May is a month of mysteries at Dragonsteel. Inspired by our upcoming trip to London—a city steeped in the history of detective fiction—we're spending the month exploring some of the greatest mysteries in the genre, and in the Cosmere. And there's no greater mystery in Brandon Sanderson's universe than the Shards themselves. 🔍🪐
Spoilers ahead for some of the big picture story going on throughout the universe. If you aren’t caught up with the worlds of Mistborn, the Stormlight Archive, or Brandon’s other Cosmere stories, you may want to hold off on this article.
“I have delved and searched, and have only been able to come up with a single name: Adonalsium. Who, or what, it was, I do not yet know.”
Ten thousand years ago, sixteen of the Cosmere’s most influential individuals betrayed and dismantled the powerful being that had created the known worlds. Whether for his good or for their ambition, these sixteen killed Adonalsium. They each took a fragment of his power, and they scattered across the Cosmere to their own worlds. Their presence wrought incredible changes to each of these worlds, empowering humans and others with invested arts, magical techniques that push and pull the surges of the worlds, manipulating primeval forces like gravity and illumination. Unfortunately, each of these vessels are mortal, as imperfect, as fallible as any of the other mortals of the Cosmere.
If the birth of these shards changed the Cosmere, their deaths have done even more. From the beginning of Brandon Sanderson's epic novels, shards living and dead have shaped worlds and changed magic.
“That said, the most worrying thing I discovered in this was the wound upon the Spiritual Realm where Ambition, Mercy, and Odium clashed—and Ambition was destroyed. The effects on the planet Threnody have been … disturbing.”
Where sixteen conspirators took upon them the power of Adonalsium, many of them have since been destroyed. Aona and Skai, vessels of Dominion and Devotion; Uli Da, who held Ambition, near Threnody; and Virtuosity, who splintered herself near Komashi. The broken parts of these dead gods manifest in different ways; on Sel, fragments of Devotion called seons are dedicated servants, providing counsel and help to bonded humans with intense love and care. Shards of Ambition, like those found in Cognitive Realm deep space or near Threnody, are volatile and violent, but follow complex rules that can save wary travelers.
Sel
The forces of AonDor, sources of boundless energy sources trapped in the Cognitive Realm, are the bodies of the two Shards who once lived on the plain. Dominion and Devotion, now fragmented, splintered, into a shadow of their once godlike power. Their names are never spoken within Elantris, at least not fully. “Merciful Domi," a common religious expression, is the closest we get to a name-drop within the novel. Brandon wrote Elantris to stand alone, and when he then developed the Mistborn trilogy, he began to shape the wider cosmology and lore of the Cosmere, drip-feeding us Realmatic theory, the nature of investiture, and the legend of the Shattering.
Scadrial
As readers, we know infinitely more about these shards than all but the most adroit worldhoppers and ancient beings. In Mistborn, Sazed spends a lifetime studying Scadrian history and religion, and he finds the name Adonalsium, but little else. It isn’t until a full conflict between Ruin and the quickly unraveling Preservation in The Hero of Ages that the allomancers and feruchemists begin to understand the scale of the war they’re mired in. Like the power of Ruin slowly destroyed its once kindly vessel, it warps Marsh. He feels Ruin’s influence after he is turned into a steel inquisitor, in the form of voices and violent impulses. Ruin molds him into a vicious, blunt instrument; Ruin’s champion in the raging battle for the fate of the world.
“Ati, perhaps kindliest among us, who had boldly taken up Ruin.”
In Arcanum: Unbounded, we learn about Leras, vessel of Preservation, and his ancient struggle against Ruin. He helped raise up Rashek, the Lord Ruler, in an effort to keep Ruin from destroying the world. Rashek worked for a millenia to keep Ruin sealed, but a few plucky thieves, indiscreet nobleman, and fledgling mistborn later, the Well of Ascension was unsealed. Freed at last, Ruin began to influence armies of Koloss, inquisitors, and the volcanic forces of the world itself to bring Scadrial itself to entropy. Millions of lives were lost to stop the apocalypse, and in the end both Shards’ vessels had been burned away. In a world-shaking finale, they are both taken up by a single vessel, fusing Ruin and Preservation into Harmony.
On the other side of the Cosmere, another shard has his own master plan, not to dissolve the Cosmere but to dominate it as the one true ruler.
Roshar
When the Shards settled the Rosharan system, they broke a pact they had made to settle far away from one another, keeping Adonalsium's powers separated. This promise is quickly broken, with disastrous consequences.
"Unfortunately, as proven by my own situation, the combination of Shards is not always a path to greater power."
Syl tells Kaladin that “honor is dead” but he lives on in men and spren. The shard of Honor, accompanied later by Cultivation, found refuge on Roshar, a world populated by ancient singers who attuned to the rhythms created by Adonalsium and his most ancient children. Soon they are joined by refugee humans, who fought a disastrous war on their first planet, influenced by the shard of Passion. Soon after, new conflicts between humans and singers began, and Passion was revealed to be Odium, an ancient manifestation of the wrath and hatred of the dead god. He pushed the humans into their wars and offered power to the singers, while Honor and Cultivation reacted sluggishly to his machinations. As Honor and Odium clash, Cultivation hides in the chaos. Before Honor is inevitably splintered, he sets guard rails in place that kept Odium in check on Roshar for thousands of years.
“We must assume that Odium has realized this, and is seeking a singular, terrible goal: the destruction—and somehow Splintering or otherwise making impotent—of all Shards other than him."
Wind and Truth gave us Tanavast’s perspective, from the early days after becoming Honor. He chronicled the conflict against Odium and his own splintering, with other splinterings occurring off screen in the background. His narration is the most intimate view we have ever had of the Shattering or Shardhood, as the man Tanavast struggles against the nature of Honor. Eventually we see Dalinar struggle with the same opposition, before sacrificing himself to ally the worlds against Odium, who then absorbs Honor to become Retribution, and the single most dangerous entity in the Cosmere. This conglomeration of godly power was so potent that it created a time dilation across Roshar, giving the rest of the Cosmere precious time to prepare for whatever fate Brandon has in store for the characters so dear to us.
Where to next?
“I have come to see that each power has three aspects: a physical one, which can be seen in the creations made by Ruin and Preservation; a spiritual one in the unseen energy that permeates all of the world; and a cognitive one in the minds which controlled that energy. There is more to this. Much more that even I do not yet comprehend.”
The Cosmere grew to its current size and complexity across twenty stories, in novels, novellas, and comics. The 20 years of the Cosmere span more than 10,000 years of history, with mysteries buried deep in the series' past and future. If the Cosmere was a whodunnit, we know the suspects: 16 shards of godhood, spread across more than a dozen worlds, who split Adonalsium into his core powers. We also know the guilty party: Odium, one of those 16 powers, has begun a war that spans the cosmos and threatens the gods of the Cosmere themselves. What we don’t know is why, 10,000 years ago, the shards decided that Adonalsium needed to go; and we don’t know how the conflict between them is going to end.
"In truth, it would be a combination of a Vessel’s craftiness and the power’s Intent that we should fear most."
The Fires of December comes later this year, and may offer new insights to this galaxy spanning mystery, and when Ghostbloods comes out in 2028 we'll get the next real peek at the fight for the fate of the Cosmere. Most of what we know about these shards and their history has emerged over time, with slow, piecemeal reveals in epigraphs, asides, and Hoid sidebars. At each of Brandon's public appearances, at conventions and other events around the world, thoughtful fans ask deep questions that have deepened our understanding of these complexities even further.
The Shards of Creation
Brotherwise Games has a brand new game in store, a game that thrusts you into the battle for the fate of the Cosmere, struggling for influence against the other Shards. Shards of Creation is a trick-taking card game, like pinochle or hearts. Where the game gets really interesting is in the differences between the Shards’ decks, with abilities that influence how you trump and which tricks you take.
Brandon pitches this as an easy-to-teach, quick-to-play game, as approachable as it is fun. Hearts is one of Brandon's favorite games to play with his family, and this design keeps the core of that classic game while introducing fantastic and fun twists. Hayden Dillard knocked it out of the park with this one, and the incredible art and shard abilities elevate the experience even further.
The preorder starts on May 22nd at 11AM MT, and we’re bringing a box of copies to give away during our visit to London. The launch copy of the game contains 8 decks for 8 shards, with stunning new art and an easy-to-learn, hard-to-put-down parlor game that your whole family can enjoy. While Team Dragonsteel is in London, we'll have daily giveaways of Shards of Creation. Keep an eye on our social media channels to stay up-to-date, with a chance to get your hands on Shards of Creation through giveaways or playing with us at Forbidden Planet and MCM.
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