Honorplate???

[cjhand he/him]

Hi I'm new to the forums, but had a thought about the Heralds. Syl says that the spren imitated the allmighty when it came to Radiant powers and the Shardblades, but what about

Shardplate? If Shardplate is something that the spren imitated as well what did they imitate? How? What abilities did it grant?

Just a thought

[Argent he/him]

An interesting question - I don't remember any of the Heralds (the one in The Way of Kings prelude or Taln in the epilogue) showing up with Plate, be it Shard- or Honor-. This leads me to believe that the Shardplate is a human - or human & spren - invention. A very powerful fabrial, perhaps (though I suspect it has to be more than just that). What do we know about Shardplate?

DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING WILL FEATURE SEEMINGLY RANDOM AND DISORGANIZED THOUGHTS

• It's very durable. My guess is that this is somehow related to the the augmenter fabrials, which are said to work with any one of the ten Polestones. Except it has to be even more than that - it probably taps into at least one of the ten Surges (Cohesion or Tension, maybe, I still don't differentiate those two well enough).
• Normal fabrials work by harnessing the power of a captured spren - which in turn harnesses the very power of creation, the fundamental surges. In this regard my hypothesis that Shardplate is essentially a fabrial seems well supported.
• It is possible that there is something fundamentally different in the spren pre-Recreance and post-Recreance (assuming all Plates were created before the Recreance, which feels like a safe assumption to me); they could've been more powerful somehow back then.
• Alternatively, maybe fabrials before the Recreance were created in a different way - artifacts such as the Oathgates certainly suggest that the ancient artifabrians knew something Navani & co. don't. Maybe they didn't use spren back then - which seems reasonable, since I doubt the Radiants were very happy about scientists and engineers trapping the brothers, sisters, and coisins of their bonded spren. Perhaps one of the Orders was responsible for the creation of those ancient wonders, including the Shardplate, and so we should be looking at Surges, not spren? The (Re)Growth aspect of Progression sounds like something that could be involved in the process of regrowing a Shardplate from even a single piece of it. The improved strength, speed, and agility a Shardbearer gains when wearing Plate sound very similar to the effects produced by simply infusing oneself with Stormlight - though, admittedly, this is not a very strong argument, as everything magical on Roshar relies on Stormlight.

So... blame it on the Truthwatchers and Lightweavers? Neither Order strikes me as a good fit. If anything, I'd guess Truthwatchers and Bondsmiths working together - but this a very shaky guess. Still, I feel the Radiants were somehow involved - either directly, or through their spren.

[Carlos Stormblessed he/him]

I like your points Argent. I do think they probably are made from, if not are, an ancient form of fabrial. 

Tor had a good reread of the chapter in WOK that talks about the "glowing armor" that the radiants had at their time. 

 

"Now the Knights Radiant bring up some questions outside of what they have to say. Namely, the fact that having the blades and plate doesn’t seem to effect them the same as they do in Dalinar’s time. First it glows which is easiest to explain since they are channeling Stormlight—which modern wearers don’t do—and also they seem to be able to make their helmets appear and disappear at will, which is handy trick. "

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/07/the-way-of-kings-reread-chapters-19-and-20

 

I think Kaladin will get shardplate eventually and be like the Radiant in the above chapter. I hope at least. 

[Argent he/him]

The one thing to keep in mind, however, is that Plate also seems to have changed it. Shardplate in modern days absorbs any Stormlight from its surroundings if it has been damaged - and that includes the Shardbearer if he or she is a Surgebinder. So if Kaladin were to don a modern Shardplate, infuse himself with Stormlight, and then take a few strong blows to the armor, the Plate would start draining him of his Light.

 

Though I should mention, it's also possible that there is a trick to making the Plate not eat your own Light. Maybe the armor hasn't changed, but because the Radiant lore was lost for such a long time, the current Surgebinders just don't know how to control it well enough to prevent loss of Light or to (un)summon the helm.

[TomR]

If Shardplate is something that the spren imitated as well what did they imitate? How?

WOR Shardblades spoiler:

One difference between Radiants and Heralds may be that Honorblades are pure Honor while nahel spren are a mix. Therefore, I figured that spren get the power to become Blades from their link to the Shard Honor and the ability to make Plate from their link to the Shard Cultivation. The Heralds in the past would then not have used Plate because they lacked any Cultivation.

[TwistedMisting she/her]

My personal theory is that the spren are involved in making plate. We see that modern shardbearers have to place a gemstone in a shardblade in order to bond it. Well my theory is that modern plate has gems inserted to make them work, but that this wasn't necessary when the original Radiants used their plate. For me, the difference in how plate functions in Roshar's present compared to how it seems to function in Dalinar's visions, says that this is more than a fabrial. It must be a creation of the spren.

 

The only hole in this (as far as I can see) is that our nascent Radiants don't hear screams when they wear or touch plate.

[11thorderknight]

I'm betting that the the plate comes after the blade in the progression, that's it's the physical manifestation of a full Radiants ability to hold and internally use Stormlight. Think about it - the benefits that Shardplate gives modern Shardbearers are basically the benefits of holding Stormlight, with the notable exception that when damaged, Stormlight will regrow the plate rather than the wearer. A surgebinder like Kaladin can take on a Shardbearer because he gets the same benefits. Eventually, he'll get so good at holding in Stormlight that he won't leak it, and it it will manifest instead as him wearing glowing plate.

[Carlos Stormblessed he/him]

I'm betting that the the plate comes after the blade in the progression, that's it's the physical manifestation of a full Radiants ability to hold and internally use Stormlight. Think about it - the benefits that Shardplate gives modern Shardbearers are basically the benefits of holding Stormlight, with the notable exception that when damaged, Stormlight will regrow the plate rather than the wearer. A surgebinder like Kaladin can take on a Shardbearer because he gets the same benefits. Eventually, he'll get so good at holding in Stormlight that he won't leak it, and it it will manifest instead as him wearing glowing plate.

 

I really like this. I think it makes sense and fits with my previous thoughts. I really think Shardplate comes from spren in some way. I think the spren creates it, but is not necessarily it like the blade.

[KasA97]

Remember the quote from Szeth, "Holding his breath, he clung to the Stormlight. He could still feel it leaking out. Stormlight could be held for only a short time, a few minutes at most. It leaked away, the human body too porous a container. He had heard that the Voidbringers could hold it in perfectly." My theory is that Shardplate was used by the Knights Radiant to retain Stormlight more efficiently.

[darkanimereal1]

• Alternatively, maybe fabrials before the Recreance were created in a different way - artifacts such as the Oathgates certainly suggest that the ancient artifabrians knew something Navani & co. don't. Maybe they didn't use spren back then - which seems reasonable, since I doubt the Radiants were very happy about scientists and engineers trapping the brothers, sisters, and coisins of their bonded spren. Perhaps one of the Orders was responsible for the creation of those ancient wonders, including the Shardplate, and so we should be looking at Surges, not spren? The (Re)Growth aspect of Progression sounds like something that could be involved in the process of regrowing a Shardplate from even a single piece of it. The improved strength, speed, and agility a Shardbearer gains when wearing Plate sound very similar to the effects produced by simply infusing oneself with Stormlight - though, admittedly, this is not a very strong argument, as everything magical on Roshar relies on Stormlight.

 

The one thing to keep in mind, however, is that Plate also seems to have changed it. Shardplate in modern days absorbs any Stormlight from its surroundings if it has been damaged - and that includes the Shardbearer if he or she is a Surgebinder. So if Kaladin were to don a modern Shardplate, infuse himself with Stormlight, and then take a few strong blows to the armor, the Plate would start draining him of his Light.

 

Though I should mention, it's also possible that there is a trick to making the Plate not eat your own Light. Maybe the armor hasn't changed, but because the Radiant lore was lost for such a long time, the current Surgebinders just don't know how to control it well enough to prevent loss of Light or to (un)summon the helm.

 

These thoughts line up most with what I was thinking. I really don't think that trapping spren in fabrial is a good thing. It just seems very... brutal, I guess? Even if these are spren that can't think, I've pointed out in another thread that even spren that can't think now have the potential to develop sentience (Pattern, for instance, says that he couldn't think back during the time of the KR, but he can now). Trapping spren just does not feel like the right thing to do. 

 

I was kind of tripping up by the fact that the Oathgate is itself a fabrial, and I started to wonder if I had the wrong idea. However, it seems like the fabrial is run more by the person using stormlight than a trapped spren. Because of this, I'm on board the idea that fabrial worked differently before the Recreance. I'm guessing that, just like people added gems to the shardblades so that they could bond them, people also added gems to the plate to run them.

 

Remember the quote from Szeth, "Holding his breath, he clung to the Stormlight. He could still feel it leaking out. Stormlight could be held for only a short time, a few minutes at most. It leaked away, the human body too porous a container. He had heard that the Voidbringers could hold it in perfectly." My theory is that Shardplate was used by the Knights Radiant to retain Stormlight more efficiently.

 

I really like this idea. This may also explain why the Heralds didn't have shardplate. Honorblades do not allow you to retain stormlight efficiently. Maybe they just weren't able to because it would take too much stormlight.

[KasA97]

I'm leaning more and more to the idea that Shardplate is a kind of fabrial. However, it also requires an active Nahel Bond to function to its full extent. I'm getting this from when the Stormfather tells Dalinar that he will be a Radiant with no Shards. If we can assume that Shardplate is in fact a Shard (rather than a misnomer) then the spren have a very active role in its functionality. Shardplate also has some advanced features that became apparent when Adolin was fighting the Parshendi in their stormform. Adolin's plate sort of absorbed the red lightning (I think). This leads me to believe that Shardplate has many features yet undiscovered.