Would you want to be a condra?

[Guest]

I feel like it would be cool to be condra, but then I wouldn't have my own body. What do you guys think?

[Through the Living Hopper He/Him]

1 hour ago, Nissa of Scadrial said:

I feel like it would be cool to be condra, but then I wouldn't have my own body. What do you guys think?

Welcome to the Shard! Please consider an Intro Post  to let us know what you have or haven't read (whichever list is shorter)! Also check out the Sharder FAQs for helpful information.

The question of "would I want to be a Kandra" really, for me, is "am I still enslaved by the Lord Ruler?" 

It would be cool, but immortallity would be hard. On the other hand, getting to live through all technological advances would be pretty great.

[Guest]

You're in newer times, so you aren't under the Lord rulers rule

[Myst He/Him]

Yes.

HoA

Spoiler

I’d get to be spiked, except it wouldn’t be a bad thing, plus I could get aesthetic spikes in non-bind points that wouldn’t kill me. Also, choosing your own bones would be so cool

[Guest]

Yeah, I agree 

[#1 Taln Fan he/him]

12 hours ago, Nissa of Scadrial said:

I feel like it would be cool to be condra, but then I wouldn't have my own body. What do you guys think?

Welcome to the Shard! Just a heads up, I've moved this topic to the Mistborn forum. General Brandon Discussion is more for spoiler free general discussion pertaining to Brandon/the Cosmere, rather than spoilery book discussion. If something might have spoilers, (like info about the Kandra, or the Lord Ruler's rule ending) then it's better off in one of the book discussion forums. 

[Honors Spectral Image She/her]

12 hours ago, Nissa of Scadrial said:

I feel like it would be cool to be condra, but then I wouldn't have my own body. What do you guys think?

Kandra? But if so then yes I would love to be a Kandra

[Shatter He/Him]

Yes. 
no other comments. 
just yes. 

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

1 hour ago, Shatter said:

Yes. 
no other comments. 
just yes. 

So real

yeah this ^^^

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

I'm a fan of immortality, plus Kandra Shapeshifting has quite a bit of untapped potential, so heck yeah I wanna be a sentient pile of goopy flesh that eats bones.

 

[Honors Spectral Image She/her]

Just now, JustQuestin2004 said:

I'm a fan of immortality, plus Kandra Shapeshifting has quite a bit of untapped potential, so heck yeah I wanna be a sentient pile of goopy flesh that eats bones.

 

I am repping this post. I am out of rep but just know it has been mentally repped

[Trusk'our he/him]

13 hours ago, Nissa of Scadrial said:

I feel like it would be cool to be condra, but then I wouldn't have my own body. What do you guys think?

Technically, as a shapeshifter you could just choose to stick to your original form. That's what I'd do, since I'm also a big fan of my body and don't want to swap it for anything else.

That said, fine tuning some things here and there would be nice, and there are a lot of other perks such as near agelessness, immunity to disease, and the ability to remain whole after nearly any injury. 

Basically it'd be nearly the same as the human experience, but better.

 

Mind control is a valid weakness, but one that rarely comes up and should be easier to counter with the advent of cheap aluminum. 

Edited November 14, 2025 by Trusk'our

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

5 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Technically, as a shapeshifter you could just choose to stick to your original form. That's what I'd do, since I'm also a big fan of my body and don't want to swap it for anything else.

That said, fine tuning some things here and there would be nice, and there are a lot of other perks such as near agelessness, immunity to disease, and the ability to remain whole after nearly any injury. 

Basically it'd be nearly the same as the human experience, but better.

We’ll, technically Kandra don’t have original forms (mistwraiths don’t count)

[Returned he/him]

11 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

We’ll, technically Kandra don’t have original forms (mistwraiths don’t count)

Slightly off topic for the thread, but did the original generation Kandra have their own, original bodies? Obviously they were transformed from human by the Lord Ruler. But I wonder if their Kandra bodies counted as still being them (in the same sense that Kelsier's current mode of existence involves pieces of his original body). My understanding of Cosmere principles suggests yes, or near enough, but I'm not sure.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Now the next question is what Kandra Blessing would you all pick?

There's no real choice for me except for the Copper Blessing, because it not only gives resistance to Hemalurgic Control, an invaluable trait on its own, but also, oh you know, literally makes you smarter. It helps you focus, prevents insanity, improves memory. God I would love to have two bits of metal that just improve every aspect of my brain.

[Guest]

sorry guys i spelled it wrong, but i listen, i haven read any books exept the skyward series 

4 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Now the next question is what Kandra Blessing would you all pick?

There's no real choice for me except for the Copper Blessing, because it not only gives resistance to Hemalurgic Control, an invaluable trait on its own, but also, oh you know, literally makes you smarter. It helps you focus, prevents insanity, improves memory. God I would love to have two bits of metal that just improve every aspect of my brain.

me too

[Trusk'our he/him]

5 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Now the next question is what Kandra Blessing would you all pick?

There's no real choice for me except for the Copper Blessing, because it not only gives resistance to Hemalurgic Control, an invaluable trait on its own, but also, oh you know, literally makes you smarter. It helps you focus, prevents insanity, improves memory. God I would love to have two bits of metal that just improve every aspect of my brain.

Yeah, copper's my #1 go to. It's probably better suited for long-lived beings as well, since better memory and resistance to insanity would be useful for a person centuries old.

Iron is my second, since it allows a Kandra to retain significant strength without the need for tons of muscle mass. Flying should be much easier with this Blessing, since any muscles powering wings would be greatly enhanced. 

Iron could also just be useful if you do ever get in a physical confrontation in your millenia-long lifespan, as you could run, jump, or attack better than any regular person even without sculpting your body for battle. 

 

Tin is probably good for something, but sculpting better senses doesn't seem as hard as sculpting a highly muscled body for combat. I just don't think it's very good compared to the others.

Zinc might be better than copper for shielding your mind, but it might not. Plus, copper gives lots of other perks.

[Duxredux he/him]

Hmm... for me it depends. There's a lot that may or may not go into it that doesn't really get addressed or is only alluded to in the books. Like... if I simply was born as a Mistwraith and then uplifted to a Kandra then sure. Friends, family, and community would be the new norm. If I was like the First Generation starting out as human then get zapped into a pile of goop and have to relearn everything... that's a much, much harder sell. Is my family also Kandra or will I simply outlive all my human family and friends? How much conscious control does it take to maintain my shape? For example, can I lock into a form or do I have to mentally maintain my entire fluid mass? I mean... generally it takes an hour or more for a Kandra to slowly eat and memorize a form before recreating it - along with placing each individual hair in every pore. TenSoon and the spies pre-Catacendre are the ones who ate a lot, imitated a lot, and got really, really fast at changing and copying. MeLaan who has been doing it for half a millennia still takes what, half an hour to an hour or two? Getting ready for the day would probably take an order of magnitude longer for me than it currently does. At least. I think we are severely minimizing the amount of practice and mental effort all this takes for a Kandra. Considering for them this may be a pre-requisite to learning to walk. For context, during TenSoon's trial only those up to the Ninth Generation were considered adults - with a new generation created every hundred years. Which means that under 100 is considered adolescence. 

Basically... the degree of flexibility and the ways it can be useful in many ways feels like training a machine learning model - by hand. There aren't textbooks or designs to download (yet) for a Kandra so the vast majority of the modifications require being much, much more closely acquainted with death and the deceased and potentially tens of thousands of hours of practice if not hundreds of thousands of hours. If I were initially human and got zapped into a Kandra... it would be hard, really hard for me to become okay with the idea of eating that many people for practice. MeLaan as a member of the Seventh Generation is quite comfortable with her identity and physiology as being entirely unrelated to humanity - citing that humans are more closely related to a cow than a Kandra. I do not have that mental divide. Along with that, Kandra like rotten meat - is that palate or dietary and will I need to make the change over? I mean... MeLaan liked booze but VenDell turned down Allik's pastries and hot chocolate saying that he was strictly carnivorous. Conventional wisdom says that if they can copy the whole digestive system they should be able to process food like that digestive system does - except they clearly can't make bones or hair despite logically being able to copy the cells that produce them. 

All in all, if I were given the option for free elective Hemalurgic surgery that turned me into a Kandra I don't think I would take it. Too much I'm not comfortable with. Especially if the spikes still require Hemalurgic donors.

Edited November 15, 2025 by Duxredux