If you go read his interlude in Worm, it's all about his fight with Scion and getting (most of) his power back. Closest thing to an explanation you'll find.
Eidolon's original shard is most likely one that Eden kept for the purpose of being able to connect to and draw upon shards she sent out. As a result, his power is to reach out to other shards and use powers they can grant. However, Eden's shards had their charging mechanism broken, so they started running low on power. In his interlude, Glaistig Uaine coaches Eidolon on how to find the right Thinker power to enable him to drain energy from other capes and their shards and then use that energy to recharge his powers.
I haven't really read Worm (I have been informed that I probably shouldn't, due to my own tendency towards depression), so this may be completely off-base.
Unfortunately, it isn't that clear.
Couldn't that just be something like picking a Grab-bag Cape's Shard, though? Grab-Bags tend to have weaker powers with more variety, after all. And Shards can express their purposes in more ways than one, in many cases. That could certainly result in more 'diluted' power, since a single Shard running multiple functions would have less energy to use on any given one.
Sounds like it's mostly dictated by the whims of
From my understanding grabbag capes are formed from multi triggers where each person has multiple shards linked and gains extremely minor powers form each one. He can't get a grabbags power, because grabbags are formed from multiple shards, and he can only fill his 'slots' with single shards/powers.
Every "shard" is also a cluster.
Eidolon with a good and trusted friend period would probably be a big AU, honestly.
I thought the canon cause of grab-bags was single shards cross-referencing with eachother, having one Shard run all the different abilities.
This is all I managed to find with a quick skim, but I'm really tired so I didn't put much effort it, may try some more after I get some sleep
...You didn't actually counter his reasoning, though.
Er.
It's a neat trick, if the power degradation is coming from the fact that he's a Cauldron Cape, and is thus operating with a damaged/dead/corrupted Shard. If such Shards originate with Eden's demise, then why would such a power exist before then? I guess I can kinda see having some sort of salvage Shard, that patches holes in one Shard with the bits from another, for emergencies that cause damage. Even so, it still seems like a bit of an ass-pull, honestly.
A reminder: many of the original shards that make up the first Entities did not join voluntarily.
...Okay, it might just be because it's late where I am, but I'm not following your line of thought, here. I guess maybe what you're saying is that he tapped something like an Assimilation Shard, one meant to forcibly incorperate recalcitrant Shards into the gestalt? I don't see why that would help repair damaged Shards, like Eidolon's, though.
I'm saying he had access to a cannibalism shard. Taking energy from a shard that would prefer not to hand it over is necessary for an entity doing the forcible assimilation thing, whatever mechanism is used in specific.
Yep. This is explicit in Scion's interlude, when he breaks up a shard into a cluster, recodes part of its ability into all the other shards, and then compacts the cluster back into a single shard (which he then throws at Aisha).
