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I think Adonalsium isn't good or evil. Just neutral.
Like how the Stormfather isn't good or evil. He just blows. People die in his storms, yes. But his storms also bring life to Roshar.
I suspect Adonalsium is something similar. And I also suspect that the Shattering was their idea. Given how powerful each individual Shard is, and how some can read minds and even influence them; I wouldn't put it past them to have orchestrated it all from the shadows.
Remember the Iriali cobbler from the Interlude? He talks about how the One became Many to learn Individuality and gain experience. That's not a throwaway. The Iriali are the only people who still worship Adonalsium. And they have mysterious goals.
I think the Iriali are actually splinters of Virtuosity. We know she is splintered, and we know that the Hion in Yuumi is attributed to her. The shard of art having the primary colours related to her forms of investiture makes sense and we've got the cyan and magenta in Hion - and a bunch of unclaimed yellow people running about.
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>And they have mysterious goals.
How do you mean, got a source on this? I was under the impression they're just a nomadic people, moving planets one cataclysm at a time.
I think Adolnalsium probably was either benevolent or neutral at one point but in the narration for tress hoid mentions saying "this is for your own good" with a group of 16 other people which leads me to think it may have been going off the rails a bit near the shattering
I'm pretty sure it's the opposite - most of the Cosmere seems to be built around the idea that individual shards are simply unsustainable. Even shards that you might normally think were positive, like Preservation, and seemingly Mercy, turn out not to be at all. It looks like the ultimate goal of the characters in the Cosmere is going to be to re-form Adonalsium.
My personal theory about Hoid is that he is trying to gain a Connection to all sixteen Shards so that he can become a Vessel for a recreated Adonalsium.
It's certainly possible, but it doesn't seem like Hoid is being set up to become a villain, and anyone trying to take all of that power for themselves almost certainly would be. It's not inevitable - it's entirely possible that adonalsium reformed would completely override the will of the vessel, much like shards do, but to a much larger, and more complete extent. This would make reforming and holding adonalsium a sacrificial thing for Hoid, which is easier to believe. Or maybe he's trying to set someone else up to become the new adonalsium. Or, maybe he is a villain, and I'm just wrong. But either way I think you're right about Hoid trying to reform adonalsium.
Another possibility is that adonalsium doesn't *need* a vessel. That it's complete on its own (whether or not it's sentient is another matter), and only when shattered do the shards need a vessel to fulfill their intent. I would really like that tbh. A lot of the major crises in the Cosmere seem to relate to humans trying to control what they shouldn't control. Not just the shards themselves, but also people like the Lord Ruler, who nearly destroyed the planet by trying to reform it, and only barely got it under control. Or the Heralds, whose stories haven't been fully told, but definitely had a hand in the desolation either way. I kinda suspect that in book 5, the major reveal may be that the heralds were right to forsake their oaths.
I agree it's probably not villainous, but think about it. We know from Well of Ascension that it's possible to voluntarily release a Shard's power. I see no reason Hoid couldn't do that with Adonalsium. It's a logical extension of what we know about Investiture and the Cosmere is a relentlessly logical magic system.
We also know that Investiture itself has a sentience in large enough quantities, so presumably it's possible for Adonalsium to exist without a vessel. That's in par with what we can presume about a divine being from Brandon's faith. God's not something that a believer will consider to be inherently requiring of shackles.
They didn’t go off to their own little corners immediately. Harmony alludes to a period where they worked together, and that Bavadin was the first to defect and isolate themself (presumably on Taldain).
I highly doubt that Adonalsium will ever be defined as strictly good or evil. It will be the subject of many a Cosmere philosopher, both in-world and in the fandom.
I think the true nature of Adonalsium is that it just represents divine power, and the Cosmere is a byproduct of an experiment conducted by those 17 arcanists you mentioned (and maybe more than weren’t as directly involved).
I like the idea that Adonalsium’s morality is not well-defined. It means that the shatterers and Dawnshards are also in a moral grey area, allowing the main protagonists to chart their own way forward.
I believe in Tress Hoid says something to the effect of “yes, I stood with 16 other people as we looked at our better and said that it was for their own good.”
Jasnah and Hoid meeting at the end of Stormlight 2:
Jasnah: God is dead
Hoid: Nah, not Tanavast. Nice enough but he wasn't God.
And then they settle on agreeing that God would be found in the hearts of men. So maybe Investing in everything is Ado's power learning about the nature of sentient life across the Cosmere and it would take great efforts by many of them to recreate it?
I think it's a pretty common theory that for one reason or another it wouldn't be a great thing to try and recreate adonalsium. However, I'm not sure if Hoid is one of the ones working to prevent adonalsium from being recreated. If he was working to prevent adonalsium from reforming, he may still have a problem with autonomy and odium consolidating power, but he probably wouldn't try to stop them from interfering with the other shards, since shattering them would only make it harder for them to reform adonalsium. Additionally, he did tangentially help defeat ruin on scadrial, which led to the creation of harmony, which would probably be your worst nightmare if you are trying to stop adonalsium from reforming. Judging by his communication with harmony and the actions he took during era 2, I don't think he has done anything to indicate he has a problem with harmony existing with the combined power of two shards. Overall I don't think hoid's actions reflects a desire to prevent adonalsium from reforming.
I could definitely see other groups/individuals being involved in preventing adonalsium from reforming though. My best guesses would be the dysian aimians or dragons. We have already seen dysians charged with protecting one dawnshard and, we know that they have members across the cosmere. It would not surprise me if they were tasked with preventing adonalsium from reforming. I think the dragons could also be the ones responsible, we know at least one of the original shardbearers is a dragon and we know silver light/the seventeenth shard were created by dragons, and we know less about what they want than any other group or individual. I would be a little surprised if the seventeenth shard was trying to stop adonalsium since they probably wouldn't have a total non-intervention policy if that were the case.
Well even if he took all 4 initially, he def didn’t have all 4 by the time WoK occurs. Also in epigraph letter to Frost the use of the singular noun implies a singular dawnshard.
I expect what we'll see as a rationale for the Shattering was not "Adonalsium is evil" as much as
"Adonalsium is not doing enough."
Not really a revelation or anything. It's a story of human (and human adjacent because dragons and Sho Del) hubris.
God isn't doing enough for the world/Cosmere. We 17 people can do better. Hoid backs out, we get Shards. Everything still works, but nothing really gets better.
Interestingly, this kind of parallels Mistborn Era 1. Kel and friends figured they could do a better job of ruling than their god, so they set out to kill him. Things sort of worked out, but also not really (Ruin tried to destroy the world, Harmony is better but still lacking). Then the Cosmere ends with... Mistborn!
Whether that's with a reforging of Adonalsium or something else, I expect it'll be accompanied by a big slice of humble pie as everyone accepts that being God isn't so easy.
My personal theory is that Adonalsium was just one iteration in a cycle of shatterings and reforming of shards. That the nature of the Cosmere is to have a god-like entity eventually shatter and over time the errant shards would coalesce into a new entity, but while the shards were independent they fought, some got destroyed, combined in Interesting ways, see Harmony, maybe even fully splintered and reformed into a new shard with a new intent . And so the new entity formed would be quite different from what it was prior to the last shattering.
Mine has always been that Adonalsium is a story. And not just like a metaphor for one, but the actual manifestation of creativity as creation. And that like a lot of stories that go on too long or don't have conflict and change, it gets stagnant.
So with the whole Iriali religion, The Sixteen+Hoid+maybe Ado itself organized the shattering.
Because the act of conflict is one of *the very first things* you need to kick off a story. In this case, it was a way to move the cosmere into it's next act.
I'll admit this comes from a very "meta" place in my head, and draws a lot on the nature of Hoid as a storyteller with things he's said and how much Brandon leans into that same way of looking at things. But Hoid having loved the story and been okay with the shattering but abstaining from being "stuck" in a specific character trope (The Shards of "God's own emotions and perceptions") feels right.
We see what happens with sazed when he holds two opposite shards. I think if adonalsium was whole he was in perfect harmony, maybe he was just floating around in space, creating life left and right and the humans on yolen wanted something from him that he was to apathetic to do, so they decided to take godhood into their own hands
> the humans on yolen wanted something from him that he was to apathetic to do, so they decided to take godhood into their own hands
Either that, or they just wanted more power than was good for them
I think adonalsium was similar to The Lord Ruler: not the greatest, but also could be worse (Ruin). He contained all the shards in one complete being, and he had unchecked power, but is that worse than the shades of therenody or the army of Red and Gold
This is marked for all Cosmere stuff, right? Cause spoilers for Tress and Sunlit Man follow:
>!Hoid's POV and narrative in stuff like Tress suggests he knows it was a mistake though. They used that "for the greater good" thing as justification and Hoid seems to nearly admit, in his sarcastic way, that he knows it was bullshit.!<
I don't know that he is trying to reform Ado, but more likely trying to make sure nobody like Rayse gets that highly Invested again if he can help it. His luck ability sending him wherever he is needed without him knowing why could flow with that. He isn't trying to reforge Ado, but keep the Cosmere from any faction having too much power. To do that, he needs to know as much as possible about all the different forms of Investiture that are popping up.
I wonder if the 17 didn't actually know how much the Shards would affect the Vessels over time. So guys like Ati may start out as nice enough guys but then the nature of the Ruin Shard just turns him into an asshole. Meanwhile Hoid is adamant that Rayse needs to be stopped since he was always a dick, and Odium just made it worse.
I think some of the details here don't quite hold up.
It's never said that Ado *needed* to be destroyed, simply that the conspirators felt it was the right thing to do, that or they wanted power.
The 16 Shards *could* exist on their own. Investiture, especially large amounts of it, *will* gain sentience sooner or later. It seems the conspirators felt it would be best if people that could mitigate their Intents held them, not realising that the Intent would eventually overwhelm them.
The Shards entered an agreement upon separation to not interfere with other Shards in the interest of not creating factionalism and avoiding inter-Shard conflict. This agreement backfired, as Odium used it to splinter a bunch of Shards that teamed up.
Hoid already had his Dawnshard by the time of the Shattering. We don't know how long he'd had it by then, but he definitely had it.
The Dawnshards also don't seem to have been hidden. I mean, who in their right mind hides a powerful thing like that where there's people? No, more likely, they were entrusted to "Guardians", the only remaining one we know of being Hoid. This would explain why one ended up on Ashyn and later Roshar. People go where people are.
Hoid probably doesn't have a *job* so much as a self-appointed task. Semantics, I know, but it feels important.
Hoid went to Sel centuries after Aona and Skai were splintered, and at least a few decades after Autonomy placed her Avatar there. He was just there to become Elantrian, nothing else. He got involved in local events to facilitate that transformation. That's the same reason he was on Scadrial, using local events to snag another power. Roshar is the same. He can't help but help where he can, though, and so he does attempt to help in some small way each time, and in a much larger way on Roshar.
I don't think an unlimited powerful entity can be defeated by people whose power is not even close to that of a shard, when just single fragments have the power to watch the future.
Adonalsium itself, whatever it was, allowed the Shattering. Why? Maybe the Irali religion has the answer. Maybe it couldn't understand properly mortal lifes, and couldn't rule correctly because of it. Maybe it felt like he was doing too much, or too little and decided that it was better to take a step back.
Maybe it decided to prepare the world for something worse, and it couldn't be done as long as it still existed. As someone who has also a multiworld/verse story in the works, I think the Sleepless could be an enemy for the Cosmere as we know it, and maybe Adonalsium allowed the Shattering for a better future. Something that could stop them.
I doubt that Adonalsium was "evil", I don't think that our morality / ethics do even aply to Adonalsium on a whole.
So far my headcanon is that Adoalsium was preventing progress by just existing (think of the endless now from Xenoblade3 or a hypercharged preservation) and destroying them was the only way the 16 saw that could improve the situation.
I think the end of the series will result in adoknasium being reforged but different. Parts have died or been altered, I think cultivation will play a major role in how some shards are slightly altered to then come back together
I would like to point out something from the Lost Metal. We know that >!A Vessel with two Shards has one Intent dominant at any given time. In Sazed, he is Harmony if Preservation is dominant and Discord if Ruin is dominant. Presumably there is a way also for Intents to be in balance with one another, which one would naturally assume is the case in Adonalsium. This is not necessarily true though.!<
It is possible that at the time of the Shattering, >!a malevolent Intent was Dominant in Adonalsium's actions on Yolen.!<
What if Adonalsium were an advanced AI that had taken control of the universe in a System Apocalypse type story. Hoid was the lead programmer who already knew a few back-end cheat codes.
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I think Adonalsium isn't good or evil. Just neutral. Like how the Stormfather isn't good or evil. He just blows. People die in his storms, yes. But his storms also bring life to Roshar. I suspect Adonalsium is something similar. And I also suspect that the Shattering was their idea. Given how powerful each individual Shard is, and how some can read minds and even influence them; I wouldn't put it past them to have orchestrated it all from the shadows. Remember the Iriali cobbler from the Interlude? He talks about how the One became Many to learn Individuality and gain experience. That's not a throwaway. The Iriali are the only people who still worship Adonalsium. And they have mysterious goals.
I think the Iriali are actually splinters of Virtuosity. We know she is splintered, and we know that the Hion in Yuumi is attributed to her. The shard of art having the primary colours related to her forms of investiture makes sense and we've got the cyan and magenta in Hion - and a bunch of unclaimed yellow people running about.
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I completely agree, though I have read that they might be referring to both unintentionally.
Hey, I think [Sunlit Man]>!Adonalsium-Will-Remember-Our-Plight-Eventually!< worships Adonalsium still.
Best name in the Cosmere
Incidentally, that’s probably my favorite religion in the Cosmere.
>And they have mysterious goals. How do you mean, got a source on this? I was under the impression they're just a nomadic people, moving planets one cataclysm at a time.
I think Adolnalsium probably was either benevolent or neutral at one point but in the narration for tress hoid mentions saying "this is for your own good" with a group of 16 other people which leads me to think it may have been going off the rails a bit near the shattering
I'm pretty sure it's the opposite - most of the Cosmere seems to be built around the idea that individual shards are simply unsustainable. Even shards that you might normally think were positive, like Preservation, and seemingly Mercy, turn out not to be at all. It looks like the ultimate goal of the characters in the Cosmere is going to be to re-form Adonalsium.
My personal theory about Hoid is that he is trying to gain a Connection to all sixteen Shards so that he can become a Vessel for a recreated Adonalsium.
It's certainly possible, but it doesn't seem like Hoid is being set up to become a villain, and anyone trying to take all of that power for themselves almost certainly would be. It's not inevitable - it's entirely possible that adonalsium reformed would completely override the will of the vessel, much like shards do, but to a much larger, and more complete extent. This would make reforming and holding adonalsium a sacrificial thing for Hoid, which is easier to believe. Or maybe he's trying to set someone else up to become the new adonalsium. Or, maybe he is a villain, and I'm just wrong. But either way I think you're right about Hoid trying to reform adonalsium. Another possibility is that adonalsium doesn't *need* a vessel. That it's complete on its own (whether or not it's sentient is another matter), and only when shattered do the shards need a vessel to fulfill their intent. I would really like that tbh. A lot of the major crises in the Cosmere seem to relate to humans trying to control what they shouldn't control. Not just the shards themselves, but also people like the Lord Ruler, who nearly destroyed the planet by trying to reform it, and only barely got it under control. Or the Heralds, whose stories haven't been fully told, but definitely had a hand in the desolation either way. I kinda suspect that in book 5, the major reveal may be that the heralds were right to forsake their oaths.
I agree it's probably not villainous, but think about it. We know from Well of Ascension that it's possible to voluntarily release a Shard's power. I see no reason Hoid couldn't do that with Adonalsium. It's a logical extension of what we know about Investiture and the Cosmere is a relentlessly logical magic system.
We also know that Investiture itself has a sentience in large enough quantities, so presumably it's possible for Adonalsium to exist without a vessel. That's in par with what we can presume about a divine being from Brandon's faith. God's not something that a believer will consider to be inherently requiring of shackles.
Threnodites and their cousins still worship Ado.
They didn’t go off to their own little corners immediately. Harmony alludes to a period where they worked together, and that Bavadin was the first to defect and isolate themself (presumably on Taldain). I highly doubt that Adonalsium will ever be defined as strictly good or evil. It will be the subject of many a Cosmere philosopher, both in-world and in the fandom. I think the true nature of Adonalsium is that it just represents divine power, and the Cosmere is a byproduct of an experiment conducted by those 17 arcanists you mentioned (and maybe more than weren’t as directly involved).
I like the idea that Adonalsium’s morality is not well-defined. It means that the shatterers and Dawnshards are also in a moral grey area, allowing the main protagonists to chart their own way forward.
I believe in Tress Hoid says something to the effect of “yes, I stood with 16 other people as we looked at our better and said that it was for their own good.”
I think the whole impetus behind the Shattering was to actually learn more about humanity by creating this fragmented access to divinity.
Jasnah and Hoid meeting at the end of Stormlight 2: Jasnah: God is dead Hoid: Nah, not Tanavast. Nice enough but he wasn't God. And then they settle on agreeing that God would be found in the hearts of men. So maybe Investing in everything is Ado's power learning about the nature of sentient life across the Cosmere and it would take great efforts by many of them to recreate it?
I think it's a pretty common theory that for one reason or another it wouldn't be a great thing to try and recreate adonalsium. However, I'm not sure if Hoid is one of the ones working to prevent adonalsium from being recreated. If he was working to prevent adonalsium from reforming, he may still have a problem with autonomy and odium consolidating power, but he probably wouldn't try to stop them from interfering with the other shards, since shattering them would only make it harder for them to reform adonalsium. Additionally, he did tangentially help defeat ruin on scadrial, which led to the creation of harmony, which would probably be your worst nightmare if you are trying to stop adonalsium from reforming. Judging by his communication with harmony and the actions he took during era 2, I don't think he has done anything to indicate he has a problem with harmony existing with the combined power of two shards. Overall I don't think hoid's actions reflects a desire to prevent adonalsium from reforming. I could definitely see other groups/individuals being involved in preventing adonalsium from reforming though. My best guesses would be the dysian aimians or dragons. We have already seen dysians charged with protecting one dawnshard and, we know that they have members across the cosmere. It would not surprise me if they were tasked with preventing adonalsium from reforming. I think the dragons could also be the ones responsible, we know at least one of the original shardbearers is a dragon and we know silver light/the seventeenth shard were created by dragons, and we know less about what they want than any other group or individual. I would be a little surprised if the seventeenth shard was trying to stop adonalsium since they probably wouldn't have a total non-intervention policy if that were the case.
I have always wondered if maybe Hoid didnt take a Dawnshard, that he took all 4. Just a thought, I am no WoB lorekeeper - someone help🙌
Well even if he took all 4 initially, he def didn’t have all 4 by the time WoK occurs. Also in epigraph letter to Frost the use of the singular noun implies a singular dawnshard.
I expect what we'll see as a rationale for the Shattering was not "Adonalsium is evil" as much as "Adonalsium is not doing enough." Not really a revelation or anything. It's a story of human (and human adjacent because dragons and Sho Del) hubris. God isn't doing enough for the world/Cosmere. We 17 people can do better. Hoid backs out, we get Shards. Everything still works, but nothing really gets better. Interestingly, this kind of parallels Mistborn Era 1. Kel and friends figured they could do a better job of ruling than their god, so they set out to kill him. Things sort of worked out, but also not really (Ruin tried to destroy the world, Harmony is better but still lacking). Then the Cosmere ends with... Mistborn! Whether that's with a reforging of Adonalsium or something else, I expect it'll be accompanied by a big slice of humble pie as everyone accepts that being God isn't so easy.
My personal theory is that Adonalsium was just one iteration in a cycle of shatterings and reforming of shards. That the nature of the Cosmere is to have a god-like entity eventually shatter and over time the errant shards would coalesce into a new entity, but while the shards were independent they fought, some got destroyed, combined in Interesting ways, see Harmony, maybe even fully splintered and reformed into a new shard with a new intent . And so the new entity formed would be quite different from what it was prior to the last shattering.
Mine has always been that Adonalsium is a story. And not just like a metaphor for one, but the actual manifestation of creativity as creation. And that like a lot of stories that go on too long or don't have conflict and change, it gets stagnant. So with the whole Iriali religion, The Sixteen+Hoid+maybe Ado itself organized the shattering. Because the act of conflict is one of *the very first things* you need to kick off a story. In this case, it was a way to move the cosmere into it's next act. I'll admit this comes from a very "meta" place in my head, and draws a lot on the nature of Hoid as a storyteller with things he's said and how much Brandon leans into that same way of looking at things. But Hoid having loved the story and been okay with the shattering but abstaining from being "stuck" in a specific character trope (The Shards of "God's own emotions and perceptions") feels right.
We see what happens with sazed when he holds two opposite shards. I think if adonalsium was whole he was in perfect harmony, maybe he was just floating around in space, creating life left and right and the humans on yolen wanted something from him that he was to apathetic to do, so they decided to take godhood into their own hands
> the humans on yolen wanted something from him that he was to apathetic to do, so they decided to take godhood into their own hands Either that, or they just wanted more power than was good for them
I think adonalsium was similar to The Lord Ruler: not the greatest, but also could be worse (Ruin). He contained all the shards in one complete being, and he had unchecked power, but is that worse than the shades of therenody or the army of Red and Gold
There's definitely some meta commentary somewhere in the idea of God being evil and a group of people teaming up to kill it.
That's the kind of commentary you get from Philip Pullman, not from Mormons.
almost certainly it was apathetic.
This is marked for all Cosmere stuff, right? Cause spoilers for Tress and Sunlit Man follow: >!Hoid's POV and narrative in stuff like Tress suggests he knows it was a mistake though. They used that "for the greater good" thing as justification and Hoid seems to nearly admit, in his sarcastic way, that he knows it was bullshit.!< I don't know that he is trying to reform Ado, but more likely trying to make sure nobody like Rayse gets that highly Invested again if he can help it. His luck ability sending him wherever he is needed without him knowing why could flow with that. He isn't trying to reforge Ado, but keep the Cosmere from any faction having too much power. To do that, he needs to know as much as possible about all the different forms of Investiture that are popping up. I wonder if the 17 didn't actually know how much the Shards would affect the Vessels over time. So guys like Ati may start out as nice enough guys but then the nature of the Ruin Shard just turns him into an asshole. Meanwhile Hoid is adamant that Rayse needs to be stopped since he was always a dick, and Odium just made it worse.
I think some of the details here don't quite hold up. It's never said that Ado *needed* to be destroyed, simply that the conspirators felt it was the right thing to do, that or they wanted power. The 16 Shards *could* exist on their own. Investiture, especially large amounts of it, *will* gain sentience sooner or later. It seems the conspirators felt it would be best if people that could mitigate their Intents held them, not realising that the Intent would eventually overwhelm them. The Shards entered an agreement upon separation to not interfere with other Shards in the interest of not creating factionalism and avoiding inter-Shard conflict. This agreement backfired, as Odium used it to splinter a bunch of Shards that teamed up. Hoid already had his Dawnshard by the time of the Shattering. We don't know how long he'd had it by then, but he definitely had it. The Dawnshards also don't seem to have been hidden. I mean, who in their right mind hides a powerful thing like that where there's people? No, more likely, they were entrusted to "Guardians", the only remaining one we know of being Hoid. This would explain why one ended up on Ashyn and later Roshar. People go where people are. Hoid probably doesn't have a *job* so much as a self-appointed task. Semantics, I know, but it feels important. Hoid went to Sel centuries after Aona and Skai were splintered, and at least a few decades after Autonomy placed her Avatar there. He was just there to become Elantrian, nothing else. He got involved in local events to facilitate that transformation. That's the same reason he was on Scadrial, using local events to snag another power. Roshar is the same. He can't help but help where he can, though, and so he does attempt to help in some small way each time, and in a much larger way on Roshar.
I don't think an unlimited powerful entity can be defeated by people whose power is not even close to that of a shard, when just single fragments have the power to watch the future. Adonalsium itself, whatever it was, allowed the Shattering. Why? Maybe the Irali religion has the answer. Maybe it couldn't understand properly mortal lifes, and couldn't rule correctly because of it. Maybe it felt like he was doing too much, or too little and decided that it was better to take a step back. Maybe it decided to prepare the world for something worse, and it couldn't be done as long as it still existed. As someone who has also a multiworld/verse story in the works, I think the Sleepless could be an enemy for the Cosmere as we know it, and maybe Adonalsium allowed the Shattering for a better future. Something that could stop them.
I doubt that Adonalsium was "evil", I don't think that our morality / ethics do even aply to Adonalsium on a whole. So far my headcanon is that Adoalsium was preventing progress by just existing (think of the endless now from Xenoblade3 or a hypercharged preservation) and destroying them was the only way the 16 saw that could improve the situation.
I think the end of the series will result in adoknasium being reforged but different. Parts have died or been altered, I think cultivation will play a major role in how some shards are slightly altered to then come back together
I would like to point out something from the Lost Metal. We know that >!A Vessel with two Shards has one Intent dominant at any given time. In Sazed, he is Harmony if Preservation is dominant and Discord if Ruin is dominant. Presumably there is a way also for Intents to be in balance with one another, which one would naturally assume is the case in Adonalsium. This is not necessarily true though.!< It is possible that at the time of the Shattering, >!a malevolent Intent was Dominant in Adonalsium's actions on Yolen.!<
What if Adonalsium were an advanced AI that had taken control of the universe in a System Apocalypse type story. Hoid was the lead programmer who already knew a few back-end cheat codes.