Stealing mistwraith malleability

[Grubfriend He/Him]

Weird wording, but how could a person steal a mistwraith's ability to control its shape? Nothing on the table seems to fit, besides lerasium but that's such a waste.

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Through The Living Grub said:

Weird wording, but how could a person steal a mistwraith's ability to control its shape? Nothing on the table seems to fit, besides lerasium but that's such a waste.

I do not think that is a trait that can be stolen. They are a different species - created from people, but no longer people and they bred true so Mistwriaths now were never people before.

But there are other ways to cause some amount of Shapeshifting. 

WoBs:

Spoiler

Quote

Oudeis16

TenSoon comments that when the unbirthed are given Blessings, they lose the mimickry instinct that mistwraiths have and have to be taught anew. If their only native senses are touch and taste, how exactly do you teach a blob of muscles how to form things like eyes and ears?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, you feed it some partially digested eyes, then some more eyes, then eventually it starts making eyes on its own. It takes a while; Kandra 'children' grow more slowly than human ones.

Oudeis16

I don't know if you've considered how mistwraiths would be taxonomically classified; have you decided whether or not mistwraiths would be considered 'mammals'?

Brandon Sanderson

They are not mammals. Since they were deliberately created, I'd place them in their own branch.

/r/books AMA 2015 (July 16, 2015)

 

Hope that helps

Edited May 12 by Treamayne
SPAG/Elaboration

[Grubfriend He/Him]

6 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

They are a different species

But they can still receive human attributes. 
SA spoilers:

Spoiler

A radiants abilities can only be stolen if both the human and their spren are spiked. Spren aren’t humans (they are pure investiture ,yes, but souls are investiture too)

In era 2 of mistborn, koloss are technically their own species too. However, they still use human attributes in spikes.

Another SA thing:

Spoiler

Hemalurgy can be used to replicate listener forms.

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xadcirk

Can Hemelurgic Spikes be used to steal Listener forms?

Brandon Sanderson

Replicate them, perhaps. Stealing them would be like stealing the fact that someone is Asian--not really what Hemalurgy does.

 

Spoilers for sixth of the dusk:

Spoiler

Aviation attributes can be stolen in a way similar to radiant bonds. Snipped for relevance.

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Questioner

So my question along those lines was: what happens when you use a Hemalurgic spike on an Aviar?

Brandon Sanderson

You are a very mean person. Basically, an Aviar’s got a mini-bond, so it’s gonna work in a similar way to what would happen if you were trying to do it to a Knight Radiant, which I’ve talked about in the past. Which means it is a less effective way to try to steal something with Hemalurgy, because once you’ve got two individuals involved in it… The Aviar, obviously, isn’t exactly the same. But it’s going to work, but it may not last, I guess is the answer I would give you on that.

 

 

[Treamayne]

19 minutes ago, Through The Living Grub said:

But they can still receive human attributes. 

Right, receive a human attribute. But their ability to change shape based on eaten biological material and using a skeleton is not, itself, an attribute to be stolen that we know of. 

20 minutes ago, Through The Living Grub said:

Another SA thing:

  Hide contents

Hemalurgy can be used to replicate listener forms.

Quote

xadcirk

Can Hemelurgic Spikes be used to steal Listener forms?

Brandon Sanderson

Replicate them, perhaps. Stealing them would be like stealing the fact that someone is Asian--not really what Hemalurgy does.

Your WoB has the answer - bolded for emphasis (SA Spoilers)

Spoiler

Mimicking a single form is not the same as stealing the ability to change forms at-will without investiture changing the spiritweb and causing a cascade change through all three realms - which is how Singers change form during a highstorm. A Nahel Bond changes their Spiritual and Cognitive Identity and massive influx of investiture from a Highstorm allows their physical body to change to match the new identity. A very different process from what is known about Mistwraiths. 

The rest of your WoBs are about bonds - not about a single Hemalurgic Spike stealing a single trait that would confer the ability to shapeshift like a Mistwraith/Kandra. As I said in the first post - there are ways to change forms/shapeshift; but we do not yet know of a way for Hemalurgy to steal this one trait.

The only known way to change a human into a mistwraith-like-shapeshifter is a Shard or Sliver using the full power of the Well (or Shard) to force a change at every level. Then, its not stealing a trait, it's a permanent race change by any reference that I can find. 

Since we do not actually know what, precisely, Rashek did - we don't seem to have enough information for further conjecture.

Sorry

[Nitpicking]

You could argue that with the importance of the Cognitive Realm, if you convinced enough thinking beings that it's possible to steal basic biology, it would be, but at "the moment" (the time of Wind and Truth) that is not the case that we can tell in the Cosmere. I suspect Ruin (now Harmony) would have to intervene to change hemalurgy in order for it to happen.

I think if Brandon wanted more horror elements, he might introduce an atium alloy that permits stealing biological form and physiology. You could spike out, say, a a beautiful woman's form (leaving behind a dead mistwraith-like blob) and the person who received the spike would become her physical duplicate (except for the spike itself). It would be a horrible, evil way for short-lived people like humans to obtain physical immortality.

If a spike had time to degenerate outside of a living person, it would produce a horrid mangled creature of mismatched parts from the original form and the stolen one. The evil immortal would try to find more people of similar appearance to the first victim to spike, to "perfect" their new body, leaving a trail of blob-corpses, and Brandon's old idea of a bunch of Misting-cops would have to track the person down ... did I just write the elevator pitch for a Mistborn side-story?

[alder24]

18 hours ago, Through The Living Grub said:

Weird wording, but how could a person steal a mistwraith's ability to control its shape? Nothing on the table seems to fit, besides lerasium but that's such a waste.

If Hemalurgy can make you grow wings, or steal the ability to grow gemhearts from Singers, it can most definitely turn you into a shapeshifter by stealing something from a mistwraith. The hardest part would be figuring out what metal to use for your spike and where you need to place it.

Spoiler

Krios (paraphrased)

If you have a form of manipulating your Identity and a form of healing, are you able to shapeshift or even evolve your body like growing wings?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You'd have to do some real work on your Spiritweb to make that work. It'd take more work than you're implying, but the [singers] for instance are doing this. It'll take a little more work, it's not just blanking your Identity. Hemalurgy would make it very easy, but also very evil. But what you want to achieve is possible.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

 

Spoiler

Snipexe

Could you spike the ability to grow a gemheart out of a singer?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I think you could. Yeah.

The Great American Read: Other Worlds with Brandon Sanderson (Oct. 25, 2018)