Why do shards invest?

[Shal]

So, I was thinking the other day: why do shards invest? Do they get anything from it? Or is it something they feel compelled to do?

I've tried to search for this but have found nothing so far.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

Why they choose to settle down somewhere, I have no idea.

I do know that they will start to invest if they stay on the same world too long, regardless of whether or not they wanted to. They stay there too long and it gets harder to leave because of that Investing. This is the thing Odium had been trying to avoid happening to him before getting trapped in the Roshar system.

[Stark he/him]

Investing in a location may be as unconscious for them as breathing is for us.  They do it unconsciously, automatically upon entering an area.  For us, breathing is an autonomic function, that with some conscious effort we can control, and with targeted training, we can control to a great degree - but the default is still automatic at a steady rate whether conscious or not.  And, the longer we are in a given area, the more the inside of our lungs exchange with ambient particles of the environment, leaving its mark on us, and ours on the environment.

 

Gross though that visual may be, that's how I see Investiture on a shardic scale.  The longer a shard is present in a given area, the more deeply they exchange their metaphoric breath with the environment (possibly literal on Nalthis) and the more deeply their investiture permeates the area.  And of course, with some conscious effort they can direct it better, like Preservation did on Scadrial.

 

Does that seem like an appropriate analogy?

[Shal]

5 minutes ago, Stark said:

Does that seem like an appropriate analogy?

Yeah, I get what you mean. But then we know of the shard just floating around, which decided not to invest. Do you have any ideas why? If investing is so natural to them.

[Stark he/him]

1 minute ago, Shal said:

But then we know of the shard just floating around, which decided not to invest.

If I keep running with my analogy, the shard that is floating around in space, is well, floating around in space.  There is no planet for the natural Investiture of the Shard to radiate into and take hold of.

 

I don't think that it is the case that the Shard decided not to invest.  It feels more accurate to me that the Shard is just hiding in the void.  As a consequence, there is nothing for the Investiture to permeate.  Shardic equivalent of holding your breath while in hiding, so the villain can't hear you, I guess.  On a human scale, we'd die in that case - no air, the far below zero temperatures, the vacuum of space, etc.  But the Shard doesn't have those issues to deal with.

 

Another way to look at it, for that specific shard, take an apple out of your fridge and Hold it in your hands.  The longer you Hold it, the more of your body heat the apple will absorb until it matches your temperature.  And, if that happens to be warmer than the ambient, it will radiate heat itself into the void of your kitchen.  If we keep this going with you being the shard, the apple a planet, and your warmth being the investiture, well then the unattached Shard has no apple.  So nothing gets invested.  Its not necessarily a decision to not invest, it is just that there is nothing around them to accept that investiture.  That shard is hiking some back country road, living off the grid, with no fridge nearby to provide an apple.  Or something along those lines, it got away from me a little bit at the end there.

 

This is all specualtion of course, but this is how I visualize the function of Shards investing.

[Spoolofwhool]

I disagree with the analogy because investing isn't a necessity for shards unlike with breathing for us. Furthermore, as The One Who Connects said, it's more of a natural occurrence due to a shard being present around a world. The shard's investiture leaks into it, but at the same time I feel like the shard can consciously accelerate the process, as well as reverse it.

[Stark he/him]

19 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I disagree with the analogy because investing isn't a necessity for shards unlike with breathing for us.

Fair enough.  I could argue that we can consciously choose to accelerate our breathing and hyperventilate our selves, or to hold our breath, until we pass out.  Both both of those options are bad, as they have negative consequences which I would not see the Shard having.  It was not a perfect analogy, but the base of it was that I think a shard investing in an area is unconscious, but they can actively influence the rate, or reverse it, by taking conscious control of the process.  Breathing was just the first unconscious process that came to mind that could also be consciously controlled to a degree.

 

I think I may have done better with the apple, as you can reverse the heating of it by putting it back in the fridge, or accelerate it by adding more heat.  

[Jondesu he/him]

I suspect it's an inherent part of their Intents, or rather, a requirement for them to enact their Intents.  A Shard that doesn't Invest in a world wouldn't be able to apply its Intent to anything, so it would be very difficult for them not to do so.  Odium had an advantage in that his Intent didn't require that as directly, and he could focus it on destroying the other Shards, but most of the other Shards needed to apply their Intent to a world or to people, so they felt compelled to Invest.

[Shal]

44 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

I suspect it's an inherent part of their Intents, or rather, a requirement for them to enact their Intents.  A Shard that doesn't Invest in a world wouldn't be able to apply its Intent to anything, so it would be very difficult for them not to do so.  Odium had an advantage in that his Intent didn't require that as directly, and he could focus it on destroying the other Shards, but most of the other Shards needed to apply their Intent to a world or to people, so they felt compelled to Invest.

Well that makes sense and I think that @Stark's theory doesn't outright deny that. Maybe the shards feel the need to, as you said, enact their intents but if the Shardholder really doesn't want to they can resist it? "Hold their breath" and get away?

To quote the Coppermind on Survival Shard:

Quote

Responding to the question "Give us the name of a Shard's intent we have not seen before," he wrote, "there is one who just wants to hide and survive."

The Shard's intent is only tangentially related to their desire to hide. The desire comes from their knowledge of events in the Cosmere.

So, a natural process for him would be to Invest and act according to the aspect of Adonalsium they represent. But Survival Shard (nickname, not canon), or rather its Shardholder, presumably got scared of what Odium was doing and decided not to Invest and avoid splintering.

But that raises a question - why didn't he Invest shortly after the Shattering like the other Shards, before Odium started to take action?

Going with @Jondesu's explanation - maybe his Intent didn't require him to invest, like Odium, and he didn't really feel the need to be tied to one place and so he just floated in space. Then he saw Odium's effect on Sel and Roshar and decided that he will definitely not Invest, thank you very much.

[Weltall]

The 'Survival Shard' could have Invested in a world at some point, then gotten wise to what Odium was up to and pulled off its world and hidden. The Drominad System is called out for having no Shard yet a stable perpendicularity and an extremely unusual three inhabited planets (plus one more inhabitable one) which could indicate that there was a Shard there at one point. We know that a Shard can leave a world before it's fully uninvested itself but doing so means it leaves some fraction of its power behind. I know Brandon has said that First of the Sun represents a 'low magic' planet not under the influence of a Shard but that doesn't mean it never had a Shard, especially after AU left us that teasing suggestion...

As to the quesion of why they Invest in the first place, I think @Jondesu is probably right and for a number of the Shards, over time they simply need to Invest in a world in order to act on their intents. We know that there's a clash of wills that the Vessel will eventually lose so I imagine that at some point most of the Shards would feel compelled to Invest simply to do what their Intent increasingly demands of them. Preservation needs there to be something in order to preserve it, Cultivation and Endowment can't do their things without having something outside themselves to act on, Dominion can't put things in order if it's just floating in the void... Though I'm sure some Shards can hold off this drive to Invest due to a combination of less-restrictive Intents, greater willpower in their Vessels or other factors.

[Shal]

43 minutes ago, Weltall said:

The 'Survival Shard' could have Invested in a world at some point, then gotten wise to what Odium was up to and pulled off its world and hidden. The Drominad System is called out for having no Shard yet a stable perpendicularity and an extremely unusual three inhabited planets (plus one more inhabitable one) which could indicate that there was a Shard there at one point. We know that a Shard can leave a world before it's fully uninvested itself but doing so means it leaves some fraction of its power behind. I know Brandon has said that First of the Sun represents a 'low magic' planet not under the influence of a Shard but that doesn't mean it never had a Shard, especially after AU left us that teasing suggestion...

That explains a lot, I wasn't sure whether a shard could leave a world it has invested in (Odium did something like that, didn't he?) but what you said makes a lot of sense.

[Jondesu he/him]

4 minutes ago, Shal said:

That explains a lot, I wasn't sure whether a shard could leave a world it has invested in (Odium did something like that, didn't he?) but what you said makes a lot of sense.

As far as we know, Odium hasn't left any world he Invested in. He's specifically avoided investing prior to being trapped in the Rosharan system, and in fact likely wouldn't be invested there if it wasn't either necessary for some reason or simply because he's been there long enough he didn't have a choice. Brandon has confirmed Odium didn't leave behind any of his Investiture on Sel, which is where we have the most evidence of his influence.

[Yata he/him]

I think a Shard could leave a Place where he invested into...But Unless ne manage to de-invest It. He Need to cut off a portion of self to leave.

This could be the reason Odium is still there...If he leave he would become weaker and his goal would be impossibile

[xxcyv he/him]

36 minutes ago, Yata said:

This could be the reason Odium is still there...If he leave he would become weaker and his goal would be impossibile

But how is he able to reach his goal if he stays on Roshar? Sorry if that's a silly question, but I'm not really into this whole "Odium's evil plan"-thing yet. Either way, I suspect him to try to kill every other shard because of... reasons and I think this could be difficult if he stays on Roshar to keep his full power.

[Yata he/him]

15 minutes ago, xxcyv said:

But how is he able to reach his goal if he stays on Roshar? Sorry if that's a silly question, but I'm not really into this whole "Odium's evil plan"-thing yet. Either way, I suspect him to try to kill every other shard because of... reasons and I think this could be difficult if he stays on Roshar to keep his full power.

If he defeats Cultivation. He could dedicate all his Force to recover Investiture. If he leaves now....Cultivation would be probably able to kill him.

PS: notice this is only a possibility, no concrete proof behind

Edited March 31, 2017 by Yata

[Spoolofwhool]

4 hours ago, xxcyv said:

But how is he able to reach his goal if he stays on Roshar? Sorry if that's a silly question, but I'm not really into this whole "Odium's evil plan"-thing yet. Either way, I suspect him to try to kill every other shard because of... reasons and I think this could be difficult if he stays on Roshar to keep his full power.

Rayse is afraid of being destroyed or changed, and in his paranoia believes that as long as entities stronger than, or with comparable strength to him exist, he's in danger. His goal then is to eliminate his insecurities by eliminating any possible opposition to his power. This branches into two sub-goals: eliminate entities of great power in the Cosmere, notably the shards, and maintain his power at all costs.

Trapped on Roshar, he is unable to strike out at other shards with full strength, therefore it is a barrier to his goals. He isn't really able to accomplish much of his goals, other than kill Cultivation as well.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Spoolofwhool