Shard

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Shards, also known as faeries, passengers or agents,<ref>"You could. But will you say so? Because when you talked about the others, you were speaking about their faerie, their passengers, their agents, not the individual."</ref> 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>

{{#if:TattletaleExtinction 27.2|

“	"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."	”
{{#if:Tattletale| —Tattletale{{#if:Extinction 27.2|, Extinction 27.2}} }} }}

Abilities

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

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>

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>

Restrictions

Every parahuman receives only a small portion of the potential abilities of their shard. For example, a shard may choose to apply it's powers to only one type of target (insects, humans, trees.)<ref name="28e1">When we get our powers, the passenger manages this sort of scan, trying to figure out a way to apply a part of itself. So Taylor gets a power that's restricted to bugs, Canary gets a power that's limited to people. At the same time, the passenger kind of figures out if there's any danger of the power harming us, physically or mentally, and it sets down safeguards and limits. Headaches like Dinah or I get are part of that. [...] Every power has secondary uses, uses that are locked away. - Cockroaches 28.4</ref>

Shards also limit themselves to avoid damaging the host. Thinker Headaches are one example of this.<ref name="28e1"/>

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">25.x</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.

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="I25"/> This does not necessarily mean that they are more powerful.^{[citation needed]}

Bonesaw speculated that she and the initial Slaughterhouse Nine-Thousand test subjects all had broad connections to their shards.<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. - Interlude 25</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">the fallen 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. - Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref>

Trigger Events

During a trigger event, a shard employs a scan to determine an appropriate way to apply a portion of it's abilities.<ref name="28e1"/>

Clones

Shards draw on a number of different factors to identify their host, including DNA, electromagnetic patterns, and traits humans don't 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.
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. - 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 connect, but it was extremely easy.<ref name="I25e1"/>

References

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