The Tale of the Truthwatcher whose father could have turned him into a Dog that wanted to be a Dragon (aka Roshar's Forgery)

[Onironte he/him]

How does healing works on the Comsere?
We have seen at least three different kinds of healing powers: F-Gold, Surgebinding-based healing (both the Surge itself and the effect of Stormlight on Radiant Knights) and Wit's powers, but they all seem to work in quite the same way:

Quote

Questioner

Stormlight, I know it heals wounds and stuff like that but can it heal illnesses like colds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes it can.

Questioner

So if Kaladin suddenly contracted brain cancer...

Brandon Sanderson

It's plausible-- it depends, see what it does is it takes your body and makes it align with your spirit, and partially through the filter of how you view yourself. So if you view yourself as sickly, then you won't.

Salt Lake City Comic-Con 2014 (Sept. 4, 2014)

 

So, if you think of yourself as ill, ill you will be. Nevertheless, I believe that this "thinking" (poetic redundancy, forgive me) is not brain-related thinking. (I know it's not canon, but Dragonsteel Prime has tons of things that have become canon.)

Spoiler

In Dragonsteel Prime, our beloved Topaz ends up with his head and body not being together. If we accept that Topaz's heart is not pumping blood that teleports magically to his head, this means that the brain could not think. And if that were the case, the body would have grown toward the head, not the other way around.

 

That being said, we don't have any (surgical neural-network engineering) way of altering someone's brain, but we do have a way of altering their connections to make them (or at least the unconscious part of them) believe they are something that they are not.
 

Spoiler

When Ishar fights against Sigzil and the other Windrunners

So, finally getting to the title: a powerful enough Bondsmith (or someone with Ishar's Honorblade) could make someone believe he is not human, but a dog. Or a dragon (unfortunately, that dragon would not have draconic-related magic, what a pity). Then the subject would heal himself or be healed by a Truthwatcher or Edgedancer, and become the imagined creature.

So let's take it one step further: Kandra. Those marvelous creatures with only two big problems—metallic, blood-related problems. Spike based problems.— We could bypass those problems by simply making someone believe that they are a Kandra, but with the difference that their minds won't be imprisoned in spikes, but spread throughout the body, contained in their ultra-developed neural tissue. And you could grant them other Blessings—not magic-related, but biologically possible ones. You could make them able to digest dirt, to sense electromagnetic fields, or even to make them infect people with a virus that would heal every illness, strengthen the bones and muscles, and all of that stuff.

As long as it's biologically possible, only the sky is the limit. No, probably not even that. You could give yourself wings, lighten your bones, and change your body structure so that you can fly. And swim under miles of water above you. And run faster than Fleet. Imagination (and physics) are the only limits. You could create an army that could outrun the Fused without Investiture or effort. And imagine them Invested—that could be perilous.

Your presumed reality becoming your reality. This seems too stupid, crazy, and logical to make any sense. Please tell me your opinion or any other related theory, and where I am wrong.

[Treamayne]

14 hours ago, Onironte said:

So, if you think of yourself as ill, ill you will be. Nevertheless, I believe that this "thinking" (poetic redundancy, forgive me) is not brain-related thinking. (I know it's not canon, but Dragonsteel Prime has tons of things that have become canon.)

  Hide contents

In Dragonsteel Prime, our beloved Topaz ends up with his head and body not being together. If we accept that Topaz's heart is not pumping blood that teleports magically to his head, this means that the brain could not think. And if that were the case, the body would have grown toward the head, not the other way around.

Realmatically, Cosmere Healing has nothing to do with the physical brain or the process of thinking based on neurons - it has to do with the Spirit Web (in the Spiritual realm) and the Cognnitive Identity (in the Cognitive realm). For Example (DSP! Spoilers)

Spoiler

Even Topaz remarks he thought his head should have grown a new body - but his body grew a new head because healing will always happen from the largest piece fixing the smaller mixing pieces - a point hammered home a lot in WoK and WoR with how they repair Shardplate.

 

14 hours ago, Onironte said:

do have a way of altering their connections to make them (or at least the unconscious part of them) believe they are something that they are not

Altered Connection, yes. Change of what they believed (even unconciously)? not at all.
It simply connected their Spiritweb to the ground so that their spiritweb tried to share Stormlight across that Connection.

14 hours ago, Onironte said:

could make someone believe he is not human, but a dog. Or a dragon (unfortunately, that dragon would not have draconic-related magic, what a pity). Then the subject would heal himself or be healed by a Truthwatcher or Edgedancer, and become the imagined creature.

There are WoBs for that:

Spoiler

Quote

Djarskublar

So, say you have a gold/gold Twinborn and they worldhop to Roshar and they study the magic and do the whole Khriss and Nazh thing for a while so they know a lot about the magic, but they've also left themselves a lot of options with what they can do. So then they manage to pull up a gold shadow of them having actually become a Surgebinder and then kind of meld themselves with that shadow a bunch, could they change their Cognitive Identity enough so that they could, like, tap a lot of gold and grow the spren and actually be a Surgebinder?

Brandon Sanderson

Unfortunately, no. It's a good question, but no. That won't work for a couple of reasons. One of which is, simply creating Investiture is not something that can happen, right?

Djarskublar

They are a gold Twinborn, so they can tap a lot of gold...

Brandon Sanderson

They can tap a whole bunch, that's true, they can do that, but simply having it is not gonna create a spren because the spren is from a different god, right, a different Shard.

Djarskublar

So if they had Regrowth cast on them, would that do it?

Brandon Sanderson

*hems and haws for a second*

Djarskublar

A really, really big Regrowth, like in the middle of a Highstorm.

Brandon Sanderson

Hmmm, this, you are getting to the realm of plausibility at that point. I still don't think gold is the way to do it. I think you just get all that Investiture. It would become sapient by you sticking a whole bunch of Investiture in, and then you can bond to that. But it's not like people gain what you would have done. Does that make sense? That's just what's going to happen, is you're gonna, you can create a, potentially create a spren that way, but you are more likely to end up with something like Nightblood. But you could potentially create a spren, but I mean you're just gonna end up...

Djarskublar

So there are other, more optimal ways to do that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, go bond a spren. (evil grin of course)

Djarskublar

But you can't easily bond multiple, and if you did this you could maybe get multiple.

Brandon Sanderson

Nyeaaahhh... The spren still has to choose. If you want to be a Surgebinder, the choice is being made. You can't fake your way into it. Decision and Honor are too much a part of Surgebinding for you to be able to fake your way into that. Other magics you might be able to do that. Other magics that don't require, like... Surgebinding works because a piece of Honor or Cultivation or a mix has chosen you specifically. There is will from the actual Investiture involved in it in Roshar. So it's not something you can cheat your way into, right. But cheating your way into Breath might be easier.

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

Quote

learhpa

Given that Stormlight healing matches to mental self-image (as shown by both the Lopen and by the Reshi monarch), could a really powerful hypnotist change someone's self-image in a way that would affect Stormlight healing? Could a powerful hypnotist use Stormlight healing to change a human into a listener?

Brandon Sanderson

Theoretically possible...to an extent. There is a limit to this, but the limitation is the amount of Investiture you have and access to Stormlight—or you know, Voidlight—can evidence this. Transformations that are happening in the storm to the listener forms are involved in this. That could theoretically happen to a human as well. But you would basically—what most likely would happen is it would have to involve a specific set of circumstances and then entering the storm, and then exiting as a listener—that could happen. You guys ask some farfetched things—that one's not so farfetched. It does require some specificity, but it could happen.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

Not as simple as normal Regrowth healing - you need highstorm-levels of investiture (which is why the Singers change forms in Storms), and I doubt changing Spiritual or Cognitive Identity is as easy as you seem to think it is. Forgery has a shortcut, because instructions are being sent to the Spiritweb directly though the MoI - but it cannot last long even in Forgery of oneself, because the soul fights unnatural changes. .

 

 

Edited May 31, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Onironte he/him]

Thanks for the answer @Treamayne! (and for the WoBs)
I get that you can not use a Bondsmith to change the Cognitive Identity of someone, but could you use an Elsecaller instead? Up to what I know, the main difference between Soulcasting and Forgery is that when you try to put a Soulstamp on someone, you have to "create" every single detail about who (or what) the stamped person will become. On the other hand, the limiting factor of Soulcasting living beings is that a lot of investiture is needed to "counter" the investiture of the living being. You do not need to "create" every single detail about what will the Soulcasted person become, only order it (and pay for it). So, we have got a dying (less Invested) friend, we could Souldcast them into the pretermentioned supra-Kandra, couldn't we?

[Treamayne]

56 minutes ago, Onironte said:

Thanks for the answer @Treamayne! (and for the WoBs)
I get that you can not use a Bondsmith to change the Cognitive Identity of someone, but could you use an Elsecaller instead? Up to what I know, the main difference between Soulcasting and Forgery is that when you try to put a Soulstamp on someone, you have to "create" every single detail about who (or what) the stamped person will become. On the other hand, the limiting factor of Soulcasting living beings is that a lot of investiture is needed to "counter" the investiture of the living being. You do not need to "create" every single detail about what will the Soulcasted person become, only order it (and pay for it). So, we have got a dying (less Invested) friend, we could Souldcast them into the pretermentioned supra-Kandra, couldn't we?

There are still a few problems.

1. Soulcasting is still making a change to the spiritweb (like Forgery) and you still have to understand what you are soulcasting into - you simply do not have the crutch of writing it out to help direct the change (which is why they Soulcast into essences, and changing anything more complex takes a lot of talent and practice). That's why Jasnah failed horribly in trying to soulcast strawberry jam in WoK (making an unpalatable mush - she had no knowledge or experience with strawberries or that type of jam)
   • So the Elsecaller would have to have a knowledge and understanding of what Kandra are and why they work the way they work, and there are no non-Shard beings alive who really know these answers (presumably Sazed/Harmony does, TLR did - but even TenSoon and MeLaan don't really know why Kandra require Spikes for Sapience or how being a Mistwraith blocks Cognitive Identity - I don't think they even really realize that is why Mistwraiths do not have Sapience). 
   • Even something like their distributed physical brain is different enough from known beings that it is not intuitive for somebody without specific medical knowledge to understand.
2. Soulcasting an unhealthy/dying friend into another biologic being won't necessarily heal whatever is killing them - The application of investiture is at the Spiritual Realm (changing the soul), not the Physical Realm (where Healing changes the body to match the soul).

 

Spoiler

Quote

zas678

TenSoon wonders, and I wonder too- How can kandra think and be sentient without brains? Doesn't the body need a physical coordinator to relay between the Physical and Cognitive realm? Or do the spikes do a good enough job with that?

Brandon Sanderson

I imagine kandra having a non-centralized nervous system, with brain power spread through their bodies. Well, non-centralized is probably the wrong way to say it. They have lobes of thought and memory attached to muscles here and there, and don't have a single 'brain.' They certainly have brain-like material, though.

/r/Fantasy_Bookclub Alloy of Law Q&A (Jan. 17, 2012)

Quote

NinjaMeTimbers

How intelligent is a mistwraith? Could you raise and train mistwraiths like dogs or horses, controlling what forms they take by the bones you give them? Would you be able to train yourself a horsewraith steed by giving it only the bones of a horse?

Brandon Sanderson

This is feasible. One thing to keep in mind is that mistwraiths are people who have a blockage between the Physical and the Cognitive Realm, messing with their ability to think. Think of them as mentally-stunted people. There's enough there to train, but then you have to dig into the ethics of it...

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 27, 2012)

 

Hope that helps

[Duxredux he/him]

I feel like an IRL example may be helpful here. Ever since scientists have started mapping the human genome and experimenting with DNA, science fiction has had all sorts of amazing hypothetical outcomes like Spider-Man, the X-Men, Solid Snake from MGS, human hybrids and more. Despite decades of experiments and tinkering, we still don't have Spider-Man or a cure for cancer. The amount of information stored in human DNA is enormous. Sure, hypothetically we could genetically enhance humans to have wings or become draconic, but we have a lot of hurdles that as far as I know we haven't yet overcome. Reading the nucleotide pairs is hard, we don't have the tech to do it directly. Modification is technically doable, but feels more like an elaborate workaround than direct modification in addition to being incredibly challenging considering we can't directly read what we're altering. We have succeeded in some ways by taking known working patterns and transplanting them. We've modified goats to produce spider silk protein, but it took a huge amount of time and research to isolate the DNA for the old and new protein, and correctly replace it (highlighting the parallel to Hemalurgy here). Bone and muscle structure is way beyond us at present I think. Without knowing exactly what you are doing when modifying DNA you're far, far more likely to break the system and cause cancer than improve it and grow functional wings. 

Spiritweb modification to make physiological enhancements is very similar to this. The amount of information in the soul, the difficulty in reading the Spiritweb, and the clunky tools available for modification, these all make the alterations suggested incredibly complex and difficult to get the desired outcome. Positive thinking and visualization aren't good enough - particularly for a transformation that has to biologically function without futher Invested support. In many cases the magic has a failure mode that prevents anything too horrendous or unnatural from happening. The Soul Stamp refuses to take (or the soul rejects it). The Awakener's improper Command does nothing. The stick refuses to be convinced to be Soulcast into a fire. There's a reason the Bondsmiths and other Radiants had checks built in - and why Ishar is such a terrifying loose cannon as an unchained Bondsmith. If you brute force the change with raw Investiture then you bypass these safeguards. That's when you get things like the one-spike Hemalurgic Chimeras. An improperly drawn Aon that cursed Dilaf's wife. Shai at the time of TES hadn't studied Flesh Forgery because messing up could cause deaths whereas messing up one of her carvings simply resulted in a stamp that wouldn't take. I'm taking a leaf from Spook's book on Hemalurgy to say that it's incredibly easy to screw things up when modifying the Spiritweb to alter the body and it's much better to stick with known methods of enhancement.

As for thinking your way into wings or becoming a dog, I think believing you are still ill (or scarred) and perpetuating a known or existing state is a far cry from believing yourself to be in a state you have never experienced. Maybe, maybe a career canine vet could properly visualize a dog or dream that they were a dog with the necessary fidelity to life, but not the general populace. Transposition of cognitive concept to non-native physical form without safeguards sounds a lot like Ishar's experiments on pulling spren into the Physical Realm. I would expect similar survival rates.

That said, what you suggest is possible. Healing someone to grow wings can be done, apparently pretty easily with Hemalurgy - though I'm adding if you know exactly what you are doing as a Hemalurgist. Note that a bit less than a thousand years of testing in the Steel Inquisitor laboratories never produced anything significant beyond the Hemalurgic constructs TLR designed while holding the power of the Well of Ascension. Considering TotES, transforming a human into a dog is definitely possible for AonDor.

Quote

Krios (paraphrased)

If you have a form of manipulating your Identity and a form of healing, are you able to shapeshift or even evolve your body like growing wings?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You'd have to do some real work on your Spiritweb to make that work. It'd take more work than you're implying, but the [singers] for instance are doing this. It'll take a little more work, it's not just blanking your Identity. Hemalurgy would make it very easy, but also very evil. But what you want to achieve is possible.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

Edited June 2, 2025 by Duxredux
Clarity and additional thoughts.