Search the Community

In WoK, before we know that Jasnah is a radiant, whenever Jasnah uses her Soulcaster, one of the gems had a chance to break (I think the smoakstone broke twice). Knowing that the Soulcaster was only a replication of a fabrial, why did the gemstones crack?

While recently looking up Spren I found out something interesting. There are no Spren in Shinovar. I have no idea why this is , hopefully someone here can lend some insight .... However , something else has been bothering me for a long time and perhaps this fact is an answer to question I have been asking myself. During WoK Risins Baps ( forgot his name) travels to Shinovar, he trades them soulcast Metal ( the shim do not laccept Metal mined from stone. They traded chickens for this ( apparently chickens like horses are indigenous to Shinovar! That really bothered me . It made no sense! The Shin have possession of the honorblades of the elsecallers and Lightweavers ! And with those blades they could soulcast all the metals they want . So why didn’t they ? Unless the objects inside Shinovar have no spren and therefore cannot be Soulcast !also a Fabrial shouldn’t work inside Shinovar either . As we all know Fabriana contain trapped spren , so you can’t have one in a spren free zone . The spren would probably be ejected when it enters Shinovar. Thoughts

Ok, so I was thinking about Soulcasting, and how insanely OP it can get, and the upper limit is only defined by what you can actually Soulcast things into. You would think the limiting factor would be how much Stormlight you have, and your ability to convince an object to change, and those limitations can be fixed easily with Honor’s Perpendicularity. Now, let’s start small, but still somewhat broken: Soulcast air into Osmium, the densest Element on the Periodic Table, perhaps an alloy of Osmium that is denser, if one can be made, or Osmium where all of the atoms have the maximum number of neutrons that are stable, or both. This will cause a large amount of air to be sucked towards it, potentially sucking in foes. Then, you Soulcast the incredibly dense material into Hydrogen, the least dense element on the Periodic Table, causing an extreme amount of pressure, and an explosion, which will probably kill anyone who got sucked in. However, this is pretty tame, compared to what is coming. You could Soulcast some air into pure fluorine, which is the most reactive, corrosive element on the Periodic Table, which would cause pretty much anything to catch fire, and would react to form all kinds of terrible, poisonous chemicals. You would probably want to wear Shardplate, and seal the visor. But why stop there? If possible, you could soulcast an object into oxygen, but instead of O2, you could Soulcast it into single atoms, which should then immediately combine into O2, causeing it to heat to thousands of degrees as it does so. Have fun! Let’s move on to something much more broken, but still kind of tame compared to what’s to come: if you could Soulcast Osmium, because it’s a metal, why not Soulcast air into a large enough quantity of a Radioactive metal,(such as Plutonium) into existence, creating an instant Nuclear explosion. (If you are doing this, I recommend you Elsecall out of there immediately.) However, broken as that is, Soulcasting can still get even more broken. Because there are elements on the Periodic Table that are incredibly unstable, and will decay radioactively within a few minutes, causing a nuclear explosion. However, the highest numbered elements will decay into elements that also decay, which would mean that the leftover elements would continue to explode. (See the Periodic Wall of Elements from What If?) But why limit ourselves to elements on the Periodic Table? We could, instead of creating element 118, create element, say, 800, which would be so much worse for everyone nearby, as it would create a much larger and longer lasting explosion. Did you think we were done? Soulcasting can still get even more broken, but I’m not entirely sure that this would work. In theory, you might be able to Soulcast the entire atmosphere into Neutron Star material, which, if taken out of the crushing gravity of a Neutron Star, would expand into superhot normal matter, releasing more energy than any nuclear weapon, killing anyone that might have survived the removal of the atmosphere. Again, you might want to relocate to the Cognitive Realm as quickly as possible. Even more terrifying, it might also be able to Soulcast the atmosphere into a black hole. (Never mind, the event horizon would be so small that it wouldn’t really do all that much, except for suffocating everyone to make it in the first place) I don’t think even the Breaking Talent could make this more broken. I’m not sure if the Fused have access to Soulcasting, but if they do, I think this means that Odium doesn’t want to make Roshar uninhabitable, like Ashlyn-or worse, depending on which of these he decided to use.

I was just listening to Kaza's interlude in Oathbringer, and it got me thinking about soulcaster fabrials. We know that regular fabrials work involving metal being pushed against a gemstone containing a spren. Different spren require different types of gems, and the spren consumes stormlight in the process. The effect of the fabrial is primarily based on the type of spren, with the details of how it works being based on the design of the fabrial. Surgebinding is similar except that it comes from the spren bonding with the surgebinder, allowing them to access 2 surges. Only true spren are capable of the bond, and I expect that this is part of how they're able to access 2 surges. Lesser spren are different, only being able to access the thing they're associated with (flamespren can create heat, etc.). Some things Syl said always made me suspect that the surges the true spren have access to comes through an agreement between that type of true spren and the spren for that surge. Like there's an agreement between Honorspren and Bondspren and another between Honorspren and Gravityspren. For soulcasting however it seems like there would be a different type of spren for each of the 10 essences. That's why lesser soulcaster fabrials are only able to use one essence. The greater ones can do more, but I suspect they have multiple spren. The lesser ones can only do 1. So does that mean that Inkspren and Cryptics have agreements with a bunch of different types of soulcasting spren? Or am I just completely misunderstanding something here?

When one elsecalls, they move their whole self into shadesmar. That is my understanding. Somehow only this is different from soulcasting when the person looks into the realm in order to communicate with the objects. However when an individual looks into shadesmar to soulcast, they are still exposed to all the dangers of the place (like drowning). How are they not fully entering shadesmar if they are interacting with the place like someone who is fully there would?

I think that I have just figured out a way to soulcast things into pole stones, thus solving the issue with greatshell extinction. most gemstones are a base material combined with different impurities that give the material a certain color. Rubies and sapphires are an example of this. Corundum is a crystalline material that in its pure form, is colorless. Rubies are created by adding small amounts of chromium and sapphires are created by adding iron, titanium, or copper. First the soulcaster would need to soulcast something into pure corundum, then they would need to soulcast a certain portion of the atoms into what ever element is needed to create the color they want. Now there is a lot more both in the chemistry and the realmic theory behind this (they do create a few problems) but I think this is a viable way to address the limited amount of polestones available.

I have been rereading the SLA and a few things have stood out to me. One of which is when Jasnah's hand sinks into the rock she soulcasts into smoke in front of Shallan and King T. That scene looks very similar to the stamps used in Forgery that sink into the material being forged. Soulcasting is basically feeding an object investure and getting it to change permanently. Forging is basically the same thing only it takes less investure and the effect is less permanent and takes a far longer time to prepare for. My question(s) are this: Is soulcasting as functionally similar to forging as I think it is? And: Could this link be exploited to hack either of the magic systems using the other system, if so, how?

Hello! While I was doing scripture study, (I'm LDS) something huge hit me! I realized that in Doctrine and Covenants 130, it has a lot of things that are extremely reminiscent of things seen in Oathbringer. For example, it mentions in verse seven a "sea of glass and fire." This sounds exactly like the cognitive realm, where the sea was made of glass beads (objects) and fire (souls). This was very peculiar to me, but connections go even deeper. Take verse eight for instance "The place where God resides is a great Urim and Thummim" In Hebrew, Urim and Thummim means "light and perfections." This blew my mind, because the spiritual realm is where stormlight comes from and where everything is the perfect version of itself. These are the only connections I've made so far, but I think there might be more. I really like this stuff and it gets me really excited! Does anyone else have any ideas about other connections to LDS or thoughts?

So in Talenel's chapter in WoR, he says they'll soulcast blocks of bronze to cast into weapons and armor. Then, in Oathbringer, in the first vision Dalinar includes Jasnah and Navani in, they comment on how the weapons are not iron or steel. The reason given for the bronze rather than the steel is that casting is easier than forging. While that would normally be true, in a world of soulcasters, I don't understand why they don't form weapons and armor out of some other metal and then soulcast it into steel. Is that addressed somewhere that I'm not remembering? My thinking is that bronze is an alloy consisting of just metal while steel includes non-metallic elements. In theory, this would mean it would require the use of multiple essences to be possible. Can they only soulcast one essence at a time? That doesn't explain not using iron. And in case anyone is confused, "casting" refers to forming molten metal in molds as opposed to the beating heated metal into shape that is "forging". It's not talking about soulcasting.

Does a copper cloud protect the user from other applications of investiture? A copper cloud prevents a seeker from sensing the use of investiture in it's area. Burning copper protects the allomancer from emotional allomancy. Does a copper cloud provide protection against other uses of investiture? For example, does burning copper protect the allomancer from being soulcast? Does burning copper protect the allomancer from a leacher? Does burning copper interfere with a blood sealer's ability to track you?

So, apparently if you Soulcast enough, your body begins to take on the characteristics of whatever Essence you're the most knowledgeable with. Like that one ardent in Words of Radiance whose face was turning to stone/crystal. But what if someone was a savant with meat Soulcasting? Would they just stay the same? Or would their begin producing more and more flesh? Or would they begin to turn into the characteristics of an inanimate slab of meat? Damnation, this is a creepy line of inquiry. In retrospect, this would be a good thread topic closer to Halloween. Oh well.

I ran across a post stating that with a sufficient amount of a shards “shard pool”, you may be able to soulcast that liquid into that shard’s godmetal. Assuming that this is possible, would it be possible with enough power or enough soulcasters, to transmute an entire pool into the godmetal, possibly blocking access.?

Pretty much exactly what the title says. We know that experienced Soulcasters can specify the type of the selected Essence the Soulcast material becomes (Jasnah trying to replicate strawberry jam in Way of Kings). If you knew what you were doing, could you Soulcast a material into a piece of a godmetal? Or would that be interfering in something far too intimately connected with the relevant Shard?

Does anybody know what happens to soulcaster physicals bodies after Prolonged use of a Soulcaster Fabrial. Twice I have seen descriptions of weird side effects. The first was during Gavilar funeral. The soulcaster Ardent skin seemed to be turning to stone. His eyes were described as becoming gem-like. Later on a ship that was headed to Aimia. The soulcaster on there skin was turning into gas I think . The user said she didn’t expect to live much longer. Jasnah using surges to soulcast doesn’t seem to have these side effects. What causes this? And why is it fatal?

I've been thinking about the physics and realmatics of soulcasting. We have seen quite a bit of it on screen, but there are, of course, still mysteries. Going down the soulcasting rabbit-hole, I came across the following WoB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/105-17th-shard-forum-qa/#e1139 Unfortunately, this seems to disagree with the canonical description of soulcasting. I imagine Brandon said this because in general he likes to preserve the laws of physics. (In this case the conservation of mass.) But how does mass conserving soulcasting contradict canonical soulcasting: 1) Soulcasting is shape preserving. We have seen this in every case where it is possible to see the shape of both the original object and the soulcast object. However, not only is it shape preserving, soulcasting also seems to be volume preserving. We have never seen a soulcast object, when soulcast into a denser material, shrink. This would be a very visible effect. It looks like marble has a density of about 2.7 g/mL. A human body has a density(if we include the air filled lungs) a little less than water, so let's call it 1 g/mL. If soulcasting conserved mass, a body soulcast to marble would shrink in volume by about 63%. This would cause a 6 ft. man to become a 4' 4" statue. 2) If soulcasting conserved mass, soulcasting to a lighter density material would cause catatrophic explosions. The analysis would be easier if she had soulcast it to air, but let us consider the example of Jasnah soulcasting the boulder to smoke. The smoke floated upward so it is less dense than the surrounding air. It looks like air at Standard temperature and pressure is about 1.3e-3 g/mL. If the boulder was 1m diameter sphere (This is being generous, it was likely much larger), it would have a mass of about 1.4 million grams of 1400 kg (using the density of marble as above). If soulcasting conserved mass, this would result in smoke that really wants to occupy about 1 million liters. To put that in D&D terms, that is 307 5ftx5ftx5ft cubes. Upon being soulcast the smoke would initially be at a pressure of 770 atms. A rough estimate would put the resulting expansion of the smoke at the equivalent of 55 lbs of TNT. (This last figure is very detail dependent and it is possible that I made some mistakes in the calculation. To make the conversion to equivalent pounds of TNT, I referenced http://ftp.feq.ufu.br/Luis_Claudio/Segurança/Safety/GUIDELINES_Chemical_Process_Quantitative_Risk_Analysis/0720X_02e.pdf) My conclusion? Soulcasting doesn't preserve mass, it preserves volume. Breaking conservation of mass is always problematic if you want to have physics behave in any way like we are used to, but I have some realmatic thoughts about that that I will share soon. I think that you can avoid the troubles associated with non-conservation of mass in a realmatic way.

So at the end of oathbringer Shallan makes her illusions solid? She assumes that it is a mix of soulcasting and illumination, but Jasnah said it may be the fact that there is so much stormlight. What if this is the resonance for the lightweavers? Do we know if you can only have one resonance? Or is it just if you put enough stormlight into an illusion you can make it solid?

Given that both forgery and soulcasting seem to work on some level with the identity of an object, would it be possible to undo both magics by using Aluminum Feruchemy? That is if you could store the identity of an object in a metalmind. Yes, I know this is a little far fetched, but think about it for a moment.

Spoilers up to Part 4. I think it's possible that Soulcasting, while it might slowly deteriorate your physical form, slowly changes your cognitive form until you become a Spren. (One to match the type of Soulcasting done) When I read Kaze Interlude, I thought she was just slowly turning into smoke. Of course, she soulcasts matter into smoke, so it seems like a plausible consequence. Chapter 105 talks of an ardent Soulcaster whose "skin beneath was colored like granite, cracked and chipped, and seemed to glow from within." This description matches that of some of the spren walking around in the Spren port in Shadesmar. This made me realize that there was also a Spren to match Kaza's trabsformation in that town. There were smokespren there as well. Anyone have a similar thought or theory about the end cost of Soulcasting?

If we were to get some FMA-esque Soulcasting fights in a future book? Changing the environment to suit yourself better, creating weapons from random materials around you, etc. I'm not sure whether Soulcasting can change the shape of an object like FMA Alchemy can, but it would be really interesting to see something like that IMO.

So shallan is running around urithiru looking for whatever this thing is. (Presumably an unmade) She's got an abundance of stormlight now considering that she put on a play by herself. It should be much safer for her to attempt soulcasting now (pattern mentions that it is much more dangerous when she only had a little stormlight after the shipwreck) The cognitive realm for urithiru would presumably be oceanish since that's the weird way it works on roshar, but im guessing that the solution will become more clear to shallan once she attempts to soulcast again and sees what's really going on over in the cognitive realm. Perhaps some giant manifestation of this spren that is only partially in the physical realm?! And she slashes it a thousand times with pattern. No clue, but i bet it's going to be weird.

What possibilities do lifeless have in terms of combining them with the power of other shards? Can you soul cast lifeless into metal? If so, would you have to do it before or after awakening it as a lifeless, and would it still be able to move? I think I remember reading that investiture of different shards doesn't play well together, but I don't really know if that means it would make it impossible, or just take a large amount of either Stormlight or breaths. Could you give them hemalurgic spikes, either in combination with soulcasting to metal or by itself, and make a sort of lifeless supersoldiers?

Ok, so maybe this is an elementary question, but I was reading a post on Reddit,( https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/5ojrq9/twok_jasnah_and_soulcasting/ ) that talks about Jasnah during her "battle soulcasting" when she turns the thugs into fire, and quartz and such. The discussion is about something else, but it got me thinking about HOW she did that. We know from other examples, such as Shallan with the boat and the stick, that Soulcasting utilizes a sense of arguing, or debate, or logic, per se to convince the object to become something it is not. So my question is how does Jasnah CONVINCE people, to suddenly burst into flame. As I discussed this with my other Brandonites we came to the conclusion that perhaps in Shadesmaar there is a black bead representing the BODY, as opposed to the MIND of the person, and that she is able to convince the actual flesh and bones to change, rather than communing with the actual cognitive self of the people. For some reason, however, this still seems much more difficult to me than inanimate objects. Yes, I understand that flesh and bones COULD be considered inanimate, but especially in relation with realmatic theory, the idea of identity is a strong one, and thus I would think that the actual body of people has a very strong identity with the mind. Thoughts?

I am a stick. But seriously. While we've all talked about the stick as one of our fav characters... It's time to do a real consideration about the mechanics and limitations of soulcasting. So obviously a soulcaster uses stormlight to transform the substance of a material. I suspect that for a radiant who can soulcast, it doesn't matter what kind of gem they draw light from (unlike how it is with soulcaster fabrials). But soulcasting can be difficult difficult. Shallan failed to turn stick into fire (even though she could apparently transform a whole boat). So. What makes an object resistant to soulcasting? 1. Investiture. This should be pretty obvious, since investiture interferes with investiture. I would guess that the reason stick proved more challenging than a boat was partially because the stick was wood that was still alive, and thus more invested. 2. Connection / cognitive intent. It seems like the basic "intent" of a spren can make it easier or harder to soulcast. I would guess it is still possible to soulcast an object against its own will (I doubt the spren of the folks who attacked Jasnah in that alley really wanted to turn into fire or smoke or any of that), but more difficult (especially since human beings are invested). So. What I'm laying out here is not remotely groundbreaking in terms of realmatics, but its worth doing this anyway since I haven't seen anyone give serious consideration to what can make something soulcasting immune. It's worth conjecturing what the rules of this power are, since I have no doubt Sanderson has restricted it with a set of rules. I bet other magic users are pretty storming hard to soulcast. They are more invested, and also connected to at least one shard. I don't think you could just soulcast a voidbringer or stormclast to make it go away. Nor could you soulcast a fellow radiant into fire. And don't even think about trying to soulcast something like a shardblade, or, god forbid, nightblood. It's also probably pretty hard to soulcast something with a really strong identity (no, I don't mean spiritual identity... more like, identity as in how you see yourself). Even though some historical artifact might be completely nonmagical and not too invested... Still pretty hard to soulcast, just because so many people have thought about the object that it has developed a more fixed self-perception. So, living things, invested things, famous things, or connected things. All hard to soulcast. This means that some things are nigh immune to soulcasting, which is probably good since otherwise to be honest the power would be a little too strong.