Who makes the spheres?

[name_here]

Modern currency is fiat currency, and destroying it for raw materials is a criminal offense. I don't think Roshar is really centralized enough to enforce that.

[Shardlet]

Another thing that hit me are, how much cost to buy a single bread in US? Something around 10 or so cents, correct ?

 

I wish.  A cheap loaf here costs about $1 and a decent loaf costs ~$2 on sale.

[Gloom]

Okay, I wasn't trying to say that silica was rare, just that it wasn't as easily accessible as it is on earth. I would imagine that it is a fairly common waste product of mining. We know that mining exists, it was mentioned several times in TWoKs. I'm still extremely doubtful that spheres are soulcast. I'm even more dubious that anyone with a soulcaster would feel that spheres are a good power source for soulcasting. I'm not saying that you couldn't use a sphere to soulcast, I'm saying that it would lack a great deal of usefulness do to the size and quality of the gemstones embedded within them. That anyone who had access to a soulcaster would more than likely have access to gems that would be of greater utility.

 

Soulcasting exacts its own price. It leads to gemstones which are shattered, which leads to gemstones of lesser value. I know that the gems don't always shatter, but I don't know that their is a known threshold, or that any existing thresholds for stormlight usage are constant with any given gem type.

[EmagSamurai]

I would tend to agree that soulcasting to encapsulate gems would seem to be a waste. Unless they put the "trainees" to work doing it. Even then it seems like a pretty big undertaking to keep up with demand.

 

Sounds like we generally agree that silica is at least a common substance, so the question is then where do they get it in a form that is easy to turn to glass (e.g. sand). Crem still seems like a candidate. Obviously it's not entirely composed of sand, but if sand is a component it shouldn't be hard to separate it out before the crem solidifies.

[18th Shard]

I think there is alot to be said about the reason they use spheres is because they could hold stormlight.

 

Make sense that they are "originally batteries for surgebinders" and with time they lost this utility and begin to be "only" the curency.

On Scadrial, atium (not by chance) is a form of currency mainly due to its value Allomantically. This could be true of spheres, too.

[Swimmingly]

What if the shattered chips left over from Soulcasting are the gem chips in spheres, or at least a significant source of them?

[Beautor]

What if the shattered chips left over from Soulcasting are the gem chips in spheres, or at least a significant source of them?

 

In Chapter 36 'The Lesson' after Jasnah soulcasts the footpads she removes the cracked smokestone from her soulcaster and it states that the cracked gem will be sold to a gemsmith who will cut smaller gemstones from the salvaged pieces. This certainly could be the pieces that are used in producing spheres. I'd say that gemsmiths would also be good candidates for who produces the spheres.

[hoser]

Given the rarity and expense of using the soulcasters, I imagine factories to produce the spheres. Depending on the level of technology, I see either multiple glass-blowers or a process of molds and polishing. 

[Bramble Thorn]

My guess is they soulcast the stock feed glass. Since each soulcast has a small chance to crack the powering gem, probably quite a bit at a time. The glass blower gets it just hot enough to melt, and with a manipulating rod, encases a gem fragment inside like amber. They make a bead, and lets it free fall through the air into a barrel of water.

 

Also guessing this the something the glass blowers have plenty of experience with. Also that legally, this is not legally a problem. as the gems are the wealth, and not representative of something else, and the glass is protection.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Bramble Thorn