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Shardplate interferes with surgebinding?


Wolf Brother

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In the prologue in WOK it says,

"Szeth didn't own a set of Shardplate himself, and didn't care to. His Lashings interfered with the gemstones that powered Shardplate, and he had to choose from one or the other".

Is this because he gets his surgebinding from a "Honourblade"?

This what I think because neither Kalak or Jezrien are wearing any in the prelude, and the Radiants in Dalinar's visions are using their surgebinding while wearing plate.

Edited by Wolf Brother
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Actually, I asked Brandon in the 17th Q/A we had about this. Here's the quote:

 

  

This has to do with the nature of the magics in the cosmere. They interfere with one another. Something that contains a lot of power--we call it investiture--resists the efforts of magic to influence it. A strong spirit can interfere as well. 

Which is interesting, especially the strong spirit part of it. This, combined with the fact that I think we have WoB somewhere that says that plate was available to all orders of Radiants, but not all of them chose to use it. This leads me to believe that the Windrunners didn't use plate at all, regardless of the Dalinar visions; I think those are different orders.

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I'm thinking that's because ancient plate was powered by the Surgebinders themselves, and the use of Stormlight directly from gems is a more modern approach.

 

That begs the question though, how did everyone make the technological advancement of powering by gems at or after the day of recreance?  It is spoken of that their tech level was pretty low.  Their fabrials may have been more advanced.  But, I think that much of that knowledge was held by the KR rather than the general population.  Seems that they would have been essentially unable to use the plate at all.  Most sets would have been abandoned as useless.  I would think that this would result in large clumpings of plate ownership rather than dispersed ownership.  (granted, a couple of thousand years could disperse things out).  Also, there doesn't seem to be a major imbalance between the number of sets of plate and the number of blades.  The plate would be hard to lose track of though since they can't be concealed like a blade can.  

 

Actually, I asked Brandon in the 17th Q/A we had about this. Here's the quote:

Which is interesting, especially the strong spirit part of it. This, combined with the fact that I think we have WoB somewhere that says that plate was available to all orders of Radiants, but not all of them chose to use it. This leads me to believe that the Windrunners didn't use plate at all, regardless of the Dalinar visions; I think those are different orders.

 

That quote seems to more fully address targeting plate with surges rather than simply using plate in conjunction with surgebinding as Szeth was talking about.

Edited by Shardlet
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I always assumed it was just the fact that the gemstones powered the plate and, since Surgebinding uses Stormlight, the Lashings would possible suck Stormlight form the stones powering the plate if the Surgebinder did not hold Stormlight within them already. This could be totally off since Szeth seems to have good control over taking in Stormlight.

Maybe it's just a personal preference for him. Maybe, despite offering greater strength to the wearer, the plate is still too cumbersome -in his opinion- for the maneuvers he uses.

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I always assumed it was just the fact that the gemstones powered the plate and, since Surgebinding uses Stormlight, the Lashings would possible suck Stormlight form the stones powering the plate if the Surgebinder did not hold Stormlight within them already. This could be totally off since Szeth seems to have good control over taking in Stormlight.

Maybe it's just a personal preference for him. Maybe, despite offering greater strength to the wearer, the plate is still too cumbersome -in his opinion- for the maneuvers he uses.

 

These were my thoughts exactly.

I suppose that we'll have several books to figure it out for sure.  If we can all survive that long.

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