I don’t understand Soulcasting

[Marabout]

I don’t understand complex Soulcasting.

I understand turning stone into something using a certain gem (simple Soulcasting)

I don’t understand how a living being can be Soulcast.  How does Jasnah transform multiple substances (blood, bone, muscle, sinew, skin, water, etc..) into smoke, fire, and crystal?

I know her soul caster gems, ruby, diamond, and smoke stone correspond to fire, crystal and smoke … so the gem is the target substance not the material to be transformed?  If so, how do soulcasters make lavis?  There is no gem that corresponds to grain (unless you assume it’s Emerald that is associated with wood and moss).  

Now the second dilemma.  Jasnah wasn’t using a soul caster to soulcast.  From what we’ve seen of how Radiants soulcast, they have to find the Shadesmar sphere that corresponds to the object then convince it to change.  But we’ve never seen a sphere that represents a living being, it’s always objects.  People are represented by little flames.  A living body would have too many components to have a sphere (I know we see one representing the palace but that’s likely just the stone and not everything contained inside the palace).  And even if it existed, how would you ever convince a human body that it would be better off as smoke or fire?

Soulcasting people just makes no sense.

 

[Elder]

44 minutes ago, Marabout said:

I don’t understand complex Soulcasting.

I understand turning stone into something using a certain gem (simple Soulcasting)

I don’t understand how a living being can be Soulcast.  How does Jasnah transform multiple substances (blood, bone, muscle, sinew, skin, water, etc..) into smoke, fire, and crystal?

I know her soul caster gems, ruby, diamond, and smoke stone correspond to fire, crystal and smoke … so the gem is the target substance not the material to be transformed?  If so, how do soulcasters make lavis?  There is no gem that corresponds to grain (unless you assume it’s Emerald that is associated with wood and moss).  

Now the second dilemma.  Jasnah wasn’t using a soul caster to soulcast.  From what we’ve seen of how Radiants soulcast, they have to find the Shadesmar sphere that corresponds to the object then convince it to change.  But we’ve never seen a sphere that represents a living being, it’s always objects.  People are represented by little flames.  A living body would have too many components to have a sphere (I know we see one representing the palace but that’s likely just the stone and not everything contained inside the palace).  And even if it existed, how would you ever convince a human body that it would be better off as smoke or fire?

Soulcasting people just makes no sense.

 

Emeralds definitely are used to soulcast grain. 
Jasnah also has the benefit of an Ink Spren to help her learn the ins and outs of Soulcasting.  And a few years to figure it out.

Finally, despite being made of different substances, a human body is cognitively a pretty cohesive unit.  It may be something more of a battle of wills when it comes to soulcasting people.  

[Treamayne]

9 hours ago, Marabout said:

I don’t understand complex Soulcasting.

I understand turning stone into something using a certain gem (simple Soulcasting)

I don’t understand how a living being can be Soulcast.  How does Jasnah transform multiple substances (blood, bone, muscle, sinew, skin, water, etc..) into smoke, fire, and crystal?

I know her soul caster gems, ruby, diamond, and smoke stone correspond to fire, crystal and smoke … so the gem is the target substance not the material to be transformed?  If so, how do soulcasters make lavis?  There is no gem that corresponds to grain (unless you assume it’s Emerald that is associated with wood and moss).  

Now the second dilemma.  Jasnah wasn’t using a soul caster to soulcast.  From what we’ve seen of how Radiants soulcast, they have to find the Shadesmar sphere that corresponds to the object then convince it to change.  But we’ve never seen a sphere that represents a living being, it’s always objects.  People are represented by little flames.  A living body would have too many components to have a sphere (I know we see one representing the palace but that’s likely just the stone and not everything contained inside the palace).  And even if it existed, how would you ever convince a human body that it would be better off as smoke or fire?

Soulcasting people just makes no sense.

Have you read The Emperor's Soul?

On object that is seen as a single whole, and views itself as a single whole is treated as a single object. When Shallan Soulcasts the Wind's Pleasure (WoR Ch 7) it is a single sphere (not a sphere for each component):

Spoiler

She snatched it, and suddenly was given the impression of a ship.

The Wind’s Pleasure. A ship that had been cared for, loved. It had carried its passengers well for years and years, owned by Tozbek and his father before him. An old ship, but not ancient, still reliable. A proud ship. It manifested here as a sphere.

For a Radiant, the Stormlight for the change is coming from them, not a gem. So the Gem color is a "feature" of the Fabrial version not Radiant Soulcasting (Error - Jossed by Alder's WoB). Jasnah's uses of gems in her fake soulcaster was a convenient excuse to both carry and use the Stormlight without exposing that she was becoming Radiant.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Marabout]

I’m pretty sure BS has said Radiant Soulcasting requires specific gems for different transformations.

And I’m still not convinced people would have a corresponding sphere in Shadesmar.

[alder24]

9 hours ago, Marabout said:

I don’t understand complex Soulcasting.

What books have you read?

9 hours ago, Marabout said:

I know her soul caster gems, ruby, diamond, and smoke stone correspond to fire, crystal and smoke … so the gem is the target substance not the material to be transformed?

Yes. Each Solcaster can transform into 1-3 materials. Those doing more than 1 are rare. But gems in Soulcasters have to match what substance they can transform things into. It doesn't matter what is their original material, only the end-result substance.

9 hours ago, Marabout said:

If so, how do soulcasters make lavis?  There is no gem that corresponds to grain (unless you assume it’s Emerald that is associated with wood and moss).  

That's emerald, it makes also plants - check out this page on Coppermind about 10 Essences: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Ten_Essences

Plus Soulcasters are more limited - like emerald Soulcasters can't make whatever they want from wood/plants/moss, they can make only one specific thing - one type of wood, one type of plant etc. Azir has a rare Soulcaster that allows them to create bronze - not any metal, just bronze. Fabrials are just far more limited than Radiants are.

Spoiler

[...]

Brandon Sanderson

[...]

Soulcasting anything other than the basic Essence requires some innate knowledge and practice. People could learn to soulcast better food, but it would have to be a Radiant with control over the process. The soulcaster fabrials are far more rigid in what they can create.

ebilutionist

As for soulcasting - now that is... interesting. So are Surgebinding fabrials more rigid in general? And what of an Honorblade when a non-Herald uses it?

Brandon Sanderson

A soulcaster is built to do a certain thing, and can do that certain thing well, but without as much flexibility. It is the difference between having a computer output a picture of a circle--following some inputs such as size and some changes to shape--and having an artist who can draw what you want.

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 20, 2016)

 

9 hours ago, Marabout said:

Now the second dilemma.  Jasnah wasn’t using a soul caster to soulcast.

Yes, Jasnah is a Radiant, which is different from fabrial Soulcasters. She can transform into any material she wants, she is only limited by her skills in that. But even when she is Soulcasting (and Shallan too) she needs to draw Stormlight from a specific gem, corresponding to the material she wants to make. 

Spoiler

StormAtlas (paraphrased)

Why can Kaladin Surgebind with any gem type but Jasnah and Shallan need specific types?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

A lot of that will be explained as the series comes along. It is really the difference between Soulcasting and the other forms of Surgebinding. It's more a quirk of Soulcasting than it is something that is different about about Kaladin. So you've kind of got it reversed a little bit though; Soulcasting has this additional restriction that the other ones don't.

Rithmatist Albuquerque signing (May 22, 2013)

 

9 hours ago, Marabout said:

(I know we see one representing the palace but that’s likely just the stone and not everything contained inside the palace).

Well, after some very long period of time objects inside the palace would be considered as a part of it (perception of people around matters a lot):

Spoiler

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

If Nightblood were in the cognitive realm and was used to stab a bead that was the cognitive representation of a castle, would the castle be destroyed in the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If you could get Nightblood into the Cognitive Realm, then yes. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

What would happen to people who were in the castle at the time? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They wouldn't be affected (other than possibly plummeting to their death).

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

How about a carpet that had been in the castle for 50 years? 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, 50 years most likely wouldn't be enough time. 

Hoiditthroughthegrapevine (paraphrased)

Is this like the "Ship of Theseus?" 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes

Oathbringer Portland signing (Nov. 16, 2017)

 

9 hours ago, Marabout said:

From what we’ve seen of how Radiants soulcast, they have to find the Shadesmar sphere that corresponds to the object then convince it to change.  But we’ve never seen a sphere that represents a living being, it’s always objects.  People are represented by little flames.  A living body would have too many components to have a sphere (I know we see one representing the palace but that’s likely just the stone and not everything contained inside the palace).  And even if it existed, how would you ever convince a human body that it would be better off as smoke or fire?

Human cognitive aspect is represented by a flame, not a sphere. Living things are always represented by flames - fishes, horses, humans etc. For them to be Soulcasted you need to touch that flame, or focus on it and Connect to it (Jasnah can Soulcast at a distance as seen in WoK with thugs).

Some things might be harder to Soulcast than others but that's depending on the will of material (and how invested it is) - for example stone is stubborn and has to be convinced with freedom and movement while air should be ordered with discipline. Different essences require different strategies.

Jasnah once said "Power is an illusion of perception" - that's how you Soulcasts - sometimes it's about convincing, but often it's about ordering the object to change - it's a battle of wills in many cases. It depends on the material you're soulcasting. For every type of essence there is a different approach. You don't look at a body as a complex object composed of many different organs and tissues - for you it's just a body, one single thing. That's why complexity of the body doesn't matter that much when you're Soulcasting it into something different - the end result will be a uniform substance. But Soulcasting a person is much harder than just dead objects, they will resist Soulcasting. The more Invested something is, the harder it is to Soulcast - a thug in an alley would be easy to Soulcast compared to a Radiant infused with Stormlight, which would be very, very hard to Soulcast.

For Soulcasting they need to know the end result substance more than what material they have now:

Spoiler

Phantine

At the risk of getting too technical, is there anything besides lack of knowledge preventing a soulcaster from turning some rocks into a bunch of plutonium and exploding?

I know you've got some rules attached to time bubbles to avoid those going nuclear so I wouldn't be surprised if there was something or another.

Brandon Sanderson

Well, Soulcasting isn't fission or fusion. It's a spiritual transformation process, not a physical one, and so you don't have to worry about some of these issues. There IS historical precedent of accidentally setting off fission reactions in the cosmere using the magic, but that was a different process. Soulcasting is actually pretty safe. (Well, on a grand scale.)

You could end up irradiating yourself, though, which wouldn't be very fun.

If you know what you were doing, making plutonium or uranium on Roshar wouldn't be difficult. The problem is more a matter of knowledge, and room for scientific exploration. They're unlikely to make atom bombs for the same reason they haven't made gunpowder. Once they figure out that some substances are important, they can learn to make them with Soulcasting (assuming they have Radiants) but some substances just don't occur naturally--so discovering them in the first place is difficult, and would require more modern scientific process.

Phantine

Okay, just to clarify here (since I'm not sure how up you are on early nuke designs)

A big enough chunk of uranium or plutonium will explode regardless of whether it's in a bomb or not. Early bomb designs just slammed two smaller chunks together so they'd be one big chunk.

For plutonium 'big enough' is about 35 pounds in one place - a chunk somewhere between the size of baseball and volleyball.

If I understand properly, people can soulcast from the cognitive realm into the physical, which implies once we get into a more modern stormlight setting soulcasters will make nuclear submarines look like small potatoes.

Brandon Sanderson

Slamming two chunks together so they became one big chunk seems an understatement, from what I remember. I'm under the impression that you had to use a great deal of explosive force to ram them together in order to set off a viable fission reaction. Doesn't it have to be compressed somewhat in order to react with itself?

I'll admit, it's been a long time since I've looked at this, but I remember glancing it over, and deciding that you'd need more than just soulcasting to get it to happen. Though it's not outside of reason that a soulcaster could learn to create super-dense plutonium. The problem is one of understanding, however.

Just like it's totally possible that we, with our current technology, could figure out some huge breakthrough in science allowing FTL or other incredible discoveries. But we don't have the understanding to pull it off yet.

In a modern setting, however, a lot of these complaints go out the window. Let's just say that this isn't the only reason a modern society that can instantly transmute one substance to another is potentially a very interesting place.

Phantine

You're totally right that everyone currently uses an 'implosion' style compression design. It's a lot more bang for your buck, and you need less radioactive material to work with. They're also a lot safer, because just sitting around they're well below critical mass - without the power-boosting tricks they basically can't go off.

The old "nobody uses these anymore" designs were 'Gun-Type'. Very simple - shoot a uranium bullet into the center of a uranium ring (or vice versa). Inefficient as heck (the Hiroshima bomb only fissioned 1.4% of its uranium), but also super simple to put together.

Despite being simple to build, gun-types were also super unsafe relative to modern implosion devices (among other worries, dropping a gun-type device into the ocean could potentially set it off because of how neutrons react with water). Also, getting the timing perfect on the fissile 'bullet' was a problem, so practically speaking it could only be done with uranium.

After WWII, the only use the US ever had for gun-types was in bunker busters and nuclear artillery (because of course that was a good idea).

Darn, that post turned out longer than I expected it to.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see you make something really cool out of a post-scarcity transmutropolis setting (especially since the liespren would be in charge of nuclear treaties), and also my roommate just pointed out all the laying out of nuclear bomb details is pointless if they could just make antimatter instead. D'oh.

Brandon Sanderson

This is useful information for me, but my gut says that Rosharans couldn't get this working with their current tech level. That said, the REAL issue (as you mentioned in your original question) is knowledge, not feasibility. They'd have to know how to make the right kind of Uranium or Plutonium--and would need to be able to get this across to a soulcaster in a way that works, then THEY would need to get this across to spren. Cross that hurdle, and I suppose it's not at all implausible to imagine Alethi during Dalinar's era with nukes. I suspect the right kind of fabrial could make a trigger device to match ring and bullet at the right time. Depends on how quickly it needs to be going, though.

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 19, 2016)

 

 

Spoilers for epilogue of WoR:

Spoiler

There is an unfinished Jasnah chapter which shows her Soulcasting from CR. She Soulcasted a rope by commanding it to change - a battle of wills as I said:

https://www.tor.com/2014/08/06/stormlight-archive-scene-after-words-of-radiance/

Quote

She dropped the spheres representing her books and ran her fingers through the other spheres, seeking… there. Ropes—the bonds tying the sailors as they were executed. She found a group of them and seized the spheres.

[...]

Jasnah gripped the beads in her hand.

“You,” she command, “will change.”

“I am a rope,” one of them said. “I am—”

“You will change.”

The ropes shivered, transforming—one by one—into smoke in the physical realm.

 

 

Edit:

OB ch 120:

Spoiler

Quote

An incredible amount of Stormlight thrummed inside her—more than she’d ever held before. Another group of soldiers broke through Shallan’s illusions and charged over the rubble through the gap in the wall. Jasnah casually flipped her hand toward them. Once, their souls would have resisted mightily. Soulcasting living things was difficult; it usually required care and concentration—along with proper knowledge and procedure.

Today, the men puffed away to smoke at her barest thought. It was so easy that a part of her was horrified.

[...]

She willed steps to Soulcast beneath her feet. Individual axi of air lined up and packed next to each other, then Soulcast into stone—though in spite of the realms being linked, this was difficult. Air was amorphous, even in concept. People thought of it as the sky, or a breath, or a gust of wind, or a storm, or just “the air.” It liked to be free, difficult to define.

Yet, with a firm command and a concept of what she wanted, Jasnah made steps form beneath her feet

[...]

“If I want to Soulcast the air. How?”

“Avoid air until you practice further,” Jasnah said. “It is convenient, but difficult to control. Why don’t you try to turn some stone into oil, as I did? We can fire it as we climb the steps, and further impede the enemy.”

“I…” So many beads, so many spren, churning in the lake that marked Thaylen City. So overwhelming.

“That rubble near the wall will be easier than the ground itself,” Jasnah said, “as you’ll be able to treat those stones as distinct units, while the ground views itself all as one.”

[...]

Radiant started up the stone steps. Behind, Jasnah waved her hand toward the approaching Fused—and stone formed from air, completely encasing them.

It was brilliant. Any who saw it in only the Physical Realm would be impressed, but Radiant saw so much more. Jasnah’s absolute command and confidence. The Stormlight rushing to do her will. The air itself responding as if to the voice of God himself. Shallan gasped in wonder.

“It obeyed. The air obeyed your call to transform. When I tried to make a single little stick change, it refused.”

“Soulcasting is a practiced art,” Jasnah said. “Up, up. Keep walking.” She sliced the steps off as they walked. “Remember, you mustn’t order stones, as they are more stubborn than men. Use coercion. Speak of freedom and of movement. But for a gas becoming a solid, you must impose discipline and will. Each Essence is different, and each offers advantages and disadvantages when used as a substrate for Soulcasting.”

 

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by alder24

[Treamayne]

On 7/1/2023 at 10:33 PM, Marabout said:

And I’m still not convinced people would have a corresponding sphere in Shadesmar.

No, Sapient beings do not appear as gems, they appear as the soul lights you described. Unfortunately, we don't know how she forced a change as she did; though she does mention when working with substances you have to change your bargaining style. Oathbringer Ch 120:

Spoiler

Shallan gasped in wonder. “It obeyed. The air obeyed your call to transform. When I tried to make a single little stick change, it refused.”

“Soulcasting is a practiced art,” Jasnah said. “Up, up. Keep walking.” She sliced the steps off as they walked. “Remember, you mustn’t order stones, as they are more stubborn than men. Use coercion. Speak of freedom and of movement. But for a gas becoming a solid, you must impose discipline and will. Each Essence is different, and each offers advantages and disadvantages when used as a substrate for Soulcasting.”

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG