101 Kandra Tricks

[Longshot97]

Alright, this is probably best settled in some form before further theorizing can take place. Also, we may want a sort of "index" for referential purposes. Trusk'our, whenever you get the chance, could you implement that?

On 10/7/2023 at 3:02 PM, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I really dont know if F pewter fits the bill here or if F bendalloy is more important. It is interesting that pewter gives mass needed to support the strength gain and that mass seems to disapear when you stop using it, where as bendalloy allows you to draw the energy and use it and that doesnt go anywhere except to sustain yourself. I dont know if there is a WoB for this but in the MAG (which is of course not entirely cannon) tapping large amounts of Bendalloy actually makes you appear fatter... 

So thanks to the MAG my mind is clouded when it comes to these two things. 

Would a Kandra with F bendalloy be able to get bigger or smaller as they store? Is that specific to Pewter? If a Kandra tapped F pewter and became bigger and then someone took a bite out of them before they stopped tapping would the bite of flesh vanish in the persons mouth? Would the Kandra be missing that much of themselves when they stop tapping? Bendalloy is tapped and used and it never comes back. Strength is too. But the mass generated seems like a totally seperate mechanism.

The shinking mass of pewter as one stores strength is a side effect of getting smaller and weaker. Gaining that mass back is a side effect of being stronger. The strength itself is being used as you get it back. The mass seems almost a biproduct of it and once that strength is used the mass would disappear anyway... but if you cut it off while using that strength arent you still losing all of the strength that went with it?  Doesnt really make sense that it would be lost forever... Sazed wouldnt have lost his strength he was tapping if he had his arm chopped off (granted the metalmind wasnt attached to it) but we dont know if that arm would have stayed that size or shrunk back to normal.  

There is a new question to ask for a WoB "If a brute is tapping strength and their muscles get bigger but they get an arm chopped off, does it shrink back to the way it was before?"   

This could either make the Kandra more busted than I thought or it makes me terrified of having a Kandra tapping pewter in general. How do you differentiate the mass of muscle you are gaining from the feruchemy from the mass of muscle that is there. In a Kandras case all muscle falls under a single umbrella. It isnt assigned to anything. It is just meat. Losing an arm means you lose 50% of your bicep and 50% of your bodies tricep. For a Kandra who can regrow limbs they just lose 5% of their meat. What if you double your meat when tapping and get cut in half? How does the spiritual realm know which half was you to start and which half was you to end? 

Okay, back in the thumbtacks-and-string zone. Let's start with F-Bendalloy.

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A bendalloy Ferring is known as a Subsumer. Bendalloy is used to store nutrition and calories. While filling a bendalloymind, a Subsumer is able to eat large quantities of food without becoming full. Tapping such a metalmind will allow the user to go without food. A separate bendalloymind can be used to store fluid intake. -Coppermind

Okay, to me, this suggests bendalloy does not store actual ATP (i.e, biological energy), as it can also store fluid, and mentions directly "nutrition and calories." Because digested food is rendered entirely into nutrients and calories, which is then converted into ATP or tissue, we can guess that the term "energy" for F-Bendalloy is more of a label than anything. There's also a WoB which could be helpful.

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Questioner

I have a sort of delicate question. If a bendalloy Ferring filled an unsealed mind and then gave it to someone else who tapped it, which one would go to the bathroom?

Brandon Sanderson

I don’t think this is working the way you think it’s working. The Ferring who is creating it is going to be the one who goes to the bathroom.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

This suggests that a bendalloy mind stores neither food nor water, but instead stores the digested compounds, to be withdrawn for ATP/tissue/fluid synthesis.

All this is to say that tapping a bendalloy mind should not make a person immediately fatter, unless tapping a bendalloy mind also enhances the body's metabolic rate (of which we have no proof). Of course, consistent tapping of a bendalloy mind in addition to standard food consumption would cause a person to gain weight, but only in the same way eating six meals---without proportionally adjusting one's phsyical and metabolic activity---causes a person to gain weight.

As for tapping F-Bendalloy alone, surplus energy withdrawal will likely be converted to fat, but over a period of time. A Subsumer's body still needs to undergo metabolic activity--muscle and fat synthesis, rehydration, and so on.

Next, F-Pewter. Unfortunately, couldn't find any WoBs for this.

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A pewter Ferring is known as a Brute. Pewter is used to store physical strength. However, as opposed to the simply enhanced body granted to an Allomancer burning pewter, a Brute tapping a pewtermind gains muscle mass and becomes physically larger. The additional muscles allow the Brute to have increased strength. For this reason, pewter metalminds are often designed to be able to stretch wider to accommodate the extra muscles. While storing physical strength, a Brute becomes scrawny and weak

Simple enough. As opposed to Thugs, whose strength is supplemented supernaturally, Brutes physically gain muscle mass, increasing their strength and consequentially their size. Sazed proves that such mass can become a hindrance to mobility at a certain point, but bear in mind that he was drawing on all his reserves in order to survive the koloss. That was likely an immense amount of Brute strength (puns!) he compounded into a few seconds.

We know that this extra muscular strength is granted by the pewterminds, so tapping the mind grants the extra muscle, and releasing it cuts off the source of extra strength. Storing pewter would mean the metalmind siphons your body's available muscular strength, consequentially making you weaker.

To directly address some questions, would releasing a pewtermind leave you with extra strength?

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The mass seems almost a biproduct of it and once that strength is used the mass would disappear anyway... but if you cut it off while using that strength arent you still losing all of the strength that went with it?  Doesnt really make sense that it would be lost forever... Sazed wouldnt have lost his strength he was tapping if he had his arm chopped off (granted the metalmind wasnt attached to it) but we dont know if that arm would have stayed that size or shrunk back to normal.  

There is a new question to ask for a WoB "If a brute is tapping strength and their muscles get bigger but they get an arm chopped off, does it shrink back to the way it was before?"   

This could either make the Kandra more busted than I thought or it makes me terrified of having a Kandra tapping pewter in general. How do you differentiate the mass of muscle you are gaining from the feruchemy from the mass of muscle that is there. In a Kandras case all muscle falls under a single umbrella. It isnt assigned to anything. It is just meat. Losing an arm means you lose 50% of your bicep and 50% of your bodies tricep. For a Kandra who can regrow limbs they just lose 5% of their meat. What if you double your meat when tapping and get cut in half? How does the spiritual realm know which half was you to start and which half was you to end? 

I would say no. Sazed is seen numerous times in The Well of Ascension to lose the extra muscular mass after releasing his metalminds. Most prominently, when he's battling the koloss, he runs out of strength just as Vin arrives to Luthadel and returns to normal size. I would argue the same would apply to kandra.

Look at both Allomancy and Feruchemy. The moment you stop burning pewter, you lose the granted strength, sometimes to disastrous results (see pewter dragging). When you stop burning tin, you lose all senses. Feruchemy works on similar principles. The moment you stop tapping iron, you return to your normal weight. The moment you stop tapping gold, you stop healing. Thus, when you stop tapping pewter, and cut yourself off from the source of Investiture, you lose the Invested ability, in this case strength.

About the Spiritual Realm differentiating between granted and existing muscle. I would argue that is not an issue. The Feruchemical muscle is being magically sustained by the Investiture in the pewtermind. Cutting off that flow of Investiture means nothing sustains the Invested Art, and so the power ceases.

Obviously, we have no direct examples of this, but all evidence points to this. And, in fact, I believe Forch, the Steel-Pewter Twinborn that tries to kill Waxillium, exhibits this. I do not have the book on me, but after Waxillium kills him, I believe his body returns to normal size. Since he is dead, he can no longer draw on his metalminds, and dies.

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Can I toss this as #61 then with the asterisks that it is dependent on F pewter? Continually being able to grow back and shed limbs

Sadly, I think not. Any F-Pewter-granted mass would disappear as soon as the kandra stops tapping (by the rules of my theory). I would, however, say that they can do this with F-Bendalloy. Recall how quickly TenSoon digested the pig and horse to become an absolute beast of a stallion, capable of plowing through several feet of ash. If kandra can swiftly make use of calories and nutrients, perhaps that could regenerate mass at an accelerated rate through F-Bendalloy, rather than shifting around mass to regrow limbs.

I will, however, posit a replacement #61,

61. Temporary Mass On-Demand. With excessive tapping of F-Pewter, a kandra can gain huge amounts of muscular mass in mere seconds. It can then take the muscles, dissolve them, and use the resulting material however it sees fit. This is only a temporary fix, however, as releasing the pewtermind will cause all gained mass to disappear.

As for storing away mass for a kandra to use later, I would say F-Pewter is most effective for storing muscular mass, while F-Bendalloy is best for storing digested material. Thus, F-Pewter can help them more in a pinch, as whatever muscle they gain, they can shift about to suit their needs. F-Bendalloy, however, can help them gain large amounts of permanent mass quicker than digesting meat would. They would still need to synthesize muscle from the calories, but it would be more efficient than simply eating.

Anyways, this took far too long to write out. Feel free to address any errors.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Longshot97

[Trusk'our]

35 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

Alright, this is probably best settled in some form before further theorizing can take place. Also, we may want a sort of "index" for referential purposes. Trusk'our, whenever you get the chance, could you implement that?

Just to clarify, you mean make a recap of all the Kandra tricks already made?

[Longshot97]

12 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Just to clarify, you mean make a recap of all the Kandra tricks already made?

Yes, exactly that. I don't know where would be the best place to put that, maybe the very first post? Somewhere easily referenced, probably.

63. Sensory Hijacking. For lack of a better description, a kandra could connect to another being's nervous system and interpret signals to interpret what the subject senses. This way, a kandra could "see" what another person sees, or "hear" what another person hears.

64. Synesthesia Cyphers. Synesthesia is the fascinating "disability" of associating an unrelated sensory input with a conventional one. For example, a person would hear a word, and instantly visualize a color. There is no one type of synesthesia, and the range is theoretically limitless. If a kandra indicated to another kandra what form of synesthesia to adopt, they could leave cues that trigger words or impressions useful for conveying messages.

Of course, it is possible that a kandra cannot make this alteration any more than they can make themselves depressed or autistic. Let me know what you think.

65. "Perfect" Hemalurgy. A kandra could encase the bind point from both ends in muscle, then manipulate a spike to pass through their flesh into the subjects, and straight out again. This would theoretically completely eliminate Hemalurgic decay, though Era 2 seems to have solved it according to the Ars Arcanum.

66. False Clothing. It makes sense to me that kandra could mimic a wide range of clothing with folds of skin. It would likely feel very odd to the touch, but in a pinch, it could serve well. Heck, with enough small bones, like chicken bones, they might be able to articulate these clothes, and have them act as extra limbs.

[Trusk'our]

46 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

Yes, exactly that. I don't know where would be the best place to put that, maybe the very first post? Somewhere easily referenced, probably.

Alright, sounds reasonable. I'll edit the original post and add the names of each Kandra trick as well as the number associated with them.

47 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

63. Sensory Hijacking. For lack of a better description, a kandra could connect to another being's nervous system and interpret signals to interpret what the subject senses. This way, a kandra could "see" what another person sees, or "hear" what another person hears.

Assuming that the PR physics work the way IRL's do, I see no reason why a skilled Kandra couldn't use this to their advantage. I can't really think of what circumstances would make it too useful though, as the Kandra would need to remain in physical contact with the person whose senses they were hijacking.

50 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

64. Synesthesia Cyphers. Synesthesia is the fascinating "disability" of associating an unrelated sensory input with a conventional one. For example, a person would hear a word, and instantly visualize a color. There is no one type of synesthesia, and the range is theoretically limitless. If a kandra indicated to another kandra what form of synesthesia to adopt, they could leave cues that trigger words or impressions useful for conveying messages.

Of course, it is possible that a kandra cannot make this alteration any more than they can make themselves depressed or autistic. Let me know what you think.

I don't know that this would work; Kandra can manipulate their Physical Aspect as they please (with the exception of creating bone, enamel, or keratin), but their Cognitive Aspect is out of their direct control. 

We've seen from TenSoon that they can manipulate their senses through modeling their body in the correct fashion though, so perhaps they could try something similar, or perhaps get it to work with enough time and effort.

53 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

65. "Perfect" Hemalurgy. A kandra could encase the bind point from both ends in muscle, then manipulate a spike to pass through their flesh into the subjects, and straight out again. This would theoretically completely eliminate Hemalurgic decay, though Era 2 seems to have solved it according to the Ars Arcanum.

This could be interesting- a Kandra Hemalurgist (or assassin) could use this method to more discretely steal powers or attributes from others. They would have to worry about automatically piercing their own Spiritweb with the spike though, as it is in their flesh and would be Hemalurgically charged.

55 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

66. False Clothing. It makes sense to me that kandra could mimic a wide range of clothing with folds of skin. It would likely feel very odd to the touch, but in a pinch, it could serve well. Heck, with enough small bones, like chicken bones, they might be able to articulate these clothes, and have them act as extra limbs.

Sounds like a cool trick. Might be a bit weird, but I think it could work 

[Longshot97]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

This could be interesting- a Kandra Hemalurgist (or assassin) could use this method to more discretely steal powers or attributes from others. They would have to worry about automatically piercing their own Spiritweb with the spike though, as it is in their flesh and would be Hemalurgically charged.

Not necessarily, as the spike would need to strike a bindpoint, and Brandon has stated that kandra bindpoints are much more fluid. A Cosmere-aware kandra should be able to manipulate this.

[Trusk'our]

1 hour ago, Longshot97 said:

Not necessarily, as the spike would need to strike a bindpoint, and Brandon has stated that kandra bindpoints are much more fluid. A Cosmere-aware kandra should be able to manipulate this.

Hmm, perhaps that could work. They might need to worry about the spike causing them pain by being misplaced by doing that though. But perhaps not- maybe that kind of pain only happens if placed in a Bindpoint that's incorrect and not just anywhere in the body will cause it.

[.....]

67. Infinite senses this one does not benefit the kandra but its possible(I think). so some one with the ability to control hemalurgic constructs controls the kandra and forces it to make eyes for example and spikes it for eyesight then the kandra would make a new one and they spike it again repeat. I dont know if that would actualy work but it would be cool if it did.

[Longshot97]

Darn it, we will reach 101 kandra tricks. There are so many out there, it just takes the proper thought.

67. Hydrophobic Material Production. A bit on the mundane side, but a kandra could produce natural hydrophobic compounds, to help insulate themselves from terrible weather or waterproof objects.

68. Hide Tanning. Also mundane, but a kandra could theoretically kill an animal and use its own digestive fluids to render a hide supple and durable. Could be useful in survival situations, I don't know.

69. F-Iron Mass Hack. Pretty sure this hasn't been posited, but a kandra could circumvent the square-cube law slightly through Iron Feruchemy. And hey [Sunlit Man spoilers]

Spoiler

If there are devices that force a person's body to be heavier, surely there are devices to make a person lighter. Depending on the limits of these devices, it might bypass the natural limitations inherent to Feruchemy, further hacking the square-cube law.

70. Automotive True Bodies. This is more on the ridiculous side, but imagine a True Body containing a mini engine (or solar panels, or something) with wheels attached to strategic locations. At will, the kandra could engage inner mechanisms, exposing the wheels to air and powering the rotors. A kandra could then rearrange its body to facilitate contact between the ground and the wheels, which are powered by the engine to spin at high speeds. In short, z o o m.

Either that, or the kandra rigs a muscle-powered rotor system (which I have no idea how they'd manage, as no creature in nature tries for that), allowing them to spin the wheels under purely biological power. Amusingly, F-Steel might help this method gain even greater speed.

Obviously, this theory had absolutely zero outside influences.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Longshot97

[.....]

71. spoilers maybe? for something maybe? its about sleepless so tell me if that needs to be spoiled please?

Spoiler

could you breed a kandra or mistwraith and a sleepless to get a mistwraith and sleepless combo and give it some blessings to make it smart and then have a kandra who has a hive mind that could be intresting.

 

[Longshot97]

On 10/20/2023 at 9:36 AM, ..... said:

71. spoilers maybe? for something maybe? its about sleepless so tell me if that needs to be spoiled please?

  Hide contents

could you breed a kandra or mistwraith and a sleepless to get a mistwraith and sleepless combo and give it some blessings to make it smart and then have a kandra who has a hive mind that could be intresting.

 

Yes, absolutely. Spoilers for The Stormlight Archive, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and the Cosmere as a whole.

As for the idea...in my opinion, not quite possible. The kandra cannot reproduce with each other or other species, though Brandon has said he might go back on that. Still, as of now, the kandra cannot produce offspring.

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Questioner

My favorite god, Sazed/Harmony, in my recent reread I got a bit angry at him because he didn’t let kandra be able to reproduce, but he let the koloss be able to do it. And I’m wondering if there’s a way he could have allowed that, but he chose not to? And also if there’s a way that it could happen in the future, so that two of my favorite people could have a baby?

Brandon Sanderson

There are a couple things that he was facing, and let me walk you through his philosophy on this, which you are allowed to disagree with. I want, for every character I write, there to be things they do that you disagree with, because otherwise I’m writing all characters to be the same person, if that makes sense.

The kandra have immortality and are able to perpetuate their culture by being immortal for as long as the individuals live. The koloss don’t have that, meaning that if he didn’t make koloss able to breed true, the entire people vanish in one generation and all culture associated with them. And so because of that, he took the extra effort to change the koloss to allow for this sort of thing. But he did it in such a way that they would not have to have hemalurgic spikes, because the idea of making new hemalurgic spikes is extremely distasteful to Harmony. Reusing old ones is a thing he was willing to allow, but new ones he didn’t.

Could he have changed the kandra to be similar? Well, the answer is kind of a fairly... yes, but they would no longer have been the kandra, they would have been rolled back to being what they were before the Lord Ruler. And so they basically would stop being what they are that makes them unique as a culture. And he decided not to do that.

You can disagree with that, and I think there are some pretty valid arguments against the choice he made, but that is the choice he made.

Is there a way going forward? Yes, this is theoretically possible.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

I do wonder if performing...whatever process the Lord Ruler originally used to create the kandra on [Spoilers for TSA and YatNP]

Spoiler

hordelings would preserve the hive-mind qualities of the Sleepless. That would be an extremely potent combination. Food for thought.

However, in the theme of kandra sharing a mind [Spoilers for Warbreaker]

Spoiler

72 (or 71, depending on what Trusk'our decides). Awakened Biological Constructs. A kandra in possession of sufficient Breath could awaken a skeleton, then encase them in flesh, similar to Kalad's Phantoms. Definitely pricier than Nalthian Lifeless, and much less versatile. However, if the formula for ichor-alcohol becomes a secret, this could circumvent that .

 

 

[.....]

4 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

Yes, absolutely. Spoilers for The Stormlight Archive, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and the Cosmere as a whole.

As for the idea...in my opinion, not quite possible. The kandra cannot reproduce with each other or other species, though Brandon has said he might go back on that. Still, as of now, the kandra cannot produce offspring.

but mistwraiths can. also thanks for telling me it needed to be spoiled because I wasn't sure.

Edited October 21, 2023 by .....

[Longshot97]

1 minute ago, ..... said:

but mistwraiths can

Can they? A kandra and a mistwraith are not biologically distinct. The only difference is the Hemalurgy-induced sentience that are kandra Blessings.

73. Bio-Luminescence. More of a general ability, but could be useful in the dark. Could also be used to blind enemies. Just a very versatile ability to have.

74. Biological Prosthetics. A kandra could fashion a replacement limb (say, a missing left hand) for a human the same way they create their True Bodies, with the other, matching limb (the remaining right hand) providing the reference to manufacture an artificial skeleton. They would then generate flesh to cover the skeleton, the same way MeLaan healed Marasi's bullet wound in the Bands of Mourning. After connecting veins, stitching nerve endings, grafting bones, and extensive physical therapy, a human would have a virtually identical biological prosthetic.

[.....]

4 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

Can they? A kandra and a mistwraith are not biologically distinct. The only difference is the Hemalurgy-induced sentience that are kandra Blessings.

mistwraith can reproduce and kandra can't. I think that creating a mistwraith hybrid depends on how mistwraith reproduce.

4 minutes ago, Longshot97 said:

73. Bio-Luminescence. More of a general ability, but could be useful in the dark. Could also be used to blind enemies. Just a very versatile ability to have.

can bioluminescence get that bright?

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

@Trusk'our 

#75: Full Feruchemist Kandra

I don't know if it would truly take aluminum to make this work but in the future of the cosemere when there are actually medallions for each metal a Kandra could collect enough to grant all feruchemist abilities without the need of taking on added risk of extra spikes.  

Do we know if medallions require contact to flesh in order to work?  Could someone wear one over their clothes and gain benefit?  

If you needed aluminum I imagine you wouldn't necessarily need a tight box that is opened over and over again. If each medallion can hold 3 powers it would take 6 medallions for full feruchemy. If you created an aluminum box with dividers and slid each medallion between the dividers then left a small hole for each one the kandra could hold the perimeter of the box within itself and have created little fleshy tentacles when needed to reach in and touch the medallion needed at that time. 

I know we don't see medallions work exactly like having the powers at the moment but once Scadrial lands a zinc compounder who takes a serious fancy into these things the progress could be insane.  

Making medallion combinations that make sense to work with eachother will be important but really if it is as simple as pulling a finger out of a hole and then putting a different one into a hole this should work pretty dang well for granting near full feruchemist types of ability. 

[Duxredux]

Most of these ideas are medically related and deal with concepts in the modern era, so their effectiveness may be dependent on how available F-Gold healing is. That said, even if unsealed medallion technology is far more common place, it's still gold and probably won't be the cheapest option. Depending on how available the attribute of Health is, I would expect F-Gold to be used specifically to save lives and stabilize trauma victims while conventional medical practices are used for nearly everything else.

#76 Surgeon

Not much to say here and we've already seen MeLaan and Ulaam make pretty good surgeons, but I'm putting it in the context of the next few tricks.

#77 Kandra Blood Bank / Organic material production

With the right food supply on hand, a couple of kandra could probably supply most if not all of the blood needed for hospitals in the basin.  Their ability to replicate organic structures would probably let them mass produce other materials as well, like spider silk, though I think other people have already said something similar. Not sure where the line will be drawn though, as anything similar to hair or fur is out which probably eliminates sheep's wool as an option. I think the blood donation demands in the U.S. is around 10,000 liters of blood per day. Despite Gold Ferrings carrying the moniker Bloodmaker, Kandra are much more suited for the role as they can transform literal carrion into blood, and that is generally more resource efficient than burning gold.

#78 Patient Blood Care (Heart-Lung Machine, Kidney Dialysis)

As an extension of blood production, they could probably serve for major life support systems for these kinds of medical challenges. Worst case scenario, they take in the patient's blood, digest it, and produce their own clean and fully oxygenated blood to pass back to the patient. This could keep someone alive during emergency transport, while surgery is being performed, or if F-Gold is unavailable.

 

Warning, the next is a practical but potentially really creepy and nauseating application.

Spoiler

#79 Emergency Food Rations

So... MeLaan can turn into a horse. Which means a kandra can turn into a cow. A self-regenerating cow that can eat just about any organic matter and convert it into dairy and beef products. Aaand I'll just stop there. It was a logical extension from blood bank, okay?

 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Duxredux

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

6 hours ago, Duxredux said:

Most of these ideas are medically related and deal with concepts in the modern era, so their effectiveness may be dependent on how available F-Gold healing is. That said, even if unsealed medallion technology is far more common place, it's still gold and probably won't be the cheapest option. Depending on how available the attribute of Health is, I would expect F-Gold to be used specifically to save lives and stabilize trauma victims while conventional medical practices are used for nearly everything else.

#76 Surgeon

Not much to say here and we've already seen MeLaan and Ulaam make pretty good surgeons, but I'm putting it in the context of the next few tricks.

#77 Kandra Blood Bank / Organic material production

With the right food supply on hand, a couple of kandra could probably supply most if not all of the blood needed for hospitals in the basin.  Their ability to replicate organic structures would probably let them mass produce other materials as well, like spider silk, though I think other people have already said something similar. Not sure where the line will be drawn though, as anything similar to hair or fur is out which probably eliminates sheep's wool as an option. I think the blood donation demands in the U.S. is around 10,000 liters of blood per day. Despite Gold Ferrings carrying the moniker Bloodmaker, Kandra are much more suited for the role as they can transform literal carrion into blood, and that is generally more resource efficient than burning gold.

#78 Patient Blood Care (Heart-Lung Machine, Kidney Dialysis)

As an extension of blood production, they could probably serve for major life support systems for these kinds of medical challenges. Worst case scenario, they take in the patient's blood, digest it, and produce their own clean and fully oxygenated blood to pass back to the patient. This could keep someone alive during emergency transport, while surgery is being performed, or if F-Gold is unavailable.

 

Warning, the next is a practical but potentially really creepy and nauseating application.

  Hide contents

#79 Emergency Food Rations

So... MeLaan can turn into a horse. Which means a kandra can turn into a cow. A self-regenerating cow that can eat just about any organic matter and convert it into dairy and beef products. Aaand I'll just stop there. It was a logical extension from blood bank, okay?

 

I love all of these.  Kandra as a pseudo ECMO machine for perfusion during surgery sounds epic.  

I have to now take this surgeon idea to the extremes.  

Could a Kandra replicate our Cathlabs?  What kind of sensory can they have attached to even the tiniest of limbs?  

Could they make the incision, and then progress a tentacle of themself up through circulatory system consuming any clots along the way?  Perhaps even creating grafts and repairs within the body with the most minimal trauma possible?  

I wonder if they could replicate and attach a new mitral valve or even create new vasculature for a person who needs bypasses.... although wouldn't you just be able to eat and consume all of the clogged vasculature in there anyways?  Instead of needing extensive surgical repairs for the heart through bypasses a kandra could be the ultimate cathlab. Branching off a tiny piece of themselves cleaning the entirety of the system.  

My only concern with this idea is time... how long would it take for a kandra to make all of this progression?  The idea that metals physically burn faster while you are tapping steel... if it translated over to a kandra and their ability to replicate organs or DNA... means that a kandra with Feruchemical steel could do this faster than modern medicine can for sure. 

How would they navigate the inside of a body though?  I imagine that if they can replicate other sensory organs or create bioluminescence in combination with some vision down there... or maybe in combination with either systems tin usage?