Half-Kandra powers

[Alumínio he/him]

Brandon confirmed in one of the new WOBS that if a human and a kandra had a child it would be of mixed blood, what could their powers and characteristics be? Could the first in the lineage be Wayne and Meelan? (It's a small hope of mine that I have a little Wayne out there)

[Trusk'our he/him]

32 minutes ago, Alumínio said:

Brandon confirmed in one of the new WOBS that if a human and a kandra had a child it would be of mixed blood, what could their powers and characteristics be? Could the first in the lineage be Wayne and Meelan? (It's a small hope of mine that I have a little Wayne out there)

You mean this WoB?

Spoiler

Dragonsteel 2023 - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

Questioner

Given that kandra can replicate human organs, is it possible for a human and a kandra to have a child? And if so, would that child be purely human, or some kind of combination?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a yes, and it would be some kind of combination.

If Brandon has finally made up his mind and made it canonical that a Kandra and a human can have a kid together and that kid is a "combination", I think that-

Warbreaker spoilers:

Spoiler

It's going to be something like the Royal Locks; they have a portion of a Divine Breath in them, similar to that of a true Returned, but it's still somewhat different and not quite as powerful.

Spoiler

Warbreaker Annotations - Arcanum (coppermind.net)

Brandon Sanderson

Vasher Explains Some Things, but Leaves Some Things Hidden

I'm worried about leaving Vivenna's two questions unanswered. One is pretty obvious—how Vasher can hide how he looks—but the other is unintuitive. I wish I could explain better in the book, as I said above, but I decided in the end to just leave it hanging. It's a bit of a violation of Sanderson's First Law, but not a big one. The reason I feel I can get away with it is because Vasher didn't use his nature as a Returned to solve any problems. It is more a flavoring for his character than it is important to him getting out of danger or fixing things. He could have done everything he needed to in this book without being Returned. So I feel it's okay not to explain why he can be Returned and not die when he gives away his Breaths.

Can Vivenna change her appearance more? She can indeed. She could actually stoke that fragment of a divine Breath inside of her and start glowing like a Returned. She can't change her physical features to look like someone else, but she can change her age, her height (within reason), and her body shape (to an extent). It takes practice.

And yes, the scraggly miscreant is how Vasher sees himself. Not noble and Returned, which is part of how he suppresses his divine Breath.

Events in the second book may change that.

 

So a half-Kandra could probably do some shapeshifting and perhaps live longer than a human, but they couldn't do it to the same extent as a true Kandra. They may not inherit all the Kandra's weakness either though, such as being extra susceptible to the Hemalurgic Flaw or needing Hemalurgic spikes to function, kind of like how Koloss-blooded people still get some perks from their heritage but don't need spikes to function.

I think that there's a good chance that the type of Blessing of the Kandra had could influence the child's abilities as well. It's possible that this isn't the case however, and only the physical/innate magical properties of the Kandra are passed down.

[..... he/him]

1 hour ago, Alumínio said:

Brandon confirmed in one of the new WOBS that if a human and a kandra had a child it would be of mixed blood, what could their powers and characteristics be? Could the first in the lineage be Wayne and Meelan? (It's a small hope of mine that I have a little Wayne out there)

I feel like that won’t happen as I believe the kandra would have to choose to have a baby because of how they're Shapeshifting works and their children might have weird bone problems

[Duxredux he/him]

On 11/28/2023 at 10:50 PM, ..... said:

I feel like that won’t happen as I believe the kandra would have to choose to have a baby because of how they're Shapeshifting works and their children might have weird bone problems

This highlights a potential problem based on who is giving birth. If the kandra is the one giving birth, they may not be able to provide the necessary nutrients for the fetus to develop any skeletal structure at all and unless the hybrid can survive as a Mistwraith, they may not survive development or birth. Side note, I wonder if kandra simply can't digest or otherwise process calcium, which would explain bones but not hair. One alternative is if there is something specific in their sDNA which disallows them from making bones but still allows them to pass on the necessary nutrients during pregnancy buuut... having that be the rule basically ends up being "kandra can't because their ideal can't" and that feels a bit like cheating but eventually it will boil down to Brandon needing limitations on powers.

One IRL example of complications specifically based on the genetics of the one giving birth is rh factor complications. You know how blood has the following classes A, B, AB, and O with secondary classes of + and -? The + and - refers to whether or not the blood has the rh factor, which is a kind of protein that is produced with some blood types but not others. Where this used to be a problem historically (and is still tracked with blood donation) is that if a mother did not have the rh factor, say a blood type A- and the child did, say A+, then the mother's body would respond to the child's blood as if it were a foreign invader and produce antibodies to attack the blood cells of the fetus. This is less of a problem in places with good prenatal support where they make a point to check for the mother's blood type, but it's because we've developed medications that can suppress this immune response.

Back to kandra/human hybrids, this is just a hypothetical but it may make a big difference if the child is carried by the kandra or the human. I think that would unfortunately reduce the odds of lil' Wayne.

[Elite01]

Without going into the specifics of how it would work the questions I what if we met a character in era 3 who was an adult Kandra hybrid human hybrid what abilities would they have. 

I think it could have mild abilities like eye color change or affecting skin tone like a tan. 

A more fun option would be to have mild shape shifting like being able to manipulate your fingers into tendrils to pick a door’s lock but not being able do anything more like completely abandon its skeleton. 

im personally in the camp that they would be able to manipulate skin and muscle like a kandra but be limited by staying attached to their bones. 

heres a different question could a hybrid have allomancy or feruchemy? 

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Elite01

[..... he/him]

2 hours ago, Elite01 said:

Without going into the specifics of how it would work the questions I what if we met a character in era 3 who was an adult Kandra hybrid human hybrid what abilities would they have. 

I think it could have mild abilities like eye color change or affecting skin tone like a tan. 

A more fun option would be to have mild shape shifting like being able to manipulate your fingers into tendrils to pick a door’s lock but not being able do anything more like completely abandon its skeleton. 

im personally in the camp that they would be able to manipulate skin and muscle like a kandra but be limited by staying attached to their bones. 

heres a different question could a hybrid have allomancy or feruchemy? 

 

I agree with you. But I think they would have feruchemy because I think that Connor still have the s dna for feruchemy but that it's suppressed by Being a kandra but I think that mixing them with a human would unlock at least part of it so they could maybe be a ferring but I think they'd be a full feruchemy

Edited December 2, 2023 by .....

[+robardin he/him]

On 12/2/2023 at 3:56 PM, ..... said:

I agree with you. But I think they would have feruchemy because I think that Connor still have the s dna for feruchemy but that it's suppressed by Being a kandra but I think that mixing them with a human would unlock at least part of it so they could maybe be a ferring but I think they'd be a full feruchemy

Assuming our friend Connor is a kandra on Autocorrect or voice-to-text, I’ve wondered this as well.

Has the sDNA for Feruchemy been passed down in mistwraiths to kandra, or at least was still latent in the First Generation (which we don’t know what happened to them in Era 2, nor any of the Seconds, we only read that the Thirds are now the most senior kandra around)?

As I tossed out there in the “How To Make An Era 2 Fullborn” thread, if a kandra-mimicking-human has enough simulated biology to produce offspring via the human biomechanics involved, and if it’s not a one-directional pairing (i.e., a posing-as-male kandra could impregnate a human woman, but not vice versa)… how about TWO kandra mimicking a male/female pair making a bio-human-made “kandra”?

Put the two concepts together - “mistwraith/kandra have physical sDNA for Feruchemy, but not expressed in shapeshifting goo bodies needing Hemalurgy for sapience” and “hey lookit, two kandra made a physically hooman form offspring” - and maybe we get a somewhat blobby human Feruchemist!

Edited December 6, 2023 by robardin