Forgery in relation to other magic.

[GeneralHZRD he/him]

So I just read The Emperors Soul recently and I was intrigued by forgery and its implications with other magic systems. I have a bunch of questions that I'm curious if any of you know and what you all think about them.

1:Could you forge yourself into an Elantrian. I saw a WOB that said that it would be very hard, and that you'd have to change your birthplace. But the shaod can claim even people that are just visiting, so as long as you had visited once couldn't you just forge your past so that the shaod chose you?

2: Could you forge an Aviar in order to change its talent? This would be dependent on whether the talents come from some genetic aspect or they are competently random.

3:Could you forge broken shard-plate so that it never broke? I know that invested things don't like getting manipulated by other investiture, so it would take a ridiculous amount of power. But is it possible?

4: Assuming you lived on Scadrial, could you forge yourself into a steel inquisitor? I know that  Allomancy and Feruchemy are hereditary, but Hemalurgy is not. so is it possible?

5: Could you forge a dead body to become Returned? 

[Weltall]

Welcome to the wonderful world of figuring out possible applications of Forgery. xD

1. The exact WoB (here) says that even if Shai were able to make an Essence Mark that not only plausibly rewrote her background to 'be from Arelon' and 'was taken by the Shaod' (and bear in mind that the former would conflict with Forgery's 'be from MaiPon' requirement so that would probably be very tricky to work out) what would probably happen is that she would only look like an Elantrian but wouldn't actually be able to use AonDor. She'd need something else to actually become an Elantrian that way.

Also, Brandon has said that you need to be of Aonic descent to be taken and if your descent is more distant then you have to be in Arelon for it to happen. Hrathen fooling people into thinking he'd been taken isn't a counterexample since 1) obviously he was faking it and 2) the people he was fooling don't know how the Shaod works exactly to know that it wasn't really possible. His faking it with Sarene actually was plausible (whether anyone actually knew it or not) because she was genetically close enough and in the right geographical area.

2. Aviar talents are species-linked so it's not the kind of thing you could realistically Forge.

3. This is probably the simplest thing to do and I imagine it would be possible if you had enough Investiture to override the Shardplate's own resistance to being changed, but for the amount it would require you might as well just regrow the Plate normally.

4. Brandon has said that you coud Forge a spike from one type to another but it would require a boost of power and it's not the sort of thing Shai could do on her own. He's also said that it's theoretically possible to make a spike from someone who used Forgery to make themselves an allomancer and it would work, but it's the sort of thing that belongs more in the realm of in-universe philosophical debate than 'a realistic possibility' because it would be extremely hard to do. I imagine that since Forging yourself to have allomancy is possible then you could also Forge yourself to have hemallurgically-granted powers, but again it would probably be an extremely complex bit of Forgery and no doubt easier to just Forge yourself to have gained the ability some other way. Or get your hands on a medallion.

5. There's some debate over whether or not something like this is pretty much what Ashravan now is, Realmatically speaking. But my guess is that creating a genuine Returned via Forgery would be a 'no' for two reasons. First, because Brandon has said that this sort of thing requires more Investiture than a Forger can pull off; the hypothetical was 'Can I Forge myself to die, check out the afterlife and then come back?' and Brandon said that transferring Investiture to/from the Cognitive is more than a Forger could do. The second reason is that you need to be Nalthian to Return and then you have to meet whatever criteria Endowment has set up and then you have to accept the offer and then you have to receive a Divine Breath. That's a lot of variables to work around and even if you had a Nalthian corpse, I'm not sure you could cheat your way into making a Returned. Brandon has called out Surgebinding as a magic system you can't cheat your way into using Forgery or crazy A-Gold tricks because a spren has to actively choose you and you can't fake that. Trying to Forge a Returned would be like that, only much moreso because you'd be trying to Forge the consent of a Shard.