Biology of Gemhearts

[Oudeis he/him]

((Standard new-theory disclaimer: I believe I've confirmed that no one else has posted a thread on this topic yet, but if I'm wrong, I apologize))

 

What's up with gemhearts? What biological purpose do they serve? How can they possibly interact with greatshell physiology?

 

From Chapter 26, The Feather, gemhearts are connected by veins and sinew. Huh? Sinew I guess maybe just holds it stationery, or is it actually connected as though it's a muscle? Do the muscles/organs connected to the gemheart matter? And what about veins? So... blood is pumped into/away from the gemheart? (Recall that this is Adolin looking at it, so it's possible he doesn't actually understand enough biology to give us an accurate description).

 

So... random hypothesis. The sinew holds the gemheart in place. The gemheart absorbs stormlight from highstorms in bursts, then lets it out slowly in a form the rest of the body can use. Much as stormlight-infused gems encourage rockbuds to grow faster for the listeners to eat them, maybe stormlight infuses the blood? Isn't the heart the first thing that gives out when a creature grows too large? Perhaps there's a special organelle, not much more than a sack, that brings blood to the gemheart, where it can get stormlight enriched, then dispersed to the rest of the body? Does this allow the actual biological heart to do less work, explaining why such a monster is possible? Does the stormlight simply feed the spren, and then the spren does something else? If so, then presumably not much other physical, biological infrastructure would be necessary. Are gemhearts Invested when they are pulled out of a Greatshell?

 

Also how do gemhearts grow? Are carbon molecules simply added via a biological process until a diamond grows bigger?

[gjustice99 she/her]

I don't think that Rosharians have studied the greatshells enough to know much about their anatomy, but I do think that there is evidence that gemhearts grow. I'm pretty sure somewhere in Stormlight Archive it is mentioned that larger greatshells have larger gemhearts.

[king of nowhere]

I believe the most logical explanation is "yes" to all of your questions.

i wonder if, during the weeping, especially in light years, they go through a sort of hybernation to save stormlight.

from a biological point of view, i doubt there's much a gemheart can do for the metabolism, however it would be absolutely no problem for a specifically evolved protein to deposit a crystal lattice. compared to dna replication, depositing a diamond out of carbohydrates is fairly easy (we can do the first but not the second only because we use natural-occurring proteins for it. it's sort of like having retroenginered some piece of alien technology).

I think it can be compared to our teeth. they also are an inorganic structure growing out of our body and connected to it.

[potato]

I would imagine that they feed the spren that allow the general health functions to operate. I'll throw a random thought out there, though- Maybe they steal some of Odium's mojo, lessening his effect on Roshar.

[Moogle]

It is notable that greatshells all have bonds with spren. As we know from modern fabrials, captured spren, when given Stormlight, often give off an immense effect. And if you were to use a gemheart to power a modern fabrial, why, you might even get an effect large enough to allow something as big as a greatshell to exist when by all rights the square-cube law says it shouldn't.
 
(Also, sprenbonds don't seem to do a whole lot on their own, Nahel bondees included. You typically need Stormlight to get anything special out of that.)
 
As to how they grow, WoB:

Viper
Ok. The gemhearts/stormgems/whatever that are grown inside the beasts in Way of Kings ... is that the same as the way Atium is grown inside geodes in the Pits of Hathsin?

Brandon Sanderson
It's similar. The pits are an area where there's like a leak from the spiritual realm into the physical. That's what happens there.

(source)

 

And while I'm at it, the spren being required for them to exist out of the oceans:

Observer

What are the smoke-y spren that appear around a dead chasmfiend?

 

Brandon Sanderson

They are in a symbiotic relationship with the chasmfiend, and are part of what allow the creatures to grow to the size they do with an exoskeleton. (Along with a high-oxygen, lower-gravity world.)

(source)

 

He says it is 'symbiotic', which suggests the chasmfiend is feeding the spren somehow. Stormlight is my first thought.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Moogle

[Oudeis he/him]

Ah yes. So... this is odd, however. Since gemhearts are probably comparatively common, yet if they form "like atium" you might expect them to be godcrystals, the way atium is a godmetal... yet there is no mention of gemhearts being any different from other gems, apart from simply larger. So I guess it's an example of a perfectly mundane focus, simply being created via spiritual leakage a la atium? We've seen many gemhearts peripupation and at least one post-pupation... did the text indicate whether or not the one Kaladin slew had pupated yet? Regardless, there didn't seem to be anything altogether special about the first one we ever see, from one of the biggest chasmfiends there's ever been, which had already pupated.

 

Hrm. And Gavilar said something about the chasmfiends being the listener gods, and the listeners didn't want their gods back, and the Forms of Power are supposed to be 'of the Gods'... do the gemhearts have something to do with voidspren? Can chasmfiends bring on voidspren? Are the gemhearts prisons, perhaps? Do chasmfiends, with their massive gemhearts inside, draw in voidspren and lock them away safely? Is that why the Last Legion moved to the Shattered Plains, to stay in an area where voidspren would have trouble appearing? Is this the ecological impact said to be brought about by the two armies killing so many greatshells before they can pupate?

 

I'm wildly down the rabbit hole at this point, I'm not even claiming I actually hypothesize any of these, I'm just spitballing to see what conversation it sparks.

[potato]

Hrm. And Gavilar said something about the chasmfiends being the listener gods, and the listeners didn't want their gods back, and the Forms of Power are supposed to be 'of the Gods'... do the gemhearts have something to do with voidspren? Can chasmfiends bring on voidspren? Are the gemhearts prisons, perhaps? Do chasmfiends, with their massive gemhearts inside, draw in voidspren and lock them away safely? Is that why the Last Legion moved to the Shattered Plains, to stay in an area where voidspren would have trouble appearing? Is this the ecological impact said to be brought about by the two armies killing so many greatshells before they can pupate?

I'm wildly down the rabbit hole at this point, I'm not even claiming I actually hypothesize any of these, I'm just spitballing to see what conversation it sparks.

That's what I wonder. The listeners were a nonfactor for eons and brought back by wholesale slaughter of the greatshells. I'm thinking Odium's presence on Roshar must be dependent upon minimum expense of endowment on greatshells (maybe matched with cultivations help).

[Oudeis he/him]

Endowment? When did Endowment leave Nalthis?

[king of nowhere]

I always figured that the greatshells being listeners god was an alethi misunderstanding, but yes, maybe there is more to it. maybe they were the factor keeping odium's power out.

[Oudeis he/him]

They were almost certainly a misunderstanding, but my question is, what was misunderstood? I find it unlikely that the listeners tried to get across the idea that, "We were thinking we might have soup for lunch today," and the Alethi misunderstood it as, "The Chasmfiends are our gods!" so I'm speculating as to what the initial idea might be. Pointing to a greatshell and trying to use gestures and limited vocabulary to explain, "We can be here because those things trap our gods" could possibly be misunderstood as "those big things are gods!" Massively speculative, I grant. Just throwing it out there, trying to tie together a few random scraps of information we suspect/know.

[hoser he/him]

Baseless speculation:  The Alethi heard that the listeners had gods.  Seeing the Chasmfiends around and not understanding the relationship w/the Unmade, the Alethi put 2 and 5 together to make 4. 

[Oudeis he/him]

Eh... that feels like something of a stretch, for all the alethi to just assume that the listeners worship greatshells without any reason whatsoever. The listeners must've said SOMETHING which ended up being misconstrued; "We believe Gods exist" seems like not enough.

 

Though, I guess since it's pretty commonly known that the Reshi worship their islands... though it's not as well-known that their islands are Greatshells...

[Patrick Star]

Actually, those sinews and other stuff inside of a gemheart are fiber optics cables.

 

To promote the Knights Radiant, Tanavest started offering complimentary gigabit ethernet with the second oath.

 

Odium is actually a future conglomerate of Comcast, Verizon, and other cable companies trying to keep Roshar offline.

 

So when the voidbringers come and the lights go out, they're actually disconnecting the internet.

 

STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE IS NET NEUTRALITY!

 

Edit: Greatshells and other gemhearted creatures serve as public wi-fi.

Edited November 20, 2014 by Patrick Star

[Oudeis he/him]

There isn't a clap slow enough.

[Twenty@20 he/him]

Have we considered how a gemheart inside a great shell can get infused with Stormlight? Spheres and regular gems need direct exposure to Stormlight during storms- keeping them indoors leaves them dun.

Is it possible that the greatshells directly absorb stormlight via a bond with their symbiotic spren and store it in their gemhearts?

[Titan Arum]

Have we considered how a gemheart inside a great shell can get infused with Stormlight? Spheres and regular gems need direct exposure to Stormlight during storms- keeping them indoors leaves them dun.

Is it possible that the greatshells directly absorb stormlight via a bond with their symbiotic spren and store it in their gemhearts?

I was thinking about this as well. If gemhearts are really like giant jewels, but act like a heart...what if the veins and arteries to and from the gemheart don't actually carry blood, but are instead the network for stormlight to travel throughout the body?

 

The Greatshells absorb stromlight directly through their carapaces (maybe with the help of their spren), who then share some of this stormlight directly with their spren. Once absorbed, the stormlight then uses these veins and arteries to infuse the gemheart and then disperse it back through the body of the beast by providing the requisite energy needed to BECOME a Greatshell. Thus, without the bond with the spren and the capacity to grow a large gemheart, there wouldn't be Greatshells. I'd say the symbiotic relationship with the spren is the key to the existence of the Greatshells, but the spren need a lot of stormlight which allows the beasts to get to their immense sizes. 

[Moogle]

Have we considered how a gemheart inside a great shell can get infused with Stormlight? Spheres and regular gems need direct exposure to Stormlight during storms- keeping them indoors leaves them dun.

Is it possible that the greatshells directly absorb stormlight via a bond with their symbiotic spren and store it in their gemhearts?

 

I don't expect they need anything special to be infused. I imagine if someone swallowed a sphere, it would be infused in their stomach out in a highstorm. The person would just have to be outside and exposed to the storm. People are "porous" for Stormlight, after all. It should be able to go in just as easily as it goes out.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Moogle

[Twenty@20 he/him]

I don't expect they need anything special to be infused. I imagine if someone swallowed a sphere, it would be infused in their stomach out in a highstorm. The person would just have to be outside and exposed to the storm. People are "porous" for Stormlight, after all. It should be able to go in just as easily as it goes out.

Is it significant that we never saw a glowing gemheart being harvested from a chasmfiend or a pupating one? Or can it be explained in some other way?

Edited November 21, 2014 by Twenty@20

[Moogle]

Is it significant that we never saw a glowing gemheart being harvested from a chasmfiend or a pupating one? Or can it be explained in some other way?

 

All the gemhearts we've seen glow (or can be assumed to be glowing):

“You know how everyone kept saying there was a chasmfiend prowling about in the nearby chasms?”

“Yes . . .”

Kaladin lifted the remnants of his coat away from the table, revealing a massive green gemstone. Though bulbous and uncut, the gemheart shone with a powerful inner light.

 

“Sadeas?” Hatham called out to him. “What have you done here?”

After a quick moment of decision, Sadeas lifted his arm back and hurled the gemheart across the plateau separating them. It hit the rock near Hatham and bounced along in a roll, glowing faintly.

 

He sighed, lowering his Blade, opening his eyes. Amaram approached across the battlefield, stepping over corpses of men and Parshendi. His Shardplate was bloodied purple up to the elbows, and he carried a glimmering gemheart in one gauntleted hand.

 

I suppose the last one isn't quite evidence, but the second one definitely is.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Moogle

[Oudeis he/him]

The gemstones themselves are encased in glass, in spheres. Clearly the stormlight can get through that. It becomes a matter of, what can Stormlight penetrate, and what can't it? We know that it can penetrate a few millimeters of glass, and it cannot penetrate a wall of stone. The body of a chasmfiend is apparently something in between all that. Perhaps there are 'vents' which open in the carapace which allow the ingress of Stormlight? Or the carapace has somehow evolved to be porous to the energy? Or the unique phenomenon of growing gemhearts pulls the stormlight through the carapace?

 

Hrm. What materials are more porous to stormlight, and which are less? Is there a metal especially conducive, so one could put their spheres safely in a locker outside without fear of loss or theft? Is there a metal especially resistant? If I'm walking along with my spheres in a purse lined with aluminum, would they be safe from Shallan taking my Stormlight?

[Twenty@20 he/him]

Ya. The Sadeas example looks definite. A rough, uncut gem that glows is most likely due to Stormlight. Kind of missed that because none of the character explicitly comment about the gemhearts being infused with stormlight when harvested.

[Moogle]

Hrm. What materials are more porous to stormlight, and which are less? Is there a metal especially conducive, so one could put their spheres safely in a locker outside without fear of loss or theft? Is there a metal especially resistant? If I'm walking along with my spheres in a purse lined with aluminum, would they be safe from Shallan taking my Stormlight?

 

If you relate it to the mists, I don't think Stormlight is necessarily "stopped" by a stone wall. It seems more like a Cognitive thing: Mists can't go indoors (when they do, they quickly dissipate), and so neither can Stormlight. A chasmfiend is outdoors, not inside, so it gets Stormlight. Whether or not a bag counts as "indoors" is an interesting question, though. I just don't think what material the enclosure is made of matters too much.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Moogle

[Oudeis he/him]

Eh... this plays into the "cognitive trumps everything, nothing else matters" mindset I don't personally see much support for. Yes, there are absolutely and undeniably examples of times when a cognitive aspect proves most important. There are also times physical things prove important, and times spiritual things prove important. If cognitive were truly the one and only thing that mattered, crazy people would be able to fly.

 

It's possible, but I don't think it's presumptive.

[Mckeedee123 he/him]

In Shallan's sketch of the chasmfiend, she comments that the same type of spren that follow the chasmfiend around were also tailing skyeels back in Kharbranth. I think the spren almost definitely help it defy gravity.  I'm sure that if you cut a skyeel open, you would find a very tiny gemheart.

[Shaggai]

Eh... this plays into the "cognitive trumps everything, nothing else matters" mindset I don't personally see much support for. Yes, there are absolutely and undeniably examples of times when a cognitive aspect proves most important. There are also times physical things prove important, and times spiritual things prove important. If cognitive were truly the one and only thing that mattered, crazy people would be able to fly.

 

It's possible, but I don't think it's presumptive.

We do have an example of free Investiture being unable to break a Cognitive inside/outside barrier, though. That makes it more likely that it would work.