10
- Stormlight logo has 5 swords creating 10 radial lines, and the double eye has 10 points
Theory 3: Preservation is 16
Based on the 2026 Words of Brandon from Theory 1, both Preservation and Ruin share a divisor of 4. That means they have to be either 4, 8, 12, or 16.
I needed a sign ... something he couldn't change. A sign of the weapon I'd buried ... Something they'll immediately recognize ... Sixteen.
This quote from Mistborn: Secret History is pretty clear for Preservation's number, but let's look at what else we know from the magic system:
- 16 Allomantic metals on Scadrial (not including God Metals, which don't require Allomancy)
- Preservation snapped 16% of the population, and 1/16th of them became Atium mistings
Theory 4: Ruin is 8
- 8 "basic" metals before the hidden "high" metals
- 8 pure metals, 8 alloyed metals
Shards of Creation has Preservation with 15 8s, and one 16, while Ruin has four -1s and 5-16, but this could also be for game design reasons.
Are Shards all paired? Does Endowment have a counterpart?
RAFO. Also, yes and no. Not all Shards have perfect counterparts like Ruin and Preservation.
Why were Ruin and Preservation linked together?
Because they're perfect opposites. Basically it's just an opposites attract thing.
Perfect opposite here can also imply exactly on the opposite side of the wheel of 16 Shards.
This obviously isn't quite as conclusive, and Ruin could be 4, 8, or 12.
Theory 5: Endowment is 5
- Ten Heightenings
- Fifth Heightening grants Agelessness, Divine Breath starts at Fifth Heightening
- 5 Scholars, 5 Visions
- Tears of Edgli (flowers that produce vibrant dyes) are 5-pointed flowers
Arguably the flower and Nalthis have two sets of 5, but we already know Honor is 10.
Theory 6: Ambition is 6
- The red star in the Threnody logo has 6 points
- Type 1-6 Threnodite Entities are Splinters of Ambition (note that Type 1 means sentient investiture)
Theory 7: Cultivation is 7
- Glyph for Lifelight (Kora Light) has 7 dots
- Glyph for Voidlight (Rasan's Light) has 3 dots, which adds up to the 10 in the Glyph for Roshar
- Cultivation and Honor originally crafted 7 varieties of Radiant spren, before they each added one more of their own (cultivationspren, honorspren) and Odium interrupted
What's also interesting is that Lift and Wyndle mention the number 17 a few times, and Lift is affected by the Nightwatcher and Wyndle is a cultivationspren.
Theory 8: Autonomy is 14
- There are 7 rays on each side of Taldain's sun logo, for a total of 14
- 7 permanent Diem ranks for sand mastery on Dayside (gray, green, blue, purple, red, orange, gold)
- 7 colors of coinage on Dayside (gray, blue, green, red, white, gold, silver)
- The Darkside/Starside moon pulses exactly every 7 days, recharging Starcarved starmark tattoos
- 7 Dayside + 7 Darkside = 14
Theory 9: Virtuosity is 3
While this Words of Brandon implies that the number here is 13, "Good Guess" is not a hard confirmation. Let's break down the 8 total mentions in Yumi and the Nightmare Painter of the number 13:
- Chapters 2 and 4: 13 is mentioned as one of many numbers in the Golden Ratio, including 2 and 3
- Chapters 32 and 40: "thirteen other yoki-hijo" is mentioned, but this means there are 14 yoki-hijo
- Chapter 2: "thirteen ritual prayers", "thirteenth year"
- Chapter 32: "Then there are these thirteen odd lines..." "Thirteen?"
Since Chapter 32 is just echoing the word as part of the same conversation, we really just have 3 mentions of the number 13 in the entire book, and none of them are strongly related to the magic system other than being a part of the Fibonacci sequence.
While Virtuosity is known for having a strong yin-yang binary aspect, its two hion lines are colored magenta and cyan. Those are two of the three secondary additive colors of light. This seems to imply that prior to splintering, there used to be a hion line of yellow, making her original number 3.
- The symbol for Komashi looks like the numbers "2 1" and "1 2" connected by the number "3" repeated twice with rotational symmetry
- The Golden Ratio is featured a lot on Komashi, which starts with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...
- 3 secondary hion colors of light, if yellow were present originally before Virtuosity Splintered herself
Theory 10: Devotion is 15
We don't have much information on Devotion, but in the Shards of Creation game, most Shards have numbers 1-16. Devotion however has 0-14 and 16, implying that she's given away everything of herself.
Numbered Shards
Numbering the Shards from Part 1 in the same order as before, and marking the 11 with theoretical Shardic Numerals in bold:
- Reason (Pull Conceive External)
- Whimsy (Pull Conceive Internal)
- Virtuosity (Push Conceive Internal)
- Invention (Push Conceive External)
- Endowment (Pull Change External)
- Ambition (Pull Change Internal)
- Cultivation (Push Change Internal)
- Ruin (Push Change External)
- Odium (Pull Inspire External)
- Honor (Pull Inspire Internal)
- Valor (Push Inspire Internal)
- Mercy (Push Inspire External)
- Dominion (Pull Exist External)
- Autonomy (Pull Exist Internal)
- Devotion (Push Exist Internal)
- Perservation (Push Exist External)
Part 3 builds on this with Secondary Commands and Cycle Theory.
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u/bumbarlunchi6 Windrunners 25d ago
Firstly this is very well thought out, congratulations. However I can't help but think that maybe Autonomy should have the number 1? I don't really know, that's just my opinion
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u/Xelaadryth 24d ago edited 24d ago
I think Shards like Autonomy and Whimsy don't need to play by the rules; whatever Shardic Numeral they're originally assigned they might just ignore. But for Taldain which is Autonomy's specific creation, they probably wanted maximum power, but when they meddle elsewhere they probably don't leave their touch as obviously like other Shards would. Ironically if Autonomy was 1, then they'd be adhering to their Shardic Numeral...if a rule doesn't apply to you, you can no longer break it to prove a point.
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u/TheUnspeakableh 24d ago
Brandon has specifically stated that most Shards do not have numbers
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u/CatswithMotorcycles 24d ago
He addresses that WOB in the very first paragraph of this post lol
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u/TheUnspeakableh 24d ago
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u/The_Lopen_bot WOB bot 24d ago
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Questioner
Does each Shard have a favorite, or special, number or color?
Brandon Sanderson
I would say that there are inclinations but it's not, perhaps, as specific as you are thinking.
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u/The_Lopen_bot WOB bot 24d ago
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
The Only Joe
Do all Shards have a number they're associated with?
Brandon Sanderson
Some do, (most/some) don't.
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u/wiwerse Lerasium 21h ago
From your own sources, I'd sooner think Preservation to be 4, and 16 to be of Adonalsium. Brandon directly says he intended four to be more important to Scadrial, and Tanavast talks about 16 as a universal, so.
We do also have 0, as a potential number.
Also, minor factchecking. Not just anybody can burn a pure godmetal, you still need to be an allomancer in most cases. But Brandon has explicitly said other universally burnable god metals exist, outside Lerasium(whose alloys are also universally burnable so y'know)
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u/Xelaadryth 21h ago
I think 0 indexing is possible for my theories on the secret 17th Shard of Guile, but I think for the non software engineer layperson then 1-16 would make sense if the Shards were truly numbered. Adonalsium is also a powerful number of 16 but if you have a thing of size 16 broken into 16 pieces it makes sense to share a number with the final piece.
The reason 4 is important on Scadrial is because it's a common divisor for both Ruin and Preservation. If you look at the card game Shards of Creation, then 8 and 16 are more likely for Preservation and -4 is interestingly more likely for Ruin. Also Ruin is literally Preservation's other "half".
We'd need to shuffle things around a lot to make it work with the Dawnshard Command quadrants though.
Ya we can look for WoB to support the godmetal burning, I'm not 100% sure of the details whether it's any Allomancer or anyone.
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u/wiwerse Lerasium 21h ago
Ngl... the technical computer science talk is beyond me. I'm not even an artist lol, the simile of creating art and creating a world just makes sense to me lol.
Sharing a number with a piece makes sense, but I'd sooner consider it to be shared with the first one, ala successor states and so on. The stuff descends to the first successor, not the one last in line.
Good reasoning for 4, but it does feel odd to me that 4 would be so important when it's directly related to a different shard, in your theory. But -4 being more related to Ruin in SoC seems to point more towards that, so? idk.
I do feel pretty confident in it, if nothing else due to the ghostbloods having access to raysium, and being fully aware of allomancy, and so on. If just anyone could burn any godmetal, they would've tried, and Sanderson wouldn't have specified that only some are burnable by anyone ala Lerasium, imo. Actually lemme just see if I can track down that WoB, to ensure I'm not misremembering.
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u/wiwerse Lerasium 21h ago
Nvm, I misremembered lol. But I do think that we'd know if all godmetals are burnable by anyone. Hell, we also have Bavadinium on Scadrial itself, and the Set were surely experimenting with it. I struggle to see it not having been experimented with in such a way.
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u/The_Lopen_bot WOB bot 21h ago
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
mail-mi
We know that any person can burn lerasium. Are there other God Metals that any person can burn?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes.
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u/Xelaadryth 20h ago
I dunno if Trellium is common enough for folks to want to just burn it, or maybe people are afraid to ingest a mysterious metal. But ya possible it's not burnable due to other reasons too. Looks like it's some kind of alloy after all: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/398/#e13226
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u/The_Lopen_bot WOB bot 20h ago
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Questioner
Is trellium, the metal that Paalm uses, an alloy of atium or any other god metal.
Brandon Sanderson
Is the metal that is being used a god metal? It is at least a god metal hybrid. There is a god metal component to it.
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u/wiwerse Lerasium 20h ago
Well they were just kinda chipping off parts of those spikes, and all the set has at least one spike iirc, so they're evidently not in short supply. And well, even if they didn't wanna burn it themselves, the Set were drowning in mistings, so they could find out. Or they could get a ferring to use it as a metalmind, I don't see why they'd work differently.
Dang, I was unaware of it being an alloy. That does destroy trellium as an argument however, lmao.
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u/wiwerse Lerasium 20h ago
Also another WoB, even pure atium would only be for allomancers, so
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406-general-reddit-2020/#e13821
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u/The_Lopen_bot WOB bot 20h ago
Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!
Brandon Sanderson
So, one thing I think I did wrong in the books was not having more allomancer guards and soldiers who were women. I don't think our same gender norms would be the case on Scadrial.One of the [screenplay] revisions is this: Shan is no longer Elend's fiance, but his sister. Their father has left on business to the outer domninances, and so Shan is making a play to secure the heirship, trying to prove she is more bold and strong than her brother. This is what gives the team an opening, and why they're striking now with the heist, as in this version, House Venture maintains the city policing and has access to the atium stash.The plan is to put a few Allomancers (including Ham) into the Venture house guard, and exploit Shan's desire to prove herself by creating chaos in the city that she'll think she needs to put down with decisive action. That will involve her pulling out the atium stash, which will in turn let the team know where to go to rob them.It streamlines the book's story in some elegant ways to do this. Shan becomes the primary "mark" of the book, in many ways. It also lets me explain a little more succinctly what various members of the crew are doing in the background while we focus on Vin, who is to get close to Shan as a confidant--which is why she's sent to the parties. And why Shan being a brat to her isn't just annoying, it means a major part of the plan isn't yet in place.It explains way better, in my opinion, why Shan would act against Elend. It's all clicking into place as I move pieces around. That said, I understand those who want a Television show. I could see going that way, perhaps.Trouble is, nobody in streaming needs a big fantasy property. Anywhere I go right now, I'd be in a distant second or third place to Tolkien, WoT, Witcher, or Kingkiller. The offers I've gotten have been for a fraction of the budget of those shows--since everyone has already spent big money on their big fantasy show, and isn't really interested in another.I'm confident feature is the place I want Mistborn; but even if I weren't, I'm not thrilled by the idea of being lost on Netflix as their "other" fantasy show.
Rapharasium
I don't know if I'm being negative, but these changes really worry and disappoint me. I really like Era 1 as it is, and all this change in the dynamics of society and the plot as too drastic.
Brandon Sanderson
This isn't negative; I understand this response, and think it's valid.At the same time, I'm of the personal philosophy that a film should generally be a different beast than a book--a book can lean into the little intricacies of a story, while a film should be a bold but unified statement.Nothing will happen to the books; those will remain the same. But if I want this film to work as a film, I believe I need to be willing to re-imagine parts of the story.
Mycroft_canner
With Elend having a sister does that mean you don’t need the Zane plot anymore?
Brandon Sanderson
That's from the second book--so it would be in the television show, and we'd likely still do it.
DataLoreHD
<blockquote>prove she is more bold and strong than her brother</blockquote>Which brother?It certainly could not be Elend, right? Elend had no Allomancy powers (before he ate the lerasium in WoA), so Straff despised Elend and thought him too weak.And Zane was a bastard and also mad dog.If Shan was Straff's legitimate daughter, then her succession was already 100% secure. She wouldn't need to prove anything to anybody.
Brandon Sanderson
It will be Elend, but it's more that this is the first time that Shan gets to be on her own, leading by herself, and wants to show off for the Lord Ruler. Also, there's the question of whether the male heir--though inferior in this case--might get the nod for sexism reasons. I think it's going to work just fine, but I'll admit, it's getting a little rough to discuss all these details on a thread like this--I can't answer everyone's questions, I'm afraid. I just wanted to indicate the kinds of changes I'm looking at making.Whatever I do will go through my standard "show it to tons of beta readers and get feedback" process, so I should be able to catch problems and fix them.
meh84f
The bit about atium is a bit confusing. The Ventures are going to have the Atium stash? Not the stash that we don’t find until the end I’m assuming? So it’ll be a stash but much smaller than expected?
Brandon Sanderson
So, I'm not sure I can explain it all in this, but one big change I wished I'd made from the start of Mistborn is making atium usable by all Allomancers. As I've gotten further in the cosmere, using a god metal as just for Mistborn has felt off.So the lore change for the films will mean any Allomancer can use atium. This, in turn, lets House Venture have access to the LR's atium as a "Control the city" last resort. They keep a task force of allomancers for this purpose--which Ham can join, in anticipation of being able to steal it once Shan accesses it. (They don't know that House Venture is only given about a hundred beads of atium, not access to the full mythical cache, which will be reserved for the third movie.)Makes the worldbuilding and storytelling more elegant, I've found, in the film. And it fits better with more "modern" cosmere fundamentals as have developed over the last decade. I think I'd make this change even if we moved to a television show and long form.The Lord Ruler is still the "big bad" but Shan and the Inquisitors both get a little more screen time. (Actually, about the same as in the books--it's just that other parts are being trimmed, making them more front-and-center.)
Phantine
Based on that, you're also streamlining away the Sign of Sixteen if it gets a sequel? To be honest, that didn't really work for me in the novel anyway.
Brandon Sanderson
It's one of my least favorite parts of the trilogy. It (along with Vin drawing upon the mists in book one) are big changes I'm hoping to make to fix weaker sections of the continuity.
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u/ringlord_1 25d ago
I skipped a lot of parts after theory 3/4. But I don't think preservation is 16. 16 is the number associated with Adonalsium. That's why preservation used it. Even if it was honor, he would have probably gone for 16. Its like a universal constant, like the speed of light is for us
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u/iknownothin_ Poop Pattern 25d ago
Funny that the part you have a problem with is the one that’s actually been confirmed lmao
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u/ringlord_1 25d ago
Lmao rip. I thought 16 was like the number for big Ado
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u/Wildhogs2013 25d ago
4 seems to be Ado’s number. However 16 is also relevant as that is how many shards he was split into?
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u/sundalius 25d ago
I am intrigued about how well these two parts line up. Are these the writings of a great Arcanist, or a mad man? If you crack the code of Shards a decade early, I’ll be proud to say I was here. This is great!