Flesh Forgery and Body Modification

[Trusk'our he/him]

I was re-reading the Emperor's Soul earlier today when something caught my eye; in order to use a Flesh Forgery, you have to have a very specific knowledge of the body's structure. You can kill someone if you aren't careful. 

I believe that this means that this aspect of Forgery isn't the same as simply rewriting your past so that you never took the wound- otherwise, things wouldn't be so hazardous, since if you messed up the worst that would happen would be that the injury stayed put until you came up with a more convincing stamp. No, it is my hypothesis that Flesh Forgery allows one to directly alter the body's structure, hence the reason you can accidentally kill someone with it; you aren't bound by what a person's past is, you can just write their body to be what you want it to be.

This has made me wonder if someone highly skilled could use effects similar to Hemalurgy- physically altering individuals to the practitioner's liking, and since the practitioner is the one writing every little change, they'd be able to be much more precise in what they modified.

Perhaps a Kandra could use a Connection hack to access Forgery, then combine their honed knowledge of the body's inner workings with Flesh Forgery to achieve better results. Or perhaps just having a Kandra skilled with modifying their body talking to and experimenting with a Flesh Forger could lead to new innovations on body modification.

If you really want to see a stamp made permanent and portable beyond MaiPon's borders, you could Hemalurgically spike out the stamp's effects, then give them back to yourself via the spike.

And now I wonder what some of the creative uses of Flesh Forgery could be; could you temporarily rewrite your age, similar to Atium Compounding? Could you enhance your natural senses beyond human capacity? Could you make yourself into a more humane form of a Koloss (inhumanly muscled, but nothing else)? Could you create a universal stamp that physically hampers you enemies (very low muscle mass or some form of paralysis) so that even those with Invested healing such as Miles could be temporarily disabled?

So much potential, assuming, of course, that it all works the way I'm imagining it, which, of course it may not 

[alder24]

12 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

No, it is my hypothesis that Flesh Forgery allows one to directly alter the body's structure, hence the reason you can accidentally kill someone with it; you aren't bound by what a person's past is, you can just write their body to be what you want it to be.

I interpreted it this way as well. Something like changing your placement of the heart, growing more ribs, thicker skull, gaining a mutated 3rd arm etc. Creating your body more fitting the task you want it to perform.

12 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Perhaps a Kandra could use a Connection hack to access Forgery, then combine their honed knowledge of the body's inner workings with Flesh Forgery to achieve better results. Or perhaps just having a Kandra skilled with modifying their body talking to and experimenting with a Flesh Forger could lead to new innovations on body modification.

Yes but why? Kandra already are masters of the body, they don't need forgery to create a unique body. In Era 2 Kandra are keeping full human form while using true body (in the case of MeLaan, she used advanced aluminum bones fit for fighting), so they changed significantly from Era 1 Kandra and no longer require to maintain the form of the bones they're wearing (yes they could modify it, and create a human form, but it was more like a general human form, lacking some detailed features of a human body - I can be wrong here). This means that they can consume bodies to learn how to create a better body, like consuming dogs for hearing and sense of smell, eagles for seeing, bats for echolocation, mantis shrimps to create an image based on 12-16 colors, not on 3 like humans do. Later they just grow and form the perfect body with the best organs they can have from all types of animals. They can change their body on will, and go from a human form to a cheetah-like form (if their bones are designed to fit both forms) and run and jump much better than human. Of course, all of this would require mastery of the body, which Kandra don't have right now (maybe except for TenSoon), but that's something they can work on in near future.

Flesh Forgery would make it all easier, yes, but they don't really need it in a long run. The best use of it for Kandra would be to forge a body of a human into a body of a Singer, so they can take the form of that body, if they are lacking necessary components (like bones/carapace).

13 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

And now I wonder what some of the creative uses of Flesh Forgery could be; could you temporarily rewrite your age, similar to Atium Compounding?

That would be just normal Forgery, bound by similar restrictions as Atium compounding. You're pushing your body to an age which doesn't fit your spiritual age. In the case of Forgery, you change your spiritual age, but the longer you live, the more investiture you would likely have to provide to overwrite your true spiritual age, which would change your physical age to fit it. There are far easier ways to achieve that.

13 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Could you enhance your natural senses beyond human capacity? Could you make yourself into a more humane form of a Koloss (inhumanly muscled, but nothing else)? Could you create a universal stamp that physically hampers you enemies (very low muscle mass or some form of paralysis) so that even those with Invested healing such as Miles could be temporarily disabled?

Yes to all? But changing a person to be more/less muscular isn't really a Flesh Forgery in my opinion. You just make them avoid the gym or make them hit it more often in the past - normal Forgery. It's better to make them blind or being born without arms and legs, or without Allomancy/Feruchemy. But I wonder if Miles would be able to push enough investiture to collapse the Forgery - Forging him in the first place would be hard as he is more invested and is constantly tapping health.

[Trusk'our he/him]

29 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I interpreted it this way as well. Something like changing your placement of the heart, growing more ribs, thicker skull, gaining a mutated 3rd arm etc. Creating your body more fitting the task you want it to perform.

Good to see one of my ideas was actually on par with someone else !

30 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Yes but why? Kandra already are masters of the body, they don't need forgery to create a unique body. In Era 2 Kandra are keeping full human form while using true body (in the case of MeLaan, she used advanced aluminum bones fit for fighting), so they changed significantly from Era 1 Kandra and no longer require to maintain the form of the bones they're wearing (yes they could modify it, and create a human form, but it was more like a general human form, lacking some detailed features of a human body - I can be wrong here). This means that they can consume bodies to learn how to create a better body, like consuming dogs for hearing and sense of smell, eagles for seeing, bats for echolocation, mantis shrimps to create an image based on 12-16 colors, not on 3 like humans do. Later they just grow and form the perfect body with the best organs they can have from all types of animals. They can change their body on will, and go from a human form to a cheetah-like form (if their bones are designed to fit both forms) and run and jump much better than human. Of course, all of this would require mastery of the body, which Kandra don't have right now (maybe except for TenSoon), but that's something they can work on in near future.

Kandra are far, far better at understanding the limitations of anatomical adjustment than a human could without some kind of direct Shardic intervention. So I agree; the Kandra would have little use for it on themselves.

However, if they apply their insights to someone else who isn't a Kandra, all kinds of new possibilities open up for their allies. Plus, the Kandra could get a gather a lot more people willing to serve them or pay them for body modifications, which only brings benefit to the Kandra, even if they don't directly benefit from their skills in Flesh Forgery.

35 minutes ago, alder24 said:

That would be just normal Forgery, bound by similar restrictions as Atium compounding. You're pushing your body to an age which doesn't fit your spiritual age. In the case of Forgery, you change your spiritual age, but the longer you live, the more investiture you would likely have to provide to overwrite your true spiritual age, which would change your physical age to fit it. There are far easier ways to achieve that.

Oh, I don't think that using Flesh Forgery would be efficient for staying young, just that it might be possible. Now, I suppose that if you could create a Universal Stamp that could temporarily reduce age, perhaps a group such as the Ghostbloods could use it to make some of their more experianced agents spry enough to operate in the field (like Twinsoul).

You also might be able to extend the life of people living in MaiPon itself by a few decades perhaps, since such a Forgery could be directly fuled by the Dor, though you're right- such changes would be overwhelmed by the natural state of the Soul eventually as the person ages, but perhaps they could buy themselves a little more time, though not nearly as much as an Atium Compounder could.

43 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Yes to all? But changing a person to be more/less muscular isn't really a Flesh Forgery in my opinion. You just make them avoid the gym or make them hit it more often in the past - normal Forgery. It's better to make them blind or being born without arms and legs, or without Allomancy/Feruchemy. But I wonder if Miles would be able to push enough investiture to collapse the Forgery - Forging him in the first place would be hard as he is more invested and is constantly tapping health.

I imagined that it would be less of a "I'm changing my past to hit the gym more often" and more of a "I'm directly changing my body's structure to say I have eight-hundred pounds of muscle", something that would be beyond the scope of standard human capacity, since you're making direct, "unnatural" changes to the body. Same applies for the enhanced senses; modify them to take after other living creatures.

As for the Miles scenario, I think you're right; someone of his caliber could probably override the Forgery since he's so Invested, which negates its whole purpose.

As an aside, I just want to mention how much I enjoy our conversations; I really enjoy it when hear others want to hear my ideas. So, thank you for that 

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

However, if they apply their insights to someone else who isn't a Kandra, all kinds of new possibilities open up for their allies. Plus, the Kandra could get a gather a lot more people willing to serve them or pay them for body modifications, which only brings benefit to the Kandra, even if they don't directly benefit from their skills in Flesh Forgery.

In that case yes, they can for sure use it on others. But the same goes for surgeons and people like that. Kandra are still better at this.

4 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Oh, I don't think that using Flesh Forgery would be efficient for staying young, just that it might be possible. Now, I suppose that if you could create a Universal Stamp that could temporarily reduce age, perhaps a group such as the Ghostbloods could use it to make some of their more experianced agents spry enough to operate in the field (like Twinsoul).

As I said, there are other ways to achieve it, more universal, used by the 17th Shard members and other worldhoppers as a primary means to drastically slow down aging. Use this instead. Ghostbloods for sure know about this, because many of their agents used to be members of the 17th Shard.

For some short extension of life, without the possibility or knowledge to use the main way of slowing down aging, Forgery can work, yes of course. But WoB:

Spoiler

VindicationKnight

Is it possible to change your age with Forging?

Brandon Sanderson

Changing your age with Forging is very hard.

/r/books AMA 2015 (July 19, 2015)

 

9 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

As an aside, I just want to mention how much I enjoy our conversations; I really enjoy it when hear others want to hear my ideas. So, thank you for that 

Me too, you're a treasury full of fun and interesting ideas. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

7 minutes ago, alder24 said:

In that case yes, they can for sure use it on others. But the same goes for surgeons and people like that. Kandra are still better at this.

Much easier to tell what's okay to move around if you've done it before on yourself.

8 minutes ago, alder24 said:

As I said, there are other ways to achieve it, more universal, used by the 17th Shard members and other worldhoppers as a primary means to drastically slow down aging. Use this instead. Ghostbloods for sure know about this, because many of their agents used to be members of the 17th Shard.

I actually wondered about this; if the Ghostblood's can access the same method of age-slowing as the 17th Shard, why didn't they use it to help Marsh when he clearly needed it?

I have a hypothesis on how the 17th Shard slows aging that would explain this... ToES spoilers.

Spoiler

We know that the 17th has Frost amongst its ranks (if he isn't actually leading them), who is a Dragon. We know that Dragons can heal people, even removing major magical maledies, such as Aether parasites.

I would be willing to bet that Frost uses this power to slow the aging of the other members of the 17th Shard. Because of this, even if the Ghostbloods had access to the knowledge of how to slow their aging via 17th Shard methods, they wouldn't have the resources to do so. This would explain why Marsh still needed Atium Compounding- his brother and his organization couldn't help him, as they hadn't a Dragon willing to do so.

 

17 minutes ago, alder24 said:

For some short extension of life, without the possibility or knowledge to use the main way of slowing down aging, Forgery can work, yes of course. But WoB:

  Hide contents

VindicationKnight

Is it possible to change your age with Forging?

Brandon Sanderson

Changing your age with Forging is very hard.

/r/books AMA 2015 (July 19, 2015)

 

Interesting. I wonder if he meant Flesh Forgery too, or if he was only thinking of Soul Forgery; Flesh Forgery age-reduction would be more complex perhaps, but also might take more easily. However, the Soul of the recipient would fight against the change the longer it was maintained, making it temporary at best.

Changing one's past via Soul Forgery to reduce age would be more Investiture efficient as it actually overwrites Connection, but would have to rely on probability more, which also reduces its utility- you probably can't change yourself to be born one-hundred years later than you actually were, it's just too unlikely.

So, both methods have their limitations, it would seem.

23 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Me too, you're a treasury full of fun and interesting ideas. 

Why thank you, I appreciate the compliment 

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I actually wondered about this; if the Ghostblood's can access the same method of age-slowing as the 17th Shard, why didn't they use it to help Marsh when he clearly needed it?

No idea. I wish we knew what that method is.

2 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

I have a hypothesis on how the 17th Shard slows aging that would explain this... ToES spoilers.

ToES:

Spoiler

Frost is on Yolen and getting to Yolen is very hard, far more than to Sel, Yolen is hidden in some way. It's unlikely that Frost is the one that makes them ageless. Plus he recently gained a second form of immortality.

And didn't Xisis say that Capitan would still die after a few years if she would leave him?

 

7 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Interesting. I wonder if he meant Flesh Forgery too, or if he was only thinking of Soul Forgery; Flesh Forgery age-reduction would be more complex perhaps, but also might take more easily. However, the Soul of the recipient would fight against the change the longer it was maintained, making it temporary at best.

Yup, that would be hard to do by Forging just a body.

8 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Changing one's past via Soul Forgery to reduce age would be more Investiture efficient as it actually overwrites Connection, but would have to rely on probability more, which also reduces its utility- you probably can't change yourself to be born one-hundred years later than you actually were, it's just too unlikely.

I don't think you would Forge your soul to be born later, you would Forge the soul either stop aging entirely, or slow down the rate it perceives time/aging. Aging is based on Connection so there is something you can change for sure, it's hard per WoB, but possible:

Spoiler

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days (magnification by Compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? I'm assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by Compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the Lord Ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth (and wouldn't have died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw Investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their Cognitive aspect as well, and the Cognitive aspect can interfere with the Spiritual aspect trying to make the Physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your Physical self with your Spiritual self--making the Physical regrow. More powerful forms of Investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what Investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the Spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this Compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use Compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing Connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

General Reddit 2015 (Nov. 20, 2015)

 

[Argenti he/him]

On 4/23/2023 at 2:11 PM, alder24 said:

I don't think you would Forge your soul to be born later, you would Forge the soul either stop aging entirely, or slow down the rate it perceives time/aging. Aging is based on Connection so there is something you can change for sure, it's hard per WoB, but possible:

 

So technically a Bondsmith would be way better at staying young? 

Noted

[Trusk'our he/him]

30 minutes ago, Argenti said:

So technically a Bondsmith would be way better at staying young? 

Noted

If they can figure out the proper way to manipulate Connection, yes, I'd say so.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Argenti said:

So technically a Bondsmith would be way better at staying young? 

Noted

Bondsmith is better at practically everything. What a surprise he's better at staying young  

[Argenti he/him]

I see in the future a bondsmith Godking. (Brandon has a thing for God kings)