List of Shards
Each Entity is comprised of "trillions upon trillions upon trillions" of Shards, so trying to chronicle all of them is an exercise in madness.
Naming based on Glaistig Uaine, Warrior Entity, Thinker Entity, and Word of Wildbow
Noble shards
Sub-category of MVP shards
| Known noble shards: | |
|---|---|
| The Champion | |
| The High Priest | Linked with artificial entities, that apply controlled pressure on the natives during The Cycle, as well as management of shards. |
| The Keeper of The Dead | Collector of imprints generated by shards. Chooser of the slain. |
| The Observer | |
| The Shaper and The Demesnes-Keeper | End-cycle cleanup. |
| The Administrator | Mass-management of shards, herding into one entity. Details see below. |
| The Broadcast | Communication/coordination shard.<ref>Interlude 26</ref> |
| Shard of Imp | Controls blind spots, and keeps natives unaware about The Entities.<ref name="I26 e1">But the entity can still see fallout effects. There are parallels in memory storage. Not many, but there may be glimmers where the subject is capable of perceiving the information stored in the shard as the connections are formed. For good measure, the entity breaks up one shard cluster, tunes it, then codes the effect into each and every shard. It studies the host species further, refines, attunes. It takes time, but the entity forms a sufficient safeguard. The host species will forget any significant details. The broken shard is cast off, joining countless others. It will bond to a host. The entity looks forward, checking. After the target planet has revolved thirty-three times around its star, this shard will connect to a host. A male guards his offspring, a female, with his size and bulk. A group of hostile bipeds cluster around them. They call out, making unusual loud sounds, suggesting intoxication. One of the hostile ones gestures, gripping its male parts, pulling them free of their coverings. A sexual gesture follows, waving the organ left and right, thrusting it into the empty air. Sounds of amusement, laced with hostility. The male and his offspring retreat as far against the nearest construction as they are able. The shard connects, attaching to the male. No. It is ineffective. The female is clearly more distressed. Prey. There is a way to maximize exposure to conflict. The entity taps into its understanding of the bipeds and how they operate, recognizes the signs of distress, the nuances such things can have. It views the future again, with changes made in the code. This time, the shard settles in the male, then immediately shifts to the more distressed female. Insinuation. The shard connects to the host’s neural network. The bond is created. The shard opens the connection as the stress peaks, and the host doubles over in pain, bewildered, stunned. The shard then forms tendrils that contact each individual in the area. It retains traces of the entity’s tampering, of the studies in psychology, awareness and memory, and is quick to adapt. It finds a manner in which it can operate, then alters itself, solidifying into a particular state. The remainder of the functions are discarded, the ones in the shard itself are rendered inert to conserve power, while the ones in the host fall away, are consumed by the shard. The host’s neural network changes once more. The female disappears from the awareness of the hostile ones that surround it. The entity looks to the future, to see if this is sustainable, efficient. - Excerpt from Interlude 26</ref> |
| Shard of Damsel of Distress | Finalization of The Cycle, initiation of the space travel.<ref>Eclipse x.1</ref> |
Darkness shard
- Grue
- Grue 2.0
- Sinkhole abhoror
- Teleport abhorers
Put in echidna bits
Mein/Cross Shard
Powers known to be granted by this shard include
2 form Breaker
3 form Breaker
<ref name="SB2">Keep in mind, also, that one shard gives different abilities based on the nature of the trigger and the individual.
Example: Shard 'Cross'. For the entities, it's a toolkit, a low-energy response to general hazards, allowing the entity to quickly switch swathes of shards to new tasks to deal with environmental hazards. The entity hasn't devoted much attention to it, beyond a few safeguards, so it finds a high crisis area & time with a 'glance' of its power and looses the shard, plotting for its arrival time & location.
Shard Mien reaches a host. It then travels to a new, younger, host, developmentally disabled Eric Stodt. It locks on, it gets a grasp on who the host is, and it summarily lets that part of itself die off, burning out to form the corona pollentia. Sit dormant for some time, if the arrival of shard to host didn't coincide with the trigger time. The trigger event happens, the shard recognizes the event from the state of the host and from context, the flood of stress responses, and so on. A now-twenty year old Eric is in the lake, his father shouting at him to swim, refusing to let him climb the ladder back up onto the dock. Eric is screaming incoherently, panicking, and every time his father pries his fingers off the ladder, he really thinks he's going to die. His father isn't even recognizable at this point, in the anger and midst of the danger.
The trigger reads Eric. Who is he? How does he generally respond to situations?
The trigger reads the situation. What form does the danger take? It's partially environmental, it's driven by a desire to escape, his life is threatened by a distinct enemy.
The shard then discards everything it doesn't need, distilling things down to one efficient task, suited to Eric. Where it wasn't already programmed with inherent safeties (Manton effect) and limitations, it uses Eric's stored knowledge to generate a kind of grasp of what it needs to do.
Eric becomes a breaker, transitioning between two forms. Because of the nature of the problem and of Eric himself, he doesn't get a form that returns him entirely to normal. He has one form where he's essentially a living artillery platform, unable to move, but capable of devastating firepower, and one form where he flies at stunning speeds, capable of turning on a dime, durable. A living bullet.
And one man in a bad situation is left standing on the beach by his family's cottage, steaming as the water is burned off his skin, having flown to freedom and obliterated his father, realizing what he's done.
If the shard hadn't left Eric's father to go to Eric, however, what might have happened? Eric's father might have triggered in another 'between a rock and a hard place' scenario, probably would have been a breaker, but might have picked up a breaker power that turned him into a living focal point capable of refocusing heat and cold over large areas (another environmental hazard the shard was tasked with facing), another form where he could manipulate gases on a similar level, and a third, clearer self identity might have left him with another form where he was more clearly human. Because the answers to the trigger question and to 'who is Mr. Stodt' is different from 'who is Eric Stodt'.Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles (scrolldown)</ref>
The Destroyer
According to Valkyrie, Chevalier is the keeper of the "Destroyer" shard.<ref name="E.1">Teneral e.1</ref> An unusual title compared to the other titles given, it's believed by some fans that Chevalier's Shard was the one the entities used to end the Cycle based on his ability to combine properties possibly being able to redistribute energy in the scales needed<ref>Once they are reformed, they leech all of the heat and energy from countless worlds and concentrate it in a single reality. The energy boils the oceans of silt-choked waters, disintegrates the landmasses.
[...]
The energy is released, and the planet shatters.
The shattering is so extreme that it extends into other worlds, through the same channels that the fragments used to extend into other realities. Every single one of the remaining habitable worlds is destroyed in the ensuing blast. Interlude 26</ref>, and that "Destroyer" is to honor it's role in the Cycle.
Glaistig Uaine's name for it, was possibly used for space travel based on the holders speculations.
Administrator
Hosts:
Mass-management of shards, herding into one entity. blah something about functionality how it relates to controlling alotta little folks
Powers known to be granted by this shard include Master/Thinker control of anthropods "bugs" within a rough three block radius, processing of senses and location.(double trigger)
Master Singular but versatile master minion composed of a Swarm of rats. hovers and can be commanded in a minute way comparable to Weaver.
'Curse' Master/Stranger power with a multi mile range that makes people and animals hate the target.
- thinker
- master
- stranger
- Brute power is possible but stretches credulity the 'Brute' body
Taylor Aidan danny <ref name="WoW">Writebow: Can't control them indviidually
[...]
Writebow: Sets invisible flags. Birds get pulled to that point.
Writebow: Or uses flag to have them all move in a wave, attacking on the way, etc. - Comment by Wildbow archived on Spacebattles</ref><ref name="R1">Depends on the trigger, but possible culprits include...
- Losing Annette.
- Realizing he'd failed Taylor utterly as a father, getting harsh talk from Mr. Barnes.
- Being stepped on by the local gov't, failing the union workers he represents.
In devising the actual trigger, we actually figure this out in a way like we would a Cauldron vial. We know what the shard does, and the key thing to figure out is how that shard expresses its power and how it manifests.
The QA shard specializes in coordinating control over large numbers of smaller lifeforms. We see it in Skitter (bugs), we see it in Aiden (birds) and we see it in Chitter (rats).
On the flip side, the common elements for Danny in the three triggers noted above are, well, Danny. He's got a lot of repressed anger and anger against the infrastructure, and in every case, his general awareness/the awareness of the shard has picked up on the same setting details. It's going to tie into similar categories and types of creature, fitting to Brockton Bay. Given Danny's personality, natural reticence, and the 'cornered rat' anger, this tends to veer in the direction of rodents. So I'm going with rodents for the options below...
Losing Annette is a master trigger, one with a singular, focused sense of loss/isolation. Annette completed Danny, and losing her left him incomplete. In expressing the shard, his shard looks to occupy that void. Rats scurry to Danny and they gather into a form. Bodies interlock, hold to one another and work in coordination as they form something vaguely humanoid. In the right light, as a silhouette, it evokes memories of Annette. Perhaps Danny becomes slightly unhinged. He misses her so much, and somehow this thing, which has a way of standing out of the light, or in his peripheral vision (and he doesn't pry) evokes memories of Annette in how it moves or how it responds to his words, as he talks to it incessantly. He withdraws from Taylor and his coworkers, and after he gets screwed over by local government, starts lashing out. He has rough control over rodents in groups, getting them to converge in one area to attack or to build his Annette. Annette moves silently, gliding over floors or up walls and then throwing herself at foes, dissolving into a biting, gnashing swarm when attacking or when being attacked. As he progresses as a cape, the figure becomes more flexible in the forms it can take or what it can do, and his control slowly and steadily approaches Taylor's.
Danny, who hasn't been eating nearly as much (or feeding his daughter) is a hollow shell of a man. Alan approaches him, tries to shake some sense into him, and Danny experiences abject horror at just how badly he failed his daughter. It's like that sensation of missing a step, teetering toward rock bottom. The Danny we know teetered, experienced that moment of horror, and then got pulled back to his feet and gets counseled in what steps to take to rebuild and recover by Alan. This Danny teeters, falls, and triggers. Horrified and distracted by his emerging powers, he doesn't hear what Alan has to say. He says something incoherent, then turns and flees the scene. This Danny suffered a crisis of identity (fatherhood), guilt, and a realization of just how much he had disconnected himself from reality. The loss of Annette still burns. The crisis of identity manifests as a changer element, the guilt as a thinker one. In an ironic twist, his power keeps him distanced from reality. He tries to gather himself up, but the nature of his power makes it hard to reconnect with his daughter, and his efforts to regain normalcy are foiled. When he eats, he regurgitates everything but the bare minimum to keep his body functional, and with that regurgitation, he produces rats. He maintains the rough, very generalized ability to control rodents, but the ones he spawns are smarter and tougher, he maintains more explicit control over them, he can see through their eyes, sense what they sense, and use them to control the other, general swarms. Actually killing his own rats is hard, but the more they are, the smaller his own perspective is, relative to the combined sensory input of all the various rats. He inevitably reaches the point where he can't take care of Taylor anymore, his awareness largely subsumed, so he tries to turn to more productive ends, trying to improve the city for his daughter, going after the corrupt politicians, the teachers who failed his daughter, and the bullies.
Being stepped on by the local government, realizing he'd failed his workers, surrounded by a broader infrastructure and a city that seems hostile to him, he triggers as a generalized stranger/master. The eyes of others are on him, almost accusatory, or he thinks they are. He's angry, and that colors things. Stranger/masters tend to generate as emotion manipulators/controllers. Danny uses the smaller critters - insects, arachnids, rats, birds, fish, whatever - all together, not controlling them explicitly, but using them as vectors. It's an effect like Shatterbird's song, propagating through the critters, and covers an area miles across. Like Taylor, Danny doesn't even need to leave his house. For an area 3-4 miles across, people get irritable, frustrated. When Danny focuses on a person, people and local wildlife get irrationally angry and frustrated with that person. It's subtle, but that person's life becomes a nightmare, as flies and rodents collect inside their houses and in their cars, and everyone they meet seems to act hostile or outright tries to hurt them. The subtlety and 'soft' nature of the attack is a source of frustration to Danny, who is angry and wants to swing a punch, to get some resolution. He could stay largely impossible to detect, but instead anger wins out, and he puts on a costume and goes to confront the people he sees as the biggest problems. Or he just doesn't stop when the people and his host are assaulting the people he's going after.
In all three cases, he's liable to self destruct. The shard recognizes this, accepts it (in a way, the shard was sent to him by the entity for this reason), but then hops to a more viable host with a longer lifespan and more complex emotion. - What if Danny Triggered, Reddit.com 15 Mar 2016 </ref>
True Nature
Her shard originally went to her father before jumping to the more suitable host. Had Taylor's father experienced a more stressful life, it's possible that he could have triggered with rat powers.<ref>Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref><ref name="reddit2"/>
Glaistig Uaine referred to Taylor as the "Queen Administrator", and claimed her power was a "noble" among the faerie.[citation needed]
In Scion's Interlude it is implied, but not explicitly stated, that Taylor's power was originally used to determine and rearrange the configuration of shards within an Entity, and it is referred to as "the administrator shard". It specializes in coordinating control over large numbers of smaller lifeforms.<ref name="R1"/>
Shard of Heartbreaker
Budding champion of this cycle.
Path to victory
God viruses using it to navigate and watch out for threats. Like not steering into a black hole.
Negotiator
Powers known to be granted by this shard include
- thinker
- Blaster
- Tinker
<ref>Tattletale's power would just scale up constantly in power, reach, and intensity of detail. The shard might not have broken 100% clean - Scion might have given it some tools somewhere in there, so I can imagine a Tattletale-sub-entity scaling up to a breaker state or tapping into a tinker ability to network/develop more hardware/brainware to process it all. Scale up to processing multiple dimensions at once, and develop/manifest/obtain a weapon. Going back to the tools Scion gave, a simple blaster power with a clean, possibly invisble terrain-penetrating laser, with Full-bore-tattletale focus at work to discern the best possible weak point? Or even just a Tattletale in the middle of it, holding a gun? Picture her systematically picking off threats one after another, from highest priority to lowest, from the center of the incident sites, maximum range. - Wildbow of Spacebattles</ref> Section where the entities uses a shard to fill in the blanks?
Sting
Is a mainstay of the entities tool kit, rarely needing anything else.<ref name="SB16">Sting, for the record, is akin to the shark. Sharks haven't evolved for aeons, because you can't get much better than a motherfucking shark. What you can do is put the shark in a tank with other fish/animals and see the way things might play out. - Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref>
References
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