Jasnah Faking Fake Soulcasting

[Oudeis he/him]

?? Has someone said that there are modern Soulcasters? I'm pretty sure we were all on the same page on that one. Fabrials based on the Surges seem to be something fundamentally different from "modern" fabrials, and are all ancient.

 

Shallan actually watched Jasnah burn the words onto the page, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Since it's a talk about precision, I doubt she's using Transportation. Jasnah is in the middle of the wilderness, with Wit, no less, a week's walk from the nearest village. Not from her actual destination, just the literal closest human beings. If she could Transport literally any more accurately than that, I assume she would have. I could see it being a mix of the Surges, the way people seem to accept she did with the muggers, but not soley Transportation.

[Seloun]

The modern/ancient soulcaster point was in response to the sub-thread that started with:

 

Soulcasters are holy, but not necessarily Relics. I seem to recall someone (Navani?) commenting that "Modern" Soulcasters are somehow inferior to ancient ones.
 

 

which I believe someone was looking for quotes in support/denial of.

 

 

Shallan actually watched Jasnah burn the words onto the page, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Since it's a talk about precision, I doubt she's using Transportation. Jasnah is in the middle of the wilderness, with Wit, no less, a week's walk from the nearest village. Not from her actual destination, just the literal closest human beings. If she could Transport literally any more accurately than that, I assume she would have. I could see it being a mix of the Surges, the way people seem to accept she did with the muggers, but not soley Transportation.

 

There's potentially other mechanisms that might look like 'burning' (e.g. lemon juice trick or another chemical reaction). I'm not necessarily suggesting that that's what happened, just that Shallan's POV is necessarily limited by what she thinks is possible.

 

It seems quite possible that the accuracy of Transportation may be dependent on distance or some other factor (e.g. living subjects might be much harder to transport, inaccuracy might be due to being in a hurry or because she's transporting from Shademar). If the mugger scene was dependent on Transportation, Jasnah seems to have reasonable precision in that instance.

[Guest]

The modern/ancient soulcaster point was in response to the sub-thread that started with:

which I believe someone was looking for quotes in support/denial of.

I believe I posted my own failure to find this, unless I forgot to hit "post" because I got distracted at work.

That said, I do think that if Navani knows enough to fix a broken one she must know enough to build at least a basic one from scavenged parts even if she can't build a new one.

[Dhavaer]

That said, I do think that if Navani knows enough to fix a broken one she must know enough to build at least a basic one from scavenged parts even if she can't build a new one.

 

Not necessarily. According to Navani's message to Jasnah broken soulcasters usually have the gem housings out of alignment: they're warped, not damaged. The actual functioning parts seem to be a black box.

[Oudeis he/him]

The modern/ancient soulcaster point was in response to the sub-thread that started with:

 

Aaaaah, sorry, I missed this. Yes, I concur with you. There are only ancient Soulcasters.

 

I still think transformation is more likely than transportation. There could be other factors, but the facts are, we have seen her Soulcast very well and we've seen her Transport very poorly. While I look forward to finding the answer and even being proven wrong, it would be a plot twist at this point.

 

I think someone pointed out the Soulcasters that form air into buildings. This seems to imply that the ending shape is important, not the beginning shape. It's also an example of "turn a quantity of a thing into something else", rather than "turn the whole of a thing". So this is interesting; while we get no further insight into the model, we have proof that Transformation does do this thing under other circumstances.

 

If I recall correctly, the event was inspired by Jasnah running out of ink. Odd she wouldn't just Soulcast air into ink, or use the Transportation Surge to steal ink from somewhere and claim she'd just Soulcast it. I know she's better at fire than... is ink oil liquid or non-oil liquid? I truly don't know. Anyway, if she can, when necessary, Soulcast a human's blood without killing them, surely it would have been simple enough to make a small quantity of ink, compared to using up her Stormlight to burn words into a book...

[Dhavaer]

If I recall correctly, the event was inspired by Jasnah running out of ink. Odd she wouldn't just Soulcast air into ink, or use the Transportation Surge to steal ink from somewhere and claim she'd just Soulcast it. I know she's better at fire than... is ink oil liquid or non-oil liquid? I truly don't know. Anyway, if she can, when necessary, Soulcast a human's blood without killing them, surely it would have been simple enough to make a small quantity of ink, compared to using up her Stormlight to burn words into a book...

 

Fire is an essence, and so is presumably easier and possibly less expensive in terms of stormlight. Jasnah also defaults to a ruby, smokestone and diamond in her soulcaster; to create ink and keep up the pretence of it being real she'd need to swap the gems out. Less bother to get creative with fire.

[hoser he/him]

Pretty ...

But my opinion is that Jasnah knows how to Soulcast in a somewhat different manner, especially since she's also used it on living beings to kill them which seems unlikely, Shallan had trouble convincing a stick not to be a stick, it'd be a lot harder to convince a person to self-immolate in the span of 2 milliseconds.

That being said the potential model I'd use is that we are talking about the cognitive realm here, Jasnah as the person using the piece of paper is probably the primary source for its cognitive identity, if she really believed that it was a bunch of different letter-shaped pieces of paper that were stuck together then Shadesmar would probably reflect that.

SA3 spoilers:

There is a sample chapter from Stormlight 3 that resolves the stick problem.  In Shadesmar, people show up brightly, so Jasnah would have known where the thieves' cognitive aspects were.  How she could get there and communicate effectively enough to get them to change is still a mystery to me.

I think the cognitive identity of the paper would have been established during it's creation and handling.  There might even be an ideal form of paper, so I think the identity would be established independent of Jasnah.  Maybe by use of authority, she could change it, but I don't see it as the simplest solution.

Aaaaah, ...

If I recall correctly, the event was inspired by Jasnah running out of ink. Odd she wouldn't just Soulcast air into ink, or use the Transportation Surge to steal ink from somewhere and claim she'd just Soulcast it. I know she's better at fire than... is ink oil liquid or non-oil liquid? I truly don't know. Anyway, if she can, when necessary, Soulcast a human's blood without killing them, surely it would have been simple enough to make a small quantity of ink, compared to using up her Stormlight to burn words into a book...

Ink seems like the kind of complex organic that she would have trouble with.  Blood is easier, as an essence. 

Edited July 8, 2015 by Moogle
Please mark spoilers for unpublished novels.

[Oudeis he/him]

Please, if you're going to discuss a chapter of an unreleased book, do so behind a spoiler cut.

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

It could be possible there is a different, yet similar, model of Transformation/Soulcasting for both Surge and Fabrial. Was it confirmed/speculated/theorised/general consensus that the original idea for Fabrials was based on the Transformation Surge itself? If so it is possible that something about the Soulcasting model for Transformation couldn't be replicated exactly into the Fabrial process. In regards to Ink classification, do we actually know what was used to make it because that may help? In relation to Ivory, it's possible his oily-esque appearance might grant some favour towards oil-based liquids. What we really need is a few more scenes from her (Jasnah's) point of view, to help give a more accurate idea. 

[hoser he/him]

Please, if you're going to discuss a chapter of an unreleased book, do so behind a spoiler cut.

Thanks, sorry, good catch, etc.  Hopefully the edit covers your concern.

[Arook he/him]

If you remember the reason that Kaladin is gathering rocks is it is easier to soulcast individual rock not just turn a section of ground into grain. So that says they can take a subset of an object and make part of it into something. Jasnah who is talented with fire and not blood might find it easier to burn letters then to write in blood not to mention blood is not a good medium for writing it tends to fade easily, also when you start writing in blood people talk. I also feel that Shallan is observant enough to tell whether thing are disappearing or being burned she is studying to be scholar after all.

[Oudeis he/him]

Thanks, sorry, good catch, etc.  Hopefully the edit covers your concern.

 

Thank you!