Assembling Forgeries

[Trusk'our he/him]

What determines an item is how it's perceived, and how long.

So, what if I am in a carpenter's workshop with lots of table parts that aren't yet assembled, and I decide to help the carpenter out by making a few likely Forgeries of unassembled table legs and bodies to have been sanded and polished up with more care.

Awesome. Now we've got a likely Forgery in place that doesn't require more time or resources on the carpenter's part.

However, what happens if those table parts that are individually stamped are assembled? Will the Forgeries dissolve, as they are no longer individual parts but now a table with multiple incompatible Forgeries on a single object? Will the Forgeries force the Cognitive Aspects of the table parts to stay table parts, thus freezing its ability to change and thus maintaining the Forgeries? Or, do the Forgeries themselves change to fit the table's new history and Cognitive Aspect, effectively merging into a single Forgery?

In short, what happens to a stable Forgery if an object changes its nature without being outright destroyed?

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

What determines an item is how it's perceived, and how long.

So, what if I am in a carpenter's workshop with lots of table parts that aren't yet assembled, and I decide to help the carpenter out by making a few likely Forgeries of unassembled table legs and bodies to have been sanded and polished up with more care.

Awesome. Now we've got a likely Forgery in place that doesn't require more time or resources on the carpenter's part.

However, what happens if those table parts that are individually stamped are assembled? Will the Forgeries dissolve, as they are no longer individual parts but now a table with multiple incompatible Forgeries on a single object? Will the Forgeries force the Cognitive Aspects of the table parts to stay table parts, thus freezing its ability to change and thus maintaining the Forgeries? Or, do the Forgeries themselves change to fit the table's new history and Cognitive Aspect, effectively merging into a single Forgery?

In short, what happens to a stable Forgery if an object changes its nature without being outright destroyed?

From TES Day 30:

Spoiler

“These stamps will not take,” she said, holding up one of them. “That is a Forger’s term for a stamp that makes a change that is too unnatural to be stable. I doubt any of these will affect you for longer than a minute—and that’s assuming I did them correctly.”

Gaotona hesitated, then nodded.

“The human soul is different from that of an object,” Shai continued. “A person is constantly growing, changing, shifting. That makes a soulstamp used on a person wear out in a way that doesn’t happen with objects. Even in the best of cases, a soulstamp used on a person lasts only a day. My Essence Marks are an example. After about twenty-six hours, they fade away.”

“So … the emperor?”

“If I do my job well,” Shai said, “he will need to be stamped each morning, much as the Bloodsealer stamps my door. I will fashion into the seal, however, the capacity for him to remember, grow, and learn—he won’t revert back to the same state each morning, and will be able to build upon the foundation I give him. However, much as a human body wears down and needs sleep, a soulstamp on one of us must be reset. Fortunately, anyone can do the stamping—Ashravan himself should be able to—once the stamp itself is prepared correctly.”

I would guess one of two outcomes - based on the situation's unique circumstances:

1. The Object changes, and its soul changes - so the Stamps wear off like they would on any living thing that changes enough (but probably not nearly as quickly)
2. By the time the parts are seen-as and considered a whole, the owner (not the builder or stamper) already knows and considers *this* table to look *this* way and the stamped parts are a part of its cognitive identity, so though the object changed, and the Identity changed; the stamps remain because it is in this quality that they have been incorporated into the whole. After all (Days 30 and 76):

Spoiler

Quote

Day 30:

 A stamp from Shai in the bottom right corner had restored the window, rewriting its history so that a caring master craftsman had discovered the fallen window and remade it. That seal had taken immediately. Even after all this time, the window had seen itself as something beautiful.

Or maybe she was just getting romantic again.

Quote

Day 76:

“Your Forgery puts him in this room instead?”

“Yes. That was before the water damage that seeped through the ceiling last year, so it’s plausible he’d have been placed here. The wall remembers Atsuko spending days too weak to leave, but having the strength for painting. A little each day, a growing pattern of vines, leaves, and berries. To pass the time.”

“This shouldn’t be taking,” Gaotona said. “This Forgery is tenuous. You’ve changed too much.”

“No,” Shai said. “It’s on the line … that line where the greatest beauty is found.” She put the seal away. She barely remembered the last six hours. She had been caught up in the frenzy of creation.

“Still…” Gaotona said.

“It will take,” Shai said. “If you were the wall, what would you rather be? Dreary and dull, or alive with paint?”

“Walls can’t think!”

“That doesn’t stop them from caring.”