Nature of Shardplate

[Calderis he/him]

@Pathfinder

I currently prefer the "condensed stormlight" idea to the spren theory, primarily because of the Identity issue. 

I don't actually say that that's definitively what it is because, like RShara, I currently don't think there's enough information. 

Regardless, as I've said repeatedly, I definitely think that the spren are involved in the creation of plate, but I do not believe they compose the material. 

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Ok, I'm pretty sure I just had a crazy moment, but hear me out for a second with this very much on-the-spot hypothesis.

 

What if Shardplate is lesser spren (at least as a framework for Stormlight to be formed into Plate), but not in the way most people think that means?

What if the nahel bond at (at least approximately) 4th Ideal is strong enough to connect to a batch of Lesser spren, which then have their Identity... changed. Not "overwritten", but... ... re-harmonized? There's a word for what I'm thinking of, basically i'm picturing Identity as a specific Frequency that the spiritweb vibrates at, and by changing that frequency, the Identity shifts. So the Radiant bonds a batch of Lesser spren, and the bond transfers the radiant's Identity frequency to the spren, and makes their Identities all... "resonate" with the Radiant Identity. So, the Radiant's Investiture can 'penetrate' through their own Shardplate because the Identity frequency is similar enough to their personal Identity that it can wiggle through the plate. And I imagine at 5th oath the Identity becomes even more closely resonating, so the Plate is even easier to Surgebind through, thus needing less Stormlight to "brute force" through the lesser spren Identity of the plate.

And if the lesser spren are just forming a framework for the Plate, that still allows the lower durability of plate to make sense, and the ability for "dead" plate to be healed with Stormlight suddenly becomes a matter of Stormlight just naturally doing what it does: restoring the physical to a Spiritual ideal, filtered through the Cognitive. The Lesser spren of Plate still have that altered Identity from their old Radiants (which is why you can't Lash through it in modern times) and need Stormlight to repair their Physical form back to their natural, Spiritual ideal. The lesser spren are Connected (by the lingering bond provided by the Radiant) to each other, and are in effect their own Spiritweb, which Stormlight can heal into a proper physical set of Plate. They perceive themselves as Plate, so they heal themselves to that form. But they still have enough... awareness? to shift into a perfectly fitting set of plate for whoever wears them. They know what they were made to do, and they do it. Even if that person puts a helm over their fist, the Lesser spren still know "oh, we ought to conform to this" and they do. Maybe not that sapiently, but on a fundemental, "cosmere programming" level, they know to conform to whoever wears the plate.

this also explains "dead" plate's ability to block out Stormform lightning bolts from sight, the lesser spren still "remember" how to do that, and automatically block out the lightning on instinct.

The glow of proper Radiant Plate would then be the glow of the lesser spren being alive and somewhat pulled into the physical realm to be the framework of the Plate, glowing with the same way Stormlight does.

 

Again this is an entirely spontaneous crazy moment hypothesis, but after writing this out I think it has some merits... Feel free to poke holes in it with evidence though, I know this can't be perfect.

[RShara she/her]

13 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Ok, I'm pretty sure I just had a crazy moment, but hear me out for a second with this very much on-the-spot hypothesis.

 

What if Shardplate is lesser spren (at least as a framework for Stormlight to be formed into Plate), but not in the way most people think that means?

What if the nahel bond at (at least approximately) 4th Ideal is strong enough to connect to a batch of Lesser spren, which then have their Identity... changed. Not "overwritten", but... ... re-harmonized? There's a word for what I'm thinking of, basically i'm picturing Identity as a specific Frequency that the spiritweb vibrates at, and by changing that frequency, the Identity shifts. So the Radiant bonds a batch of Lesser spren, and the bond transfers the radiant's Identity frequency to the spren, and makes their Identities all... "resonate" with the Radiant Identity. So, the Radiant's Investiture can 'penetrate' through their own Shardplate because the Identity frequency is similar enough to their personal Identity that it can wiggle through the plate. And I imagine at 5th oath the Identity becomes even more closely resonating, so the Plate is even easier to Surgebind through, thus needing less Stormlight to "brute force" through the lesser spren Identity of the plate.

And if the lesser spren are just forming a framework for the Plate, that still allows the lower durability of plate to make sense, and the ability for "dead" plate to be healed with Stormlight suddenly becomes a matter of Stormlight just naturally doing what it does: restoring the physical to a Spiritual ideal, filtered through the Cognitive. The Lesser spren of Plate still have that altered Identity from their old Radiants (which is why you can't Lash through it in modern times) and need Stormlight to repair their Physical form back to their natural, Spiritual ideal. The lesser spren are Connected (by the lingering bond provided by the Radiant) to each other, and are in effect their own Spiritweb, which Stormlight can heal into a proper physical set of Plate. They perceive themselves as Plate, so they heal themselves to that form. But they still have enough... awareness? to shift into a perfectly fitting set of plate for whoever wears them. They know what they were made to do, and they do it. Even if that person puts a helm over their fist, the Lesser spren still know "oh, we ought to conform to this" and they do. Maybe not that sapiently, but on a fundemental, "cosmere programming" level, they know to conform to whoever wears the plate.

this also explains "dead" plate's ability to block out Stormform lightning bolts from sight, the lesser spren still "remember" how to do that, and automatically block out the lightning on instinct.

The glow of proper Radiant Plate would then be the glow of the lesser spren being alive and somewhat pulled into the physical realm to be the framework of the Plate, glowing with the same way Stormlight does.

 

Again this is an entirely spontaneous crazy moment hypothesis, but after writing this out I think it has some merits... Feel free to poke holes in it with evidence though, I know this can't be perfect.

It doesn't explain  how Plate can grow completely new parts when they are missing. Dalinar mentions the singers would likely try to regrow his Plate from the gauntlet that he had to leave behind. The implication being that they can regrow the entire suit from a single piece.

And that as long as they fed stormlight to his suit, the old missing gauntlet would eventually crumble into dust.

So what happens to the spren in the gauntlet when it crumbles to dust and a new one is regrown somewhere else? Or to the spren in the rest of the armor, if the entire suit was regrown from the gauntlet?

Edited July 13, 2019 by RShara

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Just now, RShara said:

It doesn't explain  how Plate can grow completely new parts when they are missing. Dalinar mentions the singers would likely try to regrow his Plate from the gauntlet that he had to leave behind. The implication being that they can regrow the entire suit from a single piece.

And that as long as they fed stormlight to his suit, the old missing gauntlet would eventually crumble into dust.

So what happens to the spren in the gauntlet when it crumbles to dust and a new one is regrown somewhere else?

I'm glad you asked! Currently my theory is that by pouring Stormlight into a single Plate gauntlet, you would be giving enough Stormlight to the lesser spren making up the gauntlet that it would basically "call" the other lesser spren over there, because there's a big source of Stormlight over there, enough to (theoretically) regrow the whole plate there. It's a bit like putting a spren inside a fabrial gem, actually. In this case, the "thing the plate-spren want" is stormlight to regrow into a functioning set of Plate, because that is their goal, that is what they are perceived as: a whole set of plate. The plate-spren abandon the stormlight inside the rest of the Plate and return to the gauntlet being fed with Stormlight, building off of that to become the full Plate again.

this is also why you can block this "plate recall" with your own stormlight supply, the plate-spren that you're feeding will basically disagree with the gauntlet plate-spren and stay where your supply of stormlight is, trying to recall the gauntlet plate-spren back to them so it can feed on that supply of Stormlight as well.

[RShara she/her]

But we never see spren around regrowing Shardplate, or people mentioning spren around regrowing Shardplate. And windspren, at least, are mostly physical, so they should be seen.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Just now, RShara said:

But we never see spren around regrowing Shardplate, or people mentioning spren around regrowing Shardplate. And windspren, at least, are mostly physical, so they should be seen.

Hmm... That is a fair point. However, this is "dead" plate, with Identity altered by a Radiant bond, so there's still a chance it's just a quirk of 'dead' plate. But you do bring up a good point, and like I said, I didn't think this was a perfect theory on plate.

[Notchbeard]

My theory is that the gemstones set inside Shardplate are where the Spren reside to power the plate. They do not NEED to be there to power it, Stormlight can do it. But for a 4th ideal Knight the Spren summon it, removing the need to haul it around. We will find out in 2 years :).

[RShara she/her]

26 minutes ago, Notchbeard said:

My theory is that the gemstones set inside Shardplate are where the Spren reside to power the plate. They do not NEED to be there to power it, Stormlight can do it. But for a 4th ideal Knight the Spren summon it, removing the need to haul it around. We will find out in 2 years :).

The gemstones that power the Plate are interchangable, and using them to regrow Shardplate often causes them to shatter. For a Radiant, they don't use gemstones to power the Plate at all, it just draws it from the Radiant.

[Karger he/him]

In the interest of fairness I am going to try and support the lessor spren theory against @RShara 's excellent points.

On 7/8/2019 at 11:12 PM, RShara said:

1. We never see any spren around the Radiants when they are actually close to or in the process of manifesting Plate, such as Dalinar in the vision with Venli, the Radiants in the Starfalls visions, and Jasnah when Adolin sees glowing lines fading around her.

If the spren are being summoned through the CR then you would not see them just as you often don't see Radiant spren before they turn into shardbaldes or deadeyes befroe normal people do.

On 7/8/2019 at 11:12 PM, RShara said:

2. As lesser spren, they would have their own Identity, which would prevent them from being able to affect it with their surges, but again, in the Starfalls vision, the Windrunners were able to Lash themselves in their Shardplate.

If they can form a lessor bond with the Radiant then that identity will not be a problem.  We see this with how Pattern can hold Shallan's lightweavings.

On 7/8/2019 at 11:12 PM, RShara said:

3. Pieces of Shardplate can be completely shattered and destroyed. What would that do to the spren?

Tein asks a similar question of his mother in one of Kaladin's flashback chapters.  Hesina says that if you break an object each piece of that object has its own spren that is simply smaller then the original.  Alternatively if you think of shardplate as a weave of different spren, a broken section is just that weave being pulled apart.  A group of creationspren cannot block a shardblade.

On 7/8/2019 at 11:12 PM, RShara said:

4. If you regrow Shardplate, it can form completely new pieces and any fragments in others' hands crumble to dust. Again, how would this work with lesser spren?

The spren are breaking off from the original peice and rejoining the new one.  Alternatively the individual spren that have broken apart are now rejoining. 

On 7/8/2019 at 11:12 PM, RShara said:

5. We never see any spren around when Shardplate is shattered, destroyed, regrown, etc.

Same for dismissed shardbaldes.

On 7/8/2019 at 11:12 PM, RShara said:

6. Radiants hear the spren scream when they touch a dead Shardblade. They never hear screaming with inert Shardplate.

We have confirmation that plate is less dead.

[RShara she/her]

6 hours ago, Karger said:

If the spren are being summoned through the CR then you would not see them just as you often don't see Radiant spren before they turn into shardbaldes or deadeyes befroe normal people do.

As I mentioned, windspren, at least, are primarily PR beings, almost never seen in the CR. And they're still never seen around inert Plate.

6 hours ago, Karger said:

If they can form a lessor bond with the Radiant then that identity will not be a problem.  We see this with how Pattern can hold Shallan's lightweavings.

Well and people can hold Shallan's Lightweavings, and they have their own identity too. Her Lightweavings don't seem to involve or conflict with Identity.

6 hours ago, Karger said:

Tein asks a similar question of his mother in one of Kaladin's flashback chapters.  Hesina says that if you break an object each piece of that object has its own spren that is simply smaller then the original.  Alternatively if you think of shardplate as a weave of different spren, a broken section is just that weave being pulled apart.  A group of creationspren cannot block a shardblade.

It's not just breaking down to smaller pieces, but literally a new piece grows and the old one crumbles to dust. Dalinar's gauntlet was in the hands of the singer. He said his suit would grow a completely new one, and the old one would crumble to dust.

6 hours ago, Karger said:

The spren are breaking off from the original peice and rejoining the new one.  Alternatively the individual spren that have broken apart are now rejoining. 

See the bit about windspren and the one right before this

6 hours ago, Karger said:

Same for dismissed shardbaldes.

Covered in pt 1.

6 hours ago, Karger said:

We have confirmation that plate is less dead.

? I'm pretty sure Brandon's said that Plate isn't exactly dead, but Shardblades aren't exactly dead either. I don't know that there's anything saying that Plate is less dead than Shardblades?

[Pathfinder]

On 7/13/2019 at 3:08 PM, Calderis said:

@Pathfinder

I currently prefer the "condensed stormlight" idea to the spren theory, primarily because of the Identity issue. 

I don't actually say that that's definitively what it is because, like RShara, I currently don't think there's enough information. 

Regardless, as I've said repeatedly, I definitely think that the spren are involved in the creation of plate, but I do not believe they compose the material. 

No problem. To re-iterate, the reason I brought it up was not a "ah ha! this shows the condensed stormlight theory doesn't work!" moment. It was more of a "hey, I know there is a theory that says such and such. Reading this WoB made me think this is an important distinction. How does it effect the theory?". So is it like:

1. That is easily explained within the condensed stormlight theory. It is blah blah

2. Hmmmm, not really sure why that is. It is something to think on

3. Ah, that caused me to think of the theory in a new light, and now I have even more to add to the theory

4. Doesn't change a single thing, has no bearing upon it whatsoever. 

 

@Bigmikey357 thought it doesn't change anything, which is totally fine. I was curious everyone's thoughts. But again, brought this up not as an "the condensed stormlight theory is wrong, because of this WoB". I was more wondering if it affects anything, and if so, how so in everyone's opinion. Just thought that comment about destroying shardplate might mean something. Hopefully that clarified things.