Kurkistan he/him Posted January 23, 2014 Posted January 23, 2014 The blood question is a tough one. It may come down to Blood being an essence, or it could be a "nesting doll" of Cognitive aspects, like how the palace in the WoR Prologue both had its own aspect and contained the aspects of other objects within it (doors, etc.). So Shallan's blood was a distinct object that Jasnah could target, even though Shallan's own Cognitive aspect also included it. Just like an individual door in the palace is its own thing, despite also being contained within the palace's aspect.
DocHoliday he/him Posted January 23, 2014 Posted January 23, 2014 An interesting point Kurk, but I feel organic compounds are slightly more coherent in their Cognitive Aspect as there is an interdependency between the body's various components. Whereas doors can come and go in an inanimate object and have no influence on the rest of the object. Makes me wonder if Jasnah' s summoning of the palace in Shadesmar had a statue removed of the Herald, or of it still contained the state of Jasnah was unaware of the vandalism. Perhaps Kurk is right and its a matter of the Essences.
hoser he/him Posted January 23, 2014 Posted January 23, 2014 Another possibility is that a more skilled practitioner could interact more creatively or with a more refined intent to modify only a part of something. So I see three possibilities: Separate bead for Shallan's blood Something essence related More experienced practitioner than Shallan can make specific changes internal to the bead or some combination.
The Count he/him Posted January 23, 2014 Posted January 23, 2014 (edited) Yes, the mass conservation in stone to smoke is dubious to me. If we convert, say, a rock of 2500 kg/m3 (common enough) into air of 1kg/m3, given ideal gas law (to which air is close enough), we get, say, a ton of air under 2500 atm (36700-ish psi). I am pretty sure the explosion would be... spectacular. Now, smoke is much denser, but still, the explosion described seemed too weak for perfect mass conservation. Not to mention that statues are apparently human-sized, while stone is at least 2 times denser than human... (And given that fire is, essentially , a plasma phase of air/fuel conversion should have vaporized the whole alley) Sure this it true but given the fantasy setting we can use some handwavium and claim that the spiritual energy from the stormlight makes up the differing mass. In the Air to Stone example this make fairly good sense, the energy becomes mass directly. The Stone to Air is more tricky as the addition of spiritual energy would equate to a LOSS of mass in that example. I will invoke my handwavium here and posit that spiritual energy can be converted in negative mass to allow the Stone to be soulcast into air without producing a devastating shockwave which should incinerate the one performing the soulcasting. This would still allow mass / energy to be conserved without death inducing side effects. Edited January 23, 2014 by The Count 1
11thorderknight Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Exact numbers aside, it's obvious that Brandon meant for Soulcasting to be mass-conservative, even if the numbers don't entirely match up. The boulder-to-smoke scene, with the pressure phenomenon, is pretty clear on that. As for air, my theory is that the Zephyr Essence isn't plain air, but the movement of air, i.e. sapphires are used in soulcasting not to turn things into air (although they could, with a much bigger pressure gradient than turning things into smoke) but rather to condense air into a dense enough volume that it could then be Soulcast into something useful.
Moogle Posted January 24, 2014 Author Posted January 24, 2014 (edited) Exact numbers aside, it's obvious that Brandon meant for Soulcasting to be mass-conservative, even if the numbers don't entirely match up. The boulder-to-smoke scene, with the pressure phenomenon, is pretty clear on that. If he did, he messed up the boulder-to-smoke scene. The density of stone, had there been mass-conservation, would have made the smoke explode much more violently than it did. Certainly violently enough to kill Jasnah and everyone in the hallway. Unless, of course, the smoke was made of some super-heavy element. I find it doubtful it's anything but carbon/soot, though. Edit: Some quick numbers, since I was suddenly hit by a bout of uncertainty. Density of stone: ~2500 kg/m^3 Density of air at sea level: ~1.225 kg/m^3 If the stone was converted to smoke, the resulting smoke would have been at roughly 2000 atmospheres of pressure before exploding outwards. For reference, the compressed air in a scuba tank is around 200 atmospheres of pressure. If you puncture a scuba tank, bad things happen. If you compressed the air in a scuba tank an additional 10x... If anyone disagrees with my rough numbers, please speak up. I'm not terribly confident in them. Edited January 24, 2014 by Moogle
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