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I read a quote from Brandon Sanderson that it was possible for people to fabricate Spiritwebs (unfortunately, I couldn't find the quote ), so obviously I had to come up with at least a few different ways that it might be accomplished. Also, because I'm me, it mostly involves the use of Hemalurgy. Method 1: Stabbing someone repeatedly. Okay, so Hemalurgy is able to rip off chunks of functional Spiritweb that can be stapled onto another Spiritweb to hotwire the recipient's Spiritweb in such a way that it can access the ability held within the donor's Spiritweb. However, Hemalurgy also takes some other stuff in addition to the power or attribute removed, such as the person's Identity. Therefore, if someone were to use Hemalurgy on someone who could regrow the lost pieces of Spiritweb, maybe they could take from multiple bind points on the Spiritweb, then smelt the spikes together to create a full Spiritweb. Staple that soul onto a viable body, such as that of a Lifeless, and you have copy of that person (presumably). Method 2: Forging a fake soul . . . and then stabbing someone. So, you're not satisfied with simply making a copy of a Spiritweb that already exists, are you? Well, if you could use Selish Forgery to create a Spiritual overwrite, you could that use Hemalurgy to take that and then staple that into a viable body. We already know that it is possible to Hemalurgically spike off a Forgery, so this would likely be an improvement to method 1, as it would cause less damage to the donor and would allow you to create a Spiritweb that you could edit more before creation. Oh, I forgot to mention this, but Hemalurgic duralumin is probably the metal you'd want to use to create your soul, as it focuses specifically on taking Connection and Identity, rather than only taking the dregs of those two attributes.

When you use a Forgery on someone, you overlay their Spiritweb, causing temporary changes to their being. However, we know from a Wob that you can Hemalurgically take the overlay. And then, if you were to Allomanticlly burn the spike, it would splice the changes into your Spiritweb rather than just overlaying them, making them permanent. If you want to take it a step further, you could stamp and spike yourself multiple times, then either burn the spikes individually or smelt them into a single spike and then burn them to possibly get an enhanced result that would normally require more Investiture to create, such as turning yourself into an Allomancer. This is only a theory, obviously, but I think that there is enough evidence that it should be possible.

I was thinking again about combining magic systems when a finally thought to combine Feruchemical Nicrosil with Forgery (for a second time). If a Soulbearer Ferring could store the investiture held within a Forgery stamp, they could do at least two new really cool things. One, while Forgery is normally restricted to a small portion of one specific planet, tapping the investiture of a Soulstamp would likely allow you to gain the effects of said Soulstamp any time, any place, which would be nice, especially for a Worldhopper. The second purpose seems even more powerful though. Assuming that one could store the investiture of a Soulstamp that was not likely to take or that simply required too much Investiture to be normally feasible, such as turning a normal Scadrian into an Allomancer or Feruchemist, you could tap the Nicrosilmind at a quick rate to fuel the effects of the stamp with more Investiture than normally would be granted by regular Soulforgery, which should allow you to benefit from Soulstamps that normally wouldn't take or that wouldn't have enough fuel to function. And if you really wanted to make things interesting, you might be able to manufacture Hemalurgic spikes from such a combination of powers. So anyway, does anyone else have any ideas on how Feruchemical Nicrosil and Soulforgery might be able to be combine to achieve certain effects?

Could you use a Forgery to remove a magic user’s ability to access investiture? I could see this happening for Allomancy or Feruchemy, at least, as they aren’t particularly invested while they are neither burning or tapping. Any kind of magic that involved bonds, such as Surgebinding or the Aviar, would probably not work well though. Awakening wouldn’t likely work well either, since the investiture is already there, and would provide significant resistance.

Forgery can manipulate your spiritweb into believing that your past was something other than what it was, allowing you to make changes to your present self. But, could you change certain "random" elements of your conception? For instance, could you make yourself taller, or have a slightly different facial structure, or be healed of physical defects?

There is a WoB that says that if a Forgery were stolen via Hemalurgy there would be less damage done to the spiritweb of the donor than would typically take place. Could you use this as a viable method to protect yourself from Hemalurgic theft? Could you create a “dormant” piece of false spiritweb, similar to how there is DNA in real life that is dormant, so that you don’t actually make any adverse changes to yourself in order to gain extra protection? Maybe you could do this by making a Forgery that doesn’t change anything about your past, but is basically the same as what actually happened. Are there any magic systems other than Forgery that might be good at this?

Hemalurgy uses a smaller portion of power, just enough to hotwire the spiritweb. So, could Forgery reasonably be used to create a hemalurgic spike that functions as any other spike would?

Could you use Forgery on a Lifeless to change what command they had been given? Could you use Forgery on a Lifeless to change the moment in their past where they died, thereby making a fake copy of the individual as if they were alive?

Can you Feruchemically store the memories and Identity of yourself while under the influence of a Forgery, then after the stamp runs out, tap the metalminds to regain what you had been granted by the Forgery?

Would a forgery that was stolen and then granted by a hemalurgic spike be more permanent so long as it isn't allowed to decay? What's more, can forgeries held in spikes be granted to people other than those it was specifically made for, since hemalurgic spikes normally hold the Identity of those they were made from, and that doesn't seem to hinder their usefulness to others who don't share the Identity of the spike?

It has been confirmed by Brandon Sanderson (can't remember the exact quote, but if really needed I can find it for you guys later), that Forgeries made to the spiritweb of an individual can be taken by a hemalurgic spike. If someone could then allomantically burn that spike, could that then permanently splice it to their spiritweb?

We seen in Warbreaker (SPOILERS), that Vasher was able to teach a little girl how to remove some of here own memories in order to "heal" the trauma that she had experienced. Could Forgery be used in a similar manner, changing the spiritwebs of the Heralds (and Fused, for that matter), so that their memories of traumatic events no longer caused them to be insane?

The purpose of this topic is to project the most extreme abilities of any investiture in the cosmere based on the currently referenceable material. Ideas which can be logically defended are welcome regardless how outrageous. As promised a coinshot laser would likely be produced by a Steel twinborn compounder after the discovery of heavy metals and at least some experiments in nuclear science on Scadrial. This individual would likely be able to detonate nuclear explosions using metal pushing and heavy metals and would need the speed of a steelrunner to avoid serious injury. Using metal pushing they could likely push small particles of radioacive metal forming a type of laser or electromagnetic particle beam at high velocity. Due to a strong spiritual affinity with steel because of being a steel twin it might be possible that they could store steel pushes and speed in a metal mind for use feruchemically yielding steel pushes and speed to exceed duralumin assisted allomancy. The nuclear particle beam could be used on its own or in concert with radioactive spheres in battle situations to inflict massive damage. The nuclear laser could be used to split atoms in a plutonium, uranium or like metal to create atomic or nuclear explosions. Due to the ability to create steel bubbles they could also probably shield themselves from the radiation of nuclear material on or near them. With fine enough control they could also perform nuclear laser surgery. They could be outfitted in steel biomechanical armor that could act as a metal mind for both their allomantic and feruchemical abilities. What do you think of this idea or what extreme use of investiture do you envision?

Like the title says, I was curious if it’s possible to soulstamp something twice. If so, can you change it completely, or add some small difference? It’s been a while since I’ve read The Emporer’s Soul, so I hoped someone could help me out!

What happens if you turn your malatium at a Forged person? Do you see the original? Would that be a corpse in Ashravan's case?

I couldn’t find very many threads about forgery, and the possibilities of soulstamps, so I made one! I honestly think soulstamps are really cool, and I’m curious to see what people think up about how you can use them. ( I also may or may not be gathering ideas for my alleyverse character ). I’ll start with an idea that came to my mind: what if you could soulstamp a sword while fighting to make it extra hot or frigid, or to soulstamp poison onto it or something? You could even change its shape, and switch tactics in a flash. I don’t know If that sounds dumb, but I figured the possibilities could be cool .

We know that alumium protects an allomancer from foreign Investiture. So you cannot heal them with Progression, AonDor or Forgery while they are burning it. But what about later effects? If you have been healed with Forgery, you have to stay forged, depending on the extent of the injury possibly permanently. If that is the case and you burn aluminium, does that amount to suicide?

I am going to start this topic with the most auspicious declaration of: Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! This is my FAVOURITE Cosmere work! *clears throat* now on with the actual topic. Wan ShaiLu, the Forger is arrested while attempting to steal a painting in the capital of the Rose Empire, where Hoid, disguised as the Fool, ensures her capture (while stealing the Moon Sceptre himself) so as to force her to fulfill the task that would be thrust upon her as a condition for her release. Which raises the question of why Hoid would consider this important enough to require his attention? Would a change of Emperors be so great a political upheaval? But much more interestingly, when Shai does successfully Forge a new soul for the Emperor, what exactly does the Emperor become? Does Ashravan qualify as a Cognitive Shadow? Or is the new Ashravan truly a new Ashravan? (which is kind of terrifying) When the injury rendered Ashravan in a vegetative state, was it more akin to gluing something broken back up together or perhaps more like patchwork stitching? ~Mistborn spoilers~ That is, was Ashravan still alive in a way in the Cognitive? Was his Identity damaged in some way? Did Shai just resurrect him? ~Warbreaker spoilers~ Did she just create a new Spiritweb or repair the original? Had the original Ashravan passed into the Beyond at this point? This WoB indicates that death in the Cosmere is a rather complicated affair: ~Mistborn & Warbreaker spoilers~ Brandon has made comparisons between these three situations before: What exactly is Ashravan now?

If you break the seal on a forgery, will the underlying object have aged? Let's say you make a belt from fresh leather and decorate it by forgery. After a hundred years somebody breaks the seal and does a radiocarbon dating. Will it show zero years or one hundred years?

I tried looking around, but couldn't find any topics with this theory, so I figured it might be an interesting first post. I will here try to give my theory for the mechanism that makes healing, in general throughout the cosmere works, and hopefully back it up with some good sources. Statement 1: Physical healing (at least the ones I will talk about, e.g. F-gold & stormlight) heals by making the physical body adhere to the Spiritual ideal. Statement 2: Spiritual healing works directly on the spiritweb, and there is no ideal for the spirit to adhere to, and must therefore be a different mechanism. Statement 3: Forgery instantly affects the physical, by causing it to adhere to the Forged Spiritual ideal. Statement 4: The body can be changed without changing the Spiritual ideal. (This is obvious because the body can be damaged and then healed back it's unchanged ideal) Statement 5: Time does not exist in the Spiritual Realm. Statement 1 & 2 I will only use to remove Spiritual healing from this theory, as my proposed solution would not affect the Spiritweb. Statements 3 & 4 together show that static spiritweb without external influence does not affect the Physical aspect, while a changing spiritweb does affect the Physical aspect. This makes me to come the conlusion that: A static Spiritweb does not filter down into the physical, but a changing Spiritweb does. Using this concept I believe that physical healing works by "rippling" the Spiritweb. This causes the Spiritweb to change, as in not being static, but it doesn't actually change any of the information contained in it. By rippling the Spiritweb like this it forces the Physical aspect to adhere to the Spiritual again, and a stronger ripple would result in a faster healing. The reason Forgery looks instant would be because the change is severe enough to count as a very large change, and cause the Physical to update quicker. Since time does not exist in the Spiritual Realm, the only way for things to change is through at direct causal chain. In other words things can't change (on their own) or over time. Therefore the only way to cause an update in the Spiritual realm is to directly start a causal chain from the Physical Realm, where time does exist. I've included what evidence for I could come up with, but there are some other explanations that could also explain it. The side effect of each magic could simply directly cause these things to happen. Gold could simply "look at your spiritual, and then change the Physical to match it", rather than go through the extra step of starting a ripple in your Spiritweb. Since every time the Spiritweb changes, there is some cause, proven by the fact that time does not exist in the Spiritual Realm, means that we don't, and likely never will, have a case where the Spiritweb constantly changes without some external cause. And this would really be the only way to prove or disprove the over-arching theory, as the static Spiritweb part is proven trivially. Thank you for taking the time to read this theory, may the ripping-it-to-shreds begin.

I was thinking about Kandra in Bands of Mourning and something occurred to me. In Bands of Mourning it talks a lot about Identity, but it's all in reference to Feruchemy and Allomancy. I was wondering if Identity could be important for Kandra. Specifically, I was thinking that it may be part of how they are able to so convincingly take the forms of other people. This eventually lead me to thinking about other shapeshifters as well, but first I'll talk about Kandra. Young Kandra are only able to shapeshift into the form of a person after consuming their body. After a lot of time spent taking on various forms they're eventually able to take liberties, mixing and matching, adding, subtracting, adapting, etc. But at first they're only able to consume a body and then turn into a copy of that body. Once they're in a form they have a hard time not acting like the person that form belongs to (like when MeLaan takes on the form of the Governor Innate at the end of Shadows of Self, she knows she's supposed to be placating the crowd, but that's not what Innate would have done. This could be from training and practice, but I think that would only take you so far. Particularly when she didn't actually know much about Innate.). Anyway, so I'm proposing that when a Kandra consumes a body they are able to consume a portion of the person's Identity. This helps them to not only copy the person's physical appearance, but their mannerisms, their speech patterns, etc. It wouldn't give them the person's memories, but they would instinctively be able to tap into the way that person would do things. This is similar to when Shai is testing pieces of the pattern for Ashravan's essence mark on Gaotona. This effectively gave Gaotona a copy of a small portion of Ashravan's identity. Sometimes Shai would incorporate actual memories into the stamps as well, but like with the part about how his favorite color was green. I feel like that had more to do with Identity than memories. For a Kandra I feel like they would get more of the person's Identity than Gaotona was getting, though not the whole thing. For a Mistwraith I bet they get the bits of Identity as well, but without sapience it doesn't do them any good. So that brings me to other kinds of shapeshifting in the Cosmere. Here's a list of all the kinds of shapeshifting I can think of: Kandra/Mistwraith, Aimian, Dician Aimian, Forgery (minimal, but it does still happen), and Returned/Royal Locks. Aimians and Dician Aimians we don't see enough for me to judge how much has to do with Identity, but I suspect that it does play a part. Forgery you're only changing to different versions of yourself, but I still think that your identity is changing. Returned we don't see too much of it, but the parts we do see seem to me like it's totally about Identity, and the Royal Locks we already know work the same way, just on a smaller scale. Illusions aren't actually shapeshifting, but I think Identity frequently plays a part in them as well. Anyway, I thought this was interesting. Thoughts?

No using Forgery to gain access to another magic system. I think that’s most likely impossible, and if not then it would be very difficult because of all kinds of reasons. So what would you choose to change about yourself? What untaken paths would you make into essence marks? I think I’d have one where I stuck with martial arts. I’d have another where I stuck with piano. I’d have another where I became a scientist (I’m actually a software engineer). I’d have another where I majored in English and became an author. That one would be awesome. Put the essence mark on to work on my book, then after it’s finished I can enjoy reading my own book. LOL

Remember how in Emperor's Soul, a braindead person's mind was recreated using an essence mark? Dead shardblades are basically braindead spren (recall how Pattern said spren don't truly die, they just sort of break). It seems probable that you could temporarily resurrect a "dead" shardblade with an essence mark, provided you knew enough about the blade's history to make a forgery. There's most likely an easier way to revive a dead shardblade (I give it 50/50 odds that Adolin resurrects his blade at some point in the books), but, the idea is kind of interesting. Restoring an ancient and damaged thing seems like exactly the kind of thing forgery was made for.

I just finished listening to Emperor’s Soul, and I’m a little confused about something. Shai implies that the more ‘plausible’ and ‘correct’ a Forgery is, the longer it will tend to last before having to be restamped. But the ending of the book implies that she managed to recreate the Emperor’s soul so perfectly (other than one or two things that the book implies would have eventually happened anyway) that for all intents and purposes the term ‘forgery’ arguably doesn’t even apply. She didn’t so much create something new and ‘false’ as recreate what was already supposed to be there. Which should seem to suggest that the ‘forgery’ should have been if not permanent then at least lasted a very long time, but for some reason he has to be restamped every morning (at least for a while) or he’ll become a vegetable again. Why exactly is this the case? Why should a perfect recreation of what a person is supposed to be only last a day whereas something trivial like turning a chamber pot into an ornate vase last indefinitely? Is this just a plot hole or did I miss something?