Editing Shard (section)

==Connection with Humans==
Shards "take root" in humans,<ref name="I26">[[Interlude 26]]</ref> creating a Corona Pollentia, a lobe in the brain.<ref name="I25">[[Interlude 25]]</ref>
{{main|Corona Pollentia}}
The effects that Shards have on their hosts are dependent on several factors, including but not limited to: age of the host, the host's personality, the host's trigger event, how much the host embraces the Shard's need for conflict, and the nature of the Shard itself.<ref name="R19"> Shards only very rarely 'make' people do anything. They pick their hosts with care, those people who are going to be inclined to use powers more or throw themselves into a given type of situation, they may nudge, or encourage more subtly, reinforcing behaviors they want with more power, more focus and utility in the power, or in damping down any drawbacks. In some cases, they may ebb and flow in terms of effectiveness, and in cases like Canary's, may ebb more for a long time, getting her to let her guard down, before a 'kill all the Japanese' chance comes up. - [https://redd.it/49vqrr <nowiki>[Spoilers All] Did Canary's shard...?</nowiki>] [[Wildbow]], Reddit.com, 2016</ref><ref name="I26 e3">[[Jacob|The broadcaster]] had finished speaking just a moment before the craft had launched, oblivious to the blaring noise that had been intended to drown him out.  ''What I don’t understand, is why a blank slate like you would default to doing good deeds, rescuing cats from trees.  Why not turn to that violence, as our ancestors did?  It drove them, just like it drives the basest and most monstrous of our kind.''<br><br>Had he known he had a listening ear?  Had it merely been a struggle to continue doing what he’d instinctively done for decades?<br><br>The shards retained memories, motivated, pushed. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/interlude-26/ excerpt] from [[Interlude 26]]</ref>
{{main|Parahuman}}
It should be noted that there is a mirrored influence of the human upon their shard.<ref name="SB42">ijp92: so I guess you could say that no matter how much of an effect a shard/passenger/agent has on the personality/development of its host, its host will definately[sic] have a similar and likely far greater affect on the "personality/development"of the shard/passenger/agent.<br><br>Wildbow: That would be a very good, succinct way of putting it, yes. - [http://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/12851392 Worm Web Serial Discussion III : After the End] ([[Wildbow]], SpaceBattles.com, 2014-01-15)</ref><ref name="27.4">“You want to see the faerie rise again, apparently, and Scion’s a big part of that whole equation.”<br><br>“Yes.  I’m seeing what you’re getting at, Administrator.  A conflict of interest?”<br><br>“Essentially.”<br><br>“We all have our parts to play.”<br><br>“Parts.”<br><br>“Yes.  Like actors taking a role in a play.  We wear our human faces and harbor our dramas and fantasies, but it’s the same individuals playing the parts, as the play starts anew on a different stage, with different faces and forms.  If it all goes well, a figure from the crowd joins the stage for the plays that follow, and the roles are refined.”<br><br>“And us… Queens and Kings.  Do we have a bigger part?  Leading roles?”<br><br>“Everyone’s the lead in their own story, Administrator.  Some roles are bigger, some smaller, but none are more ''important'', understand?” - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/extinction-27-4/ Excerpt] from [[Extinction 27.4]]</ref><!-- on what a shard can actually make people do 
Find quote on luck/karma/probability manipulation powers
On how telepathy works in worm(if it works at all)
https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15208733
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===[[Trigger Event]]s===
During a trigger event, a Shard employs a scan to determine an appropriate way to apply a portion of its abilities.<ref name="28e1"/><ref name="11h e1">Bonesaw smiled, “And I know the secrets.  I know where powers come from.  I know how they work.  I know how your power works.  You have to understand, people like you and me?  Who got our powers in moments of critical stress?  The powers aren’t meant for us.  They’re accidents.  We’re accidents.  And I think you could see it if you were touching someone when they had their trigger event.”<br><br>“I don’t understand.”<br><br>“You don’t have to.  What you need to know is that the subjects of our power, the stuff it can work on, like people?  Like the fish lady in Asia?  The boy who can talk to computers?  Our powers weren’t created to work with those things.  With people or fish or computers.  It’s not intentional.  It happens because the powers connect to us in the moments we have our trigger events, decrypt our brains and search for something in the world that they can connect to, that loosely correlate with how the powers were originally supposed to work.  In those one to eight seconds it takes our powers to work, our power goes into overdrive, it picks up all the necessary details about those things, like people or fish or computers, sometimes reaching across the whole world to do it.  Then it starts condensing down until there’s a powerset, stripping away everything it doesn’t need to make that power work.”<br><br>Amy stared.<br><br>“And then, before it can destroy us, before we can hurt ourselves with our own power, before that spark of potential burns out, it changes gears.  It figures out how to function with us.  It protects us from all the ways our power might hurt us, that we can anticipate, because there’s no point if it kills us.  It connects with our emotional state at the time the powers came together, because that’s the context it builds everything else in.  It’s so amazingly complicated and beautiful.”<br><br>Bonesaw looked down at Amy.  “Your inability to affect brains?  It’s one of those protections.  A mental block.  I can help you break it.”<br><br>“I don’t want to break it,” Amy said, her voice hushed.<br><br>“Ahhh.  Well, that just makes me more excited to see how you react when you do.  See, all we have to do is get you to that point of peak stress.  Your power will be stronger, and you’ll be able to push past that mental block.  Probably.” - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/06/23 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 11h]]</ref>

===Breadth===
Generally the younger a person is the more heavily their personality is influenced by their Shard. The connection becomes "broader", removing or exaggerating almost every element of their personality.<ref name="SB4">Depends on the shard. Bonesaw elaborates on the idea by noting 'breadth and depth' in her interlude. If the shard gets you while you're young, it can shape your personality across the board, on a deeper level. The more conflict you're involved in, the more toeholds it gets to rewrite your consciousness and your subconscious. To alter your thinking, it needs to do it as a part of the trigger event, or as part of the brain's development.<br><br>In the extreme cases, the shard can leave you with an impulse (Must fight when a fight presents itself), help set up an obsession ("Wall myself in!"), steer a neurosis in one particular direction (specific hallucinations rather than random ones, of you hurting people, pushing someone down the stairs, etc), create a link between A and B (Being around fire makes subject lose empathy and inhibitions. With lower empathy and inhibitions, subject uses power to make more fire.), or steer a personality trait to an extreme (Must be on top, I answer to no one!), or they just overwrite stuff (Can't understand humans, only dogs).<br><br>In the lesser cases, it can be a nudge, hard to distinguish from one's own psychology. You might be on the fence about something, trying to make a call, and the passenger pushes you one way over the other, based on your own feelings of doubt or fear. It might tap into emotions, and dampen X emotion while promoting Y, just dampen them across the board, or take the joy out of day to day living while adding excitement to the cape life. A vague sort of depression that only goes away when one's out and fighting. Sometimes, as mentioned before, it's set up as a trap, a flood of emotion or a set of mental switches that get thrown when a prerequisite is met - such as a cape just steering clear of all confrontations, except the shard set it up so they can't, and they have a sort of limit break/command cutting in that mandates them to fight in one way or another. Or it plays off a limit or a berserk button that already exists - Damsel can't spend too long being anything less than top dog or she gets restless, and if she goes too long despite that, then she has to act, she's acting without thinking about it. This takes time and effort for the passenger, and a host that doesn't demand that time and effort (by circumstance or intent) is going to develop a better connection with the power. This in turn is a reward of sorts. If Damsel did kill the local capes and assume control over the area, fighting off all comers, she'd find her facility and control with her power just ramped up like crazy.<br><br>It varies from cape to cape and shard to shard, and it varies depending on the host, the host's background and the host's personality.<br><br>Beyond that, other influences include the passenger playing fast and loose with the power itself, as it controls the metadata, which may be more visible if the subject breaks from their norm in terms of consciousness (gets a concussion, tranquilized), working off base instincts and impulses like 'stay camouflaged' (be a little more creepy and unsettling), intimidate/dominate (passenger works behind the scenes to make you look a little more dangerous as you mutate/grow/surround yourself in the aura of your power), etc, etc. In more pronounced cases, the power is just plain controlled by the passenger, not the host, and the passenger makes the seemingly random or uncontrolled aspects generate more conflict... pushing a power to kill rather than leave someone alive, or a thinker power turns up a vision of something the subject didn't want to see.<br><br>On the macro level, too, don't discount the fact that some shards (particularly powerful ones that warranted attention) are just sent to specific people, with the idea that it's a combination that's going to promote more conflict just by the sheer dynamic of it (Powerful person with a destructive power, a desperate person with a power with negative implications). - [https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15026557/ Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles]</ref><ref name="I25"/> This does not necessarily mean that they are more powerful.<ref name="R2">*The progression of Allfather -> Kaiser -> Golem is largely informed and inspired by interactions with other shards. Golem from his mother, namely. This isn't a 'progression'. Just the shard reaching further afield. It could just have easily backtracked from Blade projectiles -> Blades from surfaces -> Blade Projectiles, given the right inspiration. - [https://redd.it/51awfy Second Gen Capes, Buds, Pings, and Second Triggers] ([[Wildbow]], Reddit.com, 2016)</ref> 

[[Bonesaw]] speculated that she and the initial [[Slaughterhouse Nine-Thousand]] test creations all had exceptionally broad connections to their Shards given their activation at such a young age.<ref name="I25" />
===Depth===
Some parahumans have particularly deep connections with their Shard when their personality is naturally in alignment with the Shard's desire for conflict. The Shard does not influence the person's personality as heavily, but the line between the two nonetheless becomes blurred.<ref name="I25e2">Jack had a different kind of connection.  A deep connection.  He was in alignment with the particular nature of his passenger.  The passengers naturally sought conflict, and Jack had fed that need from very early on, and he had sustained it for years.  The line between the two was so thin as to be impossible to mark, but Jack's personality remained his own.  Altered, but not subsumed. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/07/16 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 25]]</ref> <!--When speaking of parahuman psychology the shards influence is a factor that can not be separated from the larger human but shouls always be considered.

Tt and antares talk about this, during the talk with contessa

this should also go into the psyhology section of the neglected parahumans page
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Parahumans with very little connection to their Shard generally find that either they have "episodes" where the Shard takes over, or their power systematically acts according to the Shard's desires rather than the host. Examples of this include [[Garotte]], [[Echidna]] and [[Leet]].<ref name="SB3">Some people have very little connection to their shards. Look at Leet - his shard actively sabotages him. Look at Echidna, or Sveta. You end up with disconnects, and stuff starts to stand out as the shard's behavior becomes more distinct, either in 'episodes' or a pattern of the power not cooperating. - [http://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/12852536 Worm Web Serial Discussion III : After the End] ([[Wildbow]], SpaceBattles.com, 2014-01-15)</ref>

Bonesaw speculated that she and [[Jack Slash]] both had deep connections with their Shards.<ref name="I25" /> The [[Fallen]] are generally very good at feeling the connection with their Shards.<ref name="SB1">Similar to the Herren Clan, they're a group of families with some members having powers, largely based around the southern states. They figured out that people with powers tend to have kids with powers, and are making the most of it. This leads to families with strong threads of a particular power type running through them.<br><br>Coin toss as to whether a given member believes what the cult is saying or not, that humanity deserves to be wiped out, so-and-so deserved to die at the hands of Behemoth, or the world would be a paradise if the Simurgh were to achieve full influence, if we only let it. It's telling, perhaps, that they don't actively interfere when the Endbringers come rolling around, though they might celebrate from the sidelines and try to get media attention.<br><br>They're loosely based on the Westboro Baptist Church - they want attention and the Endbringers are a sore spot for the vast majority of people around the world, an easy target. Depending on the family and the area, the approach differs. One might commandeer a radio station and and spewing vitriol over the airwaves, praising the latest Endbringer attack for the casualties. Another might call in another family from another area, then use ten Fallen parahumans and X number of unpowered Fallen to raid a small town with two or so heroes (or bait out a hero with a minor ruckus and then ambush them) to kidnap the heroes and induct them into the family, so there's more powers running through the bloodline.<br><br>They're hard to stamp out, unpredictable, and tend to live on the fringes of society, where they're harder to track and heroes need to devote far more effort to squirreling them out. There's also a tendency to give more power to the lunatics and assholes, because it furthers their nebulous agendas. They want to be loathed. In a more abstract sense, shards love conflict, and the fallen are very good at feeding it, so the fallen get rewarded by the shards. Breadth and depth. - [https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15078112 Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles]</ref>
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===After Death===
Shards are not threatened by the deaths of their hosts in any form, and if such occasion happens would simply seek out a new one (given that shard is functioning as intended).<ref>The shard, being alive, reports back with Scion and the broader network, and then goes to find a new host. - [https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15026703 Wildbow on Spacebattles]</ref> [[Weaver]] speculated that they retained some of the memories and personality of the host,<ref>Was there any of the original personality in there?  The memories of the person that was?  If there were, then it implied something ugly.  Glaistig Uaine collected passengers, tapped them for power, and if this thing had memories, then what did that suggest about the passengers? - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/extinction-27-4/ Excerpt] from [[Extinction 27.4]]</ref> which is confirmed by 'revived' [[Ashley Stillons]] expressing more memories than would be expected otherwise, including memories of intermediary clones,<ref>[[Eclipse x.3]]</ref> pre-trigger memories, and, apparently, even memories of parahumans, that witnessed revived person before their death.<ref>[[Eclipse x.5]]</ref><!--https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/7q2uxf/glare_33_parahumans_2/dsm141y/?context=3-->

===Errata===
Shards draw on a number of different factors to identify their host, including DNA,<ref>Fenja and Menja share powers for the same reason the clones draw on the same shard. The shards use DNA as an identifier for who to tap into/reach out to. If one twin has a Corona Pollentia and the other doesn't, then only one gets powers. If both do (or if the clones do) then they all get powers.<br><br>If that [[Corona Pollentia]] is warped, the powers may be as well, as the shard provides powers, hits a wall, and finds a way to push through. - [https://redd.it/3nwyfu Unusual powers]</ref> electromagnetic patterns, and traits humans do not have names for.<ref name="I25e1">Various elements that were unique to every individual served as a signal that the passenger could reach out to in an attempt at reconnecting with a host.  DNA, electromagnetic patterns, patterns she could barely measure with instruments, all contributed, none was absolute.  Once the connection was established, powers were possible as well.  A moment of trauma sped the process along considerably.  Her initial assumption had been that coming to life would be enough for the clones.<br><br>The Corona Pollentia was developing as the originals did, drawing from DNA to form as a lobe in the brain, right from the outset.  The dreams formed the connections between the corona and the clone.  The bonds were forming too quickly and easily. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/interlude-25/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 25]]</ref> Individuals with the same DNA as a parahuman, even a deceased one, would possess a ''Corona Pollentia'' right from the outset. They still required a trigger event to gain powers, but trigger much more easily than the average potential parahuman.<ref name="I25e1" />

[[Citrine]] suggests that shard with multiple active hosts, such as clones, might provide some networking service between them, sharing their overall power aptitude on an intuitive level.<ref>“They’ve picked up other things.  I don’t know if it’s because they copy me when they see me or if it’s because they’re getting it in other ways.”<br><br>“You should have studied more about powers,” Jeanne said.  “I think it’s the latter.” - [https://www.parahumans.net/2018/04/07 Excerpt] from [[Interlude 5x II]]</ref>
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Discussion on how shards retain memories of their hosts
https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/7q2uxf/glare_33_parahumans_2/dsm635m/?context=3

Cite WOG on the protectorate not being dumb and shards knowing when there isn't any real danger when in staged fights

== Fanart Gallery ==
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