KaIadin he/him Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 How much Stormlight can be stored in each type of gem (broadly). Also, would this gem store a high amount of Stormlight?
Stormgate he/him Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 Well, we don't have numbers. Also, each gem can hold an amount of Stormlight relative to how well it was cut. Perfectly cut gemstones will not leak Stormlight according to a WoB I don't know where it is. So, that gemstone would likely not hold as much as it could.
Landis963 he/him Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 Also, it's an opal. Opals aren't listed in the Ten Essences as Stormlight-compatible gemstones.
Moogle Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 Color and cut are important: ArsenoPyrite ()I have a technical question here re: gemstones in The Stormlight Archive. How are the lines drawn between different types of gems? Emerald and Heliodor are both varieties of the mineral beryl. Emerald can get its color from trace amounts of chromium, vanadium and/or iron. Heliodor gets its color from iron combined with microscopic crystal defects. So, is the line between these two defined by color? If so, would a heliodor lose its usefulness if it were heated (which would turn it colorless or pale blue). Is it defined by trace elements—in which case, how do you deal with emeralds, or with aquamarine (the blue variety of beryl, which can also contain chromium or vanadium in small quantities and is mostly colored by iron)? Sorry for getting so technical, but this gem nerd needs to know!Brandon SandersonI actually spent a long time working on this while building the world. You'd probably be amused by how long I spent on it. Chemically, many of them are actually very similar, as you pointed out. I tried doing the book originally with them all being different, not using any that were basically the same crystal with different colors, but it didn't work out. There weren't enough, and so I had to stretch to make it all work.So, I went back to the original, and decided that color was enough to differentiate them. Just as steel and iron are very similar in the Mistborn world, emerald and heliodor can be very similar—but produce different effects. The idea here is that the physical items (like the metals or the crystals) provide a key by which magical interaction occurs.So, in a long winded answer, a gemstone with an impure color would be considered like a bad alloy in the Mistborn magic—it either wouldn't work at all, or would work very poorly. The chemical and color signature needs to be of a specific variety to provide the proper key to accessing the power of transformation.(source) Chris King (Miyabi)Two more questions here: Do bigger gems store more stormlight for longer than smaller gems? So a broam would hold it for twenty hours where a chip might hold it for six hours or something.Brandon SandersonThe cut of the gem and how flawless the gem is has more to do with how long the stormlight stays than size.(source) Now with that said, recently Brandon was asked on whether or not a gemstone drained of color via Awakening could still hold Stormlight. He answered, I believe, that it still could - so this WoB likely applies only to Soulcasting and thus color/type doesn't really matter. However, this WoB is too recent to be found in the database, and I couldn't find a posted transcript of it during my search of the forums, so please take this with a gigantic heap of salt. 1
Eagle of the Forest Path he/him Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 I'd like to tack on a related question. If you worldhopped to Roshar and took along a pearl or a piece of amber, would they be able to hold stormlight?
DreamEternal Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 I'd like to tack on a related question. If you worldhopped to Roshar and took along a pearl or a piece of amber, would they be able to hold stormlight? They are not part of the ten polestones, so I'd guess no.
Moogle Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 Found that WoB: [01:34:08] zas: If an Awakener went to Roshar and bled color from a gem, would this gem still hold Stormlight? Brandon: If an Awakener bled-- No it would-- Oh wait yes it would because a colorless gem could still hold Stormlight. It just would not have. zas: Would not have the properties of the original color. Brandon: Yeah, the color is integral to what’s going on because molecularly some of these gems are the same except for the different coloring. The coloring is kind of what-- zas: what defines what magic Brandon: Yeah. [it has to with fabrials] some of the effects, and that relates directly to the spren and what spren-- anyway. (source) To me, this is suggestive that non-polestones can maybe hold Stormlight? Or it could be that a color-drained gemstone is considered a diamond. I lean towards the latter interpretation because Brandon said "no" initially.
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