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Shardplates' Souls and Healing


Kurkistan

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This is just something that occurred to me, and that is rather obvious now that I think of it. Like my earlier thread on Healing being based on Cognitive aspect, this is more of a statement of fact than a theory, in my mind.

 

We know that only one "full set" of any given set Shardplate can exist at a time: When Dalinar loses his gauntlet, he thinks:

 

WoK, Ch 69

It would take days to regrow Dalinar’s own gauntlet. Longer, if the Parshendi tried to grow a full suit from the one he had left. They would fail, so long as Dalinar’s armorers fed Stormlight to his suit. The abandoned gauntlet would degrade and crumble to dust, a new one growing for Dalinar.

 

*AoL Spoilers*

 

We also know that this is essentially how magical healing works:

 

Link

Q: About Miles from Alloy of Law and his regenerative powers. If he was bisected down the middle and the halves were separated immediately before the healing process could begin, would the two halves each regrow into a whole Miles?

 

A: Good question. In all of the cosmere's Shard-based magics, the greater portion of a bisected body regrows the lesser portion. If it were done EXACTLY halfway, the soul wold jump to one or the other randomly and that would regrow.

 

Amusingly, this first came up in 1999, six years before I got published. (I see someone else already mentioned the situation where I had to consider it.)

 

Presumably, if the smaller part of Miles was the only one with Metalminds, than it would be the one to regrow. Assuming that Stormligh is to Shardplate as Health is to humans, the infusion of some extra (almost cetainly Spiritual) energy is what's necessary to actually do the regrowing.

 

Therefore, I would conclude that Shardplate has a "soul" (like all objects do, so not a big revelation) and that the behavior of that soul when confronted with its pieces of Plate being separated is likely identical to the behavior of the souls of living beings being magically healed.

Edited by Kurkistan
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The other two quotes about the topic are kinda amusing, I guess.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/18u4tg/i_got_a_chance_to_chat_with_my_favorite_author/c8veqx3?context=3

So... wait a sec, the Lord Ruler got decapitated at one point...

What did he do with the severed head? Mount it on the wall?

:)

Actually, this is kind of a sillier followup to a silly question, but could you use Forgery to say 'actually, this half had 51% instead of 49%' and temporarily clone Miles?

Boy. That's a can of worms, right there...

 

Anyway, the interesting thing about shardplate regrowth is that you can fight over which portion is the 'superior' one if you apply stormlight to both of them.  At least, that's the impression I seemed to get.

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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This is just something that occurred to me, and that is rather obvious now that I think of it. Like my earlier thread on Healing being based on Cognitive aspect, this is more of a statement of fact than a theory, in my mind.

 

We know that only one "full set" of any given set Shardplate can exist at a time: When Dalinar loses his gauntlet, he thinks:

 

WoK, Ch 69

 

*AoL Spoilers*

 

We also know that this is essentially how magical healing works:

 

Link

 

Presumably, if the smaller part of Miles was the only one with Metalminds, than it would be the one to regrow. Assuming that Stormligh is to Shardplate as Health is to humans, the infusion of some extra (almost cetainly Spiritual) energy is what's necessary to actually do the regrowing.

 

Therefore, I would conclude that Shardplate has a "soul" (like all objects do, so not a big revelation) and that the behavior of that soul when confronted with its pieces of Plate being separated is likely identical to the behavior of the souls of living beings being magically healed.

 

This seems solid. However, the other thing I see this leading towards is Shardplate having spren involved in it's manufacture. The spren's soul stays with the larger bulk, and "heals" itself back, very similar to Miles. Odd question, then, is why don't Soulcasters? Or was Shallan's a fake from the get-go?

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This seems solid. However, the other thing I see this leading towards is Shardplate having spren involved in it's manufacture. The spren's soul stays with the larger bulk, and "heals" itself back, very similar to Miles. Odd question, then, is why don't Soulcasters? Or was Shallan's a fake from the get-go?

Maybe not all magical objects have the healing capability, just as not all people can heal like Miles.  Armor inherently will need repair if used, but it wouldn't be essential in Soulcasters.  So, if it could heal, the larger part would regrow the smaller, but it can't regrow.

 

But why doesn't it work?  Apparently the gems can be freely replaced.  Does there need to be a magical process to reinvest the "soul" into the whole thing? 

 

I think it couldn't be repaired because it was cut by a Shardblade, and we know that Shardblades are hard on souls.  This might be an alternate explanation for why it didn't regrow if Soulcasters are supposed to be able to heal. 

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Or that just the Davar Soulcaster is a fake and her father also had inherent Soulcasting abilities, I'm sure that some brilliant theorist already made an excellent theory about that. :P

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Maybe not all magical objects have the healing capability, just as not all people can heal like Miles.  Armor inherently will need repair if used, but it wouldn't be essential in Soulcasters.  So, if it could heal, the larger part would regrow the smaller, but it can't regrow.

 

But why doesn't it work?  Apparently the gems can be freely replaced.  Does there need to be a magical process to reinvest the "soul" into the whole thing? 

 

I think it couldn't be repaired because it was cut by a Shardblade, and we know that Shardblades are hard on souls.  This might be an alternate explanation for why it didn't regrow if Soulcasters are supposed to be able to heal. 

 

So following that theory, why can Shardplate regrow if it's damaged by a Shardblade? Does the Blade need to cut through a "core" part of the Plate? If so, what counts? Dalinar lost his helm, which seems pretty core to me.

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So following that theory, why can Shardplate regrow if it's damaged by a Shardblade? Does the Blade need to cut through a "core" part of the Plate? If so, what counts? Dalinar lost his helm, which seems pretty core to me.

The pieces of the Shardplate are never cut by the Shardblade.  Each individual piece seems to explode when stressed to the breaking point.  The armor seems to be permanently invested, which allows it to resist the Shardblade in the first place.  It's investment seems to cause the destruction of the piece rather than allowing it to be cut.

 

Interesting follow-up question:  If you exploded every piece of the armor, then chose the biggest chunk of shrapnel, would it regrow? 

 

Basically, when a piece explodes, does it lose it's investment? Maybe the explosion is the release of the energy of investiture.

 

Or that just the Davar Soulcaster is a fake and her father also had inherent Soulcasting abilities, I'm sure that some brilliant theorist already made an excellent theory about that. :P

 

The father secretly creates small amounts of valuable materials at various sites on the Davar properties to induce investment, then carries a fake soulcaster to explain the Soulcasting that no-one knows he's doing :wacko:

 

<snarky sarcasm>Very subtle</snarky sarcasm>

 

Actually, I think that there are many things that I completely misunderstand in these books.  I resist this theory because I don't think that Davar Senior is supposed to be magical.  Soulcasting personally like Jasnah and Shallan seems like something that will turn out to be special. 

 

Likewise I resist the notion that all Soulcasters are fake because that would mean a continuously operating set of magical practitioners in the ardentia since the Hierocracy.  If the ardentia had been surgebinding like this, they could have discovered the other forms of surgebinding.  If the ardentia had surgebinders, they would not be chattel.  The fact that the ardentia does Soulcasting in secrecy is suspicious.  OTOH, Jasnah does it openly and people still think she uses the fake Soulcaster.

 

Edited: combine posts to avoid doubleposting.

Edited by hoser
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Or that just the Davar Soulcaster is a fake and her father also had inherent Soulcasting abilities, I'm sure that some brilliant theorist already made an excellent theory about that. :P

 

 

There are some threads about this topic indeed: 

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/2939-theory-there-are-no-universal-soulcasters/

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/1762-theory-the-soulcaster-was-a-fake/

 

After rereading some parts of TWoK I'll tend to believe what Jasnah states:

 

 

“And the ardents,” Shallan said. “Those who Soulcast? Do they actually use fabrials, or is it all a hoax?”

“No, Soulcasting fabrials are real. Quite real. So far as I know, everyone else who does what I—what we—can do uses a fabrial to accomplish it.”

TWoK, Chapter 72 

 

 

Nonetheless I'm suspect of the ardentia (as Hoser mentioned) too. This "fall of the Hierocracy" has not been such a "destruction" to the religion than it is showed to the people. That rises the question who owns the Soulcasters that the ardents work with? The ardentia? Some Brightlords? Why the secrecy?   :P

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The pieces of the Shardplate are never cut by the Shardblade.  Each individual piece seems to explode when stressed to the breaking point.  The armor seems to be permanently invested, which allows it to resist the Shardblade in the first place.  It's investment seems to cause the destruction of the piece rather than allowing it to be cut.

 

Interesting follow-up question:  If you exploded every piece of the armor, then chose the biggest chunk of shrapnel, would it regrow? 

 

Basically, when a piece explodes, does it lose it's investment? Maybe the explosion is the release of the energy of investiture..

 

Actually, that is a really good question. How small does the core have to be to regrow? Is it whole pieces that become loose, like Dalinar's gauntlet, or could they get the gauntlet and the pieces of the helm and feed Stormlight to both? And how do they feed Stormlight to a gauntlet anyway? Do you put in an infused gem? Is there a slot? In which case, how many slots are in Shardplate and how many pieces could you theoretically feed Stormlight to? 

 

I really wish we had a sketch of Shardplate...

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This is just something that occurred to me, and that is rather obvious now that I think of it. Like my earlier thread on Healing being based on Cognitive aspect, this is more of a statement of fact than a theory, in my mind.

 

We know that only one "full set" of any given set Shardplate can exist at a time: When Dalinar loses his gauntlet, he thinks:

 

WoK, Ch 69

 

Therefore, I would conclude that Shardplate has a "soul" (like all objects do, so not a big revelation) and that the behavior of that soul when confronted with its pieces of Plate being separated is likely identical to the behavior of the souls of living beings being magically healed.

Actually, I don't understand. 

 

If Shardplate has a singular soul that makes a choice at the time of bisection to go to the larger part, then Dalinar's gauntlet would never be able to regrow the rest. 

 

So there must be something else going on here, or the soul splits. 

 

Another implication is that if you have damaged armor, you need to keep it together while exposing it to stormlight, otherwise all but one piece will degrade and the remaining piece will try to regrow all the others. 

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^Presumably, if Miles was cut into thirds instead of halves, and only one of the thirds had a full goldmind attached, that third would be the one to regrow. The Healing we're talking about isn't natural: it isn't a process of the armor itself, but rather it is enabled by infusion of energy in the form of stormlight. So a gauntlet with a supply of stormlight is more capable of attracting the Plate's soul than an otherwise full suit at the bottom of a well.

 

The "keep the parts together" implication sounds right. There's probably some loosey-goosey-ness over Cognitive perceptions of together (so they can be stored on a stand in the same room without all the parts necessarily touching), though.

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^Presumably, if Miles was cut into thirds instead of halves, and only one of the thirds had a full goldmind attached, that third would be the one to regrow. The Healing we're talking about isn't natural: it isn't a process of the armor itself, but rather it is enabled by infusion of energy in the form of stormlight. So a gauntlet with a supply of stormlight is more capable of attracting the Plate's soul than an otherwise full suit at the bottom of a well.

 

The "keep the parts together" implication sounds right. There's probably some loosey-goosey-ness over Cognitive perceptions of together (so they can be stored on a stand in the same room without all the parts necessarily touching), though.

I must be missing something (happens a lot) :huh:

 

The problem I see is that the application of stormlight will happen in the future relative to the plate.  In the Miles analogies, it is his state at the moment of bisection that determines where the soul goes.  With the armor, at some indeterminate time in the future, one or more of the pieces will get stormlight applied.  If the soul has to pick at the moment of splitting, it can't tell which part will have stormlight applied later.  Does this make sense? 

 

So there must be multiple souls, a soul that jumps from piece to distant piece or a non-soul element that maintains a connection across distance like a spanreed or ...

 

As I see it, with Miles, only one piece regrows right away because the capability is innate.  The other pieces are dead immediately.  With the plate, the stormlight being applied later determines which part regrows.  If there were a unique soul that had to choose at the moment of splitting and could only travel within the integral portion, I don't see how the plate thing could work. 

 

I guess all the pieces of the plate could be linked to the cognitive or spiritual realm through the investiture and the soul could jump through the link across physical distance depending on the relative size of the pieces and whether they are getting stormlight ... but now I'm BSing wildly.   Stopping now. 

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We also know that this is essentially how magical healing works:

 

Link

I need a little help here for my understanding. The BS-quote said: 

 

Q: About Miles from Alloy of Law and his regenerative powers. If he was bisected down the middle and the halves were separated immediately before the healing process could begin, would the two halves each regrow into a whole Miles?

A: Good question. In all of the cosmere's Shard-based magics, the greater portion of a bisected body regrows the lesser portion. If it were done EXACTLY halfway, the soul wold jump to one or the other randomly and that would regrow.

 

 

(emphasizes mine) 

 

So, where do you get this idea: 

 

Presumably, if the smaller part of Miles was the only one with Metalminds, than it would be the one to regrow. 

 

 

Why should the part with the Metalminds be the "greater" portion if it's really the littler (?) part? 

 

And, too, I read this quote above that the soul jumps one time and then stays. I mean: First comes the "cut", then the "jump" (of the soul) and then the regrowing/healing. And the feeding with Stormlight only affects the part with the soul. Or do you think, if there's no feeding, the soul leaves it's part and searches for another part to jump to? 

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Although the quote doesn't explicitly support it, it makes sense (to me anyway) that Miles would be unable to regrow from the larger segment if the larger segment had no metalminds, as that larger portion of him would not be able to access the stored health necessary to regrow. I think the quote assumed both 'halves' had metalminds in place (which seems fair, given he seems to hide them about or inside his person quite well).

 

Unless of course the soul is able to bridge the gap and take the stored health present in the metalminds attached to the smaller part of Miles' body, and regrow the larger segment that way. However this seems inconsistent with what we know of how regrowing Shardplate works.

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Senor Fresh pretty much gets it right, as far as I'm concerned. I think that the "larger" part needs to have access to Healing in order for soul-sucking to kick in: otherwise, you get weird healing at a distance and Miles could have just cut off his finger every day and left it touching a full goldmind: no need for any other goldminds at that point, since he could just recharge at range from the finger.

 

I also don't think we need to be quite so quick to lock the soul down once it's made a "jump." I don't think that the not-regrowing part of Miles becomes inert immediately, just as cast-off pieces of Plate take awhile to "die," though it's much more obvious with the Plate, since "dead" pieces literally disintegrate.

 

Looking at how the Spiritual works (lots and lots of connections, if Aaradel is right), I would hazard that the Soul doesn't so much stick to the body as correspond to it: Miles till has a full spiritweb during the time when he's missing a hand or two, the Hemalurgic bind points just don't have anywhere to correspond to in his truncated form. So the soul still has existence, at least for a time, while it lacks a full body to latch on to. Following that, it is probably pretty loose about where it goes in times of uncertainty, not being locked down until you get a full body in place and all the connections it had to parts of the old body are replaced with connections to the newly-grown parts of the new body. So, as long as Miles 5.0 hasn't grown a hand back yet, his soul could theoretically migrate to a body regrown from that hand should the worst happen to his body.

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Senor Fresh pretty much gets it right, as far as I'm concerned. I think that the "larger" part needs to have access to Healing in order for soul-sucking to kick in: otherwise, you get weird healing at a distance and Miles could have just cut off his finger every day and left it touching a full goldmind: no need for any other goldminds at that point, since he could just recharge at range from the finger.

 

I also don't think we need to be quite so quick to lock the soul down once it's made a "jump." I don't think that the not-regrowing part of Miles becomes inert immediately, just as cast-off pieces of Plate take awhile to "die," though it's much more obvious with the Plate, since "dead" pieces literally disintegrate.

 

Looking at how the Spiritual works (lots and lots of connections, if Aaradel is right), I would hazard that the Soul doesn't so much stick to the body as correspond to it: Miles till has a full spiritweb during the time when he's missing a hand or two, the Hemalurgic bind points just don't have anywhere to correspond to in his truncated form. So the soul still has existence, at least for a time, while it lacks a full body to latch on to. Following that, it is probably pretty loose about where it goes in times of uncertainty, not being locked down until you get a full body in place and all the connections it had to parts of the old body are replaced with connections to the newly-grown parts of the new body. So, as long as Miles 5.0 hasn't grown a hand back yet, his soul could theoretically migrate to a body regrown from that hand should the worst happen to his body.

 

I'll wager a cognitive factor plays some role in this too. If Miles perceives himself to be attached to a certain part of his body, his soul will probably jump to that first. Spiritual connections probably don't die until the cognitive ones do.

 

With Shardplate, I'd imagine the "core" of it, if there is a spren attached, is either in the head or possibly the breastplate, although I admit to wanting to see a Fullmetal Alchemist type seal somewhere in the interior. So if it's damaged, and more Stormlight is being fed into a gauntlet, for example, then it feels it's "body" dying and moves to the healthier part because that is what it would perceive as being it's body. Given a tie in Stormlight being fed, I'll bet Shardplate heals the largest continuous section attached to the helm or breastplate.

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I dunno, I'm having trouble with the idea of spren teleporting.

 

Does it make more sense if you follow Kaladin's mother's explanation? When a suit of Shardplate is separated into smaller pieces, each piece  has a spren, but smaller than the spren that powers the whole suit originally. When it is regrown whole, the spren attached to the missing pieces dies, and the spren attached to the larger piece becomes larger to account for it.

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Does it make more sense if you follow Kaladin's mother's explanation? When a suit of Shardplate is separated into smaller pieces, each piece  has a spren, but smaller than the spren that powers the whole suit originally. When it is regrown whole, the spren attached to the missing pieces dies, and the spren attached to the larger piece becomes larger to account for it.

 

No, please do not follow Kaladin's mother's explanation. ;)

 

That might well by how Cognitive aspects work, but not souls (by which Brandon is probably talking at least partially about the Spiritual) in the sense that we're looking at in Healing someone/something. We know from the quote in the OP that intact souls stay intact for people. Besides that, your explanation still requires that the "spren" in separated parts of Plate be connected to/aware of each other (in order to commit suicide properly), and is counter to how Healing works for living things. I don't think there's any real need to posit two different "only heal one part of a splintered whole" systems just yet, so we should avoid adding unnecessary complications.

 

If you don't like teleporting spren, I invite you to reconsider. As I said earlier, I don't think we really ought to think of the soul as inhabiting the body in the strictest sense. It may well be more like it just having a multitude of connections to various parts of it. So Miles 2.0 in the process of regrowing is "attracting" the various parts of the soul to reattach to it as it grows back their corresponding body parts. This is after the lion's share of the soul has already associated itself with whatever part of the body you started out with.

 

So if Miles lost his foot (and it was instantly teleported 50 miles away instantly by a very peeved KR), his soul would retain a connection to that foot up until the point that a new foot was grown, at which point the primary body's foot would steal the connection. Being the part of the greater part of a bisected body, then, gives you priority when the soul has to choose where to connect to.

 

EDIT: Alternatively, the detached foot could lose its Connection immediately, but still be "alive" in the sense that it can still attract the soul if the primary body should be destroyed.

 

Does any of this make sense, or am I just running down the street the opposite direction from you?

Edited by Kurkistan
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It makes sense to me, if I'm following your logic correctly. The thoery makes sense, and it's probably the most difinitive stuff we've got on the Spiritual Realm as of now. So when the shardblade cuts through the soul, it no longer connects to anything. In this context, that looks like it would work.

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It makes sense to me, if I'm following your logic correctly. The thoery makes sense, and it's probably the most difinitive stuff we've got on the Spiritual Realm as of now. So when the shardblade cuts through the soul, it no longer connects to anything. In this context, that looks like it would work.

 

I'm liking this notion! That creates a neat way to tie together these two observed effects of Realmatics.

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