Theory: Aona and Skai's Shard Names

[lordofsoup]

The experience in Dakhor certainly sounds like domination. Dilaf dominated the place and make the young monks lives terrible. Also, Dilaf's ability to resist Aons. He said that it took the lives of 50 men to give him the ability. I dont know if he specifically mentioned if they were Dakhor monks or not. I suspect they are, otherwise all the monks would get the ability. Normal people dont seem to have any significant value to him.

The points for sacrifice seem mainly to be the teleporting scenes, in which Dilaf sacrificed the life of a Dakhor monk to move him to another place. The first time was to take him to see Wyrn, who was only a 15 minute walk away. After this seen he says something about the need for obedience and complete devotion to your master. The second time he uses it to transport himself to Arelon.

[Xavien]

I don't think that sacrifice is in itself the right word, more the direction of the sacrifice. I am wondering if the two sides of the coin are service. In mythology/philosophy you have different takes on whether a god exists to serve the people or do the people exist to serve the god? (You can replace "god" with government, power, etc)

Devotion and Domination are good/cool sounding words for this. You have the Elantrians on one hand who have great power and use that power to serve others. On the other you have the monks who serve those with power.

While writing this these base concepts jumped out at me: Giving and Taking. Very simplistic sounding I know.

[CrazyRioter she/her]

we have Endowment which is basically "giving".

[Xavien]

we have Endowment which is basically "giving".

True, but I see it as why we have both Cultivation and Preservation. Both deal with life, growth and creation but in different ways. Endowing is more like gifting and involves something tangible (money, talent, object), I'm thinking of Giving in terms of the giving of ones self. As I said the terms "Giving/Taking" may be overly simplistic and Devotion/Domination sound better but the underlying concept of the shard theme being in relation to the self seems to fit.

This may have already been proposed but your comment and thinking of Cultivation/Preservation reminded me of the Mistborn metal wheel: Four sections of four metals each relating around a theme but instead of metals we have shards.

Life?: Preservation : Cultivation / Ruin : ?(Neglect)

Ideals?: Honor : ? / Odium : ?

?: (Aona) / Endowment : (Skai) / ?(Loss)

?: ? / ? : ? / ?

Similar themes on the outside and the opposites on the inside or greater themes on the outsideand a subtheme on the inside (ie Cultivation is a theme of Preservation just as Neglect is a subtheme of Ruin)

[darniil he/him]

Preservation is neither growth nor creation, though. The creation of life wasn't able to happen on Scadrial until Preservation and Ruin worked together. In fact, Ruin probably had a greater hand in it, since he had to "ruin" the lack of life on that planet.

Preservation, as a concept and likely as the Shard, is stasis. Immutability. Lack of change. Growth is change.

Probably the only reason Preservation was able to act in a certain way (a way that seems potentially to go against stasis) is because Leras saw the future, the end of the battle between Preservation and Ruin, and he worked to preserve that future.

[Ari he/him]

I think "loss" makes more sense for Skai than sacrifice does, although I'm not convinced that it's not Domination yet. In specific, I think Deprivation would be a good antonym for Endowment, if that's what we're thinking, and could certainly fit with both the sacrifices talked about to fuel their magic, and the general Dakhor culture in the same way I thought Domination did.

[darniil he/him]

There's no reason that Aona and Skai had to have yin/yang style Shards like Leras and Ati did. In fact, Brandon's comment about Preservation and Ruin being drawn to each other precisely because of how different they were sounded to me like their pairing might have been unique among the Shards.

I could, of course, be wrong.

[Ari he/him]

There's no reason that Aona and Skai had to have yin/yang style Shards like Leras and Ati did. In fact, Brandon's comment about Preservation and Ruin being drawn to each other precisely because of how different they were sounded to me like their pairing might have been unique among the Shards.

I could, of course, be wrong.

Brandon's definitely implied that there aren't paired shards as directly opposing each other as Ruin and Preservation, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other paired shards at all. It's quite possible that Odium is Honour's "opposite", given one of the definitions of Odium is:

the reproach, discredit, or opprobrium attaching to something hated or repugnant: He had to bear the odium of neglecting his family.

In short, it would be well within Odium's intent to incite people to break vows and visit shame and odium on themselves in so doing.

If Skai is Deprivation and counter to Endowment on Nalthis, they would probably be a neater pair than Odium and Honour, but not as neat as Ruin and Preservation, especially given they are/were situated on different planets.

But it's also quite possible that Skai is Domination or something else we haven't yet thought of, and isn't a direct opposite to any known shards, too. I'm not prejudging anything, but we should definitely be open to future "messy pairs" like Honour and Odium.