Why did Parshendi need Gemhearts

[King Cole]

This has been something that has been bugging me for a while, but why did the Parshendi need the gemhearts? Did they have soulcasters? 

I never saw anything that indicated that they had soulcasters. Did I miss something or is it for another reason?

[Pagerunner]

From Eshonai's first interlude:

Quote

"We won," Eshonai said, leaning back against the wall and folding her arms with a clink of Shardplate. "The gemheart is ours. We will continue to eat."

Which definitely implies Soulcasters.

[Kurkistan]

There’s a line in an Eshonai interlude in WoR that mentions using the gemhearts to feed stormlight into plants and make them grow faster, IIRC.

[Calderis]

There's this WoB. 

Quote

QUESTION

For Words of Radiance, could you put a comment about something in the upcoming books, something not too specific, just something I can think about? Something like "Renarin has a spren" you wrote for somebody else in The Way of Kings?

BRANDON SANDERSON (PARAPHRASED)

Brandon wrote "Stormlight makes plants grow" in the guy's book.

So I don't think they had Soulcasters, I just think they were putting the gems into the plants themselves and letting them absorb the stormlight as it leaked out so they would grow faster and produce more food. 

[Yata]

It's possible they have a Soulcaster or maybe they had another ancient Fabrial.

I honestly believe they had a Progression Fabrial and they use it to accelerate the plan's grow.

4 hours ago, Calderis said:

There's this WoB. 

So I don't think they had Soulcasters, I just think they were putting the gems into the plants themselves and letting them absorb the stormlight as it leaked out so they would grow faster and produce more food. 

They will not have need of gemheart to this, also little gem could go fine, I assume

[Kurkistan]

7 hours ago, Yata said:

It's possible they have a Soulcaster or maybe they had another ancient Fabrial.

I honestly believe they had a Progression Fabrial and they use it to accelerate the plan's grow.

They will not have need of gemheart to this, also little gem could go fine, I assume

A thought I'd had is that maybe they need to break/crush the gems in order to release the stormlight properly into the plants, so they may be destroying the gemhearts (and thus needing more) that way.

[Gigalemesh]

My understanding is, as other have stated, that they are using the gemhearts to encourage the growth of their crops. I hadn't considered a fabrial being involved, I assumed it was just a way of using stormlight that the listeners knew of but humans have forgotten. 

On 28/09/2017 at 6:55 AM, Yata said:

It's possible they have a Soulcaster or maybe they had another ancient Fabrial.

I honestly believe they had a Progression Fabrial and they use it to accelerate the plan's grow.

They will not have need of gemheart to this, also little gem could go fine, I assume

With respect to little gems also working for this, yeah they would, but the alethi could also use little gems for everything they use gemhearts for, gemhearts are just better because they hold more stormlight. Also I don't think the listeners have any way of aquiring new gems other than gem hearts, there aren't mines on the shattered plains.

[+Wax]

On 28/09/2017 at 10:22 AM, Calderis said:

There's this WoB. 

So I don't think they had Soulcasters, I just think they were putting the gems into the plants themselves and letting them absorb the stormlight as it leaked out so they would grow faster and produce more food. 

So, gemhearts as manure 

[MPHRD]

On 10/6/2017 at 4:10 AM, Gigalemesh said:

My understanding is, as other have stated, that they are using the gemhearts to encourage the growth of their crops. I hadn't considered a fabrial being involved, I assumed it was just a way of using stormlight that the listeners knew of but humans have forgotten. 

On 9/28/2017 at 0:55 AM, Yata said:

But if this is the case why do they keep needing more gems? Alethi need more for money and because soulcasting breaks the gems and you slowly lose them and smaller ones don't work as well. If they are just placing them in plants, unless the plants are consuming the gem itself, couldn't they just re-infuse the gems indefinitely? They need less and less food too since they have a shrinking population. 

[Calderis]

7 minutes ago, MPHRD said:

But if this is the case why do they keep needing more gems? Alethi need more for money and because soulcasting breaks the gems and you slowly lose them and smaller ones don't work as well. If they are just placing them in plants, unless the plants are consuming the gem itself, couldn't they just re-infuse the gems indefinitely? They need less and less food too since they have a shrinking population. 

It's possible that once the plant starts pulling Stormlight from the gem it can keep pulling, which could shatter the gem. 

Until we see how that works, we can't answer the question fully. 

[MPHRD]

2 minutes ago, Calderis said:

It's possible that once the plant starts pulling Stormlight from the gem it can keep pulling, which could shatter the gem. 

Until we see how that works, we can't answer the question fully. 

I guess thats true. Just seems like there is more at play. 

[Yata]

On 8/10/2017 at 5:49 AM, Calderis said:

It's possible that once the plant starts pulling Stormlight from the gem it can keep pulling, which could shatter the gem. 

Until we see how that works, we can't answer the question fully. 

The Gem-Shattering is an effect that could happen when you pulled away the Stormlight too fast...this is the reason the Soulcasters regularry broke them, because they use all the Stormlight in a little timeframe.

I really doubt the plants do the same, it will be a known fact if people will find gem shattered after an Highstorm (I assume it's not too uncommon to leave spheres near a plant).

[Gigalemesh]

We definitely don't know enough to say for certain