Soul stamping spore eater ultimate protection?

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

If you could do soul stamps could you stamp yourself to be infected by an aetherspore?  If the effects only last the day would this then be all of the benefits of being nearly unkillable without the downside of the aether trying to kill you past that 24 hours?  

[EdgedancerJacob he/him]

I think it depends on whether or not the powers associated with being a Spore Eater require Investiture. If they do require Investiture, I think allowing this through Stamps would be giving them too much power. 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

25 minutes ago, EdgedancerJacob said:

I think it depends on whether or not the powers associated with being a Spore Eater require Investiture. If they do require Investiture, I think allowing this through Stamps would be giving them too much power. 

I don't know that it does. It requires water. I assume the investiture needed would be to rewrite your history to have recently consumed the spore and be infected with it. From there you will feel thirsty for the day but with it being a day at a time sort of deal, and if you write it to be within the first weeks of being infected, I assume you would see a relatively low craving for more water while the spore would do everything in its power to protect you... at only the cost of the daily water. 

Once the stamp wears off the infection is gone and the spore no longer lives there siphoning water from the host. 

I don't know if aethers work based on water the same way allomancy works based on metal, where it is a key being converted into investiture.  I believe the Aethers would view themselves as seperate from the typical Shards and their magical ways.  

If investiture is universal for all things magic feeling then perhaps this would be.  It is a dang powerful (defensively) ability for relatively low cost. If you simply need to double your water intake for the day and the spore can stop bullets then it should work yeah?  

Soulstamps to create allomancers wouldn't take the place of needing to burn metal. Just needing to rewrite the SDNA to have that alteration.  If a sporeeaters past is as simple as being infected with a spore then it should be fairly simple. Powerful for not dying... couldn't do a ton else with it. 

[EdgedancerJacob he/him]

21 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

If you simply need to double your water intake for the day and the spore can stop bullets then it should work yeah?  

Thanks for this context! I think if this is the case, then yes it could hypothetically work. 

The big caveat, in my opinion, is that it would be very tricky to make it "take." The only type of person I could see this specifically working on is a person living near MaiPon on Sel (as the stamps are less effective as they go further away) but has been to Lumar (in order for the person to have had an opportunity to be infected by the aethers). 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

44 minutes ago, EdgedancerJacob said:

Thanks for this context! I think if this is the case, then yes it could hypothetically work. 

The big caveat, in my opinion, is that it would be very tricky to make it "take." The only type of person I could see this specifically working on is a person living near MaiPon on Sel (as the stamps are less effective as they go further away) but has been to Lumar (in order for the person to have had an opportunity to be infected by the aethers). 

On the other hand I think soulstamps could be a legit way to stop the spore from killing you.  Restamp yourself everyday to make it like it was your first day with the spore. Benefits minus downsides. 

Finding the right person to do it would absolutely be difficult. 

[therunner he/him]

That would not work.

Sure, spore requires water but that water is somehow (Invested wise) transported to main Aether, which then magically supplies matter of the spore.
There is a lot of Investiture moving there, just supplied by Aether, not by the person.

So you would read 'is Spore Eater', but you would have no Connection to any Aether, and nothing would be happening.
If the Aether would somehow accept this forged Connection, then you would be Spore Eater in truth.

Hence, stamp is insufficient for that without external source of Investiture, just like you cannot simply stamp yourself to be Allomancer.

Edited June 15 by therunner

[alder24]

17 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

If you could do soul stamps could you stamp yourself to be infected by an aetherspore?  If the effects only last the day would this then be all of the benefits of being nearly unkillable without the downside of the aether trying to kill you past that 24 hours?  

I think it's similar to Forging yourself to be bonded with a spren and becoming a Radiant - a sentient entity is in control, it can break the forced bond at will and it would be really hard to forged something like this - plus it would require a ton of investiture, just like in the case of Forging yourself to become a Mistborn. 

Spoiler

DTF_20170515

Why refrigerate food when you can just stamp spoiled food so that it was stored properly before?

Aurora_Fatalis

You'll have to ask Brandon how that'd interact with gastric acid breaking down the stamp. Or how porous/loose material interacts with stamps in the first place.

Come to think of it... There's a WoB saying the Nightwatcher could change your species, but have a hard time making a spren bond to you. So... could the Nightwatcher turn you Scadrian and make you eligible for Allomantic powers? Or does the Nightwatcher's boons operate on soulstamp principles?

Hell, let's say you bought a vial of the wrong metal on your field trip to Sel. Could you pay a Forger to stamp the vial into being a vial of the right metal (it's believable that you would check before such an important trip) and then drink the metal contained in the vial to fuel your Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

All right, all right. Let's see... /u/Aurora_Fatalis, changing metals around with other forms of Investiture is generally going to work, according to how I view the magic right now. The power is there, you just need to align the matter the right way. So forging new metals: not too difficult. This is because Allomancy isn't actually using Investiture in the metals, but using it as a key to get power from somewhere else.

Forging a sword to be a Shardblade, however, would be very, very difficult for multiple reasons. The most obvious one is that the Investiture required would be enormous. A Shardblade is a highly-Invested object, with its own self-aware soul.

If you could overcome the initial resistance invested objects have to being influenced by other magics (something that Forgery is particularly good at doing anyway) you'd theoretically be able to change Shardblade/spren's personality like you could a person's.

Fooling the magic via Connection and Identity is not so hard, under the right circumstances, so making a Forger into an Elantrian (or an Allomancer) for a short time is plausible. Making yourself into a Radiant, however, would be more difficult--because the limitations placed on that magic have to do with persuading a sapient being you are worth the bond.

Aurora_Fatalis

How about regular food? If I stamp a pineapple pizza into a pepperoni pizza and eat it, what nutrients do I end up with?

Brandon Sanderson

The way I have it working now, I believe (though I'd have to do some double-checking, as it's been a while since I've been working on Sel) soulstamps are more fragile than things like Aons, and it would be very hard to eat something with one without breaking it. But assuming you could, you'd get nutrients from what it had become--but those would change back once the stamp broke or ran out.

It is possible to go so far down this rabbit hole, however, that the chemistry of Forging (like the physics of Allomancy) it just can't make sense any more. So be aware.

Oversleep

With things like Stamping metals for Allomancy, you have said that it'd be possible for short time, but then burning it would break the Seal and metal would revert back.

I guess it would be similar with food, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's the big problem with Forging. Getting the stamp to stay in place once you start to change the object that has been stamped.

General Reddit 2018 (Aug. 27, 2018)

 

Spoiler

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)

 

Spoiler

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)

 

Moreover Aethers are more like god metals, a physical manifestation of investiture and Forging or Soulcasting god metals is extra hard, so this idea might be impossible as well, due to the nature of Aethers you grow as a Spore Eater.

Spoiler

Overlord Jebus

All the physical manifestations--solid physical manifestations we've seen of Investiture has been metallic. It's been atium, lerasium, Shardblades. Is that just a coincidence?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it's intentional.

Overlord Jebus

It's intentional so we're not going to see Investiture wood or Investiture plastic?

Brandon Sanderson

Right, I mean technically, like, what do you call the aethers? Those are not metal. But I do it as metal intentionally.

Questioner

They could be a metal with very low boiling point.

Brandon Sanderson

*sarcastically* Yes, the vine ones are--

Overlord Jebus

Well we've had liquid, we've had gas, the solids all seem to be metallic, so.

Brandon Sanderson

That is intentional, it's just one of those little laws of the cosmere, that's not meant to mean anything

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

 

Spoiler

ninch

Could a person Soulcast more atium and lerasium if they had a bead?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Investiture messes things like that up.

General Signed Books 2014 (April 29, 2014)

 

Spoiler

Haylo_Alex

You've said before that Soulcasting can't create atium or lerasium which makes sense since they're made of Investiture from other Shards. But could a Soulcaster, perhaps in the proximity of Dalinar's perpendicularity, provide enough Stormlight to Soulcast something into Honor's Godmetal (tanavastium)? What about Cultivation's metal, or an alloy of both, like Shardblade metal?

Brandon Sanderson

So, creating a God Metal is not something that's done easily in the Cosmere. HOWEVER, it is possible. You'd need a ton of Investiture, and being near Dalinar's perpendicularity is unlikely to be enough. I'd say Soulcasting, or something akin to it, has the means to do this if it could obtain the proper power charge.

Footnote: The questioner is mentioning this WoB.
General Reddit 2020 (Sept. 4, 2020)

 

15 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I don't know that it does.

Of course it does. You become Invested, you grow Aethers out of your body, which is investiture, a body of an Aether. Normally that investiture is provided to you by an Aether directly for water, but just like Forging yourself into a Mistborn, this doesn't work. You need to provide a lot of external investiture for that. 

15 hours ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I don't know if aethers work based on water the same way allomancy works based on metal, where it is a key being converted into investiture. 

That's not how Allomancy works. Metals are a key, but they are not converted into investiture - they are a key for investiture being pulled from the SR which tells it what shape to take. 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

14 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I think it's similar to Forging yourself to be bonded with a spren and becoming a Radiant - a sentient entity is in control, it can break the forced bond at will and it would be really hard to forged something like this - plus it would require a ton of investiture, just like in the case of Forging yourself to become a Mistborn. 

  Reveal hidden contents

DTF_20170515

Why refrigerate food when you can just stamp spoiled food so that it was stored properly before?

Aurora_Fatalis

You'll have to ask Brandon how that'd interact with gastric acid breaking down the stamp. Or how porous/loose material interacts with stamps in the first place.

Come to think of it... There's a WoB saying the Nightwatcher could change your species, but have a hard time making a spren bond to you. So... could the Nightwatcher turn you Scadrian and make you eligible for Allomantic powers? Or does the Nightwatcher's boons operate on soulstamp principles?

Hell, let's say you bought a vial of the wrong metal on your field trip to Sel. Could you pay a Forger to stamp the vial into being a vial of the right metal (it's believable that you would check before such an important trip) and then drink the metal contained in the vial to fuel your Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

All right, all right. Let's see... /u/Aurora_Fatalis, changing metals around with other forms of Investiture is generally going to work, according to how I view the magic right now. The power is there, you just need to align the matter the right way. So forging new metals: not too difficult. This is because Allomancy isn't actually using Investiture in the metals, but using it as a key to get power from somewhere else.

Forging a sword to be a Shardblade, however, would be very, very difficult for multiple reasons. The most obvious one is that the Investiture required would be enormous. A Shardblade is a highly-Invested object, with its own self-aware soul.

If you could overcome the initial resistance invested objects have to being influenced by other magics (something that Forgery is particularly good at doing anyway) you'd theoretically be able to change Shardblade/spren's personality like you could a person's.

Fooling the magic via Connection and Identity is not so hard, under the right circumstances, so making a Forger into an Elantrian (or an Allomancer) for a short time is plausible. Making yourself into a Radiant, however, would be more difficult--because the limitations placed on that magic have to do with persuading a sapient being you are worth the bond.

Aurora_Fatalis

How about regular food? If I stamp a pineapple pizza into a pepperoni pizza and eat it, what nutrients do I end up with?

Brandon Sanderson

The way I have it working now, I believe (though I'd have to do some double-checking, as it's been a while since I've been working on Sel) soulstamps are more fragile than things like Aons, and it would be very hard to eat something with one without breaking it. But assuming you could, you'd get nutrients from what it had become--but those would change back once the stamp broke or ran out.

It is possible to go so far down this rabbit hole, however, that the chemistry of Forging (like the physics of Allomancy) it just can't make sense any more. So be aware.

Oversleep

With things like Stamping metals for Allomancy, you have said that it'd be possible for short time, but then burning it would break the Seal and metal would revert back.

I guess it would be similar with food, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's the big problem with Forging. Getting the stamp to stay in place once you start to change the object that has been stamped.

General Reddit 2018 (Aug. 27, 2018)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

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)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

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)

 

Moreover Aethers are more like god metals, a physical manifestation of investiture and Forging or Soulcasting god metals is extra hard, so this idea might be impossible as well, due to the nature of Aethers you grow as a Spore Eater.

  Reveal hidden contents

Overlord Jebus

All the physical manifestations--solid physical manifestations we've seen of Investiture has been metallic. It's been atium, lerasium, Shardblades. Is that just a coincidence?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it's intentional.

Overlord Jebus

It's intentional so we're not going to see Investiture wood or Investiture plastic?

Brandon Sanderson

Right, I mean technically, like, what do you call the aethers? Those are not metal. But I do it as metal intentionally.

Questioner

They could be a metal with very low boiling point.

Brandon Sanderson

*sarcastically* Yes, the vine ones are--

Overlord Jebus

Well we've had liquid, we've had gas, the solids all seem to be metallic, so.

Brandon Sanderson

That is intentional, it's just one of those little laws of the cosmere, that's not meant to mean anything

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

ninch

Could a person Soulcast more atium and lerasium if they had a bead?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Investiture messes things like that up.

General Signed Books 2014 (April 29, 2014)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Haylo_Alex

You've said before that Soulcasting can't create atium or lerasium which makes sense since they're made of Investiture from other Shards. But could a Soulcaster, perhaps in the proximity of Dalinar's perpendicularity, provide enough Stormlight to Soulcast something into Honor's Godmetal (tanavastium)? What about Cultivation's metal, or an alloy of both, like Shardblade metal?

Brandon Sanderson

So, creating a God Metal is not something that's done easily in the Cosmere. HOWEVER, it is possible. You'd need a ton of Investiture, and being near Dalinar's perpendicularity is unlikely to be enough. I'd say Soulcasting, or something akin to it, has the means to do this if it could obtain the proper power charge.

Footnote: The questioner is mentioning this WoB.
General Reddit 2020 (Sept. 4, 2020)

 

Of course it does. You become Invested, you grow Aethers out of your body, which is investiture, a body of an Aether. Normally that investiture is provided to you by an Aether directly for water, but just like Forging yourself into a Mistborn, this doesn't work. You need to provide a lot of external investiture for that. 

That's not how Allomancy works. Metals are a key, but they are not converted into investiture - they are a key for investiture being pulled from the SR which tells it what shape to take. 

Do you suppose stamping out the existance of the infection would be easier?  For the day at least? 

[alder24]

7 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Do you suppose stamping out the existance of the infection would be easier?  For the day at least? 

I think yes, as you don't need to create a fake source of investiture to feed on, you need to suppress some parts of your spirit web, mainly the Connection to an Aether and spores, so at most you would need to overcome the resistance your soul (because it's a bit more invested), but that's something that Forgery can do easily. I think you can do that and it won’t require a lot of investiture. 

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

36 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I think yes, as you don't need to create a fake source of investiture to feed on, you need to suppress some parts of your spirit web, mainly the Connection to an Aether and spores, so at most you would need to overcome the resistance your soul (because it's a bit more invested), but that's something that Forgery can do easily. I think you can do that and it won’t require a lot of investiture. 

How do you suppose the aether will react when that day is over?  Do you think it will demand all that hydration and kill the host quicker or do you think this could be a legitimate option to lengthen out the lifespan of a spore eater?  Still allowing them to miss a day of the stamp from time to time.