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TheoryMaker's put this question on the Shardcast thread: What happens when a Kandra gets cut by a Shardblade?

 

My Friend and I tried to answer this question, and failed.

 

A shardblade affects the flesh away from the heart and brain, by cutting away Either the Spiritual of Cognitive Connection. But a Kandra needs no Heart or Brain. Their sentience comes directly from their Spikes.

 

So, If a Shardblade does cut off a Limb, could the Kandra reabsorb it, and heal the flesh? Would it actually cut the bone, since it's techniccly dead already? If you beheaded a Kandra, would it Survive? Can you cut through a Hemalurgic Spike with a Shardblade?

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I honestly don´t know either but I´ll try to find an answere that makes sense. Kobold King is free to add his thought, if he happens to ignore your warning and reads this. :P

 

Flesh cut by a Shardblade dies on a spiritual level, so I doubt a Kandra could heal it with physical means, making it at the very least permanently grey and very unhandly to use, if not downright alien to the body and unusable to the Kandra.

A dead bone would most likely be severed, given that they at no point become an actual part of the Kandra´s living body.

Behadings should be just as (non-)lethal as normal to the Kandra, just with the added deficit of whatever the blade does to the flesh.

Spikes are invested, even if not by much, so they should offer some resistance but a lot less than Shardplate. Maybe one or two hits at most, would be my guess.

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I think that the cut flesh would die, but nothing would stop the kandra from simply regrowing the arm from the rest of his flesh. depending on their metabolic efficiency, tthey could eat their dead arm and use the extra mass gained to make a new arm with little loss. the bone would probably cut. beheading should not be fatal, but it's tricky because a physical beheading is nothing to a kandra, but a spiritual beheading ccould actually hurt.

So, anyway, slash a kandra with a shardbalde once, he'll be temporarily weakened. slash enough times, he'll die.

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I'm not sure what would happen. It would be interesting to see what would happen if a spike is hit. I'm sure it would get sheared, but I'm not sure what impact that would have on the kandra, considering they somehow also have Hemalurgic bindpoints on their formless bodies.

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(Words of Radiance spoilers, obviously. Honestly, though, if you're worried about spoilers, stay away from this particular corner of the site.)

 

As I've always understood it, a Shardblade doesn't sever the Spiritual connection unless it touches the bone. If it touches the spine, they're dead. If it hits their arm, that arm is "killed". 

 

If I remember correctly, Kaladin sticks Syl into Szeth's stomach, "searching for his spine". Until he actually hits the spine, however, the blade does no harm, correct? A Kandra's bones don't even belong to it, though. They're really just shaping their body around it, so I somehow doubt slicing through the bone would have much effect. I'm not sure what impact, if any, slicing their flesh would have. It's an interesting question. I assume slicing through its spikes would turn it back into a mistwraith?

Edited by Lindel
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I think shardblades cut through when they sever all nervous connections to the central nervous system. Cutting the spine is so damaging because it cuts the soul that leads to the heart, so the heart won't work. Cutting the spine lower just kills the rest of you below there (see Hobber).

Edited by 18th Shard
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This is an interesting addition to the discussion:

 

 

 

NINJAMETIMBERS
How intelligent is a mistwraith? Could you raise and train mistwraiths like dogs or horses, controlling what forms they take by the bones you give them? Would you be able to train yourself a horsewraith steed by giving it only the bones of a horse?
BRANDON SANDERSON
This is feasible. One thing to keep in mind is that mistwraiths are people who have a blockage between the physical and the cognitive realm, messing with their ability to think. Think of them as mentally-stunted people. There's enough there to train, but then you have to dig into the ethics of it...

 

Well, one could argue that all of them have sentience, but the spikes simply unlock it through fixing their minds. 

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Here's another one I found, about the Cognitive aspect of Kandra: (Source)

 

zas678 (Reddit.com)

TenSoon wonders, and I wonder too- How can Kandra think and be sentient without Brains? Doesn't the body need a physical coordinator to relay between the Physical and Cognitive realm? Or do the spikes do a good enough job with that?

Brandon Sanderson (Reddit.com)

I imagine Kandra having a non-centralized nervous system, with brain power spread through their bodies. Well, non-centralized is probably the wrong way to say it. They have lobes of thought and memory attached to muscles here and there, and don't have a single 'brain.' They certainly have brain-like material, though.

 

Oh, and Kandra can Survive bisection: (Source)

Herowannabe

Okay, a couple questions about Kandra. So when Kandra digest bones, obviously they need that Physically, but is there a Cognitive or a Spiritual purpose to the bones, too?
Brandon Sanderson

No, the bones are just there for the muscles to pull against.

Herowannabe

Okay, so they don’t need it for some Spiritual link through the bones to mimic someone?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Good question.

Herowannabe

Also, what would happen to a Kandra if you bisected it down the middle with half of its blessing ending up in either half?

Brandon Sanderson

That would be—like ripping off any other piece of it—that would be very disturbing for the Kandra. But they could reabsorb and come back together. They would not be able to function half and half, that would eventually kill them basically. They can’t like send pieces of themselves off and do things. They can be ripped apart and heal, but if you ripped them in half, that would be killing them.

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So, assuming a Kandra couldn´t heal the flesh cut by the Shardblade does that mean they might lose some memories?

I guess so. though the nervous system is redundant, and I expect the kandra to be extra redundant as an adaptation. when tensoon is wounded in combat, he don't look like he lost memories afterwards, so losing small chunks of tissue has no effect.

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Well we know from Alloy that pieces of spikes are still spikes in their own right, so as long as a piece of the spike remained within the Kandra I don't think the Blessing would be destroyed. 

 

I can't remember where, but I'm pretty sure I've seen in WoB that breaking a spike damages it, speeding up the process of Hemalurgic decay. Each spike has half the power, but they're losing it far more quickly. That's what I remember off the top of my head, at least. Inside a body, I think breaking a spike is likely to damage its Spiritual connection to the person in some way. 

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I can't remember where, but I'm pretty sure I've seen in WoB that breaking a spike damages it, speeding up the process of Hemalurgic decay. Each spike has half the power, but they're losing it far more quickly. That's what I remember off the top of my head, at least. Inside a body, I think breaking a spike is likely to damage its Spiritual connection to the person in some way.

So the question then is how big does a spike need to be to have enough power to carry a blessing? Is it a function of size at all or only of composition and placement?

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I would guess the spike as an invested object would at least resist the shardblade. It may be much like a regular sword hacking a regular spike, or it may be more like shardplate where it resists damage until it finally explodes. I doubt it would just shear through like a shardblade through an inanimate object.

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So the question then is how big does a spike need to be to have enough power to carry a blessing? Is it a function of size at all or only of composition and placement?

 

I don't think size is the issue, I think it's likely placement that's the biggest concern. If you shear a spike in half, you'd probably also mess up its alignment a lot, not to mention potentially lose a lot of Spirit juice.  ;)

 

Not that I actually have anything to back these claims, I'm just going on instinct here.  

Edited by Lindel
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Well we know from Marsh's segment when he was going to spike Penrod that the size of the spike doesn't matter at all other than for its ability to physically pierce the flesh. He outright says it. However, that is assuming a whole spike made to be that size. It might be a different thing if a spike was made and then divided. Thinking about it, it would have to be, otherwise Hemalurgy would hardly be end-negative. If I can make one Allomancer's power into power for 2, 4 or 8 more Allomancers that's certainly not end-negative. 

 

So what do we think based on some of the higher Realmatic implications of Hemalurgy? What would be the effects of dividing a spike? Would the power all concentrate into one remaining piece? Would both pieces be invested but to a lesser degree? Would there be power lost? We know it's possible to divide a spike and have at least one piece of it remain Hemalurgically charged (Wax's earring) though that might also have something to do with Sazed's influence and his changes to Hemalurgy. 

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I know I've read WoB on this, but I can't remember where... Ah, found it:

 

Maru Nui ()
What happens when you break a Hemalurgic spike or metalmind? What happens to that power?
Brandon Sanderson
Hemalurgic power can be split among multiple spikes and reforged, but remember that the longer a spike is outside of a person, the more the power is going to decay. Things like splitting it will decay it even further. Metalminds can also be broken and still be accessed.

 

(Link)

So the power can be divided between spikes, but it speeds up Hemalurgic decay. This doesn't exactly answer what would happen if the spike inside someone were sheared. It's possible that the Invested nature of the spike would stop a Shardblade anyway, which would render this whole line of discussion pointess.

 

If the spike could be cut, I think it's safe to say the Spiritual connection would be disrupted in some way, possibly with a similar result to simply taking the spike out. Assuming Kandra have specific bind points, of course.

 

 

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A thought-provoking debate, gentlemen. I have been keeping tabs on the learned discourse that comes into play on this thread. Valid points have been raised, and the conversation has filled me with an enthusiasm to learn more about how these separate magic systems shall ultimately be shown to connect.

 

I simply wished to drop in, congratulate you all on your intellects, and leave this screenshot that I found amusing here.

 

1501379057c6125e96980f86311db48c.jpg

 

The red circle was added for emphasis. Anyway, back to lurking and carrying out my private war against tyrannical tags!

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  • 1 month later...

If a kandra has an even number of spikes, and you cut it in half with a shardblade and each half has the same ammount of spikes, does it become 2 kandra? And if so, which is considered the original kandra and which the copy? Or are they both considered copies, or both the original?

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  • 1 month later...

Spikes transfers identity from person to person, and alter preexisting . Feruchemy copies or stores specific identity attributes and also the larger identity of the feruchemist acts as a lock on metalminds. I would imagine the bones of mistwraiths developing an identity to the animal the longer it held those bones. However creating wraiths & kandra would involve making their cognitive and physical identities more malleable.

 

my question is can kandra breach metalminds?

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While I am hardly an authority on the subject...I would have to guess that the answer is no.  If you read further back into this thread...you will find a Brandon Sanderson quote that indicates that a kandra's use of bones is strictly utilitarian and does not in any way spiritually connect the kandra to the bones previous owner.  There is another that mentions that kandra are basically thinking people who have a block or breaks that inhibits them from thinking like a person.  Recieving a blessing simply fixes that break and restores them to a more sentient state...the spikes themselves don't imprint a personality on them.  

 

but here's an upvote for thinking outside the box

Edited by hoidhunter
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