Are most South Scadrians Feruchemical Savants?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Just remembered a few WOBs and the whole idea of 'Feruchemical Savants'.

It's meant to be very difficult for a normal Feruchemist to become a Savant, unlike an Allomancer, because they can't steep in their own power as much. But if they had a way to Compound or tap into Metalminds that someone else fills, then they would be able to.

Who does this exact thing? Most people in Southern Scadrial. They survived the Ice Death through using Feruchemical Medallions that certain people, known as Firemothers and Firefathers, who spent their lives storing away their body warmth for others to use.

So, would most Southern Scadrians be Feruchemical Brass Savants? 

If they are, could this form of Savantism, where it's implied that a Feruchemical Savant becomes dependent on the extra supply of attribute from the metalmind like Miles with the extra health, make their problems with their low body temperature even worse?

[Treamayne]

6 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Just remembered a few WOBs and the whole idea of 'Feruchemical Savants'.

Here's that WoB:

Spoiler

Questioner

There are Allomantic savants, are there Feruchemical savants?

Brandon Sanderson

Much harder to do. My feeling on Feruchemical savants was because it was your own power in the first place, you can't steep in it so much in the way. But, if you can get someone else's power or if you are fueling your Feruchemy another way, you would become one. So, the Lord Ruler is a good example.

Questioner

Was Miles a...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Miles would be the same sort of thing.

Questioner

Is that why he didn't die as quickly in the execution?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

So yeah. Normally no but if you can Compound you become... basically that is how I am explaining part of the Compounding abilities. 

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

On the one hand, they are using power from a source other than themselves. On the other hand, they are not Compressing the power (2x Heat, 3xHeat, etc.) so it is still only a trickle of power - so it may be more about skill with accessing the power than actual Savantism which would permanently warp the Spiritweb. Related WoB:

Spoiler

Brainless

You've always said that your favorite sort of magic was being a Coinshot or being a Windrunner because you really want to fly. So I thought that iron Feruchemy you can fly using just iron Feruchemy. So if you had a paraglider and a place to jump off of, you're paragliding, go downwards, your momentum increases, you increase your weight when you're going downwards. You pull upward and then you decrease your weight. Your velocity will increase and you'll go up--

Brandon Sanderson

We have thought about that. I'm not sure if the math-- Like, we're trying to conserve momentum. We're trying to follow the math of that. So the question is, would that work? It probably would, but I'd have to look at the math. Because I tried to make very clear in the Wax and Wayne books that we conserve momentum...

Really what we're doing is, we're breaking potential energy, right, when we're doing this. Because iron Feruchemy is just the weirdest of all of them. Because we're breaking potential energy, what you just said probably works, doesn't it.

Brainless

That was in context with the thing I was saying yesterday, about Feruchemical savants. If you did that every day for years, would you potentially get to the point where you could potentially make one side of your body heavier than the other side?

Brandon Sanderson

...There are many people in the cosmere who would think this idea has merit and they would want to test it.

MisCon 2018 (May 26, 2018)

So, much like the Coinshot skill of separating steel and iron llines from the midpoint of an object (Kelsier pushing and pulling on different parts of the cage bars in TFE, Wax separating a bullet's steeline into the three separate components to only push on one in BoM) which was not a Savant ability, just exceptionally practiced skill. 

Hard to say until/unless we see it in-story or Brandon answers the question directly.