Crazy Essence Mark Cloning Hypothetical

[Duxredux he/him]

Okay, here's the scenario. Shai improves her Shaizan essence mark to include Flesh Forgery to maximize her physical capacity in addition to her alterations of her personal history. She uses the Essence Mark on her arm and for whatever reason takes a huge shot of Unkeyed Dor at the same time, making the far more permanent. Another hypothetical, but maybe she could setup continuous healing from a combination of the Dor and Flesh Forgery? At any rate, Shaizan gets into a fight and the arm that the Essence Mark is on gets cut off. The obvious answer is that this breaks the Soulstamp seal. BUT what if there was sufficient Investiture from the Dor to continue to power the stamp? Shai herself would probably revert back to herself, but could her severed arm grow into a fully functional Shaizan? The false soul and body template can be recorded within an Essence Mark, and we know Flesh Forgery can heal a body even from a shot to the head even without supercharging it with Dor.

Thoughts? Talk about craziest way to get a twin sister/clone.

[Argenti he/him]

On 12/5/2023 at 10:34 PM, Duxredux said:

Okay, here's the scenario. Shai improves her Shaizan essence mark to include Flesh Forgery to maximize her physical capacity in addition to her alterations of her personal history. She uses the Essence Mark on her arm and for whatever reason takes a huge shot of Unkeyed Dor at the same time, making the far more permanent. Another hypothetical, but maybe she could setup continuous healing from a combination of the Dor and Flesh Forgery? At any rate, Shaizan gets into a fight and the arm that the Essence Mark is on gets cut off. The obvious answer is that this breaks the Soulstamp seal. BUT what if there was sufficient Investiture from the Dor to continue to power the stamp? Shai herself would probably revert back to herself, but could her severed arm grow into a fully functional Shaizan? The false soul and body template can be recorded within an Essence Mark, and we know Flesh Forgery can heal a body even from a shot to the head even without supercharging it with Dor.

Thoughts? Talk about craziest way to get a twin sister/clone.

I don't think it would work like that. Cosmere healing doesn't work like that, if you cut Hoid in half you won't get two Hoids (God save the cosmere if it did). I don't think the essance mark would work well after the arm died either,  since it's spirit web would change so quickly. 

[Duxredux he/him]

1 minute ago, Ookla the Silver said:

I don't think it would work like that. Cosmere healing doesn't work like that, if you cut Hoid in half you won't get two Hoids (God save the cosmere if it did). I don't think the essance mark would work well after the arm died either,  since it's spirit web would change so quickly. 

Dragonsteel Prime spoiler:

Spoiler

Is this what you're referring to?

 

/u/ph4mp573

[Hoid] was beheaded in Dragonsteel Prime and the Dawnshard is what regrew his head. He makes a crack about always thinking his head would have grown a new body, not vice versa, as he stares at his own severed head.

/u/sambadaemon

Slightly related: If the Dawnshard let Hoid regrow his entire head, will it eventually give Rysn back the use of her legs?

Peter Ahlstrom

The different dawnshards have different powers.

Information subject to change when it appears in canon.

General Reddit 2022 (Dec. 2, 2022)

In terms of Cosmere healing generally not causing a clone like you might get with a starfish (which can grow into a whole new starfish from a severed arm), why is that the case? Heralds I believe grow a whole new body when they respawn, though we only have one of each Herald running around. It may or may not be related, but when you have a suit of Shardplate that is shattered, you can regrow the whole suit of plate by feeding a large piece Stormlight, causing the other stray fragments to crumble into dust. Now one possible option of why the healing works the way it does is because Spiritual based healing is related to the Spiritual Realm where location is irrelevant. There is only one soul for that person, and when they start restoring their body, the other portions of their soul and or body are summoned away or degrade.

Way of Kings Prime spoiler:

Spoiler

It used to be the case that Heralds would turn into smoke several days after they died. I think this is part of this concept, where spiritual based healing generally allows only one body and soul to be present, though we don't know if this rule applies to the current Stormlight Archive Heralds.

The reason why this scenario might be an exception to the rule is that Essence Marks create a new and valid soul to inhabit the body. This isn't something we've seen any other magic system do. We know that it is possible to heal a body without a soul because that is exactly what they did with Ashravan, at least I'm assuming the original really did die and pass into the Beyond during the 100 day time period that Shai worked to build his body a new soul. We also know that it's possible for the soul found in an Essence Mark to be installed into an empty body. The scenario I presented is just an extension of that. Broken down into smaller steps, could you supercharge Flesh Forgery to regrow a body using a severed arm as a template, particularly if you already knew the history of the body? Once you have that empty shell of a body, then you stamp the body with an Essence Mark reviving it as the false soul, exactly what happened with Ashravan.  This new Shaizan sprung from a severed arm would have all of the fragility and limitations of Ashravan, requiring a daily stamp to stay alive, but I think it's plausible that she could exist as a separate entity from Shai herself - so long as that Essence Mark stayed on her arm. Now you might need to setup it up in those steps and it might not work on the fly like my initial scenario, but this could also be a plausible method to introduce cloning into the Cosmere.

 

Now I'm totally fine if this doesn't work, and if I ask it in a WoB and he says it wouldn't work, I'm fine with that, but that could be a pretty crazy result of a fringe scenario. It definitely leans on the side of awesome. At any rate, Brandon has been asked about cloning at least once.

Spoiler

VindicationKnight

If you cloned someone using real life technology (so not magic) would they have a normal Cognitive and Spiritual make up or be something like a Drab?

Brandon Sanderson

Cloning would most likely work like creating a twin--the body would pull Investiture for a soul, and you probably wouldn't have a drab. Though it would be possible to do it in such a way that you did create one, if you're simply working from our current cloning technology, you'd get a fully invested human being.

/r/books AMA 2015 (July 15, 2015)

 

[Argenti he/him]

34 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

The reason why this scenario might be an exception to the rule is that Essence Marks create a new and valid soul to inhabit the body. This isn't something we've seen any other magic system do. We know that it is possible to heal a body without a soul because that is exactly what they did with Ashravan, at least I'm assuming the original really did die and pass into the Beyond during the 100 day time period that Shai worked to build his body a new soul. We also know that it's possible for the soul found in an Essence Mark to be installed into an empty body. The scenario I presented is just an extension of that. Broken down into smaller steps, could you supercharge Flesh Forgery to regrow a body using a severed arm as a template, particularly if you already knew the history of the body? Once you have that empty shell of a body, then you stamp the body with an Essence Mark reviving it as the false soul, exactly what happened with Ashravan.  This new Shaizan sprung from a severed arm would have all of the fragility and limitations of Ashravan, requiring a daily stamp to stay alive, but I think it's plausible that she could exist as a separate entity from Shai herself - so long as that Essence Mark stayed on her arm. Now you might need to setup it up in those steps and it might not work on the fly like my initial scenario, but this could also be a plausible method to introduce cloning into the Cosmere.

 

Honestly? I'm not convinced that Ashravan passed into the beyond, at least not fully. I think his head injury damaged the connection between his cognitive and physical aspects, kinda like what happened to the mistwraiths. Shai forged "a new soul" as a way to get around this, but it was really just making a new pathway to the soul. Eventualy, the two Cogntives merge and he won't need the Forgery anymore.

[Duxredux he/him]

10 hours ago, Ookla the Silver said:

Honestly? I'm not convinced that Ashravan passed into the beyond, at least not fully. I think his head injury damaged the connection between his cognitive and physical aspects, kinda like what happened to the mistwraiths. Shai forged "a new soul" as a way to get around this, but it was really just making a new pathway to the soul. Eventualy, the two Cogntives merge and he won't need the Forgery anymore.

I looked for some Wobs, and unfortunately this is currently inconclusive because Brandon wants us to theorize more.

Spoiler

Russ LeBar

Did Shai have to Forge a soul for Ashravan's body because his actual soul had gone to the Great Beyond?

Brandon Sanderson

Rafo!

General Twitter 2016 (Sept. 15, 2016)

Spoiler

argel1200

Regarding Ashraven... Would it be correct to say that memories are part of the mind/CR aspect? Assuming so, was Shai forging a new CR aspect to in-effect reconnect Ashraven's Soul (SR) with his body (PR)? I was thinking this could explain how she got his mannerisms correct -- i.e. that those are timeless SR aspects, so she didn't really get those right but instead, the SR connection was re-established?

Brandon Sanderson

Regarding Ashrovan: The problem here is that I don't want to get too deep into these sorts of things, for reasons that I want aspects of the magic to remain subject to discussion for a while yet. Suffice it to say that when we talk about Returned and lifeless in Warbreaker sequels, you'll have more ammunition for understanding what happened in Emperor's Soul.

Faera

Ashraven, Ashrovan...it's Ashravan damnit. He didn't step up to become emperor just so you could get his name wrong. Gaotona is ashamed of you all DX

Brandon Sanderson

In the original language, the a/o is very similar. I always get them mixed up in the English, like when I try to write aㅂsound from Korean in English.

Either that, or I just couldn't decide which one I wanted when writing the book, giving Peter a headache as he had to go back and standardize them all.

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 4, 2016)

Probably the point of debate then, is if with sufficient investiture (something practical in the future, like a jar full of Dor) an Essence Mark could restore a dead body to full function using flesh forgery, get it "living again" and then install a new soul with an essence mark, even if a person has passed into the beyond. If it can't, what are the limitations or restrictions that govern this?

• One option is that no matter how hard you try, an essence mark can't actually replicate a soul. We'd have to understand the difference between the Investiture describing the surrogate soul and a Divine Breath making an imprint of a soul as it passes into the Beyond before the Investiture comes down and reinhabiting a dead body. We know that it's possible for a totally dead body to be reanimated after the original soul has left the body and gone to the Beyond as that's Lifeless and Returned. The second WoB makes me lean towards the discussion about Ashravan being about making a surrogate soul and not just reconnecting a broken Cognitive connection though. Shai still being alive could conceivably cause issues too.
• Option two is that flesh forgery doesn't take on something that isn't alive. This might explain why Ashravan with a bolt through his head could be restored in a vegetative state, yet his wife Kurshina could not. The question here is it the time frame, the manner of death, or is it that most Flesh Forgery stamps don't have enough juice to repair anything more severe than a bolt to the head? Presumably Kurshina was killed with conventional assassination methods if the Emperor just got shot.
• Option three is that it wouldn't work in context of regrowing a whole body from an arm. That said, there is the fight with Getruda in TLM where Wax thinks about how he had heard of a Bloodmaker regrowing from a severed limb so long as a Goldmind with enough health was still attached to the limb. Brandon has intentionally drawn attention to this style of regrowth from a limb, but left it inconclusive as to whether or not it was actually possible as it was presented as hearsay.

It could go either way that Brandon wants it to, but I think he's left room for this to be possible.

 

As a side note, yes, Investiture interferes with Investiture so that's the first uncertainty, but could an Essence Mark restore autonomy and cognitive function to a Lifeless? It might be worth asking if Shai could figure out a way to make it work, though it would probably just be a quick RAFO.