Shard

Shards, also known as faeries, passengers or agents, are fragments of incomprehensibly immense colony organisms known as entities that serve as the source of parahuman powers.

Description
Shards resemble crystalline structures folding and unfolding like hypercubes.

Each Entity is comprised of "trillions upon trillions upon trillions" of Shards. When two entities collide, rubbing against each other, their Shards can be damaged or destroyed by the friction and pressure, but they are exchanged between the two. Before coming to Earth, Eden and Scion cast off the vast majority of their Shards.

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. ""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

Shards are non-discrete objects – each single shard connected to a human is already an amalgamation of smaller shards, some of which are necessary for it to happen at all. Linking Shards together produces a more complex Shard with the abilities of all joined fragments.

Living Shards
Entities can "tune" their Shards to perform different functions, or combine different Shards to create new ones with new functions.

Some can be intentionally crippled to prevent hosts from accessing their full potential.

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.

Noble Shards
'Noble' is intermediary category between vital and regular shards. Unlike vital shards, they are given out into The Cycle. However they are still important tools during initiation and ending of The Cycle as a whole or have a passive background tasks during it. They tend to be more developed and somewhat less violent compared to regular shards.

Buds
Sometimes, a Shard begins splitting off, ready to find a (generally young) host similar to the original target and attach to them with the benefit of more experience. This generally takes time and/or stress on the part of the host. It's possible for a Shard to bud before or at the same time as a trigger event.

Very rarely, the host will experience a second trigger very similar to their first trigger, causing a developing bud to consolidate in the current host instead. This would not remove the ability of the host to develop more buds in the future.

Although the entities consider the different "fragments" to be separate shards, and the buds require their hosts to remain in close proximity if they want to communicate, on a physical level the shard is simply devoting a part of its "CPU" to the new host. This is because the main portion of a shard is largely inactive, while only the smaller "active" portion deals with the host.

When Shards bud or cross-bud there can be interaction between the parent Shards creating interesting effects. For example Golem's power derives partially from his Shards relation to Kaiser's and Allfather's, the manifestation of his power as limbs and similar derives from his mother Heith however.

Multi-Triggers
Powers from multitriggers are from a mix of Shards. The Shards give up a small to moderate portion of themselves, and then leave the rest of themselves to develop normally while taking in info from multiple sources. The Shard will usually connect another, primary host as well, possibly with some relation to one of the grab-bag capes. This is primarily intended for the end of the cycle, and serves to stress-test powers and compare and contrast the smaller powers.

Shards can not refuse to cluster; the process is immanent to the cycle.

Dead & Damaged Shards
A dead shard is not connected to the larger shard network and by extension the entities or the hubs. 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 its host was alive.

Scion would generally destroy them on sight as he saw them falling.

Disconnected shard are unable ask network for any assistance or permissions to alter themselves, including in a way that would safeguard hosts and limit power over-expression, e.g. lead to broken triggers.

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

Different Shards tend to have different abilities, even if the powers they grant humans appear similar. Generally they are not supposed to give a specific power; different hosts and trigger events produce different powers. Since it furthers the main purpose of Cycles, which is recombination and search for possible applications of specific shards.

Although there are general-purpose shards, which will react to any potential Trigger event situation. Some shards will only make a connection under specific types of trigger events, that synchronize with their specialization. For instance, "Administrator" shard will always grant its host some form of Master power, as it did by budding from Taylor Hebert to Aidan and producing almost equivalent Master power. They will also skip a potential host if there is a similar, but more prospective individual in their vicinity. The common mechanisms within shards leads to certain commonalities in expressed powers, thus the term Alexandria Package is used due to the prevalence of flying Brutes as well as flying in general.

Power Source
One Shard is capable of settling in a grouping of near-identical worlds, drawing energy from all of those worlds at once. While this provides immeasurable power it is still essentially finite, especially for dead shards.

Powers that seem to be 'fueled' by absorbing things like emotions, people, or similar will not generally be powered by the subject in question but instead will be due to the shard being allowed to expend power due to the conflict it creates.

Restrictions
Every parahuman receives only a small portion of the potential abilities of their Shard. For example, a Shard may choose to apply its powers to only one type of target; insects, humans, trees, etc.

Shards also limit themselves to avoid damaging the host. "Thinker Headaches" are one example of this.

Connection with Humans
Shards "take root" in humans, creating a Corona Pollentia, a lobe in the brain.

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.

It should be noted that there is a mirrored influence of the human upon their shard.

Trigger Events
During a trigger event, a Shard employs a scan to determine an appropriate way to apply a portion of its abilities. 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.” “I don’t understand.”  “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.” Amy stared. “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.” 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.” “I don’t want to break it,” Amy said, her voice hushed. “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.” - Excerpt from Interlude 11h

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.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. 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). 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. 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. 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. 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). - Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles This does not necessarily mean that they are more powerful.

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.

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.

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.

Bonesaw speculated that she and Jack Slash both had deep connections with their Shards. The Fallen are generally very good at feeling the connection with their Shards.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. 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. 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. 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. - Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles

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). Weaver speculated that they retained some of the memories and personality of the host, which is confirmed by 'revived' Ashley Stillons expressing more memories than would be expected otherwise, including memories of intermediary clones, pre-trigger memories, and, apparently, even memories of parahumans, that witnessed revived person before their death.

Errata
Shards draw on a number of different factors to identify their host, including DNA, electromagnetic patterns, and traits humans do not have names for. 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.

Citrine suggests that shard with multiple active hosts, such as clones, might provide some networking service between them, sharing their overall power aptitude on intuitive level.