Forms: Simplified

[Kurkistan]

Hello all. Since my previous thread, while not getting many objections, was universally hailed as the single most dense and unreadable thing ever, and a bit of new information has come to light, I've decided to try a bit of a simplification/reboot. I'll leave off all my crazy talk about the minutia of Forging (see the original thread for that) and just talk about the bare bones of the matter with some clearly marked digressions at the end to analyse how it applies to Spren, Returned, and Forging, as well as glossing over some other possible uses for a "Form" theory of Realmatics.

Evidence:
 
We've got various quotes pointing us in this direction:

 

At 7:30 in the TES Writing Excuses episode, Brandon identifies at least part of the foundation of Realmatics: "we're delving into the Cosmere stuff, my underlying theory of existence in my novels, which is based on a mash-up between Platonic Forms and Asian style 'everything has a soul'".

We can see at least some of this happening in TES with how Forging works, but particularly with what happens when you Forge simple objects, like Shai's stained glass window. In her discussion with Gaotona:
 

“It is . . . rather mystical,” Gaotona said, spreading his hands before him. “A window frame knowing the ‘concept’ of a stained glass window? A soul understanding the concept of another soul?”

“These things exist beyond us,” Shai said, preparing another seal. “We think about windows, we know about windows; what is and isn't a window takes on . . . meaning, in the Spiritual Realm. Takes on life, after a fashion. Believe the explanation or do not; I guess it doesn't matter. The fact is that I can try these seals on you, and if they stick for at least a minute, it’s a very good indication that I've hit on something."
(83-84 (?) - in the eBook, not sure on the pages)

 

EDIT 3 (12/08/2013): I neglected to give the full context for that quote. It still says what I think it says, I think, but it's always best to give full information.

 

Source:

[Mary] One of the things that I was very interested in, speaking of themes and souls and... Was the idea that the narrative that talks about something gives it its own soul. Like... When Shai was talking about the table. We don't think of a table as all of the separate components, we think of it as its thing. That it then begins to think of itself as a table.

 

[brandon] Right. This is based on all kinds of things. We're delving into the Cosmere sort of stuff, my underlying theory of existence in my novels, which is based on a mashup between Platonic forms and Asian style "everything has a soul." So I felt that the Asian themes of "everything has a soul" would be very useful here. Having... I served an LDS mission in Korea. I lived in Korea for those years and got very much exposed to some of these Eastern forms of thought regarding these sorts of things, which I find very fascinating.

 

Link

Rutthed:
Serious question: are there poopspren, and how would they fare in indoor plumbing situations?

Brandon:
Well, it depends on how you're defining spren. In the books, they don't make a distinction, but there are several varieties. At the basic level, everything has an identity--a soul, you might say, but more than that. This is based on how it is viewed, and how long it has been viewed that way. Feces would have this, but wouldn't have a very strong cognitive identity because of its transitional nature.

Other types of spren, the type that characters see and interact with, are cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time. These are usually related to forces or emotions, and don't relate to this particular topic.

And that's far more than I ever expected to say on this...

 
Link

Nepene:
5) In Warbreaker Lightsong mentions that the Returned's forms are dependent on contemporary beauty standards. In the Emperor's Soul Shai implies that if others did not find the Emperor's Soul plausible it would not take as well. Is my reading of their statements correct, is their magic dependent on how others view you as well as how you view yourself?

Brandon:
5) Yes. This is a factor.

 
Link

Kurkistan:
1) Are the changing beauty standards of Returned and the "plausibility" of Forgeries determined by the same kind of "cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time" that some types of Spren represent?

Brandon:
1) Yes. These things all work according to the same fundamental framework.

 
EDIT: Some more evidence for the Spiritual being a realm of ideals:
 

“Besides, what good will a cook be in the Spiritual Realm?”
“Heralds need food,” [Geranid] said absently, scratching out a line on her writing board, then scribbling another line of numbers beneath it.
“Do they?” Ashir asked. “I’ve never been convinced. Oh, I’ve read the speculations, but it just doesn't seem rational to me. The body must be fed in the Physical Realm, but the spirit exists in a completely different state.”
“A state of ideals,” she replied. “So, you could create ideal foods, perhaps.”
[...]
“I wonder if they eat in the Cognitive Realm. Is a food there what it sees itself as being? I’ll have to read and see if anyone has ever eaten while visiting Shadesmar.”
(WoK 711)

 
While this is in-line with Vorinism's "everything is super-powered when you die" (farmers grow entire fields with a wave of their hands, etc.), and so might be religiously inspired, Ashir and Geranid seem to be pretty Realmatically knowledgeable, so I'll give them credit on this one. So a hint that "objects" in the Spiritual Realm are in "a state of ideals".

Brandon's comment on "poopspren" opens up the possibility of a bit more Cognitive-Spiritual fuzziness than I've been talking about up until now, but I would hazard that the Cognitive versions of Forms are akin to "working copies" that serve as an intermediary between "ideal" Spiritual Forms and the amalgamation of Cognitive perceptions: the Cognitive version can get messy and be reactive, with the initial version based on and tied to the pure Spiritual Form and the end results (after being gnawed on by a few thousand people's brains) percolating up to the Spiritual--and so providing a mechanism for both changing existing Forms and creating new ones. This is somewhat similar, at least in terms of metaphor, to Sazed's two sets of Copperminds.
 
EDIT 2: Actually, looking at another part of Nepene's question, this is almost certainly how it works. Not sure how I overlooked that before. 

Link

Nepene:
 
1) You've mentioned several philosophical concepts used in the writing of your books, like Jung's collective unconsciousness, Plato's cave. Could you expand a bit on your use of those in your books, and whether you think it is necessary to use philosophy to make a good fantasy world?
 
Brandon:
1) I don't think it's necessary at all. The writer's own fascinations--whatever they are--can add to the writing experience. But yes, some philosophical ideas worked into my fiction. Plato's theory of the forms has always fascinated, and so the idea of a physical/cognitive/spiritual realm is certainly a product of this. Human perception of ideals has a lot to do with the cognitive realm, and a true ideal has a lot to do with the spiritual realm.
 
 As for more examples, they're spread through my fiction. Spinoza is in there a lot, and Jung has a lot to do with the idea of spiritual connectivity (and how the Parshendi can all sing the same songs.)

 
Basic Theory:

Stop me if I get too convoluted.

Okay. As you can see in the quotes above, Spren as we know them (visible, interacting Spren, not pseudo-Cognitive aspects) are based on "cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time". As I asked Brandon, this is the same type of thing that lets a window being remade out of new stained glass or a block of gold being adulterated with lead judge the plausibility of its Forgery. It is also the same thing that makes Returned of one era (including Vasher, actually) fat and those of another era athletic (also including Vasher, reinforcing that he accesses an external "Returned" Form rather than just changing his own perceptions).

These "Forms," then, are quasi-independent Spiritual entities that come into being as a result of the massed Cognitive perceptions of large numbers of sapient (as in perceiving, not necessarily self-aware) beings. So "Fire," "Wind," "Pain," and "Window" all have Forms because they are abstractions from the specific to the general. I take these truths to be self-evident, given the information we have.

Expansion:

I hereby spare you an expansion. Look at the original thread if you want to torture yourself, or I'll gladly expand on and/or defend the theory if anyone has questions to ask below.

Applications:

Forging:

As I lay out in far more detail in the other thread I linked to, the "plausibility" of Forgeries seems to depend, to a large extent, on manifold Spiritual connections to appropriate Forms. So whether or not a block of gold would be adulterated with lead, or a set of manacles made out of soap, is dependent on quasi-independent manifestations of social norms. Nepene's question also gave us the fact that more "local" views can also have an affect on a Forgery: thousands of people going "AH! The Emperor is a homunculus!!!!" is just as effective as a Form in this regard, and should work in the same way.

Returned and Divine Healing:

Looking at Nepene's and my own question, it's clear that the beauty standards of Returned are dependent on some highly external sense of human physical ideals. These standards seems to be externally imposed as well, looking to Nepene's question. Also, as I mentioned when discussing Vasher above, these ideals seem to be actively as well as externally imposed on those who are in "Returned" form, as opposed to being simply internalized at one point and then not updated, though I suppose Vasher could conceivably have intentionally "updated" his Returned appearance.

As I mentioned here, I would posit that the healing done by the sacrifice of a Returned's Divine Breath is so much better than normal magical Healing--healing Susebron to have a tongue and the ability to speak, instead of the normal "you heal back to the form of yourself" you see with Forging and Feruchemy--because it accesses some Form of human health, external to the healed and thus not restricted by their Cognitive aspect.

Spren:

Though I do have an entire thread on the matter, I would like to reiterate that Spren seem to be the purist manifestation of these Forms that we have yet seen. Whether windspren are drawn to the wind or are the wind, their forms seem to be entirely dependent upon both incidental Cognitive perceptions (see: locked flamespren in the interlude) and broader, more universal Forms.

General Effects of Forms:

It's dawned upon me (oh no) that Forms seem to serve a similar function to the Cognitive Realm. Not Realmatically (though they kind of do that too), but in terms of Brandon being able to write books and magic systems that don't break down under their own weight. Just as the Cognitive stops the world from exploding whenever someone tries to leave a Cadmium bubble and allows Healing without Miles being a mass of tumors, so Forms restrict and guide magic along "common sense" routes on a more meta-scale.

The spoiled are just a few thoughts I've had, and are tangential to the theory as a whole. They're probably worth spinning theories off of, if anyone likes my Form theory and wants to expand on it a bit.

Forms could potentially be the answer to why Commands in Awakening work so "easily": you don't necessarily need to impart every possible sense of "hold" onto a rope in order for it to understand, so long as you pass along a connection to the appropriate Form. This could even provide an alternative explanation to "instinctive Awakening": You could gain greater access to the various Forms of Commands as you become more Invested with Breath, and so be able to pass those connections on more easily and strongly to various objects without needing to have a perfectly formed Cognitive idea of the Form to cement it down. This is semi-betraying my own model of Awakening, but I think it's compatible.

Forms could explain the region-based magic of Sel: yes, the individual lands may have souls (just as planets do as a whole), but their being represent-able through a few abstract lines could easily come about because those lines are associated, through human creation and maintenance of a Form, with the nations themselves.

Aside: Maybe part of the point of Derethi expansion is to create a larger "base" where their magic works by increasing the reach of territory that is considered one, Derethi-magic-compatible, region. Hmm...

Forms could explain why a soulcaster can make Blood or Smoke or any of the more complex essences: their full specification is already easily accessible as Forms. On a lesser level, many other soulcast materials could also depend on (somewhat weaker) Forms: how do you really picture and create iron, or stone? Do Rosharians really understand their underlying structure? I doubt it. Instead, they most likely simply look at some stone, think "yup, that's stone" and so create a Form to draw upon for Soulcasting. Soulcast food, then, might well be generic and bland because the base idea of "food" is itself generic and bland.

Wow, that's more than I wanted to have to force you to read. Sorry (again).

I would like to stress that a fair amount of this is conjecture; highly educated (*pats own back*) and plausible conjecture, but conjecture nonetheless. I've tried to note--with quotes, links, or "as we all knows"--wherever what I say is canon.

 

EDIT: Nvm, turns out I'm right in a lot of ways. That's nice.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Phantom Monstrosity]

(also including Vasher, reinforcing that he accesses an external "Returned" Form rather than just changing his own perceptions).

 

We don't know how much control Vasher has over his shape.  I think he'd want to look like current Returned if he had a choice; otherwise everyone would be like 'why is he glowing and fat now' instead of 'oooooh, so he's a returned'.

[Kurkistan]

Fair enough, it's mostly just an aside I thought of in the moment. It feels right to me, though. As I discussed in the grand debate on Denth's lineage, I think it likely that Vasher can only really switch between "Returned" and "not-Returned": otherwise he or Denth could have disguised themselves. It seems odd that he should have careful control over exactly what kind of Returned he'd be. Possible, but odd.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Fair enough, it's mostly just an aside I thought of in the moment. It feels right to me, though. As I discussed in the grand debate on Denth's lineage, I think it likely that Vasher can only really switch between "Returned" and "not-Returned": otherwise he or Denth could have disguised themselves. It seems odd that he should have careful control over exactly what kind of Returned he'd be. Possible, but odd.

Actually, Denth DOES use that to disguise himself.

http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation/400/Warbreaker-Chapter-Twenty-Two-Part-2

 

How do they hide that they’re Returned? Well, it comes down to mastery of their ability to change their appearance. They can’t shape-shift entirely; they can just alter some things about their appearance. They can change their weight, their hair color, and things like that at will. Vasher doesn’t do this often, but Denth has been known to use it as a disguise. The problem, after you do this once and someone realizes it, your nature becomes very suspect.

[Kurkistan]

Huh. I hadn't seen that annotation. Thanks. I suppose that leaves my off-the-cuff theory a bit more exposed, though I still think it's plausible, and even likely, just from a gut level.

[Phantom Monstrosity]

Huh. I hadn't seen that annotation. Thanks. I suppose that leaves my off-the-cuff theory a bit more exposed, though I still think it's plausible, and even likely, just from a gut level.

And even without voluntary shapeshifting, there's still variance in how old a Returned looks to be.

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/408/warbreaker-Chapter-Thirty

 

I wanted to show some Returned of different ages; I think it’s important for people to realize that you can be any age when you Return. There are children, babies, grandmothers, and people in their middle years who Return.

Hopefinder is the youngest person at court currently, though there are a couple of other gods who Returned when they were in their teens. It’s hard to tell them from the other gods now, however. (And often, when a god Returns in their middle years, their body transforms to be much more youthful. Not always; it depends on the god.)

 

I really don't think they're accessing anything more external than a normal human.  It's cultural, not supernatural.  If you tell someone with amnesia that he's a god, and show him a bunch of other gods who look basically alike, he's probably going to end up looking like them.  If he recalls what a Returned usually looks like already (as basically anybody in their country does), he'll probably take on that form the moment he comes back.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Phantom Monstrosity

[Kurkistan]

We know from Nepene's question that how others view them "is a factor," so I would hazard that the other factor manifests as some amount of leeway on how exactly they express such a broad Form. We paint the Olympians as of differing ages, but that does not change their underlying similarities.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Kurkistan

[happyman]

I like this theory.

 

Also, I suspect that the Returned forms and forging have a lot in common.  How "strong" the underlying forms probably constrain how much the Returned can change their shape.  In other words, the form "uber-healthy God" (or whatever the current fashion is) is really, really big and easy to access, and so most Returned default to it.  It takes effort to go away from this default.

However, some changes from this default seem extremely plausible, and so some of the reformed make those changes, mostly unconsciously.  This would include things like age, which seems like it would be flexible (old-looking gods are also a very common image, just not quite as common) and related things.  Other changes are probably harder, just like some forgeries are tenuous.  Some of the changes are probably entirely impossible with the energy they actually have.

[Isomere]

I managed the marathon of reading the entire original thread and it's quite a mouthful to chew. First off, props for taking the time to develop this. It's meaty stuff and I still am unsure how much I understand. Before reading through this I'd always assumed a spiritual Form was immutable, but you definitely changed my mind. We know the spirit realm represents the "Ideal", but I hadn't really thought about how that Ideal could change over time or be influenced by the cognitive realm. I love how the terminology is growing here: sForms, uForms, sDNA - makes me feel like pulling out the old degenerate code for protein synthesis and tracking down a spiritual ribosome.

I want to make sure I'm on the same page so lets go with the window example and see if I'm interpreting things differently than you.

I'm hearing that Forgery works by remapping Spiritual Connections. So we have a window, and its Spiritweb has a connection to a bunch of Forms: clear glass, broken, wooden frame, ugly, neglected. These Forms literally become part of the window's soul due to these connections. So a soul is a big puddle of spiritual goop that takes on structure based on the interactions of the Forms it has incorporated. The Forms still exist separate from the soul, just like a function in a computer program exists separate from the object that calls it.

Lets focus on clear vs colored glass. Through Soulstamping, all you do is create another bond in the Spiritweb that links the window to the Form "colored" and the window changes from clear to colored glass. Is it really that simple? The Form "colored" becomes part of the soul and when the cognitive aspect interprets it the physical window pops out as Stained glass?

[Kurkistan]

Well, congratulations on managing to get through the whole thread. Stuff got a bit dense once you got past the first few sentences.

 

I could be remembering and/or thinking wrong, since my head hasn't been in this in a while, but I think you might be going a bit too far down goop-street in your interpretation. I keep insisting on a "nucleus" of the soul existing at the center of the Spiritweb specifically so that the soul is not entirely defined by the Forms it has connections to. I do this because it really shouldn't be.

 

Forms are, by necessity, generalizations. You get them when you generalize a type from a set of many tokens, and so they are necessarily "fuzzy". They can't tell you what a specific window or person looks like, then. If you took that window and threw it into deep space (assuming that this separates it from its Forms, but any method to separate an object from its Forms would work), then it should still be a window in its own right. It won't disappear in a puff of logic or melt into a puddle of goop, and if someone comes along 1,000 years later and looks at it, they should be able to say "yup, that's a window in space". Individual windows give form to the Window Form, not the other way around.

 

I may have been misreading you here, and you may be saying that the complete indeterminacy of the window in this case sans-Forging is only meant to talk about how Forging in particular works. If so, sorry. I still think it's a bit off in the limited case, though.

 

It seem to me that Forgings must make something a bit more solid and singular than what you describe. As I touch upon in the other thread's OP at the end, I would say that the Forms inform what shape the Forgeries soul should take, but that some Cognitive shenanigans go on to make a specific soul which is procedurally generated from the Forms, but independent of them once completed. So, if you were to look at the souls of two stained glass windows, one original and one Forged, both would look equally "real".

 

This follows from the fact that Forgeries have definite (physical) forms, instead of being in a constant state of flux. The window that Shai Forged has an essentially arbitrary pattern, but that pattern isn't expected to morph and change through the Forgery's lifetime, despite the fact that the "Stained Glass Window" Form will undoubtedly undergo some small changes that could have resulted in a different pattern, if the stamp were to have been applied at another date.

 

I do talk about Forgeries constantly referencing their relevant Forms, but this is more for the sake of checking the plausibility of their stamps than for anything else.

 

Aside: It occurs to me that having a hierarchy of Forms could be useful:

 

We have three options for how stained glass windows might work. Either the Window Form contains discrete subdivisions for normal vs. stained glass, there are two wholly distinct "Normal" and "Stained" Window Forms with no unifying Window that covers both, or there is both a large-scale, general Window Form and weaker, smaller, more distinct Normal Window and Stained Glass Window Forms which are subordinate to the overarching Window Form.

 

I lean heavily towards the third option, with Normal and Stained standing in the child relation to Window. This allows us to retain general facts about windows over a broad range of possible configurations, while still enabling us to posit some Spiritual ideal for more specific kinds of windows. Presumably, different kinds of stained glass windows would have their own, even "smaller" Forms subordinated to the Stained Form, which would in turn be subordinated to the Window Form.

 

So as far as just throwing in a "colored" Form to finish up the stained glass window, you need a bit more than that--particularly in this case, because stained glass windows are physically structured differently from normal windows.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Kurkistan

[happyman]

I lean heavily towards the third option, with Normal and Stained standing in the child relation to Window. This allows us to retain general facts about windows over a broad range of possible configurations, while still enabling us to posit some Spiritual ideal for more specific kinds of windows. Presumably, different kinds of stained glass windows would have their own, even "smaller" Forms subordinated to the Stained Form, which would in turn be subordinated to the Window Form.

 

I suspect that the relationship between forms is more complex than just parent-child.  The real world is not easily modeled that way, as many programmers could tell you.  In other words, there should be sub-forms, but they probably also partake of unrelated forms in a complex way.

[Kurkistan]

I will certainly give you that there are likely many more connections between Forms than parent-child, but I think Window->Stained Glass Window would probably best be described that way, since you literally cannot--in any way--have the second without the first.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Shardbearer]

So, going with the programming analogy:

 

A Form is like a class - it contains the basic essence of what a stained glass window is: how it works, what it can do, what it looks like, etc.

 

Using a soulstamp is like creating an instance of that class - you impose your ideas on how this stained glass window will look and behave, within the paramaters of what the Form allows.

 

Something like that?

[Kurkistan]

Basically, I think. I have been scolded for being to computer-sciency in the past, so I've tried to stay away from such analogies myself.

[Leuthie]

Not only must it fit the form, but it must conform to a believable history. Forgeries change the history on an object, not the object itself.

[Kurkistan]

^Yes on the first part, I don't think so on the second.

 

I hesitate to refer even my worst enemy to the pretzel-brained presentation of my original thread, but I actually posit a bit of a dual effect from Forgery: you fundamentally want to say "this is what you are like now" and then, quite distinctly, you also say "and here is what your past was like such that you look like that". The "what you look like now" part is relatively important, since otherwise you both

 

1) Put a bit too much work on the shoulders of the object/magic system permutating out the consequences of its changed history

and

2) Leave far too much up to chance on the final form of your Forgery.

 

We also have textual evidence that two-fold system is how it works. Shai gives the Emperor's stamp anger when his brother is insulted (a bit too much, the first time) and his favorite color, both based on the historical fact of his brother's death. The fact (and similarly facts backed up by Forms) serves to check the "plausibility" of the desired outcome.

[Leuthie]

Gauging how an individual is changed by a new history does require a lot of tweaking. Still, the key was the history.

I wish I had the book in.front of me. I remember distinctly reading several descriptions of her processes and interpreting it as having nothing to do with a form but rather to do with identity (cognitive self view and others views) and history (how those views have changed over time). A brick of hard stone can be changed to soft stone, but only for a short time because no one would actually mistake the two while making the wall.

[Kurkistan]

Okay, I agree history is the most important consideration, just wanted to make sure you agreed about the "end result" side of things.

 

You didn't pick up on Brandon's offer of a free eBook? I think it's still on the table, if you want to email your receipt to [email protected]. It's very convenient for theorizing and whatnot on the fly.

 

As for your second paragraph, that all seems to be talking about "plausiblity checks" of whether/how long a stamp will take. Those are the things I generally kick up to Forms. I can explain it more if you want me to, or you could read the other thread's OP and post any thoughts you have in this thread (to keep the discussion in one place).

[Senor Feesh]

Knowing an object's history is absolutely vital, as the Forgery must write a plausible fake history to take. Part of the instructions of the forgery actually define what form the forgery takes (this is evident in many places, and explicit in the example of the wall painting). I'm not 100% though on if Kurk is correct is saying

 

'this is how you should look now, and here's the history that justifies it'

 

or if it should be

 

'here is the false history, with very specific details defining how you were created'.

 

The end result is the same, but the difference in process is important realmatically. In one instance you're defining the end result and giving a creating the justification after the fact, in the other you're in essence writing a script in the code of the universe, and allowing it to play out as reality catches up with the altered history.

 

I'm not really sure which I see as more likely.

[Kurkistan]

That is an important distinction, Senor. I'm tempted to say that it's actually a mix of the two. What if Forgeries are always "procedurally generated", but the Forger has relative freedom over how strict the parameters are? So Shai could say "...and then that artisan made a stained glass window" or she could say "...and then that artisan made a stained glass window of an X type of pattern".

Edited May 15, 2013 by Kurkistan

[makromag]

I always felt, that forgery was a lot like gold-burning. When you burn gold, you see, feel, "experience" a version of yourself with an alternate history and because of this different history the person you feel is different from the person you are at the moment. A valid forgery, one that takes, is a plausible history, depending on the current history of yourself or the object you want to stamp. Basically, the forgery changes some of your life-changing decisions to different ones. I view it very much like taking different branches in a tree-diagram: you take different routes, and as such land at a different leaf (end of the tree, aka present). A forgery that takes, then, would be one that passes nodes that were visited by you throughout your life.

An example for such a node: say I attended karate-training and decided to quit. I could then create an essence-mark in which the "me" decided to dig into karate and become a black-belt of high rank. This would take, because I had the chance to take this branch, but decided against it.

One that would NOT take, would be where I want to forge myself become japanese (I am not), because I never had the chance to "decide"

hey, I want to be japanese.

Now, to finally draw the connection between gold and forgery, I belive, that if shai could burn gold to "become" another version of herself, she could create an essence mark that would take, based on what she saw during her gold-vision, since gold shows you an actual alternate history/version.

This became very convoluted very quickly, so I hope someone can actually understand it

[Kurkistan]

Your post is quite insightful. I can get on board with that. One question is the degree to which you you know the "branches" that lead to the shadows of your self, for the purposes of making a soulstamp. At the very least, though, an Augor should know that their shadows are valid end results, even if they need to do some work to figure out the intermediate steps.

 

I don't think we need to focus 100% on "choices", though. Simple happenings or events can be just as important. I imagine that a Forger could "change" the outcome of a coin-flip if he wanted to.

[makromag]

I didn't consider random events, yes I think those definitely would pass as possible nodes in my book. What I was trying to say was, that an augur can find a leaf that exists. To find they right path to it, that would be quite the challenge I suspect. I wonder if using malatium would make it easier for a forger to create essence marks for other people, I mean they could only see the other version, but it can help, just like with Vin and TLR.

[Kurkistan]

Okay, just double checking there. Good thoughts on malatium.

[happyman]

OK, now I want to see an Augur or Malatium misting train to become a forger, because that we be an awesome cross-over.