Trying to drum up discussion as others have mentioned. Full spoilers.
Which of the 16 Shards of Adonalsium would you pick, had you been present at the shattering? Or be able to Connect to well enough to pick up? Would you try to modify its intent in any way, a la Harmony/Discord?
I think Cultivation has to be the best one. Maybe Invention for similar reasons. Your Intent just drives you to make sure things grow and change. You can have any additional motives beyond those, and I think most won’t be an issue. The only drawback I could see is that maybe your Intent would lead you to Cultivating a new vessel for your shard, as being held by the same person forever doesn’t work. I think that’s what Lift is, and I’m interested to find out if a Vessel can willingly part with a Shard.
I totally agree with this, while we still don’t know the negative effects of holding Cultivation, possibly because Koravellum is a dragon and might sustain the effects for longer, the nature of the shard might be what pushed her to have an successor or maybe is just Kora doing the decision from observing what happened witb the others.
I worry that Cultivations downside is the same as many others, in that a single virtue pushed to extremes is bad. Change and growth just for changes sake can mess up a lot of stuff.
I think that’s kinda the point of the cosmere.