Eero's Crazy Theories: soulcasting and you

[Eerongal he/him]

So this is a branch-off topic from here on TWG, and thought i'd put it out there as a theory based on very little info about the soulcasting, and inferences by character actions in story. I'm copying and pasting the info here, what's everyone else think?

When making the buildings, they obviously didn't have some huge box to change into stone to be a structure, so they had to do the more difficult procedure of making it from thin air. My guess is that making the stone from thin air wasn't instant, and took some time. Possibly building it by adding layer by layer of sediment to the building to create it. This would be terribly time consuming. Possibly more time consuming than just plain building a bridge. We never actually see any buildings being soulcast, nor is the process ever described beyond something like "Our ancestors soulcast this place X thousand years ago!" or "We soulcast this place so many years ago, and have slowly been adding/changing it!"

Further thought - Maybe soulcasting something into existence requires a reduplicating of the natural process to create it (e.g. depositing stone layer by layer like sedimentary runoff would do, creating an apple requires creating a bud, which flowers, then becomes and apple, etc.) and is either more difficult and/or time consuming than going "Hey, stone, you're now a loaf of bread"

Thoughts, comments, flames?

[Chaos he/him]

Well, I'd imagine that since Jasnah was able to save Shallan's life quickly, that Soulcasting happens essentially instantly, much like how Aons and other foci work. I'd also assume that the ancients didn't have fabrials, so any ancient Soulcast structure was produced quickly, just like Jasnah's actions.

[Earendil]

Also, remember that Jasnah was able to soulcast a boulder into smoke (essentially thin air) in a single, instantaneous action.  I don't imagine that it would be significantly harder to reverse the process.

[Eerongal he/him]

Also, remember that Jasnah was able to soulcast a boulder into smoke (essentially thin air) in a single, instantaneous action.  I don't imagine that it would be significantly harder to reverse the process.

Smoke is hardly thin air. (in fact, you could probably technically call it "thick air" )

Smoke implies that there is something more substantial to it (particles of something) than just plain ol' empty air. In fact, given the dangers of smoke inhalation, and the dirt and debris it would cause, changing into air would actually be a much better, safer scenario, so there has to be a reason WHY she didn't just make it into air, but made it into smoke instead.

To me, there's just things that don't add up with soulcasting, that could have made things much easier. E.G. soulcasting permanent stone/metal bridges closer to the staging areas (stone/metal cant be burned down obviously, and is much harder to destroy, and permanent bridges all over would make life easier for their assaults in general), the aforementioned stone becoming smoke, and not something easier to deal with in general (air), and the fact that NONE of the soulcasting we see involves making ANYTHING from thin air, though it's obviously possible (like i said, they surely didn't have some building "template" they turned into stone, that would just be highly impractical to get around)

[Ryan he/him]

They did say that the barracks had been soulcast from air. And I seem to recall a mention of laying down layers when soulcasting from air. It seems implausible to me that they can somehow bring in enough air to make usably dense stone all at once.

Also,

Also, remember that Jasnah was able to soulcast a boulder into smoke (essentially thin air) in a single, instantaneous action.  I don't imagine that it would be significantly harder to reverse the process.

Remember that when she did that, the air pressure in the room instantly rose noticeably. Clearly, soulcasting follows some sort of conservation of matter, because soulcasting a boulder produced a much larger volume of smoke than the source boulder occupied. This lends further credence to the idea that soulcasting from air has to be done layer by layer, because the volume of your soulcast stone will be much smaller than the volume of air you used to produce it.