Can breaths be forged?

[IlstrawberrySeed]

It seems like breaths are the easiest magic system to forge. Can they be forged, how difficult a forgery would it be, and how much fuel would it require? Is a single breath powered by the stamp, is it linear?

[alder24]

How would you even do it? You would need to forge investiture to make Breaths, But investiture resist investiture, so while it's technically possible, however highly unlikely as it would require a lot of investiture. Or forger would have to forge themselves as someone with Breaths, and that would require imput of investiture to make those Breaths. Or If they had Breaths, and gave them up, then forged themselves as someone with those Breaths again - this might get weird, as those Breath would be connected to 2 people at one, but that would require less investiture.

WoB below about Shardblade, but I think it would work similar with Breaths - if you want to copy Shardblade (Breaths in our case), you will have to give a lot of investiture to make it, or if you want to forge yourself as someone with a Shardblade that you once had, it will make some weird things as Shardblade now thinks it's owned by two persons at once.

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Lady Radagu

If Shai were to gain a Shardblade and she gave it up, could she then create an Essence Mark that represented the history where she still had the blade? And then if she applied it could she summon the blade? Or a copy of it?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, so doing that sort of thing, like re-writing herself to be an Allomancer or something like this -- This is possible but in order to gain the Investiture she wants to have she will have to input that much in Investiture which her current magic system is not capable of doing. Okay? Alright, so "re-write so that I have a Shardblade" would require some sort of hacking of her magic system, which is currently impossible to her in her current situation.

Lady Radagu

So if she had had a Shardblade and gave it up she could not rewrite herself to have that back without more input --

Brandon Sanderson

She could-- Yes, exactly. Now rewriting-- That would be a lot easier than just rewriting herself so that she had a Shardblade--

Lady Radagu

That's what I was asking--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, but what you're asking about would be much easier and that is probably within her power. But what that would do is-- Yeah that's totally within her power. It would create some weird implications where she's summoning it and someone summons it back from her because the Shardblade thinks it's owned by two people.

Lady Radagu

So it wouldn't be a copy it would be the same Blade?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Firefight release party (Jan. 5, 2015)

 

Ultimately Breaths are low reward from forgery, it would be easier and cheaper to go to Nalthis and just collect them. 

[+Harrycrapper]

You would likely need unkeyed Dor to manage it, which based on context seems more valuable than an equivalent amount of Investiture worth of Breaths. So, yes it's possible, but I don't think there's many scenarios where someone would take the time to craft a Soul Stamp to get themselves Breath and in the process use the more expensive unkeyed Dor instead of just finding someone to buy them. 

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Alright, but how much power is actually required to finish a singular breath? Can it be powered with the regular stamp's investiture?

[alder24]

2 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Alright, but how much power is actually required to finish a singular breath? Can it be powered with the regular stamp's investiture?

There is no answer to this. It might require the same amount of investiture a singular Breath has, if you want to copy it. Much less if you forging yourself back to having Breaths you once had. Or a lot of investiture if you forging investiture directly into Breaths (if that's even possible).

And it could be powered by stamp, If you provide enough investiture for it (on Sel it's coming from Dor). However WoB suggest that there are limits of what Dor is capable of making.