Using Forgery to Trick Your Soul Into Growing Metalborn Powers

[Trusk'our he/him]

I thought of another cool hack to gain Allomancy; using Feruchemy to overcome the limited available Investiture in Forgery.

1. Use Forgery on a Scadrian to turn them into an Allomancer or Ferruchemist, but one who has had their power Hemalurgically stolen and survived. This means that the Forgery will require far less Investiture to achieve the end result, and therefore should be more within the scope of what Forgery can normally achieve.

2. Give the Scadrian access to Feruchemical gold, likely with a Southern Scadrian medallion. Since the person's Spiritweb thinks that they should have an Invested power, the Investiture "heals" a new piece of Investiture onto the Spiritweb, creating a new power where one hadn't existed previously.

If it proves impossible to get the power to stay after the Soulstamp runs out, you could Hemalurgically remove the new power to use later (which isn't the ideal case, but you'd still get a functional power where one didn't exist before). Plus, if the new power is just an extension of the Forgery, then removing it would likely not cause serious spiritual damage to the donor since it isn't a real part of them.

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Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

Questioner

If you Stamp yourself, to have another, overwritten spiritweb, and you get Spiked-- *laughter* What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

We actually worked this out. *laughter*

Questioner

Well, you'd die, or very close to it, but would it revert when the Stamp reverts?

Brandon Sanderson

So what’s probably going to happen here is that you’re going to rip off the Investiture you’ve put on your soul, and your own soul will have less damage. Now, the spike is only gonna get the-- the spike, you're like "What will it do?" It will do what you've been overwritten with, but again remember, becoming an Allomancer takes so much energy, and things like-- But it is theoretically possible in the cosmere to rewrite yourself "You're an allomancer", someone spikes you to get this. The Investiture doesn't care that it was fake on you, you have managed to get that Investiture to work. Uhh, this is really tough. And really, like, you need Connection, and you need, like, the right kind of Investiture, but then it rips off and yes you have made a spike that makes you an Allomancer, even though the person was a Forger. So yes, okay? But this is the kind of stuff that is like the thought experiments for physicists in the cosmere as opposed to, y'know--

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Trusk'our

[alder24]

You can forge yourself to be a Mistborn, but you need to provide investiture from which you will be drawing. You're not going to be drawing from Preservation, like normally, you need another source for that.

Spoiler

Aneesh

If there's a Forger like Shai who plausibly had an opportunity to ingest lerasium and become Mistborn, but she passed it up, could she create a stamp that makes her temporarily a Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

She would have to have access to enough Investiture to make that happen. The stamp saying, "Hey, I'm a Mistborn!" doesn't actually give her the Investiture to do that. She could rewrite her past so that she took that bead. She would not actually be able to use the power, until she got an infusion of Investiture, which could be done with a stamp in the right manner, but most of the time you're gonna have to have some external source. Basically you're gonna have to take a hit of Investiture, a large amount of it, and then use the stamp, and then it will feed on that to change you into basically any of the other magics.

Aneesh

Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

If you could get a hit of Stormlight, that'd work. The problem is, Stormlight's not easy to get off of Roshar, and it still is technically keyed. You could get it a lot more easily-- Stormlight would work fairly well, but what you really want is some pure, unkeyed Dor. That stuff, you could do all kinds of things with. But, you know, it's kinda dangerous. But that's the stuff you're gonna want, or something like unto it.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

So even if you forge yourself to be a spiked Metalborn, and then heal, you still need an external source of investiture to be able to use your powers.

[Trusk'our he/him]

21 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You can forge yourself to be a Mistborn, but you need to provide investiture from which you will be drawing. You're not going to be drawing from Preservation, like normally, you need another source for that.

I don't know that the quote means that Allomantic powers can't draw from Preservation if Forged into existence. I think that Brandon was trying to say that a Forger would need more Investiture to create the Forgery than would normally be possible, hence the infusion of external Investiture.

I think that the reason that Soulstamps can't replicate most other Invested powers was because there just isn't enough available Investiture at a given point of time; it's a leak in the Dor, not a faucet, and unlike Feruchemy you can't slowly store it up over a long period of time and release it in a short but powerful burst. Trying to replicate a wounded, less Invested than even a regular human Spiritweb probably wouldn't require too much Investiture though.

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Skyward Pre-Release AMA - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

MavenSoul

I'm wondering if Shai could create a stamp that would turn someone into an Allomancer. Or, alternatively, create a stamp that would break a bond between a Radiant and their Spren?

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible--but likely beyond Shai's ability. It would require large amounts of investiture. The second would be easier.

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Salt Lake City signing (March 29, 2014)

Questioner

I've got a list of various Cosmere bits of metal and I was wondering if you would rank them from like one to ten or just easy to difficult on how hard it would be to steelpush on them. So with one being just a regular coin, ten being like when the Lord Ruler was moving bits of glass on the floor, so like metal inside a person's body.

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on how strong the Investiture in them is.

Questioner

Is that gonna be the answer for all of these?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably!

Questioner

How about a spike charged with Hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson

A spike charged with Hemalurgy... that depends on...

Questioner

Not in a person.

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on how strong, yeah, a spike is moderately, (in the realm of these kinds of things) moderately easy to push on because a spike does not rip off very much Investiture. Only enough to short circuit the soul, and less it over time. I would put that at the bottom, with the top being very hard, to be one of the easier things.

Questioner

How about a metalmind that is full?

Brandon Sanderson

That is full? That is going to be middle of the realm of the, yeah. Generally easier than, for instance, a Shardblade which is going to be very hard.

Questioner #2

A Shardblade is [inaudible] actually metal? [metal]-ish?

Brandon Sanderson

Ish. Is Lerasium a metal? Yeah.

Questioner

So that'd be the same for Shardplate too?

Brandon Sanderson

Shardplate and Blade are very hard. Blade is probably gonna be a little harder.

Questioner

A Half-shard?

Brandon Sanderson

A Half-shard shield? That's gonna be moderate.

Questioner

Nightblood? I imagine that being hard.

Brandon Sanderson

Hard, of all the things you've listed, that is going to be the hardest. Far beyond even a Sharblade.

Questioner

Far beyond metal inside a person? 

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, yes. Depending on how invested the person is.

Questioner

If somebody was invested as much as Nightblood?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, for instance the God King, right. At the end with all those Breaths. Pushing something inside of him, getting through all of that? Gonna be real hard. Average person on Scadrial? You've seen how hard that is. A drab? Much easier.

Questioner

That was my next one, or no, sorry not a drab. A lifeless?

Brandon Sanderson

A Lifeless, yeah. Even... yeah. Lifeless are kind of weird because they've had their soul leave but then they've had a replacement stuck in in the form of Breath which leaves them in a very weird position compared to a drab which has had part of their Investiture ripped away but a majority remains, so, anyways. I'm going to give you one more. Pick your favorite.

Questioner

A soulstamped piece of metal?

Brandon Sanderson

A soulstamped piece of metal is going to be on the lower, easier side. Not a lot of Investiture going on in a soulstamp.

 

[alder24]

8 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I don't know that the quote means that Allomantic powers can't draw from Preservation if Forged into existence. I think that Brandon was trying to say that a Forger would need more Investiture to create the Forgery than would normally be possible, hence the infusion of external Investiture.

I think that the reason that Soulstamps can't replicate most other Invested powers was because there just isn't enough available Investiture at a given point of time; it's a leak in the Dor, not a faucet, and unlike Feruchemy you can't slowly store it up over a long period of time and release it in a short but powerful burst. Trying to replicate a wounded, less Invested than even a regular human Spiritweb probably wouldn't require too much Investiture though.

That's why you need to provide Investiture from an outside source, because you can't draw it from the Dor. Even by forging yourself to be a Mistborn, you are still using Forgery, which draws from the Dor. The Dor however is unable to provide that much investiture for you, so you need something else.

Spoiler

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)

 

[Trusk'our he/him]

4 minutes ago, alder24 said:

That's why you need to provide Investiture from an outside source, because you can't draw it from the Dor. Even by forging yourself to be a Mistborn, you are still using Forgery, which draws from the Dor. The Dor however is unable to provide that much investiture for you, so you need something else.

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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)

 

That's for Shai specifically though, who does not have a natural Connection to Scadrial. A natural Scadrien would already have a Connection to Preservation though; the Forgery just tricks the Feruchemical health into molding into a new power rather than healing the Scadrien into what their actual natural state is.

[alder24]

39 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

That's for Shai specifically though, who does not have a natural Connection to Scadrial. A natural Scadrien would already have a Connection to Preservation though; the Forgery just tricks the Feruchemical health into molding into a new power rather than healing the Scadrien into what their actual natural state is.

Possibly. But what Forgery does is it creates a fake soul out of Investiture on top of your on, that overwrites it. And that fake soul is powered by the Dor, as it's still Forgery. So even if you make that on somebody from Scadrial, it is still made out of the Dor, as normal non-allomancers don't have that strong connection to Preservation to become a Mistborn, so you need to Forge it, and replace it with stronger connection made out of the Dor. So you are still getting issues of different invested arts. And like the WoB says, which you posted in your 1st post, you need "right kind of investiture".

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Preservation's Power

All right, so maybe I lied about there only being three magic systems in this book. It comes down to how you term the powers of Preservation and Ruin, who kind of blanket the entire system. There are a lot of things going on here, and—well, the truth is I don't want to mention all of them, for fear of spoiling future books. However, I'll give you a few rules to apply.

First, to these forces, energy and mass are the same thing. So, their power can take physical shape—as Preservation's did in the bead of metal Elend ate. Second, there is a bit of Preservation inside of all the people—and it's this that allows the people to perform Allomancy. It needs to be awakened and stirred to be of use, but when it is, a proper metal can draw forth more of Preservation's power. It's like the metal attunes the bit within the person, allowing it to act as a catalyst to grab more power.

Allomancy is not fueled by metal; it is fueled by Preservation. The metal is the means by which a person can access that fuel, however. If there were another way to access it, then the metal wouldn't be needed.

Preservation's touch on people differs. Some have more, some have less. This doesn't make them better or worse people—indeed, some most touched by Preservation have been among the worst people in the world. As Ruin later points out, there is a difference between being evil and being destructive.

Regardless, if a person can get more Preservation into them, they become better Allomancers. Hence Elend becoming a Mistborn. Like all people, he had the potential within him—it was just too small of a potential to be awakened through normal means. That little jolt of Preservation's body, however, expanded and awakened his Allomancy.

As a tidbit, that was a side effect of what that bead of metal did. It wasn't the main purpose of the bead, and if another Allomancer were to burn it, it would do something else.

The Hero of Ages Annotations (Nov. 12, 2009)

Your idea might be a sneaky way to go around that. It might work. I'm not sure now, but still I doubt it, because the connection isn't that strong.

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 3/10/2023 at 1:42 PM, alder24 said:

Your idea might be a sneaky way to go around that. It might work. I'm not sure now, but still I doubt it, because the connection isn't that strong.

Alright, I can your respect your opinion on that, though I still believe that it would be possible to create a naturally functioning Allomancer (burning metals to access Investiture) or Feruchemist via Forgery and Feruchemy.

Edited March 27, 2023 by Trusk'our

[therunner he/him]

I think the healing would end up disrupting the fake Forgery soul.
Healing restores to spiritual ideal, so possibly it would break it apart?

Not sure though.

[alder24]

7 minutes ago, therunner said:

I think the healing would end up disrupting the fake Forgery soul.
Healing restores to spiritual ideal, so possibly it would break it apart?

Not sure though.

No, I don't think so. Soulstamping creates a fake soul, that overwrites your real one. So you create a new spiritual ideal of yourself, and healing is done to that new ideal.

Spoiler

BipedSnowman

In theory, could you create weird structures or even alloys [with Forgery]?

Two scenarios: using Forging how you might use Soulcasting, such as turning something into wood, bending and carving it to make a new shape, then breaking the seal so it turns back into the original material without changing shape.

Second: Forging one metal into another, and forming an alloy to reduce operation costs. For example, tungsten has a melting point of about 3.5k C, but it's useful as part of a steel alloy for certain applications. Could you Forge it into, say, zinc, which has a melting point of about 500 C, create the steel, then turn it back into tungsten? Presumably the investiture would adjust the molecular structure so it acts as if it has been alloyed with tungsten originally too, otherwise the same process happening with food could be deadly.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this is in theory similar to Soulcasting. The difference is that a Forged object, upon "Forgetting" the rewriting to its spiritual nature is going to try to snap back and match what it "thinks" it should be like--which isn't going to lead to as much stability as Soulcasting, where the actual soul is changed. The object is going to try to get back to the way it "should" be, with varying results.

The reason the Lord Ruler aged hyper-quickly is related to this as well.

General Reddit 2018 (Aug. 27, 2018)

 

[therunner he/him]

15 minutes ago, alder24 said:

No, I don't think so. Soulstamping creates a fake soul, that overwrites your real one. So you create a new spiritual ideal of yourself, and healing is done to that new ideal.

  Hide contents

BipedSnowman

In theory, could you create weird structures or even alloys [with Forgery]?

Two scenarios: using Forging how you might use Soulcasting, such as turning something into wood, bending and carving it to make a new shape, then breaking the seal so it turns back into the original material without changing shape.

Second: Forging one metal into another, and forming an alloy to reduce operation costs. For example, tungsten has a melting point of about 3.5k C, but it's useful as part of a steel alloy for certain applications. Could you Forge it into, say, zinc, which has a melting point of about 500 C, create the steel, then turn it back into tungsten? Presumably the investiture would adjust the molecular structure so it acts as if it has been alloyed with tungsten originally too, otherwise the same process happening with food could be deadly.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this is in theory similar to Soulcasting. The difference is that a Forged object, upon "Forgetting" the rewriting to its spiritual nature is going to try to snap back and match what it "thinks" it should be like--which isn't going to lead to as much stability as Soulcasting, where the actual soul is changed. The object is going to try to get back to the way it "should" be, with varying results.

The reason the Lord Ruler aged hyper-quickly is related to this as well.

General Reddit 2018 (Aug. 27, 2018)

 

The WoB says that Forgery is less stable then Soulcasting, because the actual soul is not changed though.
And so the object/sould is actually kind of fighting the change.

So if you provided more power to the soul to be as it should be, should that not result in breaking of the Soulstamp?

I mean, burning of a metal is enough to disrupt the soulstamp, and there would be less Investiture there then in healing the 'spiking'.

Edited March 10, 2023 by therunner

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, therunner said:

The WoB says that Forgery is less stable then Soulcasting, because the actual soul is not changed though.
And so the object/sould is actually kind of fighting the change.

So if you provided more power to the soul to be as it should be, should that not result in breaking of the Soulstamp?

Yes, but as long as a stample is working, the "fake" soul is the new ideal. After it's gone, old ideal is forcing to change back to what it was.

TLM spoilers:

Spoiler

If healing would collapse a Soulstamp, then Shai as Elantrian who can heal, fueled by pure Dor, would quickly revert back to her normal self. However she had serious concerns that using this Soulstamp would permanently trap her in Elantrian form. This definitely proves that healing is done to the new, fake spiritual Ideal.

I didn't want to bring it up, because it's a big spoiler to even mention TLM in the context of Forgery.

 

[therunner he/him]

2 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Yes, but as long as a stample is working, the "fake" soul is the new ideal. After it's gone, old ideal is forcing to change back to what it was.

Yes, but unless a lot of Investiture went into creating that fake soul, I still think the healing could disrupt it.

In your example I think the amount of Investiture used for that soulstamp was sufficient to possibly create at least Misting outright.

[Trusk'our he/him]

18 hours ago, therunner said:

Yes, but unless a lot of Investiture went into creating that fake soul, I still think the healing could disrupt it.

In your example I think the amount of Investiture used for that soulstamp was sufficient to possibly create at least Misting outright.

Alright, that's a fair conclusion.

To overcome that, maybe you could use a medallion that grants Allomantic gold and Allomantic duralumin, then quickly duralumin blast an Unkeyed Goldmind while the stamp is in effect. You'd ruin the fake Spiritweb, but you might have quickly grown a power in your real Spiritweb in the fraction of time the stamp persisted.

Probably less Investiture efficient on the Goldmind's part, but maybe it would still be achievable.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 3/11/2023 at 8:59 AM, Trusk'our said:

Alright, that's a fair conclusion.

To overcome that, maybe you could use a medallion that grants Allomantic gold and Allomantic duralumin, then quickly duralumin blast an Unkeyed Goldmind while the stamp is in effect. You'd ruin the fake Spiritweb, but you might have quickly grown a power in your real Spiritweb in the fraction of time the stamp persisted.

Probably less Investiture efficient on the Goldmind's part, but maybe it would still be achievable.

1: necroburst if A-durilium medalians are impossible.

2: D/N- tapping should be more effecient than tapping all of it regularly.