Other Possible uses for Soulstamps?

[Landis963 he/him]

You don't have to actually make them make those bad decisions, though. That's the beauty of Forgery. You can simply (relatively speaking) stamp them and they'll experience what life is like if they had made those choices.

Of course, I'm not really convinced how well that would work out anyways, but it's intriguing.

Edit: I wonder if you could stamp someone into having a disease like cancer or AIDS or even diabetes? Diabolical if so.

jW

 

I'm fairly convinced it would not end well for the Forger who tried that.  Assuming the idea is to stamp someone so they've lived out the consequences of poor decisions, on one hand you have the "you messed with my mind?!" revulsion that springs up as soon as the trick is revealed, or if you didn't conceal the trick you'd have the "this is nightmarish to think about so consider the whole process blocked out" repression, aided by the fact that emotions caused by false memories wash away as though they were a bad dream just over an hour later.  

[happyman he/him]

It seems to me that, given the nature of Forgery, it would be far easier to actually ruin somebody's life than it would be to forge them into thinking their life had been ruined.  Forgery, like most Selish magics, is an art of intense study and scholarship.

[Arrae]

Probably. And it would be pretty difficult to convince somebody's cognitive/spiritual self that they want to have made bad choices in the past. A more benevolent use could be Forging someone out of a drug addiction? People might be a lot more willing to test that out and restamp themselves every day for that.

[Oudeis he/him]

Lol, easy cure for addiction, there's just this one thing you have to do every day, forever.

[Voidus]

Lol, easy cure for addiction, there's just this one thing you have to do every day, forever.

Oh also you have to completely master your own mind and soul as well as spend a few years creating stamps for it.

If you understand yourself and your motivations enough to create a Soulstamp it would be far easier to just treat your addiction yourself.

One thing I can definitely see this as being useful for though is in psychiatry. Being able to confirm what motivates someone would be very important and helpful and it wouldn't require years since you're not making an entire stamp, just checking how well certain things would hold.

[Landis963 he/him]

One thing I can definitely see this as being useful for though is in psychiatry. Being able to confirm what motivates someone would be very important and helpful and it wouldn't require years since you're not making an entire stamp, just checking how well certain things would hold.

 

Doesn't Gaotona mention this exact use in the book?  

[Voidus]

Doesn't Gaotona mention this exact use in the book?  

Been a while since I read ES so maybe?

[Atkion he/him]

I wonder if you could make an essence mark to pass yourself as, say, a government official? It wouldn't need to be a full essence mark, just something to change a core aspect or two about yourself. Great Assassin's tool.

[Landis963 he/him]

On 4/17/2016 at 2:56 PM, Voidus said:

Been a while since I read ES so maybe?

I just checked - it's not confirming an element of a psychiatric patient's testimony, it's giving elements of your personality to others so they, in retrospect, can understand better where you're coming from (e.g. Ashravan's temper, which Gaotona notes mirrors Shai's).  

[Mercy he/him]

On the point about reForging a broken sword:

I would think an easier application of Forging weapons would be more along the lines of stamping an innocent metal goblet / candle stick / frying pan, and changing its history such that the blacksmith decided to make a sword / dagger instead. It would be a fantastic way for an assassin to conceal a weapon. Who would think twice about the servant carrying in metal tray with food, and a small but concealed Soulstamp?

For that matter, could this same approach not be used to conceal any number of items? A sheet of parchment and a Soulstamp which changes the words that were written on that parchment, as a way of sending secret messages?

[Stormgate he/him]

Perhaps a Soulstamp that stamps it to be false information, but small and concealed, and must be pried off to reveal the true message.

[Spoolofwhool]

I'm surprised no one mentioned this earlier, but I've thought of a couple of uses of soulstamps with feruchemy. 

Essence marks, as stated, affect the target spiritual identity. My first idea then is that you could apply an essence mark to a feruchemist to make them unable to access their previously-made metalminds. Useful if you want to make sure they don't access any hidden or internal metalminds, especially if you're planning on executing twinborn golds like Miles. Especially if you don't want to waste time killing him excessively. Another facet of this idea would be have the feruchemist create while under the essence mark, which could then only be accessed by the feruchemist under the essence mark again, and would be safe from use by someone who hemalurgically takes his powers (though at that point they probably wouldn't be worrying about the metalmind anyways). A viable case would be to protect a certain memory, since they wouldn't be safe from direct hemalurgical theft, or use of the metalmind if the powers are stolen.

Honestly though, everything I just wrote is low-key compared to a potentially underused feruchemical power. Aluminium feruchemistry. Imagine. You use an essence mark on a trueself ferring, then they store that new identity for later usage. This could be extremely powerful, as you could get around some problems about essence marks, such as needing it to last awhile and requiring that you're near Mai Pon. For instance, we know that you can use essence marks to turn someone into a fighter. But even if you brute force it so that it only lasts a minute or less, you could just keep applying it and storing the spiritual identity into a metalmind, with full access later on. Overall, with enough time spent storing them, you could have a set of aluminium metalminds which allow you to switch between quite varied identities on the fly.

[Weltall]

On 8/4/2016 at 4:11 PM, Demoux said:

I would think an easier application of Forging weapons would be more along the lines of stamping an innocent metal goblet / candle stick / frying pan, and changing its history such that the blacksmith decided to make a sword / dagger instead. It would be a fantastic way for an assassin to conceal a weapon. Who would think twice about the servant carrying in metal tray with food, and a small but concealed Soulstamp?

Since 'plausibility' is the name of the game when it comes to major alterations, I wonder if this would be covered by the example we're given about how changing lead to gold is effectively impossible (because who would make something intended to be lead out of gold instead?) but the reverse would be pretty easy. So, instead of taking an innocuous object and Forging it to think that I Am A Dagger, it might be more 'plausible' for a blacksmith to think 'I'm tired of making weapons, I'll use this bit of metal to make something pretty instead'.

Of course, that means you'd have to hide the presence of the stamp but in the Rose Empire at least, that might not be a problem. Shai points out how so much of the art in the palace is Forged so a servant carrying a stamped tray might not really attract any special attention. Either way, neat idea.