Spoolofwhool

I think the Rosharan general belief that everything has a spren is only technically correct, while their actual outlook is incorrect. Spren are essentially realmatic entities which embody certain concept due to their existence in the cognitive realm with little connection to the physical realm. Therefore, at the most basic level, they can just be considered souls. Hence, Rosharans are technically correct in that everything has a soul, and therefore everything essentially has a spren. However, generally speaking they are incorrect because what they think of as sprens aren't really entirely similar to the souls of everyday objects. As such, there would probably be effectively little difference between a steel sword made on Nalthis and a steel sword made on Roshar outside of a few weird investiture connection differences with probably insignificant effects. At the end of the day, the awakening of Nightblood amounted to binding investiture to the object and its soul and elevating to a a realmatic state which is similar to the state that the spren usually exist at.

That's essentially what she did. Awakening to create an entity which is analogous to a spren, bound to the sword.

True, but my point of the shape of the fabrial not causing stormlight from the gem to spread through the device still stands though.

Keep in mind that fabrials don't work by manipulating stormlight to produce effects. They work by feeding the trapped spren stormlight, which then cause the effect. This means that there's a black box (the spren) in every fabrial doing the actual heavy lifting. It's not the design of the fabrial which is causing stormlight to spread out and doing things in the object, it's the spren which is affecting the fabrials and surroundings and causing the effects we see. Also, we can't really compare soulcaster fabrials since we don't know how those actually work.

Possibly. However, what would be required is a fundamental change in the properties of stormlight, properties which fabrials are naturally utilizing. While knowledge of fabrials could help in understanding the properties of stormlight, they wouldn't inform much about how to get it to act how it needs to be for awakening.

There are likely a whole other set of issues when attempting to awaken with stormlight instead of breath, once the issue of maintaining stormlight is solved. The main problem is linked to how awakening works on a base level, which I think is as follows. In awakening, the awakener formulates a command with appropriate visualization, which "imprints" into the breath. This breath then transfers to the target and shapes into an artificial soul which builds on top of the object's pre-existing soul. This artificial soul is what augments the object to have the capability to move, have awareness, etc. and is related to the properties of breath to be sticky, as the stickiness of breath is due to its nature of interfacing with the soul of the holder, and changing it in different ways. Stormlight would not possess the properties of breath which allow it to imprint the command made by the awakener, nor would it naturally possess the ability to interface with an object's soul that awakening requires. Therefore, even with a perfect gemstone containing ample amount of stormlight, awakening would not be easily possible, without processes which would essentially involve changing the properties of stormlight. If it were as easy as "using a perfect gemstone", it still would've been relatively simple to test that in the past, by awakening using a large amount of stormlight into a non-perfect gem, which still would've resulted in a limited awakening until the stormlight dissipated. You can't soulcast gems.

Yeah, they definitely mine rock for metal in some places. Remember in the first Rysn interlude in WoK. They traded soulcast metal to the Shin, who specifically wanted metal which had not been mined from stone.

It also really seems to exist only to highlight the differences between the Metallic Arts, not really as a general model for describing systems.

That could work, except that it would hard to move at a significantly high mass. Tapping iron changes the body so it doesn't destroy itself under its own weight, but it won't give the body the same strength that it has without tapping. A different method of propelling him could work however.

Bands of Mourning had Wax describe what was happening as a change in mass, due to him conserving momentum when he changed storing rate.

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Respectfully disagree all you want, but Brandon has stated how he feels the magic works and has attempted to portray it the best that he can. He doesn't have a high-level science background and most definitely isn't a physicist by any stretch so it's likely that most of the nuances that you are presenting here weren't kept in mind when he wrote those scenes. If you do feel like those scenes inadequately present what he has stated is happening, perhaps contact Peter his assistant with suggestions for better to portray it. You do make good points and it would be nice to have a better tie-in to science since that is what Brandon has expressed wanting.

Generally the usage of soulcasting in Stormlight Archive preserves mass, with a few exception. While it's likely that Brandon has not done the full math on the specifics, the way it has acted in the series indicates this. As you indicated with Jasnah in WoK, soulcasting the stone boulder into smoke resulted in the same mass of smoke in the same volume. If it wasn't the same mass and just volume, then there would be no reason for the expansion which saw. Likewise, in WoR when the ardents soulcast a stone windbreak, the suction of air inwards was because of the lower density of air requiring a greater volume to make the volume of stone in the windbreak. There are definitely some weird points of course, such as the formation of statues from people. It's possible then that either it's an exception as Brandon is possible, or they're just drawing extra mass from air. However, generally speaking the text does support Brandon's direct statement that it's a conservation of mass, loosely speaking.

I don't think Nightblood permanently holds onto the investiture though. That black liquid/smoke he emits is investiture after all, and Brandon has described him as leaky, so it seems likely that he's maintaining a constant power as all investiture he consumes is eventually emitted back into the world. Either way, Vivienna's sword wasn't shown to act in the same way where it consumed investiture like Nightblood, so even if Nightblood does grow stronger from consuming investiture, we don't even know if Vivienna's sword is consuming investiture.

Two questions, with preference on the first: How is Ascension defined, since what happened to Dalinar seems a lot different than what happened to previous who Ascended like Rashek or Vin. How is it possible for aluminum to be invested by feruchemy and hemalurgy, since it seems to otherwise prevent magic from affecting it or its surroundings?

Well, I don't doubt the sword is dangerous, but I don't think that's enough of a qualifier to say that it can permanently kill them.

Vivienna's sword probably can't permanently kill Fused, since unlike Nightblood it doesn't seem to be annihilating entities. Best not to make that assumption.

Relevant

Making Dalinar into Odium's champion probably would've sundered Dalinar's connection to the Stormfather, therefore no longer giving him the power to release Odium.

Note though that Ruin and Preservation didn't create the matter which constitutes Scadrial, they likely just gathered and shaped what was in the ambient system.

Relevant Though you can't really use it on outside stuff, a feruchemist tapping Identity would probably far more resistant to forgery and soulcasting.

Yeah, I think there's a good chance that that's the case.

I don't think they consciously designed it, any more than any shard could. The magic systems arose as a result of the shards investing into Scadrial, a natural expression of the Cosmere between the world and their powers. Either way, I agree with the idea that Metallic Arts basically touch the ideals of metal, and have created their own exception into aluminum allowing investiture to permeate it through them.

Different speed. A parachute would apply an upward force while downward force would be the force of gravity applying on the person and the parachute, which would then result in downward acceleration based on the difference between the two forces. As someone with have the effective mass through iron feruchemy would have a lower force of gravity, the net acceleration of them with the parachute would be lower.