Spren Splinters / Old Style Fabrials

[Moogle]

Warning! Long post below.

 

The things this post is meant to cover are:

• The differences between old style fabrials (Soulcasters, Regrowth fabrials) and new style fabrials.
• The possibility of Shardplate as a combination of the ten Surge fabrials.
• The implications of spren being able to mimic what Honor did in creating the Honorblades (that is, every spren is actually a mini-Shard and can do anything a Shard can do in theory, they just don't have much Investiture).

tl;dr I'm essentially theorizing that old-style fabrials (of which Shardplate is) are the result of Nahel spren voluntarily Splintering themselves, much like Honor created the Honorblades by Splintering himself (or, if that's not the right terminology, then by giving up some of his power).
 
(Side note: I'm quite uncertain on the vast majority of this post, but I'm not going to be prepending "I think that..." or "It is possible that..." to every sentence for brevity concerns. If I sound confident, I'm not. Things are stated as fact which are not. Beware!)
 
Old and New Fabrials
If you're unaware of the Navani notebook translation, essentially the new style fabrials (like the heating fabrials that are replacing fireplaces) are created by taking a specific type of gem, carving it into a specific shape, and then attracting a spren (flamespren for the heating fabrials) and trapping it inside the gem. When the gem is infused, the Stormlight is filtered through the spren and whatever the spren represents becomes physical, or can be manipulated/sensed/other things involving that concept (possibly because spren are the concepts they represented, just on a different level of existence, which Stormlight sort of melds).
 
Put a flamespren in a ruby, put Stormlight in, and you get 'flames' (heat). Put a windspren in a gem (sapphire?), put Stormlight in, and you can make a faint breeze (who needs a fan?). Put a joyspren in a heliodor, and you can the gem flashes up whenever someone is joyful in a certain radius. Put a joyspren in a different gem (ruby?) and touching someone with the fabrial will cause them to feel happy. The applications are basically limitless. If I was on Roshar, I would love to be an artifabrian.
 
Anyways, this results in a gem with a spren trapped in it. The spren is visible, too, going by this picture. And, obviously, you cannot just swap the gem out with a any old new one because your captured spren was what made everything work.
 
So... we have an interesting problem. Old style fabrials, like Soulcasters and the Regrowth fabrial of Dalinar's vision, don't show spren trapped inside gems anywhere. You can replace the gems willy-nilly (and regularly have to, for Soulcasting fabrials, because they shatter the gems). Where's the captured spren? What makes these fabrials work?
 
Well, the key is that the old style fabrials manipulate Surges. New style ones do not; they manipulate the concepts the spren represent. If you put Syl in a new-style fabrial (I do not recommend doing this, but darnit this is SCIENCE!), it's likely that the fabrial created could be used to sense honor/create honor in those it touches, as well as many more possibilities. She's an honorspren! Try as you might, you'd never get a captured Syl to Lash things.
 
Surges belong to spren, the Nahel spren. (Or, perhaps, you could say that Nahel spren are the Surges, or pieces of them. I'm not sure if non-Nahel spren are of the Surges, but Nahel spren certainly are.) The Parshendi state this:
The betrayal of spren has brought us here. They gave their Surges to human heirs, But not to those who know them most dear, before us. ’Tis no surprise we turned away Unto the gods we spent our days And to become their molding clay, they changed us.

And we also have Shallan's explanation:

“Either,” Shallan said, turning the diamond sphere in her fingers— the tiny gemstone trapped inside glowed with a vigilant light, suspended in glass. “The Surges— the forces that run the world— are more pliable to spren. Or . . . well . . . since spren are pieces of those Surges, maybe it’s that the spren are better at influencing one another. Our bond gives me the ability to manipulate one of the Surges. In this case, light, the power of Illumination.”

 
So, when we see a Soulcaster, or Regrowth fabrial, we should be searching for a Nahel spren somewhere. I think the idea that such spren would 'sacrifice' themselves to permanently become an object like that is ridiculous, since the spren wouldn't get much out of that. Similarly, there's only so many fabrials, which implies that the Radiants were limited in how many they could create. If they weren't limited, and they didn't give literally every single human alive Regrowth fabrials so no one had to die of injuries, the Radiants would have had to be either stupid or uncaring, something I doubt is the case.
 
Spren are mini-Shards of Adonalsium
Syl puts it best, as always:

“He thinks you’re a god. You shouldn’t encourage him.”
“Why not? I am a god.”
He turned his head, looking at her flatly as she sat on his shoulder . “Syl . . .”
“What? I am!” She grinned and held up her fingers, as if pinching something very small. “A little piece of one. Very, very little. You have permission to bow to me now.”

 
We also have this nice WoB:

Q:  I'm guessing it's a RAFO, but why do Honorblades work the way they do?
A:  Honorblades were crafted before Shardblades existed--
Q:  So they were crafted.
A:  They were crafted before Shardblades existed, and all Shardblades that exist came about as certain individuals trying to find out how to copy Honorblades.
Q:  So would it be fair to say that Honorblades are analagous to fabrials in some sense? Trap spren in a crystal yada yada Stormlight power?
A:  There is an analogy there, that I think would pass the SAT's rigor for analogies.
(source)

 
Honor crafted the Honorblades, and spren were able to copy what he did in becoming Shardblades. This is a very, very interesting fact, because it implies spren can copy other things Honor did. Essentially, they are mini-Shards, each with their own Intent. This is not all that surprising, considering that they are pieces of Shards.
 
So, since Honor created the Honorblades by giving up some of his power (Splintering), it seems likely that spren can create things of their own by giving up some of their power. Perhaps not quite as fancy of things as Honor could do (he had power to spare), but certainly it makes sense that spren can Splinter themselves.
 
Well, what do Nahel spren have? Surges. And, for some reason, Radiants ended up with Surgebinding fabrials.
 
So, we can speculate as to the mechanisms behind Soulcasters here: A Cryptic or oilspren (Ivory's type) gave up some of their power and infused it into metal (like Honor infused his power into metal in creating the Honorblades), allowing anyone to use one of their Surges. (Why not both? Well, spren probably don't have that much Investiture to give up, so they can only ever create one fabrial.)
 
Surgebinding fabrials, then, are basically weaker versions of Honorblades. The spren give of themselves, and a weak-Honorblade is created. This probably significantly harms the spren in question, explaining the rarity of fabrials. Each one was a huge sacrifice on the part of the spren. Of course, it's all Investiture in the end, so perhaps spren can recover over a few months by replacing what they lost with Stormlight. I still suspect it is an unpleasant process for the spren.
 
Shardplate
Shardplate shares many characteristics with old style fabrials:

• It uses gems, and the gems do not have captured spren inside.
• When repairing itself, it shatters gems, like Soulcasters. It may also shatter gems when being used a lot to hit things.
• Like new-style fabrials, specifically half-shards, Shardplate is cracked and shattered when hit by a Shardblade, but it is not indestructible like Shardblades seem to be. (Sidenote: I fully expect Nightblood to break Shardblades.)

Most importantly, a lot of the characteristics of Shardplate (increased strength, invisible helmets, etc.) can be explained via usage of Surges.

• Increased strength: the user inside of the Shardplate is probably not actually stronger, but instead the Shardplate probably acts like hydraulics/exosuits. When you move your hand, the suit uses hydraulics to move with you and apply the same force. We can see this as an example of the Gravity Surge, where the Shardplate is Lashed in whatever direction you move.
• Shardplate feels 'light'. This is probably the same as the previous point, but Shardplate doesn't feel heavy when you're wearing it... until it runs out of Stormlight. Perhaps a quarter Lashing upwards is applied to the Shardplate whenever it is active.
• Increased hardness: Shardplate is very hard to dent or break with regular weapons. We can see this as an example of the Tension Surge, which makes it very hard.
• Disappearing helmets: Shardplate becomes transluscent, a property associated with with the Transportation Surge, which can shift you between the Realms. Specifically, it seems plausible that the mechanism at work is that the helmet halfway shifts into Shadesmar. We see an example of this with Pattern in Shadesmar:
  

  It was Pattern. He stood tall and willowy, but slightly indistinct, translucent. The complex pattern of his head, with its sharp lines and impossible geometries, seemed to have no eyes. He stood with hands behind his back, wearing a robe that seemed too stiff to be cloth.

  Pattern is partially in the Physical, not entirely in Shadesmar, so Shallan sees him as transluscent. Sounds similar to Dalinar's helmet to me. When the Radiant in Dalinar's vision causes her helmet to disappear entirely, it seems likely that she just sent her helmet fully into Shadesmar for a moment.
• Self-repairing armor: this one is tricky, but it seems like an example of Transformation. The Shardplate Soulcasts air to metal, while simultaneously drawing the Investiture from the broken parts from wherever they might be, turning them to dust. Also possible: the Growth Surge, though I doubt it works on metal.
• Molding armor: Shardplate molds itself to fit you. Kaladin puts a Shardplate helmet on his hand, and it changes to act like a glove for him. Sounds exactly like Cohesion, which is where you can shape/deform materials.

This is five Surges, and it's entirely possible there's more things that can be done with Shardplate that modern people are unaware of.

 

In any case, Shardplate can easily be explained as being a mixture of several Surgebinding fabrials. Interesting. This would mean that spren need to Splinter themselves to create it, and oh would you look at this...

 

VERY WELL, the Stormfather finally said. THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED. Dalinar smiled. I WILL NOT BE A SIMPLE SWORD TO YOU, the Stormfather warned. I WILL NOT COME AS YOU CALL, AND YOU WILL HAVE TO DIVEST YOURSELF OF THAT . . . MONSTROSITY THAT YOU CARRY. YOU WILL BE A RADIANT WITH NO SHARDS [emphasis mine].

 

The Stormfather says shards, implying that he is also needed for Shardplate.

 

Creating Shardplate

There's a couple of interesting consequences of all this.

 

First of all, to create Shardplate, you'll need at least three Radiants working together to provide spren with the requisite Surges (Transformation/Transportation/Tension/Cohesion/Gravity/possibly more). This is not a new theory; other people have speculated that Kaladin will need to have Shallan help him create Shardplate, because there's a line connecting the Windrunners and Lightweavers. This theory expands on this to say you will need more than two Radiants, and it may even be necessary to have all ten Orders working together to create Shardplate. So... don't expect Kaladin to spontaneously grow Shardplate when he speaks the next two Ideals.

 

Second, we can expect Shardplate to act like an Honorblade does, and drain the Stormlight of the wielder. No gems needed! We might expect this to decrease Stormlight efficiency for the Radiants (it didn't help out Kaladin), but I suspect this is not of much concern. In fact, since it surrounds the Radiant, the Shardplate may just drain the Stormlight radiated from the wielder, allowing them a more perfect retention of Stormlight.

 

This also has obvious consequences for Honorblades: they drain Stormlight from Szeth, so it seems very likely that they have some extra tricks to them we haven't seen yet. That drained Stormlight has to be going somewhere and doing something. Kalak remarks in TWoK that Honorblades are weapons of power beyond Shardblades, and so far all we've seen is that they're a worse version of what Kaladin gets from Syl. Expect great things.

 

If anyone has any thoughts/criticisms, I'd appreciate them. The theory has a few holes in it (particularly Transformation as self-repair of Plate), but this post was long enough without me writing refutations of every paragraph.

Edited April 17, 2014 by Moogle

[PorridgeBrick]

Cool theory. Just a thought, however. I think Shardplate/fabrials should require a significantly smaller investment than you are describing. All the combat orders, very possibly all the Radiants, have Shardplate. Each has one spren, yet Shardplate as your theory dictates needs a lot of spren to sacrifice a considerable portion of their power. For this to be possible, any spren should be capable of producing at least several fabrials from their power instead of just 1-2. Factor in the other fabrials, too, and then they probably have the capacity for anywhere from 6-12 (depending on how available old-style fabrials are).

Also, a capacity of Shardplate you missed. It absorbs lightning from the Parshendi. Not sure what Surge that could be, but it's worth mentioning.

Edited April 17, 2014 by PorridgeBrick

[Moogle]

Cool theory. Just a thought, however. I think Shardplate/fabrials should require a significantly smaller investment than you are describing. All the combat orders, very possibly all the Radiants, have Shardplate.

 

Good thought.

 

I'm thinking that the spren could restore whatever power they gave up over time by absorbing Stormlight from their Radiant, so there may have been quite a lot of fabrials that were lost. Shardplate is a bit more useful than a single Surge fabrial, though I suppose something like Transportation is a bit more flexible than Shardplate. I'd still expect spren to prioritize Plate over other Surges.

 

Another possible Shardplate use: It's also possible that Shardplate lets you teleport to other Radiants, which is why the Stoneward only showed up after the Windrunner flew in in Dalinar's vision. That seems more like something you'd use a fabrial for, though.

 

Absorbing lightning could just be a property of how Invested the metal is, but it might also be a use of Pressure creating a vacuum or something. I'd have to look up a few constants to see how viable that would be, though.