So I haven’t read the secret history or any other heavy lore books yet but I’m just curious: was Adonalsium naturally made out of 16 entities or did it broke up into number of people that killed it? What I mean is, if Hoid accepted the part of the power it would be 17? What would it be? Or some of the vessels would gave up their power?
It SEEMS that it/they was/were one entity and they split it/them, but it also seems that the Shards are split by Dawnshard, meaning that 16 was the inevitable number. Hoid would have taken Endowment, though, we do know that.
It’s a bummer that there was seventeen of them then. But still I don’t really understand the mechanics of Dawnshard. Like I have read the Dawnshard of Stormlight Archive with Rysn, but where it actually explains the way it works??
There may have actually been eighteen, or possibly 20-21 depending on who you ask. The Dawnshards are the four primal commands used to create the Cosmere, the two we know now are Exist and Change (opposites), there's one which technically opposes all the others (possibly Exist), and the mural in the cave where Rysn gets Change depicts a whole divided into four segments (Dawnshards) which are all also divided into four more segments (Shards). Most of this info will come out in Dragonsteel, which hasn't been written yet, so most of it is RAFOed indefinitely.
