Impossible Forgeries?

[Trusk'our he/him]

Normally, a Forgery must be plausible to take. For instance, trying to turn a Scadrian with noble blood into a Misting would be more likely to take than trying to turn a Rosharan with no relation at all with Scadrial into a Misting.

However, we've seen with other Cosmere magics that certain "unbreakable" rules of the magic system can be broken; you can Steelpush on metal inside people, you just need a lot of Investiture. You can Awaken a non-organic piece of matter, you just need a lot of Investiture. You can damage a supposedly indestructible Honorblade, you just need a lot of Investiture.

So, with that in mind, could you create a Forgery that is so implausible that it shouldn't be possible work if you charged it with enough Investiture? For instance, if I create a Forgery of a completely fictitious person, then apply it to a random person who I have no idea what there past is, could I get it to work by forcing enough Investiture into the stamp?

[+Invocation]

I don't think that would work as easily as that, at least not with a normal soulstamp. You'd have to specifically design it (and discover the quirks of the MaiPon system necessary to make the design feasible) to be able to hold that kind of Investiture without obliterating itself I'm pretty sure, if for no other reason than the raw maximum Investiture capacity of the material.
It might be able to be done if the Dor was restored into both the Spiritual Realm and given a Vessel who is intentionally intervening to try to make it work and/or supplying godmetal to use for the soulstamp (wait would the godmetal of that kind of restored Dor have regional alloys attuned to the regional magics?), or with a truly massive soulstamp. 
But honestly for all I know, with the right Connections, Intents, and material, it could work. Who knows how the Selish magics have progressed through all the time dilation stuff.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Invocation

[Trusk'our he/him]

14 hours ago, Invocation said:

(wait would the godmetal of that kind of restored Dor have regional alloys attuned to the regional magics?)

Whoa. I hadn't even thought of that, but that would be really cool to see. 

Although, Shardblades have different percentages of Honor's and Cultivation's God metals, so there's at least one example of something like that existing. I wonder, do they have different Allomantic and Feruchemical uses based on the percentage?

[Duxredux he/him]

If we're talking material composition, you can make soul stamps out of anything as long as you can etch it well enough. Shai specifically mentions that crystal makes some of the best soul stamps though it is incredibly hard to work with. By that concept, you could potentially carve a Soulstamp from a gemstone and infuse it with Stormlight or other gaseous Investiture. Maybe it would even work with the Dor. At any rate, pump enough Investiture into anything and you can probably break whatever rules.

Quote

Questioner

What if you Soulstamped a city?

Brandon Sanderson

Soulstaped a city... So if you're a really good Forger-- It is possible to do things like that, but it requires a lot of work and time. Just one thing to keep in mind with Soulstamps, and anything that does this, rewriting your spiritweb, right, like, requires Invesiture. A lot of Investiture. And so, for instance, what Shai can do is really cool, but what an Elantrian can do is gonna look a lot more dramatic, right? Shooting a column of fire, you would say "Which takes more power, making the wall have flowers on it or shooting a column of fire?" Making the wall have flowers takes way more Investiture. It's a lot easier to pull off some dramatic effects with others, but the actual changing of the soul and overwr-- ...So just keep in mind the extent-- This is why you don't see Shai Forge it so the whole building disappears. Right? And stuff like this. Which is not outside of reason for a couple of Elantrians with the right program to put into place. But I mean effectively-- They could blow it up, essentially, that's what they would do

Bystander

Make a new hole, rather than making one that has existed.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Exactly. Do keep in mind, people like to ask, you've probably seen people ask, "Could I rewrite myself to be a Knight Radiant?" Right? WELL... There are certain things that you just-- you can't fake without enough energy that it becomes impractical. Usually what I use as an example to that is: Yes, we can turn hydrogen into gold, if we wanted to. Right? We can do that! It might take more energy than the earth creates in an entire year, but we can do that.

I get a lot of questions with this that I'm like "is it possible?" and I'm like "Guys, is it possible?" ...You should probably be like, "Is it possible, with reasonable amounts of energy provided by one Invested person".

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

 

[Returned he/him]

On 7/17/2022 at 5:44 PM, Trusk'our said:

So, with that in mind, could you create a Forgery that is so implausible that it shouldn't be possible work if you charged it with enough Investiture? For instance, if I create a Forgery of a completely fictitious person, then apply it to a random person who I have no idea what there past is, could I get it to work by forcing enough Investiture into the stamp?

I don't have definitive proof to back this up, but from various WoB statements I think that the degree of Investiture that we're talking about here would make Forgery as a magic system irrelevant to what you're doing. "Plausible enough" is sort of the whole basis of Forgery in the first place.

When fully Invested by Preservation's power, for example, a Vessel can do things way beyond what any of the Metallic Arts grant without even using any metals. This circumvents all of the limitations and mechanisms of Allomancy even in cases where action might use Allomantic mechanisms-- it's power beyond Allomancy. By the same token using enough Investiture to totally obviate the mechanisms and limitations of Forgery should be in such a different category that it doesn't even count as Forgery any more. With enough Investiture you can do pretty much anything without any constraints.