Gem properties

[Bloodfalcon]

I don't know much about gems IRL, but it appears I definitely don't understand them in the context of Stormlight Archive either. Gems are basically the most valuable item in the entire series. They can be used for soulcasting, empowering Shardplate, containing Stormlight, and just plain old currency. They come in all sorts of sizes ranging from chip to gemheart. 

It is the size difference that is bugging me though. You have this massive gemheart, good for storing huge amounts of Stormlight and soulcasting large quantities of food or shelter, but that all ends the moment it shatters. 

OK, well does it all turn into dust? Wouldn't you wind up with thousands (I suppose) tiny pieces of gem that are essentially smaller gems and/or chips? Could you not put those into sphere and use them as currency? I figure they could be recut if that is the issue. I can't see why they wouldn't still hold stormlight if only in smaller quantities.

The thought only came to me because I was wondering what would happen if someone cut into a chasmfiend and sliced the gemheart by mistake. Would it be such a clean break due to the use of a Shardblade that it was just two half size gemhearts?


TL;DR - Why don't shattered gemhearts get recycled into smaller gems and chips for spheres? 

[Moogle]

They are!

 

Jasnah idly popped the broken smokestone from her Soulcaster, then tucked it into a pocket. It could be sold to a gemsmith, who could cut smaller gemstones from the salvaged pieces.

 

Even so, you can't really 'combine' a bunch of smaller gems into one for Soulcasting purposes (I think? This might be a limitation for fabrials, not Surgebinders?). You use one gem, and its size determines what size of object can be Soulcast. Larger gems are way more valuable because of this, and the total value of the salvaged gemstones is going to be less if than the whole was.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Moogle

[Bloodfalcon]

Nice! Thanks Moogle! I was under the impression it wasn't possible, but I'm glad to see it's in there. I would think you would just use a gemheart, use the pieces for soulcasting again, again, again, until you are literally left with the materials used to make currency. Really puts the importance of gemhearts into perspective for me. Still wonder how it would react to being cut by a Shardblade though.

[Ethrien]

I imagine that the power of gemstones in relation to their size, increases exponentially. So a single large gemheart is worth far more than individual gemhearts of equal mass. As such if you were to cut into the gem heart with a Shardblade you would simply be throwing your money away. Which might explain why the Parshendi and Alethi do use hammers to get the heart out, when a blade would be so much quicker.

[Argent]

The Alethi do use Shardblades to break the chasmfiend chrysalises - but the Blades are not exactly common even within their armies. They are just careful about it. 

[Bloodfalcon]

They use them to break they chrysalis, but not to chop the gemheart.

[Satsuoni]

Why would they chop it? The have to cut it for better Stormlight holding, but not chop it to pieces...

One other thing:

Beyond that, the larger a gemstone was when used by a Soulcaster, the less likely it was to shatter. Enormous gemheart stones offered near-limitless potential.

It is not that the size determines the limit of the object to be soulcast - that depends on the Stormlight amount, what it is soulcast into (probably), etc. It is that even if you were to replace it with several smaller stones (that may be possible for Surgebinders), those stones won't last nearly as long. It is probability thing - a large stone may never shatter if you keep soulcasting smaller things, but several smaller would become dust long before that (shattering again and again).

Edited October 28, 2013 by Satsuoni

[Bloodfalcon]

Dalinar walks over to the Parshendii leader and says "I'm gonna slice every single gemheart in half. You get one piece, we get the other. PEACE SUCKAS, LETS HAVE DINNA SOMETIME."

It would mean no more mass slaughters on the Plains, and depending on how it works, it could still provide more than enough food for both sides. Maybe that is how Dalinar wrecks everyone's fun.

[Shardlet]

Still wonder how it would react to being cut by a Shardblade though.

 

I doubt that there would be any particular reaction caused by a gemstone being cut with a shardblade.  The gem itself doesn't have any power.  it appears to act instead as a filter for the stormlight to direct the effect of that power.  I would liken it to the metals in allomancy.  The metals themselves don't have any power, they are instead filters to direct the power of Preservation to cause a particular effect.

Edited October 28, 2013 by Shardlet

[Bloodfalcon]

I doubt that there would be any particular reaction caused by a gemstone being cut with a shardblade.  The gem itself doesn't have any power.  it appears to act instead as a filter for the stormlight to direct the effect of that power.  I would liken it to the metals in allomancy.  The metals themselves don't have any power, they are instead filters to direct the power of Preservation to cause a particular effect.

Right, all of that is understood. But Shardblades don't cut through things like normal blades, as I'm sure you have read once or twice. If they sever the soul / feeling / idk of people, what do they do to an item containing stormlight? They don't cut through Shardplate easily, so I am curious. Would the product be a whole gemheart without Stormlight? Or two clean cut halves, each with half of the Stormlight? Or shattered pieces? Not really about what how gems react with Stormlight as much as how gems react with Shardblades.

[Scott]

Right, all of that is understood. But Shardblades don't cut through things like normal blades, as I'm sure you have read once or twice. If they sever the soul / feeling / idk of people, what do they do to an item containing stormlight? They don't cut through Shardplate easily, so I am curious. Would the product be a whole gemheart without Stormlight? Or two clean cut halves, each with half of the Stormlight? Or shattered pieces? Not really about what how gems react with Stormlight as much as how gems react with Shardblades.

 

I believe that both size and cut are limiting factors in how much stormlight a gem can hold and for how long.  A gem with a large straight edge like that would probably lose it's stormlight rapidly.

[Bloodfalcon]

I believe that both size and cut are limiting factors in how much stormlight a gem can hold and for how long.  A gem with a large straight edge like that would probably lose it's stormlight rapidly.

Sounds plausible. If so, lets start rounding out all of our gems then. Air-tight seal effect.

[Shardlet]

assuming, of course, that round is good and faceted is bad.

[Bloodfalcon]

If the opposite, cubes it is!

[Argent]

Which might very well be a flawed assumption. Navani's notebook suggests that it's not the roundness or the... facetness?... of a gemstone that matters, it's the exact shape. 

[Bloodfalcon]

Do you think gemhearts grow inside chasmfiends all the same awesome shape? Or do they have to be cut on a huge scale?

[Shardlet]

I suspect that they are cut in a particular fashion, unless they already hold stormlight very well.  I would presume, due to their supernatural nature, that they are rather pure and would be high quality gemstones (clarity).  In contrast, a natural gemstone has inclusions in it that may be impurities or at least affect the clarity of the stone.  These stones are cut in a way to section out poor quality portions of the stone.

[name_here]

I recall that Gemhearts are somewhat rough when removed from the Chasmfiend and need to be cut and polished to hold as much Stormlight as possible.

 

Since there's no mention whatsoever of normal gems or fabrials hampering Shardblades, I tend to assume that they'll cut right through anything that's just holding Stormlight instead of using it to reinforce a material. They'd probably neatly cut through a Gemheart. That would be bad, though, since gems crack under use and smaller ones crack more readily. Now, since they apparently shatter into many pieces instead of breaking in half, it's hard to say exactly how much slicing one in half would cost you. But you'd get less use out of them before they cracked and they'd likely break into smaller pieces, so the total amount of Soulcasting you could do with two halves of a Gemheart before the fragments were too small to be useful would be less than an intact Gemheart.