Questions about Soulcasters... okay... and Kandra

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

When soulcasting can you form the material into shape or does it strictly maintain the shape of the object you soulcast from?  

How does this work for soulcasting air? 

Can you fuel soulcasting via fabrial with outside stormlight or only the stormlight present in the gems used to create the soulcaster themselves? If it is only the gems in the fabrial is there a trick to transferring stormlight from one gem into another?  

After reading the soulcasting portion of coppermind I am confused as to how much of an object gets soulcast.  Seeing the portion about wax sculptures being soulcast makes me really curious about the specifications of how that works. 

If you were to have a wax sculpture of a chandelier all 1 piece could a soulcaster differentiate between what portions they want to be crystal and what portions they want to be metal? 

Are soulcaster fabrials capable of soulcasting a portion of the soulcaster themselves? 

Leading to a possible synergy with Kandra.... 

If a Kandra had a soulcaster capable of soulcasting metal... could they soulcast a portion of themselves into aluminum? Of course they would lose that portion of themselves but as a Kandra you sort of have liberty to do just that. 

Watching the mimic octopus change shapes I picture a kandra with a soulcaster shaping their outer flesh into carapace shapes and soulcasting it into armor on the go.  I don't necessarily thing it is the most efficient use of the materials... but wouldn't convincing portions of yourself to become what you want, as a being that has mimicry at their root, make soulcasting easier? 

Of course a human turning their arm into aluminum would be bad news as they would never be able to change it back to flesh. But a kandra could shed unwanted portions of their body and grow it back after a decent sized snack. @Trusk'our due to yet another possible kandra synergy. 

[Treamayne]

As far as we know so far, Soulcasting is like Forgery - you are changing the Spiritweb and those changes ripple through to the Cognitive and Physical Realms. So, you wouldn't be changing only "part" of something unless it already has a separate Cognitive and Spiritual Identity (or you can separate those identities). For larger projects (as seen in WoR when Adolin watches the Soulcasting) they use multiple Soulcasters (Fabrial) working together when the light in the gems of a single soulcaster is not enough.

I would guess that complicated projects with multiple essences (like you chandelier example) would require separate pieces soulcast with the correct essence, then assembled. It may be possible (again using your example) that since there are three gem settings in a fabrial Soulcaster, that if the Fabrial had both (in this case metal and crystal) then a single person with the correct Intent might be able to soulcast different pieces simultaneously (as long as those pieces in "wax" had not been assembled long enought to take on a singular "chandelier" cognitive identity yet). 

I doubt a sapiant being could Soulcast just a part of their body without that part already having a separate Identity - which, by then, why not just take a shirt and soulcast that into aluminum armor?

Edited February 21 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

@Trusk'our due to yet another possible kandra synergy. 

Nice. It's always fun to find another one of those 

 

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

When soulcasting can you form the material into shape or does it strictly maintain the shape of the object you soulcast from?  

How does this work for soulcasting air? 

Can you fuel soulcasting via fabrial with outside stormlight or only the stormlight present in the gems used to create the soulcaster themselves? If it is only the gems in the fabrial is there a trick to transferring stormlight from one gem into another?  

After reading the soulcasting portion of coppermind I am confused as to how much of an object gets soulcast.  Seeing the portion about wax sculptures being soulcast makes me really curious about the specifications of how that works. 

If you were to have a wax sculpture of a chandelier all 1 piece could a soulcaster differentiate between what portions they want to be crystal and what portions they want to be metal? 

Are soulcaster fabrials capable of soulcasting a portion of the soulcaster themselves? 

Leading to a possible synergy with Kandra.... 

If a Kandra had a soulcaster capable of soulcasting metal... could they soulcast a portion of themselves into aluminum? Of course they would lose that portion of themselves but as a Kandra you sort of have liberty to do just that. 

Watching the mimic octopus change shapes I picture a kandra with a soulcaster shaping their outer flesh into carapace shapes and soulcasting it into armor on the go.  I don't necessarily thing it is the most efficient use of the materials... but wouldn't convincing portions of yourself to become what you want, as a being that has mimicry at their root, make soulcasting easier? 

Of course a human turning their arm into aluminum would be bad news as they would never be able to change it back to flesh. But a kandra could shed unwanted portions of their body and grow it back after a decent sized snack. @Trusk'our due to yet another possible kandra synergy. 

Okay, so, yes, as far as we know a Soulcasting requires that the object retains its original shape- heck, even wood turned metal retains its grain-, though the material its made out of changes. When changing air to a solid, you usually need some kind of barrier to give it shape (such as the poles with cloth on them that traditional Soulcasters use to make stone buildings for the Alethi war camps), but as we see Jasnah shaping stairs out of thin air in OB, this is optional, likely needing to do with the perception of the Soulcaster.

@Treamayne raises a good point; I think it would be difficult to just choose to Soulcast a portion of your own self, as the default would be to target all of yourself (resulting in guaranteed death for most- probably all- changes). . . though I suppose Jasnah did selectively Soulcast Shallan's blood in tWoK, so with practice and correct targeting it should be doable.

I'd say an easier option for the Kandra would be to separate the body part they wish to Soulcast from the rest of them (mostly just the nerves and blood vessels, though an aluminum shell could still cover them) so they don't have to deal with that issue as much.

Overall, I'd say this could be a pretty powerful synergy between Soulcasting and Kandra. Good idea @Tamriel Wolfsbaine!