Forging vs Soulcasting

[Bricakes]

So I just read The Emperor's Soul for the first time. I know Brandon said that he tried not to stray too close to Soulcasting, but there are obvious similarities. The big difference seems to be that Soulcasting takes place in the cognitive real whereas Shai says that Forging affects the spiritual realm.

With that in mind - could Shallan/Jasnah learn to apply their talents to the spiritual realm and therefore alter human souls? They're already communicating with the souls of objects so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

[Scion of the Mists]

I think Jasnah Soulcasting people to smoke/crystal (which we've seen her do multiple times) counts as altering their souls.  I don't think that Soulcasting is capable of the kind of nuance that Forging allows.  Soulcasting is limited to matter transformation, while Forging can modify histories.  

[Quantus]

The biggest functional difference is that Forgery is an ongoing effect that needs to be maintained and can be disrupted, whereas Soulcasting triggers a permanent change and leaves no active Investiture behind.  Among other things, it's the reason you can create Aluminum via Soulcasting but not Forgery.

 

 

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Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Can Soulforged bones be Awakened?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Can Soulforged bones be Awakened? So, Soulcast bones be awakened? Once the Soulcasting is done, it is no longer Invested, and it would act as the normal item. A Forged item will act as Invested, and will resist any manipulation. Differences between the magics.

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BipedSnowman

In theory, could you create weird structures or even alloys [with Forgery]?

Two scenarios: using forging how you might use soulcasting, such as turning something into wood, bending and carving it to make a new shape, then breaking the seal so it turns back into the original material without changing shape.

Second: forging one metal into another, and forming an alloy to reduce operation costs. For example, tungsten has a melting point of about 3.5k C, but it's useful as part of a steel alloy for certain applications. Could you Forge it into, say, zinc, which has a melting point of about 500 C, create the steel, then turn it back into tungsten? Presumably the investiture would adjust the molecular structure so it acts as if it has been alloyed with tungsten originally too, otherwise the same process happening with food could be deadly.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this is in theory similar to Soulcasting. The difference is that a forged object, upon "Forgetting" the rewriting to its spiritual nature is going to try to snap back and match what it "thinks" it should be like--which isn't going to lead to as much stability as Soulcasting, where the actual soul is changed. The object is going to try to get back to the way it "should" be, with varying results.

The reason the Lord Ruler aged hyper-quickly is related to this as well.

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  Edited October 26, 2018 by Quantus

[Yata]

Soulcasting and Forgery are actually extremely different and all the similarity are only superficials.

With Soulcasting you performe a permanent change to the structure of something, you don't touch its history and you don't need the plausibility to take place for this own reason.

A Air soulcasted to rock knows perfectly it was Air before and to be turned into Rock, it's written in its spiritweb.

With Forgery you alter the history of an object messing with his Soul, the Soul fights aganist the overlapping fake-soul you produce to revert to his rightful state, the Forgery is never permanent and depends deeply from the constant stream of Dor to remains in place (if you move a Forged object from the Rose empire it would break the forgery for example) and the true sou of the object is still there fighting to overcome the Magic.

With the example I used before, also if extremely unlikely Air Forged into Rock would believe that sometime in the past something happened (honestly I don't know what) that make it rock but under this overlay, the Air's Soul is still there untouched and will soon or later break free and destroy the forgery