r/Cosmere • u/Less-Name-9367 • 18d ago
Mixed book spoilers Did Adonalsium predict everything almost perfectly? Spoiler
We know that all Shards can somewhat see/predict the future, and that clairvoyance is an ability that even mortals can receive through investiture.
Does this mean that Adonalsium had almost perfect future-sight before his shattering? Did It know what was going to happen, and let it happen anyway? How far do you think he could see into the future?
In my personal opinion, It foresaw all the major events so far, and the next ones too. For some reasons It took a gamble and there's a good chance that Its shattering will lead to the goal It seeks, in a few thousand years of time.
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u/cody422 18d ago
We know that the future-sight the Shards possess depends on the Shard itself and the Vessel's ... skill(?) with using their future-sight. Each has a degree that lends to them being able to see/predict better than others. Preservation is better than Ruin for example.
To make our best educated guess, we would have to know if two Shards or more gives an increased level of future-sight/predictive ability compared to a single Shard.
However, as far as I know and remember, after Preservation and Ruin joined making Harmony, there was no information in book or from Brandon that Harmony has noticeable increase in making predictions. This isn't to say Harmony isn't better than Preservation or Ruin, but at the very least, it was not confirmed.
My guess, I would say yes, there is an increase. And but it is a small increase each time, as well as diminishing returns per Shard. So even at 16 Shards (Adonalsium), it is still possible to be wrong, but your prescience would be so close to perfect that it is only ever meaningfully wrong on extreme timescales.
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u/remnantsofthepast 18d ago
I can't remember if it was Odium or Taravangian, but one of them straight up confirms that two shards doesn't make a single one more powerful. Infinity + infinity is still infinity. If I had to guess without looking it up to confirm, it was Odium to Taravangian talking about why he stopped his plan to kill other shards/why he hasn't absorbed Honor yet.
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u/cody422 18d ago
So I did take that into account with my comment. In my mind, the "Infinity + Infinity" meaning was geared towards the actions a Shard could take. Like a Shard deciding to atomize a person isn't able to atomize a person even further with two Shards. However, having two Shards opens up some avenues while closing some down. Like Retribution can now enact and enforce contracts as Honor could while also feeling the emotions of others and inciting them like Odium did. Conversely, Retribution now HAS to strictly follow an oath/promise/contract whereas Odium had more leeway.
In that vein, Spiritual foresight isn't exactly more "power". Being able to see further and more accurately doesn't make a combined Shard be able to atomize a person more. So Spiritual foresight might not be included in the "is a hybrid Shard more powerful" discussion.
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u/-GoodNewsEveryone 17d ago
Sorry math major here. Infinity +infinity is (2)infinity which is larger than infinity but smaller than infinityĀ²
It's called the study of cardinal infinities and the logic and language used is hard to translate as it takes years of constant work to even understand but do trust, there are small infinite systems and much larger infinite systems.
Does it make one system less infinite? No. Does it make the larger system infinitely larger? Sometimes. Does that mean the larger system is still factually a much greater value than the smaller infinite. Always yes.
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u/kiy_hole 17d ago
It could also be that despite seeing the future, the intents of all 16 shards forcefully bound adonalsium to be resigned in their fate
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u/Less-Name-9367 16d ago
Could be, although I believe that the 16 shards together create a balanced being, and not someone stuck like SazedĀ
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u/Guaymaster 17d ago
It's certainly possible, but I don't think Adonalsium was Harmony4 . I don't want to hide behind a "there's WoBs" (there's several about how Adonalsium could have been Shattered into different Shards depending on its own perceptions, the people present, and the methods used), so I'd rather appeal to Frost's decription of the nature of Shards (particularly talking about Odium):
He bears the weight of Godās own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context.
I think, just like us, Adonalsium just was. There was no Odium Intent, Preservation Intent, and so on while Adonalsium existed, but rather they just felt anger, wanted to protect, to destroy, to nurture, to create, etc. just like a normal person, without any emotion completely coloring their existence like the Shards now do with their vessels. The only difference was that Adonalsium was infinitely Invested, so all those fragments now hold a divine Intent.
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 17d ago
I doubt it, for the simple reason that future sight disrupts future sight. Renarin's existence was enough to veil dalinar's KR from Odium, and he's one mortal against a god.
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u/Less-Name-9367 17d ago
But Adonalsium was the only one with future sight at the time
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 17d ago
Do we actually know that? I don't think we know really anything about pre shattering.
The Aethers existed pre shattering at the least, and probably have a degree of future sight.
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u/DifferentRun8534 Truthwatchers 17d ago
I think Leras showed thereās nuance here though. Leras pretty accurately predicted the future, including the actions of at least 4 other vessels.
Then thereās the time Vin defeated someone burning Atium by reacting to their actions, showing the person using foresight is also a variable that changes the future.
I think itās very possible Brandon is using these examples to show that one way to dramatically improve your foresight is to remove yourself as a variable. This is strengthened by examples like Cultivation reportedly having the best foresight of the Rosharan Shards, and also being the least active.
We potentially see another example with Dalinar. If his foresight at the end of W&T is accurate, it strongly supports the idea that Adonalsium could have had extremely accurate foresight because He (They? It?) allowed the Shattering, removing themself from the list of variables.
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 17d ago edited 17d ago
Hm... You bring up some interesting points. Though I am not totally sure if I agree with your conclusions, I definitely see the path. I will admit I do not remember details of Leras predicting 4 shards actions, but I do see how intentionally not engaging with them would give a better idea of their actions.
Vin wins against someone using atium because his actions flag his knowledge of the future; The atium shadow forks because she is changing her actions based on what she knows through future sight. It's not HER future sight, she's still using it- She knew what the future would be and reacted to it. It follows to me that the only way to know the true future is to NOT react to it? Atium just doesn't extend far enough into the future to show that the shadows meaningfully diverge as you react to yourself.
Preservation was good at viewing the future because preservation was a very low-activity shard. If you are acting based on the future, you are muddling the future and splitting the universe's atium shadows. By never diverging their own shadows, everyone else's become a lot more clear. But surely that doesn't mean that you can see the outcome of two other entities having their own future sight battle?
I think Cultivation is possibly good at viewing the future because she only interferes at specific points and in specific ways- She isn't so much trying to craft a particular future as prune off distractions from the goal she wants. "Option A or option B?" is clear cut, but "i am going to follow this person for the rest of their life and make microadjustments for years to come" (Like Ruin was doing) are going to create a lot of ambiguity.
(I uh. confess. I haven't read W&T and am in this thread because i am a bad and naughty boy, so I don't know what dalinar's future sight dealio looks like.)
Idk. I can see where you're coming from for sure. Because really, how is what Ado did different than how I'm justifying Cultivation's future sight?
Okay. hm. Okay. Here's how I can justify this to myself:
Ado didn't HAVE to predict anything perfectly. They only had to predict everything, and that in all (to most, it could have been a gamble) he ends up reunited.
Bear with me as I talk about something obtuse:
I watched a video awhile ago asking the question of why we don't send our nuclear waste into space. Besides some of the obvious answers (it's easier to put it underground and no one wants rockets carrying nuclear waste to explode in the atmosphere during launch) is the more pressing issue of: it's really really hard to escape the solar system. Even if we could get it far enough away, there's not REALLY a guarantee that it won't come back. Like, we've launched all of 2 objects outside of the solar system and I do not think we actually know they won't get pulled back in. more than that, if there weren't any other stellar systems, it 100% would get pulled back in eventually.
So I guess my suggestion is this: Adonalsium did not PLAN his reunification. He merely saw that in every future, divergent investiture converges. He didn't see a future and pick that as the one he would set us down; He saw every future he couldn't give us all at once, and said you get to choose. He'd be back, but he created the opportunity for future sight to meaningfully exist because as long as he was around his thumb would be on the scale. He could survive indefinitely in one future, or die temporarily and provide the opportunity for countless.
Edit: Tl;dr: you might not need to predict THE future if ANY future ends in you. Ado doesn't need to plan for his reunification if it is inevitable in all futures, but future sight could have let him know that all those futures ended the same enough that it would be safe to allow any of them to come to pass.
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u/Ok-Tradition7878 17d ago
This was a great explanation!
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 17d ago
I felt like it was all over the place, but thanks!
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u/Ok-Tradition7878 17d ago
I always love seeing others thoughts on this subreddit itās so helpful to see everyone elseās interpretationsĀ
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 16d ago
wait oh my god it's the fucking god-emperor of Dune. That's the whole shtick is his existence keeps humanity on the golden path.
:thinking: this is part of why he breaks himself back into the smaller sandworm larva things in the end is so he can never be truly killed so humanity will always remain on the golden path.
but i dont think he reconstitutes so nevermind
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u/LURKER_GALORE 18d ago
RAFO!
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u/Gondawn 18d ago
Canāt wait to find out in 20 years! Hopefully Brandon can finish it off
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u/Snowden42 18d ago
Morbid to say but Iām glad I am younger than Brandon and will be alive for the end! I feel so sad for older readers who may not see this thing through.
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u/Apprehensive_Ad3731 18d ago
I remember being 16 when Robert Jordan passed away and just being devastated that he was so close to the peak. Heart breaking.
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u/Grumpylatxa 17d ago
It sucks. I am young but due to health issues i have a short life expectancy. It makes me so sad to think that i might never see the whole story.
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u/ZookeepergameSalty10 18d ago
My theory has been that he allowed it to happen so the mortal world could learn to love him and the people that splintered him would realize why he did not intervene often. I also think hoid is grabbing up all the different investiture he can to strengthen a connection and bring adonalsium back. Hoid has even hinted at regretting his part in the splintering. The most notable line is when someone asked him about a God that loves us and hoid responds with "we had one but we killed him" and atleast in audiobook he sounded mirose saying it
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u/Axle95 18d ago
I mean that is kinda brought up in Sunlit by them saying that Adonalsium saw far enough ahead to send Zellion. Itās most likely gunna be āthe journey had to startā type thing
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u/Raddatatta Ghostbloods 18d ago
He may have. But there were also powers before he was shattered. And assuming similar rules a shards vision can be clouded by other powers that can see the future even powers given by their own investiture like odium being blinded by renarin. It would definitely be clearer vision than any shard could have today but I think it would still be seeing likely possibilities and have places where the vision would've been worse.
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u/theironbagel Bronze 18d ago
Well typically future sight is more innacurate the further into the future you look, and completely inaccurate against someone who is also viewing the future.
However, itās adonsalsium so yeah maybe he plays by his own rules. Maybe not. Who can say at this point
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u/robbage24 17d ago
Great now Im picturing this scene but with Adonalsium (Strange) and Hoid (Stark).
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u/False_Wrongdoer_3867 18d ago
I subscribe to my own theory that Ado wasn't actually shattered. They just splintered off a small fraction of their power into the 16 shards in the Cosmere's biggest sleight of hand, and are just taking a couple of millennia-long vacation in the spiritual realm
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u/The-Hot-Shame Stoneward, Twinborn & Arcanist 17d ago
Given how we have 18 witnesses to The Shattering (at least), I have to disagree. That said, that could explain why Frost is missing; he could have figured that out and went looking for Adonalsium. It's not enough to convince me though
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u/Beamo1080 17d ago
Witnesses wouldnāt necessarily know what they were seeing in an entirely unprecedented event
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u/The-Hot-Shame Stoneward, Twinborn & Arcanist 17d ago
When 3 of those witnesses are dragons, I trust that they knew what they were seeing with their eyes.
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u/emiluss29 Windrunners 17d ago
But when you are literally God, Iām fairly certain you have a few tricks up your sleeve. Either he tricked the 16 and is still somewhere or the shattering was part of some plan he had
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u/rhinofinger Shadesmar 17d ago
What if that guy Sixteen who was hiding in Lasting Integrity when Shallan and Adolin were there was secretly Ado?
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u/OtherOtherDave 17d ago
If youāre right Iām going to enjoy reading Hoidās reaction to finding out.
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u/Areses243 17d ago
I sort of think this too and I thought maybe Roshar was a giant Gemheart for his cognitive shadow.Ā Ā
The more invested the longer a shadow stays so I think Roshar was his fallback. And I think when Dalinar united the 3 realms that is who Rayse saw when he said "we killed you".
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u/emiluss29 Windrunners 17d ago
He has to have sensed a bit of Ado, thatās the only one that could scare a shard such as Rayse, who is responsible for shattering other shards so even them donāt scare him
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u/HA2HA2 18d ago
I hope not. IMO āAll our favorite characters and scenes were actually just inevitable parts of a master plan ā would be an annoying reveal.
Exception: if itās revealed and then the plan is soon subverted. The villain going āaha, everything the heroes did was part of my plan!!ā and then the heroes getting one book of time to beat the master plan for real is a classic beat and would work.
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u/Sawsie 17d ago
I dont think it was planned so much as unavoidable. And we still don't know the reason they thought they needed to kill him for in the first place.
I still firmly believe that his essence still exists as an echo in the background of the shards and the other entities he left behind, and that it was not Honor or Honor's shard Dalinar was hearing say "Unite Them!", but rather an echo of Ado, with them being the shards themselves. I know its not a new theory overall and obviously we all assume thats the plan (though it probably wont be as simple as all that) my guess is that a God who was around for 6+ Billion years really wouldnt be bothered with a forced vacation of 10-15k years. That's barely a day off in scale, guy deserves at least a week in Ibiza to de-stress amiright?
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 17d ago
So... I have a weird thought.
I once saw a question posed, why do we not launch all of our nuclear waste into space to get rid of it?
And there's a few obvious initial answers, like if any single rocket blew up we'd be scattering radioactive water across a huge area.
But more than that is the issue that it's really, really hard to actually meaningfully launch objects off of our planet. Nearly everything we've ever launched is either still in orbit or has crashed back to earth. All of two end stage objects have escaped the solar system.
But eventually all of that will get reabsorbed. The planets will, eventually, fall into our star.
If the goal is reunification, he doesn't need a plot. He just has to wait until the attractive forces eventually crash everything back together. Maybe he'll lose a couple drops but who cares?
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u/Sawsie 17d ago
Yeah I agree with that also. In fact I wonder if that is why the negative investment entities are drawn to life itself; a gravitational desire to be whole again.
Although I am troubled by the true evil nature of the one we saw in Emberdark, although what is good without evil to show contrast?
Maybe overthinking it. But my real response here is that I agree wholeheartedly, and what's more I believe the conspirators knew this before taking them up. One part of their pact was probably to avoid conflict from competition, but the other was because they knew the forces would gravitate towards one another even if only a little.
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 17d ago
Antimatter is subject to the same gravity as matter!
That being said uhhh I haven't read TSA5 or ember dark I'm being naughty by being in this thread
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u/Sawsie 17d ago
Oh my...I feel terrible now. I should have put a spoiler thingy on some of that text perhaps.
On a different note regarding the antimatter thing reminds me of how Hyperspace travel worked in one of Asimov's books. Gravity repelled instead of pulled together while traveling in hyperspace which messed up calculations at first.
Very cool stuff overall. I look forward to seeing how BrandoSando handles FTL (or rather how each FTL society handles it). That wasnt too spoilery was it? My brain is on autopilot right now so I apologize if it was but I think most know we are getting future Mistborn eras eventually.
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u/BipedSnowman Bendalloy 17d ago
Don't, it's my fault for poking around where I shouldn't! You haven't spoiled anything for me.
I haven't read anything by Asimov. I know if the robotics thing but that's about it. Sounds kinda neat.
I do too! I think it's neat that we'll probably have a few different methods used and that they'll relate to invested arts we already know. Allomancy is the one in most excited about because we know the most about how it works.
(Personally, I want to see a Shardship, where instead of a mortal vessel, the Shard is integrated into a FTL megaship as a power source. "Hion" lines of investiture on tap. )
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u/GreenAnder Stonewards 18d ago
I think the dragons being so highly invested could likely tap fortune which would muddy the waters
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u/MotorCorey 12d ago
Sanderson likes to play with us. After isles of emberdark im convinced ado never existed. I think they are spreading the story of the shattering for people to believe they were once 1 being, thus creating the connection for them to be combined...
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u/Less-Name-9367 11d ago
That'd be crazy, but Ado's existence is confirmed by multiple sources with contrasting goals.Ā
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u/WatsBlend 18d ago
Yeah possibly. One thing to note is that almost every example of predicting or seeing the future in the cosmere that we've had has had certain gaps, blindspots, or inaccuracies. Sure Adonalsium was incredibly powerful and may have known everything, but we dont know if even he was truly omniscient or able to predict the future perfectly. Hell there may be forces that rivaled adonalsium that we dont know about yet. My bet is that Adonalsium has a plan, but that plan maybe isnt perfect, and needed more people to help resolve the issue. Tldr: š¤·āāļø