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What Shardplate really is and how it's created is still a big mystery even though we've learnt what Shardblades are. But it seems like Shardplate can't just be made of spren like Shardblades or Surgebinders would be able to hear their screams. This theory owes a nod to cris34b's thread about the Surgebinding Chart, which got me thinking about the relationships between the different orders of the Knights Radiant. He noticed that as well as lines connecting the orders that share Surges there are also lines connecting the "opposite" orders who would seem to have nothing in common. In particular we have a line connecting Windrunners and Lightweavers, and we know just how different those orders are. So my theory is this: in order to create Shardplate for someone, a Knight Radiant must co-operate with a member of the opposite order. I don't know how exactly it would work, but any two Surgebinders working together would be very powerful and possibly have some very strange co-operative abilities. The reason I think this might be true is that it adds another level of checks to the power of a Surgebinder. They progress in strength as they speak ideals (or ideal-equivalents) and with each ideal they are bound to behave in certain ways in order to retain their abilities. That solidifies each order's specific mission, which should serve to make them a unified body, but it doesn't do anything to make the different orders part of a greater whole. If the only way to create Shardplate is to work together with the order with which you have the least in common, then the entire organisation of the Knights Radiant are bound together. To get stronger, to do more, they have to work together. On a storytelling level this would mean that Kaladin and Shallan need to continue to work together, and that Dalinar will have to help Renarin create his Shardplate. I suspect that won't be so easy for Dalinar to accept, but that might be a discussion for a different day.

How well could shardplate hold up against bullets? It only takes a few good whacks with a shardblade to totally shatter a piece, so I think that a bullet could penetrate, but this could be due to shardblades somehow being better equipped to fight shardplate. Also, would the bullet just make a hole (due to tiny impulse) or does shardplate always shatter when it fails? Thoughts?

Imagine that you, yes you little muggle/skaa/non-radiant etc., are standing in front of a suit of shardplate. You are given two weapons: 1) a shardblade and 2) a warhammer. You take the shardblade and swing it repeatedly against the left vambrace of the shardplate until the vambrace shatters. You then take the warhammer and swing it repeatedly against the right vambrace of the shardplate until the vambrace shatters. Did it take the same number of swings or would the shardblade provide a bonus against shardplate? *** edit ***: To be clear I do not mean a warhammer as in the massive weapons wielded by shardplate users but rather a one (or two) handed mace/hammer meant to be wielded by a regular soldier.

Hey all, this is gonna be my first theory. I hope it hasn't been brought forward in this way. I have been musing about the origins of Shardplate. I got this idea on my current reread of WoR, in one of Dalinars visions. So i went back to WoK: From the arrival of the KR, falling from the sky, it seems a good assumtion, that this is either a Windrunner or Skybreaker. Same chapter, the KR that heals Dalinars vision character: The next quotes are from Dalinar's vision at Feverstonekeep. Dalinar looking out at the charging KR: With these quote, it's a good assumtion, that the Orders had Plate glowing with specific colors. What really got me into this theory, is the fact, that both Kaladin and Shallan attract huge amounts of Wind-/Creationspren. From Kaladins first flight in WoR: Syl was first described as a Windspren, though this is obviously wrong. But she shares some basic personality traits with them, i.e. playing pranks, flying around in highstorms. At multiple points in the story she calls the Stormfather her father, which seems like a good indication, that she is somewhat related to Windspren. Now 2 quotes about Shallan, boath aboard the Winds Pleasure: Here she is drawing Pattern, notice the amount of creationspren: So with all this in mind, I went to check the WoB for any hints Brandon might have dropped there. So with this quote I think it's save to assume, that Shardplate, much like Shardblades, were originally spren. Lesser spren, related to the bonded spren, that would form Shardplate. A very likely spren coupling is Honor- and Windspren for Windrunners. I presume something like this will come light for the other Orders as well. (Cryptics and Creationspren, maybe?) TL;DR: Original Shardplate was formed by lesser spren. edit: typos

So I was reading the coppemind wiki and it said that windrunner's colour of shardplate is blue,and from the books we also see that kaladin's eyes(when he ingests stormlight) and sylblade are blue in color as he is a member of the order of windrunners,and I also noticed the the color of glyph of the windrunners is blue (windrunners obviously have a lot of blue) so my question is do other orders also have their shardplate,shardblade and eye color turn to the color of their order's glyphs? For example,the dustbringer's colour of glyph is red,the truthwatchers is green,the bondsmiths is yellow etc What further makes me think this way is that,kaladin's original eye color is brown,so if ingesting stomlight or bonding a shardblade will make a darkeyes eye color brighten then it would make kaladin's eye color to become very light brown or tan like what happened to moash when he bonded with his shardblade BUT kaladin's eye color did not change to light brown/tan it changed to blue which is the color of the order of windrunners. So will we see dalinar's eye turn to yellow or renarin's to green? OATHBRINGER SPOILER! I just thought I should add this,I read kaldin's sample chapter from book three at tor and in the chapter it is said that if kaladin doesn't ingest stormlight or summons his sylblade for a long time,his eye colour reverts back to dark brown,if he does either of the actions his eye color will start to glow blue again

If a Full Shardbearer lost both their arms, what would they still be capable of doing with their Shards? Also, would the arms being lost normally vs severed by Shardblade change things? For Plate, obviously they could still wear their Plate and be protected/strengthened by it, but what would happen with the arms & gloves? My best guesses: -They hang there uselessly -They are usable through mental commands (like when Adolin wills a glove to disconnect) -The arms shrink into the shoulder sockets forming a super-dense layer of armor As for the Blade, it could still be summoned, but then what? It appears in the bearer's HAND, which does not exist... Would it appear where their hand should be, and then immediately evaporate? Appear touching the bearer's shoulder, then fall to the ground? Or if the Plate arms are present, would the Blade appear in the Plate hand?

Shardplate- okay, now I've been thinking about the physical appearance Of it. Does the whole armor glow when used by a Radiant? Or just the joints? And when it is being worn by a regular human and is not painted could you tell the difference from regular armor? It seems weird to me that people can just tell that someone has shardplate all the time. If you painted a very intricately designed armor plate would people think it's shardplate? When I first read WoK I thought that shardplate was translucent and see through-ish, now I know that is not correct according to WOR. Another question, is the person in the cover for WoK the parshendi chick (venli? I forgot her name and don't got my book with me now)? Or is that dalinar's unpainted plate?

So in one of Dalinar's visions in Way of Kings he sees Radiants who have helmets on and then all of the sudden do not. It seems like a silly thing to be an effect of the vision as there are no other weird discrepancies and Brandon is not one to add details for no reason. Also the fact that after the battle of the Tower where Dalinar is betrayed by Sadeas he loses his shardplate's gauntlet. He then says that the Parshendi could hold that gauntlet and regrow it into a full suit if Dalinar did not have the rest of the shardplate. He borrows Adolin's gauntlet and says his shardplate will regenerate the hand piece with stormlight and time. So if shardplate regenerates like some kind of organic coral type thing could modern shardplate also be made of dead spren stimulated by stormlight? Are we seeing the Radiants in Dalinar's vision drop their visor mentally with a thought? If shardplate is made of spren is it the same spren as the blade or a different one that becomes the armor once they reach the 5th ideal or something like that? WILL KALADIN BOND A damnation GLORY SPREN FOR THE SHINIEST ARMOR AWARD ALREADY!!! Sorry... got carried away. Interested to hear your thoughts.

Theory: Shardplate is made of the storm light wisps coming from a Surgebinders skin. This explains how they could hold stormlight so efficiently and why it doesn't cause screams. If any has any other ideas of modifications it would help.

So i was reading the coppermind on halfshards and its very unclear to me what they actually are. (being an audiobook listener its not easy to go to the source, and im not due for another reread for at least a couple of months ) I always imagined them as shields that could stop a shardblade. But the coppermind makes it sound like they could be armour, just huge bulky not strength enhancing armour. Im also wandering what sort of fabrial they are. Afaik fabrials tend to use simillar powers to the surgebindings to produce a similar effect. But i cant think of a surgebinding that could stop a shardblade, and if there is one directly that has some serious implications for the combat effectiveness of the KR using such a surge. Granted i doubt KR ever really fought other people with shardblades, so the ability to use your innate power to block one isnt super useful unless of course the voidbringers had their own shardblade equivalents (i mean back in the day, we know the parshendi use/d shards more recently). I cant remember any mention of voidbringers with shardblades, but if theyre spren fueled i dont see why they couldnt have dark shards or something. Captured evil twisted spren forced into sword form then killed/preserved/trapped in it (would be kinda cool imo). so yeah half shardsw, what are they? Shields? Armour? And a KR with the ability to block a shardblade without parrying would be one bad chull -> take a hit on the chest shrug it off and riposte while your enemy is shocked and off balance.

So recently I finished my re reading of SA, and somewhere into WoK I got into a discussion with some friends about shardplate, and it got me thinking. At this point probably stop reading if you haven't finished Words of Radiance. I'd like to see what people think about shardplate, since it seems it doesn't get as much attention as the other various shards. I had been thinking about the workings of plate, it started with realizing that if shardplate was really made out of metal, it should dent, except it doesn't, it shatters. When I brought this up to my freinds they seemed to think treating plate like a fabrial was silly since doing that in the past turned out to be false (i.e shardblades being spren). They believed that construction of plate was in some way related to the Nahel Bond, as shardblades are. Despite this, I'm pretty sure they are just fabrials. We know the gemstone in a shardblade isn't actually related to its function, but shardplate requires them AND a steady supply of stormlight. If the gemstones aren't infused then the armor is anything but light. And, probably most importantly, everything shardplate does can be related to the surges. Shardplate is metal, yet it shatters instead of deforming, I imagine that is is related to the surge of either tenstion or cohesion, but I can't say for certain since we don't yet know much about those surges. Progression or transformation would allow the plate to regrow from a single piece. The misting of the visor due to illumination. Obviously there's some pretty advanced fabrial science that is beyond our current understanding but as we've seen, the ancients had some pretty wicked knowledge in that department. This brings me to my second topic. History. Recent and not so recent. The vision where dalinar meets Nohadon seems to imply that Bond granted surgebinding was present long before the founding of the Knights Radiant. This is important because I believe shardplate was the hallmark of the Knights and came into existence around the same time. In fact I think this time was one of the few where it's construction was possible given the level of technology at the time. That they managed to construct something as sophisticated as the oathgates makes me think they could manage shardplate. As for recent history, both Kaladin and Renarin seemed to have no problem touching shardplate, which doesn't help the assertion that shardplate is of the spren. Something both my friends were eager to prove. tl;dr: Shardplate is just a very advanced fabrial that was made at the same period as the founding of the KR and the construction of Urithiru.

Something from the tweets archive on Brandon's site, about two-thirds of the way down the page (March 12th). It's not a world-shattering revelation, but I just wanted to make sure that it was known for theorizing purposes.

I have a theory. I'm not sure if there is a WoB that renders said theory inert, but I figured what the hedge, it wouldn't hurt to get the opinions of the mortals. What if you could lash Shardplate? First of all, would it even work? I don't believe there would be a reason why it wouldn't, unless the Shardplate's magical properties somehow make it were Stormlight can't be used against them. But think about it, You could lash a Shardbearer to the ground, tripping him up. You could lash him to a wall, so that he becomes immobile and can not fight you anymore. You could Lash him to the roof, and presto same as Lashing him to a wall, with the added bonus of him becoming confused as hedge. I realize these are already things you that we know one can accomplish with Stormligh, but as far as we know they have not been attempted against a Shardbearer. Additionally, there are two other uses I can think of for Lashing a Shardbearer. You could Lash him into another enemy, this would push the Shardbearer off balance, and could seriously injure or kill the other enemy if they are not also wearing Plate. The other option I could think of is Lashing Shardplate off of its bearer. Maybe not all the pieces at once, but if you focused all of your concentration onto one piece of Plate, such as the breastplate, then possibly it would succeed. The bearer would be fighting, impervious to injury and then all of the sudden his chest and stomach are exposed for a killing blow. I don't know. Someone with more Rosharan knowledge (sadly I don't get nearly enough of it here in Camorr) should tell me if this is possible or not. Also, if you do think it will work, can you think of any other uses for this technique?

Hello there. I am a big fan of infinity blade, and I noticed while playing that there seem to be some coincidences. There is an armour set called shardplate, a blade called shard, and an odium armour set! Is it coincidences, or have the world hoppers been meddling...

How does one weld to shardplate? Doesn't welding involve melting both materials at the interface to bond them together? Does that mean you can melt shardplate? Could you then make something new out of it? Feel free to also discuss things you would want made out of shardplate material.

Hey guys, don't know if this has popped up in a thread somewhere (did a quick search under shardplate skirts), but I'm really curious about this. All the illustrations show Sharplate as having skirts attached. Why would they need a skirt? Generally, this was for protection around the groin area as it was impossible to fit plate right up your inner thighs and around your precious areas. Argument 1: The design is built this way to fit the same design model as current armour; "it just looks right" to the warriors of the time. OR against this Argument 2: Because of the form-fitting nature of Shardplate, all these precious areas are well protected by the Shardplate itself. Thus, having a skirt is extra encumbering. Argument 2 makes much more sense to me: Radiants of the time were far above regular individuals; I don't see them designing their gear to fit in. Standing out was no problem. Why would they need skirts then, if the armor fits their bodies so well? I get conflicted when reading which way to visualise this. I like to stick with the idea of no skirts, as it makes more sense for Shardplate design to me. Your guys thoughts? If you have any evidence from the books, that'd be awesome.