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For each different hand and misadventure, there is a ribbon and seal at the bottom of the paper - with the ribbon, seal and wax color corresponding to the authority that updated the document. You set it aside temporarily, and in the faltering light of your eyes, you open up the Master Family Patent, so you may compare. Interestingly, the Master is written entirely in one hand - but while the record doesn't go past the Approved Transport to Outremer, it does go further back, briefly accounting for his parents, their parents and their parents parents. As it is all in the same hand, you have to think that a new Master Family Patent was made for Polyergus when he was approved for Approved Transport. It would make sense, keeping a Master Family Patent up to date on the other side of the Ultimate would be a difficult and expensive proposition, so perhaps when Billeted Subjects are Transported, they can be issued new Masters, to make a separate branch of their family. Certainly something to consider. Actually, if you were to portray a Family Patent that had just been issued, then all of it would be in one hand, right? Yeah, that ... that holds water. Alright, then ... so what do you need to forge this? Sheets of long-form paper, some black ink, ribbons and ... shit. Seals. How are you going to fake seals? Well ... maybe you don't fake them. As it seems that Polyergus isn't going to be needing his Master Family Patent, couldn't you just ... pull the ribbon with the seal off, then attach it to your forged copy?
Come to think of it, you could really part out Polyergus's Family Patents. You would keep the binders, the ribbons and the seals that were on them - all you would need to do is clean off the old paper, attach the new sheet, then attach the ribbons to that. Presumably, it would be a lot easier than recreating everything - well, actually, just the seals themselves would be trouble, everything else you need is in the tilt-top desks in the gallery downstairs. From your understanding of the note, the signets are kept in a vault ... which depending on how tight and strong it was, it might not even be on the table. There was a box of signets in Aldoin's library that has some blanks and there tools to carve them too ... but you didn't bring the carving tools, and you didn't even take the blank signets. That ... aye, that was a failure of imagination. You knew you were going to be forging documents tonight - Hell, immediately afterwards - was it really too much of a leap to recognize how useful blank signets could be in forging if the document to be forged had seals, as the Family Patents turned out to have? It must be that you are too tired; come to think of it, if you had more in you right now, you'd probably be really beating yourself up over this - right now, all this is making you feel is hollow and stupid. And tired. And aching, and worn down, and a little off-kilter. Damn ...
