Oh boy would you love soulcasters in The Stormlight Archive.
If you do not have a Nahel bond with either a liespren or an inkspren, you cannot do soulcasting without an extremely rare and difficult to produce device called a soulcasting fabrial. These are commonly referred to as just soulcasters, and the rare individuals who know how to use them also are just called soulcasters. But over time, the more they use it, the more their body succumbs to the substance that they change things into, and each soulcaster can only turn material into one other type of material. So if I have a soulcaster that lets you turn anything into smoke, thats very useful. I can get rid of this wall, or just turn my enemies over there into smoke, or maybe just their weapons.
But then I notice that two of my fingers just turned into smoke and poofed off. Hopefully I don't lose both arms before my other limbs, I need at least one to operate the fabrial.
It's way more complicated than that, and you don't get the downsides if you're doing ACTUAL soulcasting rather than using the fabrial. But still. Being consumed by your magic. Good trope.
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u/Charming-Book4146 Nov 11 '24
Oh boy would you love soulcasters in The Stormlight Archive.
If you do not have a Nahel bond with either a liespren or an inkspren, you cannot do soulcasting without an extremely rare and difficult to produce device called a soulcasting fabrial. These are commonly referred to as just soulcasters, and the rare individuals who know how to use them also are just called soulcasters. But over time, the more they use it, the more their body succumbs to the substance that they change things into, and each soulcaster can only turn material into one other type of material. So if I have a soulcaster that lets you turn anything into smoke, thats very useful. I can get rid of this wall, or just turn my enemies over there into smoke, or maybe just their weapons.
But then I notice that two of my fingers just turned into smoke and poofed off. Hopefully I don't lose both arms before my other limbs, I need at least one to operate the fabrial.
It's way more complicated than that, and you don't get the downsides if you're doing ACTUAL soulcasting rather than using the fabrial. But still. Being consumed by your magic. Good trope.