Gaming the System in Forging

[Kurkistan]

It's occurred to me that a prepared Forger is a versatile Forger; namely, it would behoove anyone serious about Forgery to go through a large number of close encounters that could have seriously messed their body. Given these past events, which could have gone either way, an entirely intact forger chained to a wall by her foot, say, could easily craft a very simple soulstamp that says, essentially, "you know that time I almost got my foot cut off? Yeah, I did" and, ta da, you're free of the wall. Pop off the stamp and be about your day, citizen.

 

You could rather easily arrange this by setting aside a single stress-filled day early in your career during which you risk everything that you might want to be disfigured/maimed at a later date. Put your hand under a guillotine that falls at an unknown time only a split second after an easy to miss "click" sound, or your arm, or your foot or leg. Barely miss a poke to the eye or burn to the face through similar circumstances. Later, you could Forge a fairly simple and plausible scenario where you were distracted at a crucial moment and so got hit by whatever nastiness you want to get hit by.

 

So far as actual plausibility goes, this might not cut it (har har), due to how much control the Forger, who most likely very much does not want to be maimed, has over the situation. On a less universally useful note, then, any Forger who has genuinely risked their face or limbs could still quite easily capitalize on that risk on a later date.

 

Such simple circumstances are nice because they allow exceptionally simple soulstamps to "actualize", allowing for Forging in dire circumstances for disguise and/or escape without needing an entire alternate personality like Shai's beggar persona.

 

Thoughts?

Edited May 19, 2013 by Kurkistan

[NewbSombrero]

This sounds both terrifying to execute and very effective.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

I'd rather just have a box with two compartments.

 

The bottom compartment contains a variety of objects I had my trusted servant choose to pack on a hunch, thinking they'd be useful.

 

The top compartment would be full of stamps to control just what had been chosen.  Need a bottle of booze?  I've got one.  A hammer?  That too.  Thirty feet of rope?  Coming right up.

[ROSHtafARian]

Forgery as the cosmere equivalent of Schrodinger's Cat, huh?  Hmmm.  Must think on this.

[Thought]

I suspect that forging wouldn't work for losing a limb, although it probably does work for restoring one. The reason is simply the phantom limb sensation: I take that as evidence that the body would strongly see itself as having a limb. Trying to say that a foot had been cut off would be rejected, not because it wasn't probably, but because it's so against how the body views itself. In contrast, for the same reason, restoring a limb would be easier, because the body wants that limb to still be there (although it sounds like resealing is crazy difficult in its own right: my point is just that for a lost limb, the body wants the resealer to succeed).

Keep in mind that essence marks (which is what I think this would count as) are very difficult to make. I suspect it'd be more worth your time to forge yourself into someone who has the skill to escape on their own.

Also, a forger should always carry around a paperclip. If MacGyver taught us anything, it's that a paperclip is all that you need to get out of any situation. Combine that with a forger, and you have an unstoppable magic user.

[Pechvarry]

Shaizan has scars and shorter hair, and the beggar is apparently emaciated. Those are obviously pretty minor compared to limb loss, but I thought I'd mention them as they set a precedent.

[Kurkistan]

The body seeing itself as having a limb is an expression of its Cognitive aspect and is important for magical healing, but we already know (or at least have very strong reason to believe) that Forging can and does change Cognitive aspects. Shaizan has scars, beggar!Shai was de-haired by disease. If you attempted to heal either of them magically, I imagine that they'd still have those disfigurements.

 

It's my understanding that essence marks are only difficult to make because they affect people--complex beasties--on a large scale. Essence marks are, in essence (har har), just a large collection of individual soul-Forgeries. Each of those individual Forgeries is rather simple, to an extent. Shai could make each one of them stick for the "maximum time" on Gaotona, and thus would presumably have been able to make each simple alteration stick for the full 26 hours on the Emperor himself. The difficulty comes from the complexity involved in any large scale, personality- and identity-wide change comprised of a thousand smaller changes. So a single mark changing a single thing about a well known event which could have plausibly gone the other way is easy as pie.

 

EDIT: And even a shorter duration (though I don't think we're limited to that) would be fine, if all we're looking for is to slip some shackles. Ooh, you could just force a close friend to suffer all of these indignities, then use your Connection to have a Gaotona-level stamp that lasts for only a short while. Or, more charitably, a group of close Forgers could all share stamps.

 

---

 

And yes, paperclips all the way.

 

@Pechvary

 

You posted while I was composing mine, but yes, that.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Thought]

Kurk, do you remember the window that Shai forged? She had tried dozens of times, but it didn't work until she discovered that it used to be stained glass, then it worked on her first try. If she couldn't get a glass window to be whole unless it got to be a stained glass window again, how much more stubborn would a body be about something important?

 

Hair, scars, these are minor things, and ones that people believe are relatively ephemeral. We cut our hair, we grow it long, we dye it, we style it: it's about as constant as the clothes we wear. We might notice horribly disfiguring scars, but most of them are easy to ignore, both by others and ourselves. But limbs? They're how we experience and interact with the world. Removing them is removing part of that experience. And so, it seems like it would be very difficult to forge them away. It's not an issue of how probably the forgery is, but rather how desirable that forgery is.

 

EDIT: I should note that I suspect this has a lot to do with how we view a person's connectedness to their limbs differently. As noted, I take phantom limb syndrome to be evidence that, even with limbs gone, the body still views itself as having them. Getting the body to view itself as not having the limbs, so that the limbs "disappear," seems to be the opposite of what we see. But that's not an absolute argument, in the least.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Thought

[Kurkistan]

I really think you're off base here, Thought (welcome back from your hiatus, by the way. I see you're catching up).

 

The window didn't work because Shai didn't get the history (or, indeed, even the basic identity of the object as a stained glass window) right, and so her Forgery didn't have enough "plausibility" to stick--though I would like to note that it lasted as regular glass for "five minutes or so", leaving the weaker version of my idea quite untouched. That's quite a different story from having a known and plausible history to draw upon. Even if I buy that human bodies are liable to reject limb-severing changes in the long term, you can almost certainly still capitalize on short-term stamps (as I said in my edit about 4 seconds before you posted. Sorry about that). Shai was able to take down a door for a few moments using her bed-killing stamp, despite the fact that the history she gave to justify the bed's decay was nearly incompatible with the door's.

 

The hair for beggar!Shai wasn't just a new style, it was the result of a her hair "falling out", suggesting a tad more permanence. Regardless, we have Sazed to thank for the knowledge that scars are incorporated into Cognitive aspects. So I find it rather implausible ( ) that Forgeries are fundamentally incapable of changing Cognitive aspects, at least temporarily, at the very least.

 

Beyond that, I can see your point about limbs being important for how we live our lives, and how the course of someone's life would almost necessarily be changed by the loss of one. It has little to do with Cognitive aspects and how strongly we see ourselves as "limbed", though. Getting the body to see itself as de-limbed is a real and important change to it's Cognitive aspect, but is of a kind that we've already seen done in Forgery.

 

Perhaps the clearest and most pertinent example in this case is Brandon's discussion of how Forging interacts with chronic illness. Even though your body knows full well that your eyes or organs are bad, you can still write a full 26 hour stamp to alter your state of health, make yourself into a person who does not have that deficiency. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the application of Feruchemical gold or Regrowth to someone under the influence of an eye stamps would not "heal" them back to having bad eyes, just as Feruchemical gold can't un-eunich Sazed. So far as the Cosmere at large is concerned, then, a Forged object has a different Cognitive aspect for the duration of its stamp.

 

I can see how you might be concerned about Forgery in particular causing these de-limbings, given that it needs to change the past. That is an interesting question. I think that, to a certain extent, Forgeries don't care about the plausibility of the entirety of their circumstances when you apply their stamps. Shaizan can essentially pop into existence in the middle of an escape from people trying to kill her for Forging without any existential concerns as to how her life went such that she found herself in those circumstances.

 

There does remain the question, though, of whether the entirety of a Forgery's backstory needs to be specified. Did Shai's stamp of her window and desk include constant upkeep up to the moment that corresponded to her application of the stamp? Did her Shaizan stamp include some trickery to account for what she was "really" doing from the last moment "specified" up until the present day? I do not think so, but it is not as definite a "no" as I've been giving so far.

 

If Shai's a desk was almost destroyed mere moments ago, could not Shai destory it by writing a simple "you were just destroyed" stamp and calling it a day? Or need she account for the experiences of the desk for the last 6.9 seconds? If Shai does need to provide a life history from the point of change to the present day, how much detail need she give? Will "you sat there in splinters" or "you went about your life" do the trick? Shai's bed received a robust "you're rotten now and always have been" stamp, but did that mean she had to change it's past such that she had never slept on it?

 

As I touch upon in my mondo-thread-of-death, I think that all you really need is "change desired" and "historical event that differs from reality such as to justify this change." The in-between stuff doesn't matter so much. The desk in Shai's room would almost certainly have been carted off to some not-rathole at some point in its life, or her rotten bed replaced before or shortly after they put her in there, but just as Forgeries' immediate circumstances don't seem to matter at the moment of Forging, I do not think that tangential historical circumstances that might logically arise from the changes of a Forged history need be accounted for.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Observer]

Problem: If you get your leg shackled, and then you forge yourself to have been missing it, how do you explain to your new history why they didn't just chain up your only leg instead of the thin air beside it?

 

I prefer the magic box. Maybe because I'm a timeloop nut or something, but the Schrodinger's Box forgery sounds much more useful and vertisile.

 

Of course, this is all assuming they grabbed a forger and didn't search them for stamps.

[Kurkistan]

First of all, I just wrote a small essay about how Forgeries don't consider your immediate circumstances when considering "plausibility."

 

Second, part of the point of this is that Shai with a block of wood and a fork could carve this soulstamp in 2 minutes flat, as it's so simple and plausible.

[Observer]

Would probably be easier to just forge a weak link into the chain, but meh, I can see this being more useful than that.

[Thought]

Sorry for the delay in responding, Kurk (and thanks for the welcome back: I didn't mean to return, but I wanted to look into something, saw an interesting thread, and got sucked back in). I suspect most our disagreements aren't over what's possible, but how much each factor weighs on the process, and how difficult it would be. My stance is that forging away a limb is technically possible, but so difficult in practice as to be impossible. Much like how an author could, in theory, write a novel that will satisfy every reader, but in practice that just doesn't happen.

Anywho, the window provides a worthwhile example, so I hope you won’t mind if I discuss it a little more. In the book, Shai comes to a conclusion as to why her earlier forging attempts didn't work, and why the final one did. She concludes that the issue was that the window, after all those years, still thought of itself as beautiful. That indicates that the issue wasn't that there was a historical inaccuracy in her earlier attempts that was causing a problem, but that she hadn't understood the window's desires well enough (just as she hadn't understood at first the Emperor's desires for becoming the Emperor). If a window's desire to see itself as beautiful could reject Shai's forging attempt, then how much more would a person's desire to remain physically whole reject a forging?

It is that a person's sense of limbedness is very deeply ingrained, so much so that attempts to change a person's limbedness are going to be a ridiculously hard sell, as it were. It's going against a very strong desire, and so the forge has to be that much better.

Perhaps the best illustration of my objection can be had in the fact that losing a limb causes drastic psychological trauma, while usually scars, disease, hair loss, poor eyesight, etc do not. Not only does a forger have to switch the change their past so that they lost that limb, they have to take into account the medical attention they need, then the psychological damage caused by it, while managing the body's innate desire to refuse to believe that it's lost a limb.

As for forgery backstory, we see a little of the answer to this question when Shai forged the wall into a mural: she had two other stamps that directed how the forging was to progress, and she explained that they were to address the skills needed to actually paint the artwork. Given the complexity, it's likely that she provided guidance and the skills, but didn't designate every brushstroke. To me that indicates that Shai's stamp on the table probably included something along the lines of "you received daily care" instead of "you were polished on July 23, 25th, 28th, August 1st, 5th, 11th, etc." This gets to be problematic with a person, though. Let's say that Shai forges someone's past to believe that they had a brother who died. I suspect that if she just said "you were depressed for a while," that would be less likely to stick than if she included notes on the entire cycle of grief, how this particular individual handled it, and what psychological scars were left over.

The question of destruction is an interesting one: could Shai forge her desk to be destroyed? I suspect not, since forging just changes a things past, while destroying it removes part of that past. Let's say that Shai's desk was almost burnt to ashes three years ago. She forges it so that it actually did get burned up. Except now she's not working with the desk, she's working with a pile of ash. At least a pile of ash could still have a sense of identity, but would that pile of ash been left undisturbed for three years? That seems unlikely, so the sense of identity would be lost, and therefore the thing that you had forged would have been destroyed. I suspect, then, that the object's will would resist being so changed.

I'd propose that a successful forge has to address the following:

1) The object's desires (as evidence by Shai's interpretation of why the window wouldn't forge)
2) The likelihood of the end result/how others perceive that change (gold into lead is more likely than lead into gold, chains have a specific purpose, deviate from that purpose and it makes no sense, so there's clear feedback between viewer and object)
3) What differed in the object's history in order for the change to occur (coal was accidentally mined instead of limestone, for example)
4) Guidelines for how the change manifested, which would include guidelines for complex artistic capabilities as well (as evidence by the forging of the wall into a mural).

So, the reason I think that amputation is unlikely to take is because it's strongly against #1 and #4 (the forger would need to know how to treat an amputation, as well as how an amputation would affect an individual's psyche). #2 is a bit up in the air: the randomized amputation process that was proposed should itself be simple enough to change, but what about how people view amputations? I think the feedback from others would make this more difficult than just flipping a switch, as it were.

[Kurkistan]

Sorry for the delay in responding, Kurk (and thanks for the welcome back: I didn't mean to return, but I wanted to look into something, saw an interesting thread, and got sucked back in). I suspect most our disagreements aren't over what's possible, but how much each factor weighs on the process, and how difficult it would be. My stance is that forging away a limb is technically possible, but so difficult in practice as to be impossible. Much like how an author could, in theory, write a novel that will satisfy every reader, but in practice that just doesn't happen.

Anywho, the window provides a worthwhile example, so I hope you won’t mind if I discuss it a little more. In the book, Shai comes to a conclusion as to why her earlier forging attempts didn't work, and why the final one did. She concludes that the issue was that the window, after all those years, still thought of itself as beautiful. That indicates that the issue wasn't that there was a historical inaccuracy in her earlier attempts that was causing a problem, but that she hadn't understood the window's desires well enough (just as she hadn't understood at first the Emperor's desires for becoming the Emperor). If a window's desire to see itself as beautiful could reject Shai's forging attempt, then how much more would a person's desire to remain physically whole reject a forging?

It is that a person's sense of limbedness is very deeply ingrained, so much so that attempts to change a person's limbedness are going to be a ridiculously hard sell, as it were. It's going against a very strong desire, and so the forge has to be that much better.

 

Okay, this is a lot. Now I know what everyone else feels like when they are confronted with my posts

 

The Window and "desire":

 

First off, the window thinking itself to be beautiful was a matter of acknowledged poeticalness on Shai's part, so is a bit shaky, and we oughtn't to use such a source as our sole justification for "desires" as important for consideration above and beyond what we already know about Cognitive aspects.

 

Also, I think you're giving a bit too much weight to "positive" conceptions of oneself (I'm straying away from talk of "desires" for the reasons I've already given). If a body conceives of itself as suffering from a chronic illness, it will fight off a stamp that tries to change it. This is yet another reason why talk of "desires" is misleading: does the body truly want to be ill and ill-functioning, or is that simply how it sees itself? I would say the latter, quite naturally. The window sees itself as stained glass, but would not be envious if it were to have been made of normal glass, and does not have any "desire" to be made of some kind of super-stained-glass that is more beautiful and tougher than any other kind of stained glass: it just sees itself as a stained glass window, full stop.

 

I think your correlation between the Emperor's "desires for becoming an Emperor" and the window's "desires" is rather odd, and possibly misleading. Given, Ashraven's reason for becoming the Emperor were a matter of historical fact that held significant impact and insight into his personality. On that basis, you could say that it was as important to his identity as, say, having been broken once was to the window's. But not as important as his being a human being, or the window being stained glass, or even just a window.

 

Regardless, the fact that this fundamental aspect of the Emperor happened to be a question of motivations and desires is largely irrelevant. Had we been looking at another man with a different history, whether or not a rooster crowed at dawn on a particular day could be the defining moment in a man's life, or whether and why he liked chocolate. Therefore, I find very little to support this talk of "desires", and think we would be far better served by talk of identities (in the context of Cognitive aspects).

 

Deeply ingrained aspect of Identity

 

Though I've just spent and inordinate amount of time bashing your word choice, you still raise a valid point when we recast your arguments in terms of identity. Yes, being the Emperor and the reasons he accepted are a very deeply held part of Ashraven's identity. Just like being a Forger is a fundamental part of Shai's identity. But I can well imagine that it could have been changed, were that to be Shai's goal, just as she can change herself. We'll get into relative difficulty in a bit.

 

Being stained glass, however, was the window's identity. Turning it into a regular window would be like turning a man into a dog, or a tree into a rock. Perhaps Shai could have Forged the window frame such that a regular window had been in its place (like Forging a wall such that it's component parts were made of different stones), but not the window itself, I think.

 

Even if I'm overstating the importance of being stained glass to the window, Shai still needed to at least acknowledge and account for that part of its history/identity, which she had failed to do up until her revelation as to its nature. I'm still inclined to think that the fact that it was stained glass was fundamental to its entire identity, though.

 

People, then, see themselves as themselves. If I lose my arm tomorrow, I might well suffer some emotional trauma, perhaps even come to view myself differently as a result, but I will still be me. Whether or not I have that limb is somewhere on the scale from tangential to important, but not foundational. I think we're allowed to do just about anything we want to to an object beyond compromising it's core identity, at least without a good excuse.

 

Shai killed her bed. She rotted it to the point of being unusable, of being a worthless hulk, good only for firewood. She compromised its core functionality, to the point where its entire purpose in "life" was destroyed. But she let it stay a bed. It's function destroyed, destined for destruction itself, but still itself. That seems to be the only dividing line, just as--as you say and I agree--you likely can't Forge an object to have been destroyed outright; such a Forgery would compromise its core identity.

 

Perhaps the best illustration of my objection can be had in the fact that losing a limb causes drastic psychological trauma, while usually scars, disease, hair loss, poor eyesight, etc do not. Not only does a forger have to switch the change their past so that they lost that limb, they have to take into account the medical attention they need, then the psychological damage caused by it, while managing the body's innate desire to refuse to believe that it's lost a limb.

 

Perhaps I'm vain and/or have a conception of the human race as vain, but I would think that your hair falling out and your face being horribly scarred (as with beggar!Shai) would have a rather deep impact on anyone. But Shai still managed the change (albeit nestled among a thousand others).

 

As for needing to Forge the "context", I'll address that in a moment.

 

As for forgery backstory, we see a little of the answer to this question when Shai forged the wall into a mural: she had two other stamps that directed how the forging was to progress, and she explained that they were to address the skills needed to actually paint the artwork. Given the complexity, it's likely that she provided guidance and the skills, but didn't designate every brushstroke. To me that indicates that Shai's stamp on the table probably included something along the lines of "you received daily care" instead of "you were polished on July 23, 25th, 28th, August 1st, 5th, 11th, etc." This gets to be problematic with a person, though. Let's say that Shai forges someone's past to believe that they had a brother who died. I suspect that if she just said "you were depressed for a while," that would be less likely to stick than if she included notes on the entire cycle of grief, how this particular individual handled it, and what psychological scars were left over.

 

I believe the wall was a rather unique case, first of all. I doubt Shai knows how to install fireplaces, build beds, or put in floors, but she was able to Forge those easily enough. That is tangential, though, as I agree that it was likely "procedurally generated" from relatively simple (if artistically knowledgeable) instructions.

 

I think we're still clashing on the level of granularity Forging demands. I think it's a rather straight "what I want changed" <-> "what happened so it changed that way" relationship, with little concern for the interval.

 

If you Forge a man with a weak heart, let's call him Bob, into having a healthy one, what does that entail? Let's say that it means that you go back to his childhood and change his history such that he never caught some disease.

 

As a result of his illness, that man has lived his entire life under the burden of his heart's weakness; he's stayed out of strenuous occupations or situations, he lacked friends as a child and so became an introvert, he was exempted from military service and so wasn't on the ship when the entire platoon from his home town was captured by the Fjordell and tortured into insanity, he went on to become a professor and meet the love of his life in the university library, converted to her religion when they got married, and raised 10 kids.

 

Now healthy!Bob should, by all rights, have his entire personality reshaped by a simple temporary resealing. His illness has been a constant presence every moment of every day, shaping and tempering every risk and decision, and ultimately leading rather directly to his personality and behavior for the vast majority of his life. Is that reasonable, though? Brandon tells us that Shai doesn't Forge her eyes because she doesn't feel like it, not because she's afraid of having to account for why 4-Eyes-Shai, who studied Forgery to get away from ridicule in her fellow children, is still who she is.

 

Beyond even concerns of what evidence we have for how Forgery is modeled, I doubt that Brandon would put that huge of a burden on Resealing.

 

Also, if you are inclined to argue that Bob's heart condition is not as important as having a limb, I'll just say no, or maybe provide a more extreme example. Poor Bob (well, not that poor, since he didn't get tortured and got the girl) has lived his entire life making compromises for his health, has had it present in his mind at all times. He defines himself as "a man from Townville with a bad heart". It's perhaps the most important part of his identity. More important than a simple limb, certainly.

 

Based in part on my rather exaggerated account of Bob, I think we're allowed to skip the middle parts. It's fair to say that amputating a limb will change someone's personality. But if I want to Forge them such as to achieve that change, I'll have to write both that the limb was severed and, as you said, a relatively plausible dialogue of its aftereffects if I want to get both results. If I just want to cut off the arm, though, and not take advantage of the psychological effects, then I can just ignore them. To each his own: I don't ask the universe to change someone's personality and it doesn't ask me how I justify it. 

 

"Maintenence":

 

As to the plausibility/necessity of "maintenance notes" on stamps, the more I think, the more I doubt this. I talk more about this below (second to last reply-block), but it all boils down to circumstances. If a Forged object needs to be told that it was maintained, then that opens up some rather unpleasant doors on what else it needs to be told.

 

A set of chains that's Forged into having a flaw will need not only how the flaw originated, but how it got past quality control, how it got past the man buying them, how it got past the man unloading them, how it got past the man who stocked them in the dungeon (?), how it got past innumerable (regular) people doing maintenance and oiling for rust and whatnot, and how it got past the man who put the chains on Shai. All that on top of any other incidental spotting by serving people, people delivering meals, or the like.

 

Perhaps I overstate, but it seems that people who keep prisoners so often that they keep chains for them ought to be fairly good at making sure those chains aren't about to fall apart. That's before we even start talking about a wall "accidentally" made of limestone being missed for decades. The problem isn't necesarily this level of detail; as you say, maybe you can just say "the flaw wasn't noticed by anyone". The problem is that a requirement to explain what happens in the interval, to any degree, seems to introduce the possibility that "changes" could conceivably have been noticed and/or undone during that interval, and so massively jack up base implausibility/difficulty.

 

The question of destruction is an interesting one: could Shai forge her desk to be destroyed? I suspect not, since forging just changes a things past, while destroying it removes part of that past. Let's say that Shai's desk was almost burnt to ashes three years ago. She forges it so that it actually did get burned up. Except now she's not working with the desk, she's working with a pile of ash. At least a pile of ash could still have a sense of identity, but would that pile of ash been left undisturbed for three years? That seems unlikely, so the sense of identity would be lost, and therefore the thing that you had forged would have been destroyed. I suspect, then, that the object's will would resist being so changed.

 

I agree that you can't destroy an object (directly) through Forgery, but not for the reasons you hold, it seems. You can look to my discussion of core identity above for my own reasons, but for the moment I'll just attack yours.

 

I've already established rather well (if I may say so) that Forged objects seem not to care about the immediate circumstances in which they "come into being". Sure, a pile of ash wouldn't have been left sitting there for three months. Neither would a rotten bed that someone was supposed to be sleeping in for the last year. The bed simply would not have been left there, just as, on a larger scale, Shai wouldn't have been given her room or many of its contents in their final states (of niceness, not post-jailbreak). I've already cited some other example in my previous post, but it boils down to say that what "ought to have happened" in the interval doesn't seem to matter to a Forgery.

 

I'd propose that a successful forge has to address the following:

1) The object's desires (as evidence by Shai's interpretation of why the window wouldn't forge)

2) The likelihood of the end result/how others perceive that change (gold into lead is more likely than lead into gold, chains have a specific purpose, deviate from that purpose and it makes no sense, so there's clear feedback between viewer and object)

3) What differed in the object's history in order for the change to occur (coal was accidentally mined instead of limestone, for example)

4) Guidelines for how the change manifested, which would include guidelines for complex artistic capabilities as well (as evidence by the forging of the wall into a mural).

 

In order:

 

1) Just replace this with "the object's identity" with various degrees of how central each part is and you've got me.

 

2) A bit off, I think. Unless I'm missing something, this is the first time you've mentioned this teleological argument, and I find it interesting. But still wrong as applies to Forgery. Shai murdered her bed. She stole its very purpose. But she left it as a bed. So teleology seems to have very little impact on how objects change over their lives, as with a once-functional bed rotting.

 

Now, questions of initial composition are more engaging here. Shai couldn't turn chains into soap because no one would make chains out of soap, but she could make a chain (or a wall, for that matter) have been made with a weak link. So the it seems that objects needn't have actually ever been functional towards their purpose, but simply that it be plausible that they be created or enter into a flawed state.

 

Now as to the chain never being made of soap, that is likely due to that specific kind of "mistake" not being plausible, as opposed to a mistake being made while forging (with metal and whatnot) a chain being more plausible. The fact that neither kind of chain would ever be put on a prisoner never seems to enter the equation, though.

 

Though I'm repeating myself, it's worth reiterating that immediate context seems not to matter. If it did, then the Rose Empire could simply have a firm, unbreakable rule that the walls and floors of their cells be checked several times over for flaws in engineering, such as, say, massive holes or the blocks being made of chalk. If the chance of them making a mistake in this was, say, 1/10,000, then that would probably tip any Forger over the "implausibility" threshold if they tried to mess with the walls. No need for ralkalest or 44 types of rock, just a bit of quality control.

 

I'll accept 3 and 4, though we might have to chat over what those guidelines entail.

 

So, the reason I think that amputation is unlikely to take is because it's strongly against #1 and #4 (the forger would need to know how to treat an amputation, as well as how an amputation would affect an individual's psyche). #2 is a bit up in the air: the randomized amputation process that was proposed should itself be simple enough to change, but what about how people view amputations? I think the feedback from others would make this more difficult than just flipping a switch, as it were.

 

I think I've addressed these points well enough (in this, my indecently long reply).

 

P.S. On rereading, I see that I made a small mistake in reading you. Unless I'm also mistaken in my memory, you started off by saying that amputating a limb through Forgery was flat out impossible. In this post, though, you imply that, if you account for the consequences, it is still possible. Sorry for acting as if the former was still the case, if my new understanding is correct.

 

P.P.S. Feel free to respond to this in a less than point-by-point manner. It's just my own style, which lends itself to extra length.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Thought]

I'll respond in depth later, but I had to know:

 

 First off, the window thinking itself to be beautiful was a matter of acknowledged poeticalness on Shai's part, so is a bit shaky, and we oughtn't to use such a source as our sole justification for "desires" as important for consideration above and beyond what we already know about Cognitive aspects.

 

Are you discounting Shai's gut feeling?

[Kurkistan]

Only because she does

[Senor Feesh]

I'll respond in depth later, but I had to know:

 

 

Are you discounting Shai's gut feeling?

 

I'm staying (mostly) out of this discussion (too heady for me) but I had to give that a nod for pure snark

 

damnation Kurk for beating me to it, but I was also going to say it's worth noting that Shai remonstrates herself for thinking this in the very same paragraph.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

I'm pretty sure Resealing is (like bloodsealing) seperate in mechanics from Forgery.

[WeiryWriter]

I'm pretty sure Resealing is (like bloodsealing) seperate in mechanics from Forgery.

 

Actually, resealing is, very likely, a part of Forgery.

 

Her people called it Flesh Forgery.  Using it, a surgeon of great skill could Forge a body to remove its wounds and scars.  It required great specialization.  The Forger had to know  each and every sinew, each vein and muscle, in order to accurately heal.

 

Resealing was one of the few branches of Forgery that Shai hadn't studied in depth.  Get an ordinary forgery wrong, and you created a work of poor artistic merit.  Get a Flesh Forgery wrong, and people died.

Edited June 21, 2013 by WeiryWriter

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Actually, resealing is, very likely, a part of Forgery.

Shai claims that of Bloodsealing as well, but we have Word of Brandon that bloodsealing is a separate magic system.

Resealing has several pretty important difference from Forgery - for one thing, you don't seem to reapply a stamp when you use it on humans. For another, a poor Forgery is rejected, but a poor Resealing seems to kill people.

Edited June 21, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[Kurkistan]

Shai claims that of Bloodsealing as well, but we have Word of Brandon that bloodsealing is a separate magic system.

Resealing has several pretty important difference from Forgery - for one thing, you don't seem to reapply a stamp when you use it on humans. For another, a poor Forgery is rejected, but a poor Resealing seems to kill people.

 

*Oh by the Forgotten Gods, not this type of discussion again...*

 

Okay, first off, thanks for the quote, WeiryWriter. You're totally right, in my opinion. Now all that remains is to beat Phantom into submission .

 

I've written a teeny little (less than 6,00 words, even) thread which touches upon why the effects of Resealing last, but I can give you the cliff notes version: Given that it is Cognitive aspects that "burn off" stamps--which artificially impose identity upon them--as well as instigating the reversal of their effects, a stamp whose changes matches (to a large extent, at least) the Cognitive aspect of its target will see those changes remain in place after the stamp is burned off--or the stamp might even just be immediately incorporated; I'm not quite sure, as we never see Resealing in action.

 

Also, I'm pretty positive (from my free of the reading/gut/theorizing, at least), that Resealed individuals whose Resealing was permanent actually don't have stamps on them anymore. Their bodies are brought back to the way they should be: why should they need to have the Dor keep pumping magic into them? Bloodmakers can turn off their metalminds once they heal.

 

That all works perfectly fine under Forgery as we know it (or at least as I and the 4 people who read and agreed with my OP know it).

 

Given that Shai  chose not to study Flesh Forgery, she was likely given the opportunity by her teachers in MaiPon, which suggests that it was properly a branch of Forgery, with MaiPon as the setting stamp and everything. Not the strongest evidence, but worth throwing in.

 

As far as Resealing killing people, sure, it'll work. You can Reseal people (temporarily) into not having chronic heart conditions: that means you can go against their Cognitive perception of their own Health. With that constraint gone, I would like to officially welcome you to Murder Land, where you can wreak havoc on the human body with nothing to stop you, so long as you have a plausible story to justify it. As Thought and I have been discussing, it seems that you oughtn't to be able to Forge something into nonexistence; you can, however, Forge something into functional uselessness, and/or weaken and then (physically) destroy it.

 

So I try to fix your heart, I make a mistake because my mind wandered while I was carving the stamp, and, though the recipient's heart grew three sizes that day, he did not discover the true meaning of Christmas, unless it was revealed to him in the Cosmere afterlife a few minutes later. I can't Forge you into not existing, but I can put your insides on your outsides or the like, if I make a mistake.

 

And I'd like to note that you seem to misunderstand Shai's quote there. "Poor Forgeries" are not rejected, in the context that Shai is talking about, but simply look ugly, are of "poor artistic merit." She's talking in the contexts of stamps that take (at least for some amount of time), but fail to meet expectations or are just generally poorly done--like Forging a desk into being more ugly, or "Forge-painting" an eye-searing wreck of a mural.

Edited June 21, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Phantom Monstrosity]

And I'd like to note that you seem to misunderstand Shai's quote there. "Poor Forgeries" are not rejected, in the context that Shai is talking about, but simply look ugly, are of "poor artistic merit." She's talking in the contexts of stamps that take (at least for some amount of time), but fail to meet expectations or are just generally poorly done--like Forging a desk into being more ugly, or "Forge-painting" an eye-searing wreck of a mural.

Note the lower case 'forgery' here. Shai's not talking magic, she's talking making fake paintings.

Get an ordinary forgery wrong, and you created a work of poor artistic merit. Get a Flesh Forgery wrong, and people died.

[Kurkistan]

Ah, I had missed the lack of capitalization.
 
Still, Shai does use lowercase "forgery" as an umbrella term for both normal and magical forgery, and could certainly be talking about both in this context. I think she really has to be including Forgery, though, given that Shai is telling us why she studied every branch of Forgery besides Flesh Forgery, and then her reasons for it (poor artistic merit as the failure state). It would be odd for her to intentionally exclude magical Forgery in the middle of that monologue without an explicit mention, so I believe it's a near certainty that she's using "forgery" as an umbrella term here.
 
Quote (Day Three)
"Plausibility was key to any forgery, magical or not."

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Ah, I had missed the lack of capitalization.

 

Still, Shai does use lowercase "forgery" as an umbrella term for both normal and magical forgery, and could certainly be talking about both in this context. I think she really has to be including Forgery, though, given that Shai is telling us why she studied every branch of Forgery besides Flesh Forgery, and then her reasons for it (poor artistic merit as the failure state). It would be odd for her to intentionally exclude magical Forgery in the middle of that monologue without an explicit mention, so I believe it's a near certainty that she's using "forgery" as an umbrella term here.

 

Quote (Day Three)

"Plausibility was key to any forgery, magical or not."

Shai's justifying her entire career path - she pathologically avoids areas where she can be held responsible.

And she *hasn't* studied Resealing in depth. Yet, she still is able to adjust levels of musculature, readjust hair follicles, and add in healed scars over old wounds. Not only that, she CURES HER OWN VISION when in warrior form, effectively giving herself LASIK. ("She slipped off her spectacles. Her eyes had been healed long ago, and she didn’t need those any longer.")

If soulstamps were working off of medical knowledge, Shai would *need* to have studied in depth to get them to work. But she didn't. Since she doesn't have any ability as a resealer, but can still pull off these significant and complex changes to human physiology, we can conclude that Shai's soulstamps operate under different mechanics than resealing does.

She also admits to only being "vaguely" familiar with resealing - and, again, she considers bloodsealing to be a kind of Forgery as well, so we *know* she puts things under the umbrella of 'Forgery' that aren't properly there.

[Kurkistan]

Shai's justifying her entire career path - she pathologically avoids areas where she can be held responsible.

 

I'm not sure if I get that reading from the book. Shai doesn't avoid responsibility, just responsibility over the life and death of others. Not a bad place to draw the line, and one I'd probably agree with. Also, you still have to address the oddity inherent in saying that a reference to "forging" in the middle of a magic-heavy discussion is excluding the magical kind.

 

And she *hasn't* studied Resealing in depth. Yet, she still is able to adjust levels of musculature, readjust hair follicles, and add in healed scars over old wounds. Not only that, she CURES HER OWN VISION when in warrior form, effectively giving herself LASIK. ("She slipped off her spectacles. Her eyes had been healed long ago, and she didn’t need those any longer.")

If soulstamps were working off of medical knowledge, Shai would *need* to have studied in depth to get them to work. But she didn't. Since she doesn't have any ability as a resealer, but can still pull off these significant and complex changes to human physiology, we can conclude that Shai's soulstamps operate under different mechanics than resealing does.

 

First, I would guess (just pure conjecture, here), that Shai had some minute training in Resealing back when she was learning. Enough to know it wasn't for her, at the very least. That's besides the point as applies to her Essence Marks, though.

Adjusting hair, musculature, etc. all falls under the same umbrella of being secondary, consequential changes of changing who Shai is as a human being. She details a history wherein beggar!Shai suffered from a terrible disease and so was scarred and lost her hair--there's no need to lay out the explicit, inch-by-inch details. But such a thing wouldn't work for Resealing, at least not permanently. You want to heal someone, not change who they are as a person. Shai's method is crude and has far reaching effects, but is not proper Flesh Forgery in that it effects far more than it ought to, and for a necessarily limited time.

 

EDIT: Actually, that explanation may run counter to the vein of my argumentation against Thought. Hm. I need to dig more into Resealing

----

 

Actually, this prompts me to consider whether Flesh Forgery (of the permanent variety, at least) is unique in not needing to specify a changed history, the alignment with the body's Cognitive perception of its Health being enough to keep the stamp on. Or perhaps the history is discarded, but physical changes remain when the stamp is "removed". . .

There are three options for Shaizan's vision, that I see: either Shai studied just fixing eyesight in-depth and incorporated such a stamp into her Shaizan stamp, Shai asked/payed another Forger to write up a "fix Shai's eyesight" stamp and then copied that stamp into her Shaizan stamp, or Shaizan's stamp can actually mimic Forgery a bit more directly and has "has used a stamp bought off of a Resealer to fix her eyesight" in her past, without Shai needing to actually include the stamp itself. None of these require super in-depth save a life knowledge on Shai's part, and two of them don't require any knowledge at all.

 

She also admits to only being "vaguely" familiar with resealing - and, again, she considers bloodsealing to be a kind of Forgery as well, so we *know* she puts things under the umbrella of 'Forgery' that aren't properly there.

 

Yes, but we're given the implication that Shai could have studied Resealing if she so desired, suggesting that it is in use in MaiPon, while we know that Shai was simply incapable of Bloodsealing, flat out. She wouldn't even know where to begin with an attempt to dowse somebody using their blood, while she seems to know exactly what she would need to have studied in order to become a Resealer.

Edited June 23, 2013 by Kurkistan