What's with Jasnah's Soulcasting?

[KalaDANG he/him]

So in Way of Kings, Jasnah's soulcasting has kind of been confusing me. 

Spoiler

Her soulcaster is fake, but the gemstones on it still crack when she's using their investiture to soulcast and change things. I'm kind of confused at why this would happen if she doesn't actually rely upon the soulcaster since she has access to the surge of transformation. Since we have a kind of limited experience with soulcasting and the surge of transformation, we (Or at least, I) don't really know if just in general using either of those causes the gemstones that power the transformation to crack. So this is kind of a dual question, but is the cracking and destruction of the gemstones a result of both normal fabrial-assisted soulcasting AND the surge of Transformation? And if it is not, why do Jasnah's gemstones still crack? For example, the scene where she takes Shallan into the alley and kills the murderers?

 

Edited July 12, 2018 by KalaDANG

[jefftucker0525]

Well she was still making use of those gemstones to surgebind, so she's was still putting a lot of stain on them really quickly. I'm assuming any large, quick withdraw of stormlight would cause a gemstone to crack

[Calderis he/him]

The way that Jasnah functions in way of Kings makes it seem fairly clear, to me at least, that the surge can be used without drawing the stormlight in. Offering the stormlight to the Cognitive aspect of the item directly from the gemstone. 

I believe doing this would limit the transformations to the gem type, the same as a fabrial Soulcaster. It would also effect the gems in the same way as the fabrials. 

You see it from Shallan as well. When she soulcast the goblet the very first time, she never inhaled Stormlight. The goblet changed to blood, and a garnet was drained. 

Edited July 13, 2018 by Calderis

[Gray to he/him]

According to Coppermind

Quote

[Greatshells] produce gemhearts of great size, which are incredibly useful in Soulcasting as a larger stone is less likely to break from the strain.

What this "strain" is I have no idea. Maybe it's the force of the stormlight leaving the gemstone?

[KalaDANG he/him]

Yeah. It’s just weird. We haven’t seen anything like that with other surgebinding before, and I don’t think that Jasnah withdraws it any faster than Kaladin would. I think what Calderis said is interesting though. Maybe forcing the gemstone to directly power the transformation instead of the surgebinder them self powering it causes the strain that destroys it. It could be that if the surgebinder hasn’t absorbed any stormlight, but still attempts a transformation, the transformation steals from the nearest investiture energy source it finds to power it.  Kind of like how Nightblood will feast upon your soul if you try to wield him without investiture.

[RShara she/her]

I always think of it the way some opals (hydrophane) work. These types of opals absorb water because they have microfissures throughout their structure. And if you dry them too fast, they will crack.

So when the stormlight is withdrawn from a gemstone too quickly, it might crack and fracture too.

[KalaDANG he/him]

OOOH OOOH

It’s kind of like how when Szeth lashes or something too quickly with a large amount of stormlight, frost accumulates on his body! Maybe it’s just the COLD that’s making the gemstones crack? This happened to me when I was doing the dishes once. I pulled a mug out of the dishwasher and it was BURNING hot, so I shoved it under the cold water from the faucet to cool it off, and it shattered. Could it be the same principle? I know there’s a WoB out there where Brandon says that the frost accumulation is just from the stormlight changing phases or something, so it could be.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

1 hour ago, KalaDANG said:

OOOH OOOH

It’s kind of like how when Szeth lashes or something too quickly with a large amount of stormlight, frost accumulates on his body! Maybe it’s just the COLD that’s making the gemstones crack? This happened to me when I was doing the dishes once. I pulled a mug out of the dishwasher and it was BURNING hot, so I shoved it under the cold water from the faucet to cool it off, and it shattered. Could it be the same principle? I know there’s a WoB out there where Brandon says that the frost accumulation is just from the stormlight changing phases or something, so it could be.

I don't have much else to say, but I think this is a very plausible theory. It's probably somewhere between your theory, Calderis's, and RShara's. 

[KalaDANG he/him]

I looked around and I read about something called Thermal Shock. Here's the definition.

Thermal shock occurs when a thermal gradient causes different parts of an object to expand by different amounts. This differential expansion can be understood in terms of stress or of strain, equivalently. At some point, this stress can exceed the strength of the material, causing a crack to form.

It says that since most gems are at least partially made up of water, (Opal is apparently the worst at 30% H20, so @RShara knew her stuff) the sudden increase of cold in gemstones can cause certain parts of the gem to shrink at a different rate than others, leading to the stress that cracks it. 

Since Szeth and gemstones are doing essentially the same thing, just holding in stormlight and then releasing a lot of it at once, it would make sense for the gemstones to get colder too. I can't find the WoB right now, but I think Brandon said at one time that the frost on Szeth is caused by an endothermic reaction caused by the stormlight changing states. But I can't be sure exactly what he said.

[Calderis he/him]

I absolutely agree that it's temperature differential causing the stress, my point though was that it is only applied when the stormlight is expended directly from the gemstone. 

If it were just the light "leaving the gem too quickly" then every time a Radiant sucked in light they should crack. 

Edited July 13, 2018 by Calderis

[KalaDANG he/him]

On 7/13/2018 at 9:30 AM, Calderis said:

I absolutely agree that it's temperature differential causing the stress, my point though was that it is only applied when the stormlight is expended directly from the gemstone. 

If it were just the light "leaving the gem to quickly" then every time a Radiant shucked in light they should crack. 

Yeah I’m with you there. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply disagreement. 100% with you there. 

EDIT: I just reread the part where Shallan Soulcasts the goblet into blood by accident, and I paid special attention to the spheres that were in the room giving light, and non of them cracked or were drained. Are we assuming that the Soulcaster gems in her safepouch were drained that way?

Edited July 14, 2018 by KalaDANG
Read the Shallan part.

[KalaDANG he/him]

On 7/12/2018 at 6:06 PM, Calderis said:

The way that Jasnah functions in way of Kings makes it seem fairly clear, to me at least, that the surge can be used without drawing the stormlight in. Offering the stormlight to the Cognitive aspect of the item directly from the gemstone. 

I believe doing this would limit the transformations to the gem type, the same as a fabrial Soulcaster. It would also effect the gems in the same way as the fabrials. 

You see it from Shallan as well. When she soulcast the goblet the very first time, she never inhaled Stormlight. The goblet changed to blood, and a garnet was drained. 

@Calderis, I just read the part when Shallan’s in the hospital, and I think we might have actually had it wrong about shallan. It looks like she actually inhaled it. It WAS from a garnet sphere though. I still think the theory is solid.

Edited July 14, 2018 by KalaDANG

[Calderis he/him]

@KalaDANG I had forgotten that completely. Thanks for the correction.

I still think it doesn't change the way it works. Jasnah, with the Boulder in Kharbranth, the alley and presumably while healing her in the hospital didn't glow.

[+Harrycrapper]

This kinda makes me wonder what metal that gets burned through allomancy actually looks like when it's getting burned in someones stomach. I wonder if we'll get a scene or something where some scientists in future Mistborn books study that using x-rays or some other technology to allow them to see in the human body. 

[KalaDANG he/him]

Yeah I’d have to agree Calderis. She wouldn’t be able to hide it for very long unless she foun a way around having to breathe the stormlight in. She’s the soulcaster instead of the fabrial. And yeah that actually would be really interesting. I wonder if it would look similar to how invested and gets used up on Taldain.

[Xanius]

So it's also been mentioned that regrowing shard plate and using shard plate will crack gemstones. It's not limited to soul casting, but both of them involve physical transformation of some kind, so maybe some of the other surges will crack stones as well. 

[Gray to he/him]

Spoiler

I wonder. Would Nightblood crack the gemstones if you let him drain stormlight directly from the gems rather than from the holder?

OB Spoiler

Edited July 16, 2018 by Gray to
Add spoiler tags

[RShara she/her]

 

Spoiler

10 hours ago, Gray to said:

I wonder. Would Nightblood crack the gemstones if you let him drain stormlight directly from the gems rather than from the holder?

 

 

Hey can you put that behind spoiler tags? This post isn't marked for OB.

 

Spoiler

He didn't when he pulled the stormlight from the gems when Szeth executed the prison guard.

 

[Spoolofwhool]

Also a relevant passage from WoR when Shallan soulcasts the ship:

Quote

It happened in a hectic second; the Stormlight ripped from Shallan. She heard distant cracks from the physical world as she withdrew so much Light from the nearby gemstones that they shattered.

- Words of Radiance, Chapter 7

 

[Quantus he/him]

Thermal changes tend to happen as a natural part of nearly ANY movement of energy, from electric flow to pure physical strain, so it would make a ton of sense to say that drawing too much energy from a Gemstone too fast would risk physically cracking it on that alone, especially given that most gems are encased in glass/crystal as spheres where the differing materials would increase that risk. 

 

Separately, given how much Intent matters to all cosmere magic it might be possible that Jasnah's gems were cracking for no other reason that because that's something normal fabrials do and so she made it happen by expecting it to happen.  But that holds less water in the face of Shallan also cracking some gems. 

[KalaDANG he/him]

I found a passage towards the end of WoK that goes along with the thermal change stuff, it reads -

"Kaladin's hand felt warm. He stopped in the chasm, closing his eyes. You couldn't feel any heat from a sphere, usually, but the one in his hand seemed warm. And then--feeling completely natural about it--Kaladin breathed in deeply. The sphere grew cold and a wave of heat shot up his arm. He opened his eyes. The sphere in his hand was dun and his fingers were crispy with frost. Light rose from him like smoke from a fire, white, pure."

That definitely seems to go along with what we've been saying, that taking the stormlight from the gemstones will make them super cold, leading them to crack. Thermal Shock people!