Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him Posted December 30, 2016 Report Share Posted December 30, 2016 I thought of this while reading the part where Jasnah gives Shallan a "philosophy lesson". I can understand how the man who was turned into fire can never be brought back, due to the fire disappearing, but what about the one who was turned into a statue? Has there been something that states a person that is turned into an inanimate object can't be reanimated? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king of nowhere Posted December 30, 2016 Report Share Posted December 30, 2016 21 minutes ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said: I thought of this while reading the part where Jasnah gives Shallan a "philosophy lesson". I can understand how the man who was turned into fire can never be brought back, due to the fire disappearing, but what about the one who was turned into a statue? Has there been something that states a person that is turned into an inanimate object can't be reanimated? i think not. soulcasting changes the substance, but it cannot bring a soul back into what is now an inanimate object. at best, you could have a body with no discernible cause of death. Just as reattaching a decapitated head won't revive the person. Also, the human body is not made by a single stuff, but by hundreds of different tissues, so turning a block of stone into one should be too complex to be feasible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him Posted December 30, 2016 Author Report Share Posted December 30, 2016 That makes sense. I was curious, since you can presumably reverse inanimate soul-casting. So, to be clear, when a human is soul-cast the Cognitive Aspect is what changes and the Spirit/soul goes away in the process? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yata he/him Posted December 30, 2016 Report Share Posted December 30, 2016 31 minutes ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said: That makes sense. I was curious, since you can presumably reverse inanimate soul-casting. So, to be clear, when a human is soul-cast the Cognitive Aspect is what changes and the Spirit/soul goes away in the process? When someone dies, his Soul's tie to the physical realm began to be cutted and also if the body is dead, the Mind spawn in the Cognitive Realm.While He is still in this state He may be revived with magic Healingbut the Soul began to feel the pull of the Beyond and this pull become stronger and stronger until the Mind leaves the Realms to reach the Beyond itself. Once the Mind is beyond the Realms, the guy's invesiture is recycled in the rightful pool and no mortal (and as far as we know godly) way may restore him. Of course you could Soulcast the matter again into a living being (but I think it's quite hard for biology complexity) but if the soul is gone, you will simply have a corpse (probably if you are fast enough you may de-Soulcast someone as living being...but I think you will need to apply some Healing to the guy too) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king of nowhere Posted December 30, 2016 Report Share Posted December 30, 2016 (edited) Eh, I'm not really sure about the realmatics. I'm not even sure if soulcasting affects primarily the cognitive or the spiritual aspect. But either way, killing the person is not part of the soulcasting. That's just a side-effect, because accidentally a body of stone cannot support life. So you can reverse the soulcasting, it's just that the side effet will stay. I think the closer it could come to be reversible would be soulcasting someone's blood to a physiological saline solution; while that's lethal, it takes a few minutes to kill (without emoglobine, it cannot carry enough oxygen to support the tissues, so death by asphyxiation will occur), and if before those few minutes are passed you soulcast the solution back to blood, the person will be fine. After the person is already dead, the person will stay dead. and the soulcasting mechanics doesn't change a thing, because whether the person died from lack of oxygen carried in his blood is not part of the soulcasting. EDIT: i wasn't specifying it, but even if the soul is still in the cognitive realm, where it can be brought back, reversing the soulcasting will not bring back the soul, because the soul was not detached from the body by the soulcasting. though soulcasting the body back can allow healing to bring the soul back. Edited December 30, 2016 by king of nowhere Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vikorr Posted December 30, 2016 Report Share Posted December 30, 2016 (edited) Don't forget that in the Shallan arc, where Jasnah tries soulcasting the strawberry jam into something else (edible), she couldn't do that well, so a human (from rock) in all their organic complexity (spirit attached or not), would be quite impossible. If it were possible to soulcast a human,and attach spirit from the spiritual realm to the soulcast 'human' - then the question would arise 'What else can we do?'.... and where would that question stop? New people with no past? New animals? Clones? Trollocs? New forms of higher intelligence? Edited December 30, 2016 by vikorr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nervousnerd he/him Posted December 31, 2016 Report Share Posted December 31, 2016 Well we don't know that it is impossible. As said it would certainly be difficult but Jasnah (while possibly one of the best) is likely not at the level of the past Radiants yet and may also get better with more oaths. I do agree it would likely be quite impossible for the soul to just return to the body by itself as people appear different in shadesmar than other things seen there. I do wonder if there are methods to help a soul do that before it has moved beyond. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corax Posted December 31, 2016 Report Share Posted December 31, 2016 I would expect that even if it were possible it would be extremely hard for a surgebinder and impossible for a fabriel soulcaster, as they deal in transmuting things to pure essences. Even if a surgebinder could pull it off, I suspect the result would be the Rosharan equivalent of a Lifeless. That being said, the human origin and shape might make it relatively easy to Awaken if you were an Awakener. (I was just thinking about this the other day, lol. Glad I'm not the only one.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krandacth Posted December 31, 2016 Report Share Posted December 31, 2016 (edited) I've wondered for a while what it means to soulcast a human at all... Are you soulcasting the person, or just their body? In the latter case, does the body appear in Shadesmar as a sphere, in addition to the flame that represents the person as a sentient being? In which case the discussion this far makes complete sense: Changing the body would dissociate it from the sentience in the same way as killing the body, which presumably breaks that combined entity's spirit web. However, if the flame that represents the person in Shadesmar also encompasses their body, then their entire sentience and being has been convinced/forced to see itself as crystal (or whatever). This would therefore not leave a detached cognitive aspect in Shadesmar, and (Realmatically) the person hasnt died, but transformed. Furthermore, this is actually less destructive to the spirit web, conceptually, as there has not been a dissociation between the mind and the body. [wild speculation] In the second case, I would assume that the persons consciousness and soul has transformed (and so been captured) every bit as much as their physical form, and this form may be used as a model in the same way that a transformed muscle could be used as a model when transforming it back to flesh; all you need to know is how to soulcast to the base "materials" of consciousness and humanity in the former cases, and to the base material of muscle (muscle fibres) in the latter. While very unintuitive, this doesn't sound impossible to me, whereas constructing a functioning soul and mind from scratch would be a whole other degree of complexity. Think of the difference between forging a copper wire and building a super computer capable of human thought: The former can be done easily with a basic knowledge of forging, but the latter is a task that has still not been solved today. However, given a template of such a super computer and the ability to create copper wires (and transistors I guess, but shh), you could fairly easily recreate one. [/wild speculation] EDIT: Wow, way to kill a thread, Krandacth Edited January 2, 2017 by Krandacth observation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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