What essence marks would be useful?

[Elite01]

I reread Emperor's soul recently and was thinking of useful ways to use soul stamping in the cosmere. In most cases it requires time to study your subject to make a useful stamp but essence marks don't have the same problem. We see Shai use them in a variety of ways once they are returned to her. I started thinking if Shai made more essence marks or if we saw another soulforger in the cosmere what essence marks would be useful. Here is the list I have so far

Sailor

Medic - this could help with regular medic things but Shai mentions how resealing, or healing people via stamps is hard because the user has to know all the different muscles and how the body works so this could be a potential shortcut

Actor/diplomat - it sounds like soulforgers are generally pretty good at reading people and presenting themselves in certain ways but getting better at accents or imitations or a more flamboyant personality could be useful in certain situations,

Chef

Blacksmith or some kind of crafter

Most of these are just different career choices so they aren't anything crazy but I bet there are some other ones out there. The one I find the most interesting is the beggar essence mark because it encompasses a couple skills (disguise, lock picking, contortion skills, being able to move through a crowd) so if anyone can think of more essence marks like that I would love to hear them. 

Edited November 26, 2023 by Elite01

[Trusk'our he/him]

12 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

Medic - this could help with regular medic things but Shai mentions how resealing, or healing people via stamps is hard because the user has to know all the different muscles and how the body works so this could be a potential shortcut

Ah, so using a Forgery to allow her to create different kind of Forgeries?

Perhaps a similar method could be used to help Shai specialize in certain aspects of Forgery, such as allowing her to Forge herself to have spent ten years learning how to craft better universal stamps.

[Quantus he/him]

I cant think of a Soulstamp more powerful than one that had her Parents move to Arelon so she could be taken by the Reod.  Just as an entirely random, hypothetical example.

Maybe one that had her move to Silverlight early in her life so she was still a Forger but far more Realmically aware.

[Elite01]

Quote

Perhaps a similar method could be used to help Shai specialize in certain aspects of Forgery, such as allowing her to Forge herself to have spent ten years learning how to craft better universal stamps.

That's very interesting. I think at a certain point there's a kind of roadblock because you need to know enough about say painting to make a good fake painting so in order to create an essence mark like that she might already need to know more about universal marks but that would be a fun hack if it worked. 

[Quantus he/him]

12 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

That's very interesting. I think at a certain point there's a kind of roadblock because you need to know enough about say painting to make a good fake painting so in order to create an essence mark like that she might already need to know more about universal marks but that would be a fun hack if it worked. 

ReSealing too, as a very Intense subspecialty of Forger, one that requires years and years of medical study.  

[Treamayne]

5 hours ago, Quantus said:

ReSealing too, as a very Intense subspecialty of Forger, one that requires years and years of medical study.  

This assumes, of course, that Resealing (and Bloodsealing) also use the MaiPon setting mark - Day 30:

Spoiler

 The setting mark finished every soulstamp, indicating no more carving was to come. Shai had always fancied it to look like the shape of MaiPon, her homeland.

Those marks finished, she held the stamp over a flame. 

If the other Stamp-based manifestations of investiture do use different setting marks, then it might not be that simple (but certainly not as complex as the stamp used in TLM). 

We know Shai thought (at the time of TES) that she could have studied Resealing, but we don't know for sure that she may have lacked the Connection to make it work. For that matter, I wonder if a Resealing Essence Mark might have different effects from a Forgery Essence mark. . . Maybe that's why the Rose Empire has such a hatred of Essence Marks.

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

6 hours ago, Quantus said:

I cant think of a Soulstamp more powerful than one that had her Parents move to Arelon so she could be taken by the Reod.  Just as an entirely random, hypothetical example.

Maybe one that had her move to Silverlight early in her life so she was still a Forger but far more Realmically aware.

Yeah, this one is hard to beat

I wonder if you had another jar of Dor, could you create an Essence Mark of being a master Awakener with thousands of breaths and have the purified Dor take on the form of Breaths? 

[Elite01]

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I wonder if you had another jar of Dor, could you create an Essence Mark of being a master Awakener with thousands of breaths and have the purified Dor take on the form of Breaths? 

That's a good question could an essence mark create investiture? If you used a stamp to get a lot of breaths and then gave those breaths to someone else would the breaths disappear when the stamp wears off? I almost want to say it wouldn't work. If I created an essence mark where I always wore a hat would it create that hat? I think it only changes things about you instead of giving you things but 

Lost metal spoilers

Spoiler

In the Lost metal she uses an essence mark to get a connection to become an elantrian so anything is possible 

 

[Atlas333]

1 hour ago, Elite01 said:

That's a good question could an essence mark create investiture? If you used a stamp to get a lot of breaths and then gave those breaths to someone else would the breaths disappear when the stamp wears off? I almost want to say it wouldn't work. If I created an essence mark where I always wore a hat would it create that hat? I think it only changes things about you instead of giving you things but 

The short answer is that yes, forging can create any change in your spirit web. However, stuff like that is going to take a lot of investiture. I would say that breaths and surgebinding would be the easiest to replicate, considering those are things that aren't tied to your connection to the planet while allomancy and feruchemy would be significantly more difficult because you'd have to rewrite your past to being born on Scadrial. 

Quote

Aneesh

If there's a Forger like Shai who plausibly had an opportunity to ingest lerasium and become Mistborn, but she passed it up, could she create a stamp that makes her temporarily a Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

She would have to have access to enough Investiture to make that happen. The stamp saying, "Hey, I'm a Mistborn!" doesn't actually give her the Investiture to do that. She could rewrite her past so that she took that bead. She would not actually be able to use the power, until she got an infusion of Investiture, which could be done with a stamp in the right manner, but most of the time you're gonna have to have some external source. Basically you're gonna have to take a hit of Investiture, a large amount of it, and then use the stamp, and then it will feed on that to change you into basically any of the other magics.

Aneesh

Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

If you could get a hit of Stormlight, that'd work. The problem is, Stormlight's not easy to get off of Roshar, and it still is technically keyed. You could get it a lot more easily-- Stormlight would work fairly well, but what you really want is some pure, unkeyed Dor. That stuff, you could do all kinds of things with. But, you know, it's kinda dangerous. But that's the stuff you're gonna want, or something like unto it.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

The breaths thing is a bit more difficult. It works for hemalurgy so I would say it might work for breaths, but again, needs a ton of investiture. 

Quote

Questioner

If you Stamp yourself, to have another, overwritten spiritweb, and you get Spiked-- *laughter* What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

We actually worked this out. *laughter*

Questioner

Well, you'd die, or very close to it, but would it revert when the Stamp reverts?

Brandon Sanderson

So what’s probably going to happen here is that you’re going to rip off the Investiture you’ve put on your soul, and your own soul will have less damage. Now, the spike is only gonna get the-- the spike, you're like "What will it do?" It will do what you've been overwritten with, but again remember, becoming an Allomancer takes so much energy, and things like-- But it is theoretically possible in the cosmere to rewrite yourself "You're an allomancer", someone spikes you to get this. The Investiture doesn't care that it was fake on you, you have managed to get that Investiture to work. Uhh, this is really tough. And really, like, you need Connection, and you need, like, the right kind of Investiture, but then it rips off and yes you have made a spike that makes you an Allomancer, even though the person was a Forger. So yes, okay? But this is the kind of stuff that is like the thought experiments for physicists in the cosmere as opposed to, y'know--

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

 

[Authorspren]

The best Essence Mark is just that enchanting trick from Skyrim. Create an Essence Mark to make yourself slightly better at Forgery, which would allow you to create a better Essence Mark, which would be used to make yourself slightly better at Forgery...

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

12 hours ago, Authorspren said:

The best Essence Mark is just that enchanting trick from Skyrim. Create an Essence Mark to make yourself slightly better at Forgery, which would allow you to create a better Essence Mark, which would be used to make yourself slightly better at Forgery...

You would need to wait for each essence mark to wear out first, so you would have to make intentionally bad marks.

Also, eventually it would stop being realistic for you to be that good.

So there would be a hard limit on the scaling, but you could totally create something crazy powerful with it.

[Argenti he/him]

The Best Essence mark would be one that lets you wrest control of a shard from the vessel.

You'd have to forge a significant connection and wait until the vessel acts contrary to the shard. Probably a Well of investiture needed too.

[Trusk'our he/him]

On 11/29/2023 at 10:31 PM, Authorspren said:

The best Essence Mark is just that enchanting trick from Skyrim. Create an Essence Mark to make yourself slightly better at Forgery, which would allow you to create a better Essence Mark, which would be used to make yourself slightly better at Forgery...

I love this idea so much. 

As @NerdyAarakocra said, there would be a hard cap. . . but, I think you could at least make it so that the stamp could say you had the natural talent of a prodigy and had spent literally all of your time training that particular skillset.

So all in all, I'd say that this would be the best essence mark to invest your time in first.

On 11/30/2023 at 11:24 AM, NerdyAarakocra said:

You would need to wait for each essence mark to wear out first, so you would have to make intentionally bad marks.

I don't know that I follow your tail of thought; wouldn't even very good essence marks just fail after about twenty-six hours, meaning that you could just make a good one that will inevitably fail and allow for the newer mark to be used?

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

23 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

I don't know that I follow your tail of thought; wouldn't even very good essence marks just fail after about twenty-six hours, meaning that you could just make a good one that will inevitably fail and allow for the newer mark to be used?

In TLM, the Elantarian stamp lasts pretty long. Anyway, it would be way easier if you made bad stamps that wore off in just enough time for you to make another soulstamp until finally you hit the scaling cap and made a soulstamp meant to last.

[Trusk'our he/him]

19 minutes ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

Spoiler

In TLM, the Elantarian stamp lasts pretty long. Anyway, it would be way easier if you made bad stamps that wore off in just enough time for you to make another soulstamp until finally you hit the scaling cap and made a soulstamp meant to last.

 

TLM and ToES spoilers:

Spoiler

I think the reason that particular stamp doesn't naturally wear off is because Shai as an Elantrian has Kinetic Investiture pumped into her directly from the SR (similar to the sorceress in ToES). The other stamps made my Shai wore off within a limited amount of time probably because of the low amount of Investiture typically present in Forgery.

But of course, this is just my hypothesis and not proven to be true.

Also, this is the forum for Elantris and the Emporer's Soul. Please put your Lost Metal reference in a spoiler box just in case.

 

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

17 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

TLM and ToES spoilers:

  Hide contents

I think the reason that particular stamp doesn't naturally wear off is because Shai as an Elantrian has Kinetic Investiture pumped into her directly from the SR (similar to the sorceress in ToES). The other stamps made my Shai wore off within a limited amount of time probably because of the low amount of Investiture typically present in Forgery.

But of course, this is just my hypothesis and not proven to be true.

Also, this is the forum for Elantris and the Emporer's Soul. Please put your Lost Metal reference in a spoiler box just in case.

 

Yeah, but even if the soulstamp lasted for just twenty-six hours, it would still be 26 hrs of downtime. There might be a way to remove the stamp before it runs out of juice, though.

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

Yeah, but even if the soulstamp lasted for just twenty-six hours, it would still be 26 hrs of downtime. There might be a way to remove the stamp before it runs out of juice, though.

Oh yeah, didn't Shai brake a Samp on her own body before? So perhaps you could do that in order to remove it sooner.

I still don't know if I understand your thought process though. If the reason for making the original stamp is to make you more proficient at crafting the following stamp, wouldn't you want it to last a while? It takes Shai nearly 100 days to craft a Soul Stamp, and she's a master. I don't say this to discourage your reasoning, I merely wish to understand better.

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

21 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Oh yeah, didn't Shai brake a Stamp on her own body before? So perhaps you could do that in order to remove it sooner.

I still don't know if I understand your thought process though. If the reason for making the original stamp is to make you more proficient at crafting the following stamp, wouldn't you want it to last a while? It takes Shai nearly 100 days to craft a Soul Stamp, and she's a master. I don't say this to discourage your reasoning, I merely wish to understand better.

It takes Shai nearly 100 days to craft the most complex soulstamp ever made, pretty much. A soulstamp that just increases one attribute would probably be easier and quicker, especially if you have a stamp that makes you have unparalleled stamp-crafting skill. Shai doesn't take very long to modify the room she's in, for instance.