Forging horsepower

[Argenti he/him]

So somone said to me that forging was high-power, which it thought it wasn't. 

they showed me this WOB

Quote

Questioner

What if you Soulstamped a city?

Brandon Sanderson

Soulstaped a city... So if you're a really good Forger-- It is possible to do things like that, but it requires a lot of work and time. Just one thing to keep in mind with Soulstamps, and anything that does this, rewriting your spiritweb, right, like, requires Invesiture. A lot of Investiture. And so, for instance, what Shai can do is really cool, but what an Elantrian can do is gonna look a lot more dramatic, right? Shooting a column of fire, you would say "Which takes more power, making the wall have flowers on it or shooting a column of fire?" Making the wall have flowers takes way more Investiture. It's a lot easier to pull off some dramatic effects with others, but the actual changing of the soul and overwr-- ...So just keep in mind the extent-- This is why you don't see Shai Forge it so the whole building disappears. Right? And stuff like this. Which is not outside of reason for a couple of Elantrians with the right program to put into place. But I mean effectively-- They could blow it up, essentially, that's what they would do

Bystander

Make a new hole, rather than making one that has existed.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Exactly. Do keep in mind, people like to ask, you've probably seen people ask, "Could I rewrite myself to be a Knight Radiant?" Right? WELL... There are certain things that you just-- you can't fake without enough energy that it becomes impractical. Usually what I use as an example to that is: Yes, we can turn hydrogen into gold, if we wanted to. Right? We can do that! It might take more energy than the earth creates in an entire year, but we can do that.

I get a lot of questions with this that I'm like "is it possible?" and I'm like "Guys, is it possible?" ...You should probably be like, "Is it possible, with reasonable amounts of energy provided by one Invested person".

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

and I showed this WOB

Quote

Questioner

I've got a list of various Cosmere bits of metal and I was wondering if you would rank them from like one to ten or just easy to difficult on how hard it would be to steelpush on them. So with one being just a regular coin, ten being like when the Lord Ruler was moving bits of glass on the floor, so like metal inside a person's body.

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on how strong the Investiture in them is.

Questioner

Is that gonna be the answer for all of these?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably!

(Not relevant stuff)

Questioner

A soulstamped piece of metal?

Brandon Sanderson

A soulstamped piece of metal is going to be on the lower, easier side. Not a lot of Investiture going on in a soulstamp.

Salt Lake City signing (March 29, 2014)

Theirs a clear contradiction here, but I think that in book stuff aligns more with it being on the weaker side, just very efficient. What do you think?

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, Argenti said:

Theirs a clear contradiction here, but I think that in book stuff aligns more with it being on the weaker side, just very efficient. What do you think?

Not really a contridiction - the first WoB is about how much investiture it takes to affect change. The second is about how much residual investiture remains after the change.

I don't see a conflict.

[Argenti he/him]

Just now, Treamayne said:

Not really a contridiction - the first WoB is about how much investiture it takes to affect change. The second is about how much residual investiture remains after the change.

I don't see a conflict.

so high or low?

[Treamayne]

29 minutes ago, Argenti said:

so high or low?

Yes.

High amounts to generate change. Low residual investiture in a changed object/person.

I guess there is an arguement for "low" across the board, since the investiture never passes through the Forger - it goes straight from the Dor to the object's Spiritweb, then the change cascades back down through the cognitive (where it is either rejected as implausible, or accepted as plausible) and into the Physical realm if it was plausible (with the time of change reflecting the level of plausibility).

Edited July 1, 2023 by Treamayne

[therunner he/him]

To add, to rewrite yourself to be Knight Radiant, the stamp would basically have to create a complete spren, which would take a lot of Investiture.
Afterwards, not much.

Comparatively, changing piece of metal into different metal is 'easy'.

So some stamps would require such ridiculous amounts of Investiture, they would not be really feasible.

[Firesong she/her]

I feel there is also another thing they ignored, the first WoB was saying it takes a lot of Investiture for very extreme changes, like changing an entire city or completely changing the material of an entire wall. While the lower-power Forgings are much smaller scale, and closer to the current form and its history, the easier it is (kinda like some form of the Law of BioChromatic Parallelism). 

Edited July 10, 2023 by Firesong