Shard

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Shards are fragments of incomprehensibly immense Colony organisms that serve as the source of parahuman powers.

Description

Shards resemble crystalline structures folding and unfolding like hypercubes.<ref name="WoG1">Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref>

They travel along predetermined paths after being cast off by an Entity in space, "raining down" on the Earths over the course of decades. Once they landed, shards resided in other worlds, uninhabited worlds, and they remained cloaked and concealed in areas humans were unlikely to explore. <ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

When two entities collide, rubbing against each other, their shards can be damaged or destroyed by the friction and pressure, but they are still exchanged.<ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

"All of our powers stem from the same source. It’s this big alien bastard that we keep seeing when we have our trigger events. Except each of his cells is coded with just a fragment of his brain and a technique he uses to manipulate his environment, protect himself or attack others. He spread powers around Earth as part of a way to stress test them. He wants to leverage our brains and imagination to figure out ways to make the most of these abilities or innovate new ones."

--Tattletale<ref>Extinction 27.2</ref>

Abilities

Ever since they first evolved on their home world, Entities have been composed of "clusters" of shards, each with different functions.

Living Shards

Entities can "tune" their shards to perform different functions, or combine different shards to create new ones with new functions.<ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

Some are intentionally crippled to keep them from reaching their full power. when shards bud or cross-bud there can be interaction between the parent shards creating interesting effects.^{[citation needed]} For example Golem's powers derive partially from his shards relation to Kaiser's and Allfathers, the manifestation of of his powers as limbs and similar derives from his mother Heith however.

Dead & Damaged Shards

Many dead shards were also damaged.

The large numbers of Eden's shards were damaged, corrupt, or dead. This meant there were more parahumans than the entities had intended, rendering them useless to the cycle. Vikare's shard was such an example, though it was still able to grow properly as long as he was alive.<ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

The Warrior Entity would generally destroy them on sight as he saw them falling.<ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

Vital Shards

Some shards were vital to an Entity, and not intended to be given out. If their vital processes were separated, they could die. Scion saw some of Eden's vital shards seemingly falling and being sent to hosts after she crashed.<ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

Power Source

One shard is capable of settling in a grouping of near-identical worlds, drawing energy from all of those worlds at once.<ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

Breadth & Depth

Shards "take root" in humans.<ref name="I26">Interlude 26</ref>

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.

Generally the younger a person is the more changed they are when a shard connects to them during a trigger event, this does not necessarily mean that they are more powerful.

How powers effect someone's day to day function varies.

The Fallen are generally very good at feeling the connection with their shards<ref name="SB1">Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref>.

References

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