kandras and beard stubble

[king of nowhere]

I just realized a small, but very annoying difficulty a kandra has towards maintaining his cover: faking beard stubble.

 

Ok, if a kandra is posing as a common man, he can just retract the stubble every morning and pull it out in the evening. But it won't do for rich people, who - with the sole exception of sam vimes - have servants to cut their beards. Those servants would realize something is amiss if they found their razor clean after the operation, so if the kandra doesn't want to be spotted he has to offer some hairs to be cut every day. And kandras can't grow hairs on their own. For a few days they can offer the part of the hair that wass embedded under the skin of the person they replaced, but once that runs out, they have to somehow find new hairs. How can they get them?

I wonder if there is a kandra barber, surreptitiously saving up the hairs he cut to send them covertly to his brethren around...

[Eki]

I suspect very few people know the limitations kandra have (in fact most people don't know kandra exist in the world of ash, I think). So a small change in someone's morning routine probably won't tip a normal servant off.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

Clever catch! You should mention that to Sanderson the next time you see him - I bet he will love it!

[king of nowhere]

I suspect very few people know the limitations kandra have (in fact most people don't know kandra exist in the world of ash, I think). So a small change in someone's morning routine probably won't tip a normal servant off.

 

nobles know of them, and it would make sense that they would instruct some selected servants to watch for signs that someone has been swapped. Still, the part about most people not knowing stuff about kandras hold. I was actually thinking more of events from SoS (which I don't want to open spoilers about) than of the ashworld, but the same considerations hold true.

 

Clever catch! You should mention that to Sanderson the next time you see him - I bet he will love it!

I would, if I happened to live in the same continent. Or even in a country where he passed on a tour. As it is, maybe someone else could do the mentioning. And maybe a future book will mention it.

[dashardie]

I think my mind has been blown....Sam Vimes is part of the cosmere!?!? I knew it!! Great A'Tuin is actually the "Survival" shard...

[CaptainRyan he/him]

I would, if I happened to live in the same continent. Or even in a country where he passed on a tour. As it is, maybe someone else could do the mentioning. And maybe a future book will mention it.

 

Ah. Sorry to hear that Sanderson does not come close to you. Well, if you need a place to stay in California in order to go to a book signing let me know! 

[king of nowhere]

I just got a flash of intuition that led me to solve the barber paradox:

The barber is the one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves. The question is, does the barber shave himself?

 

Answer: the barber is a kandra and does not need shaving. He also collects hairs for his fellows.

[The Ninja Yodeler he/him]

It would be a problem. But wouldn't a simple solution be for the Kandra to just ingest more hair and grow it as it needs it?

[natc]

Well, obviously the original corpse is dead and digested.

You're going to walk up to a guy and say "I need your beard"?

[Eki]

nobles know of them, and it would make sense that they would instruct some selected servants to watch for signs that someone has been swapped. Still, the part about most people not knowing stuff about kandras hold. I was actually thinking more of events from SoS (which I don't want to open spoilers about) than of the ashworld, but the same considerations hold true.

I believe most people think Kandra don't impersonate humans anymore, as of the W&W era. And they are supposed to be servants of Harmony, so I don't think people worry about them spying and such.

The Set probably does, though. They might look for inconsistencies like that.

[Pathfinder]

Men typically have body hair as well. It would not be a long term solution, but the kandra could certainly migrate chest and leg hair to the face and let it out in bits over time to emulate stubble. Given the time period, walking around naked or with little clothing is very rare. True servants tend to draw their lords and ladies baths, but at least in men's case I believe it is rare to have a male servant wash you as well. Especially as an adult. 

[Magestar he/him]

Couldn't a Kandra, theoretically, keep a piece of a body alive, by pumping blood to it?  For instance, instead of digesting, say, a chin, they could just hold it in place with bits of flesh, and keep it alive.  Then, the chin could grow a beard, by itself, while the Kandra only has to keep the chin working.  

 

Yeah...

 

Thats a little gross.