How is Moonlight Shai?

[Koloss17]

So Shai is Moonlight. I get that. Makes relative sense. I’m sure Shai was an easy person to recruit into the Ghostbloods. However, for being hundreds of years old, she sure does not seem to be the most powerful forger of her time.

From what she has said, she has three soul stamps on her. Two of which are universal stamps, which I am certain is quite difficult to pull off. The third is an essence stamp that makes her an Elantrian, which is also surely difficult to pull off.
 

However. Three soul stamps? Really? Shai is certainly better than that. Is it a limitation of resources? What Shai has made is certainly impressive, but probably something an average forger could pull off in 100 years of living. I think it’s safe to assume Shai’s been kicking for longer than that, and again, she is THE BEST forger of her lifetime. If this is the Shai we know, I would expect a whole briefcase of powerful soul stamps, including more than just one essence mark. I understand that she only has so much access to her abilities, since there’s only so much Dor that she has access to. However, even with limited resources, more options are always welcome. 
 

I find it slightly hard to believe that Shai wouldn’t have proper materials to make more, as the Ghostbloods are at this point quite far reaching and could certainly procure some. Especially since, as far as I’m aware, Shai is quite high up in their ranks.

 

So what’s up? Why does Shai, the most powerful forger or her time, who has presumably been alive for hundreds of years, honing her skills, pals with Kelsier himself, have only three soul stamps?

[kenod]

My personal guess it's related to the new resources needed to make stamps that work both on Scadrial, and the complexity behind her new types of Soulstamps. Universal soulstamps and an Elantrian Essence Mark are both completely new developments, which even with Shai's skill, would have taken a long time to develop, and even more to adapt to work off-world.

Another big question is how exactly her immortality works. At least some worldhoppers aren't actually immortal, but utilize a form of time dilation. If Shai is using that method, even if she also slowed her aging, that gives her a lot less time to work in.

Aside from that, didn't Shai note something about these being the stamps she currently had on her? It's quite possible she has a bunch of additional stamps squirreled away, and these were the only ones available.

[TheoreticalMagic]

We don't know that she's been actively alive for hundreds of years though, is the thing. We know from Brandon that there are various different ways that characters (largely the worldhoppers) manage to stay around hundreds of years after their introductory storylines, but those methods vary and we don't really know all that much about how some of them work. We do know however that at least one of those methods involves some kind of time dilation/relativity trick, where the character is able to essentially 'fast forward' to later time periods, essentially skipping out on the passage of time around them....but for them, only a short amount of time has passed.

So for instance, if this 'trick' is how Shai's able to still be present despite all the time that's passed since The Emperor's Soul, she HASN'T been active for hundreds of years, and thus its not unreasonable to think that most of her time spent honing her expertise with forgery since we last saw her HAS 'only' resulted in two universal stamps and one to turn her into an Elantrian....with all three of these still being HUGE feats based on where she was at when we last saw her.

If we knew for sure that her method of longevity was akin to say, The Lord Ruler's, where he was actively around and cognizant for all the centuries between the time of his birth and that of his death, then yes, I'd agree that based on the amount of time theorized to have passed between The Emperor's Soul and The Lost Metal, it does seem like Shai should have a greater volume and variety of powerful, useful stamps than just the three we saw in this book. We just don't know that she actually has that much life experience despite the seeming 'breadth' of her lifespan.

(Though to be fair, it also could be that she doesn't bring every stamp she has with her to every world or on every mission. Even with centuries of practice under her belt, stamps like the three we saw must still be considerable investments of time and skill. It wouldn't surprise me if a centuries old Shai had an 'armory' of stamps hidden somewhere that she goes back to between missions, but she's highly selective about which stamps she brings with her on various trips to different worlds based on what she thinks she'll need, plus a 'break glass in case of emergency' kind of failsafe stamp like the Elantrian one, in case things go way wrong - since there's not likely a better stamp for handling any generic but extreme threat to her, at least not without foreknowledge of the actual threat and the most useful skillset for combating it. And if she is centuries or even a millennia old and has built up a vast array of useful and powerful stamps that she has hidden somewhere for safekeeping, her choices of these three particular stamps do make a lot of sense as they're all potent and useful, and only seem underwhelming in light of the actual mission Shai found herself in the middle of....once Autonomy's timetable was revealed to be vastly further ahead of what the Ghostbloods assumed it to be.

Shai at the start of the book seemed to see herself as on the Ghostblood equivalent of a milk run....meant to be a fairly simple surveillance mission with a possibility of recruiting Marasi, but not much more action/threat-intensive than that, as they still thought they had months if not years before Autonomy and her pawns' plans for Scadrial required the Ghostbloods directly intervene. Essentially the same reason the Ghostbloods didn't have more members available to help stop the threat. In light of that, its reasonable that if at some future point, Kelsier was going to summon his most powerful and magically skilled agents to go up against Autonomy and her minions directly, Shai might have planned to only at that point head to some offworld safehouse where she has her personal armory of stamps hidden, and make more selective choices based on planning to be in an actual firefight or actively infiltrating the enemy camp.)

Edit: LOL I see kenod and I posted at about the same time and had similar trains of thought.

Edited November 20, 2022 by TheoreticalMagic

[drunkenbotanist]

Regarding Moonlight and time, this WoB may be relevant. Time is very likely going super slowly relative to outside in Elantris.

 

Jeremy

If vast amounts of Investiture can distort time in a similar manner as a black hole, [...] does that include Shards? Would time dilation be greater on Roshar than on Nalthis?

Brandon Sanderson

No, because the Shard is contained almost entirely in the Spiritual Realm. In the Spiritual Realm, time and distance have no meaning. So, what this means is: Large piles of Investiture that somehow make it into the Cognitive Realm or the Physical Realm are going to cause time dilation, but the Spiritual Realm—where it belongs—it's not going to do that.

That's gonna make some exclamation points raise above the heads of some people.

The Dusty Wheel Show (June 17, 2021)

 

 

 

 

[i’m in the details]

On 11/20/2022 at 2:33 PM, kenod said:

My personal guess it's related to the new resources needed to make stamps that work both on Scadrial, and the complexity behind her new types of Soulstamps. Universal soulstamps and an Elantrian Essence Mark are both completely new developments, which even with Shai's skill, would have taken a long time to develop, and even more to adapt to work off-world.

Another big question is how exactly her immortality works. At least some worldhoppers aren't actually immortal, but utilize a form of time dilation. If Shai is using that method, even if she also slowed her aging, that gives her a lot less time to work in.

Aside from that, didn't Shai note something about these being the stamps she currently had on her? It's quite possible she has a bunch of additional stamps squirreled away, and these were the only ones available.

She rode to that other city it bears noting. Maybe she keeps most her stamps in elendel and only brought those she could easily hide on her person. 

[lacrossedeamon]

Shai just stamps herself to be one year younger every year.

[Koloss17]

4 hours ago, lacrossedeamon said:

Shai just stamps herself to be one year younger every year.

You know what? That would be hilarious, of not a tad impractical. Definitely going to be my joke headcanon until proven otherwise.

[stonehand]

On 11/20/2022 at 2:33 PM, TheoreticalMagic said:

where the character is able to essentially 'fast forward' to later time periods, essentially skipping out on the passage of time around them....but for them, only a short amount of time has passed.

If A-Bendolloy can do it, there's probably other ways in other magic systems

[SwordNimiForPresident]

There's no evidence to support it, but it could just be Breath. The 5th heightening makes you immortal and isn't really even all that expensive. I could easily see the Ghostbloods giving out 5th heightenings to members. I could also see Shai acquiring it on her own before joining the Ghostbloods. She seems like a very enterprising young woman.