Talk:Remati Shackle/@comment-5782071-20190422182510/@comment-5782071-20190424202922

The best I came up with is that the Shackle originally drew its power from its wearer, draining their life force/energy to fuel the shield. If this happened too often, the Guardian would die or suffer other ill effects, necessitating the shackle be transferred often and risk disippating were the Guardian to die before the threat to the Warehouse ceased.

We know that the Regents are somehow able to alter the Shackle, since they modified it after Sykes so that, by pointing the telescope from the AC system to Uranus instead, the shield will appear to remain active while allowing it to be passed through (side note, that doesn't explain why Artie and Steve's last attempt to break in with car batteries knocked Steve back if the shield were inactive by that point, since Myka and Pete drove up to them in the same shot).

So, at some point, either when they decided the current life-draining system wasn't good enough, or when they decided the Guardian had to be a Regent, which are indispensible, they altered the artifact to isntead drain its power from Alpha Centauri. How, I'm not sure.

A bit of support for this idea, maybe, is that when we see the Shackle in use for the first time, it causes Jane pain. Perhaps the Shackle still drains a bit of energy (or tries to) from its wearer? Or a remnant of its downside from its forced creation hurts the wearer, but not to the degree it used to?