Strange Savantism Questions

[Varenus]

Not sure if any of these questions have answers, but I think they are still worth discussing.

1) Is it possible to become a Feruchemical Savant? What exactly does this entail? Would they be more efficient in their tapping/filling? Would they be able to more precisely tap/fill their metalminds?

2) Is it possible to become a "Hemalurgic Savant"? Meaning that the person's soul has fused with the stolen pices to the point it no longer considers them stolen? Would the Hemalurgic spikes still be required or could they be removed?

2B) If attributes were stolen from someone who was storing their identity, would it be possible to impart that attribute to someone without the need for the spike to stay in their body?

Extrem case:

2C) If attributes were stolen from someone who was actively tapping the identity of the person who was to receive(is it even possible to tap someone else's identity?), would the continued presence of the Hemalurgic spike still be necessary?

3) If a Savant filled a nicrosil investiture metalmind(one that anyone could tap) with their more powerful allomancy(thinking about Spook's tin), would the person tapping said metalmind become a Savant as long as they were tapping it?

[Kurkistan he/him]

11 minutes ago, Varenus said:

Not sure if any of these questions have answers, but I think they are still worth discussing.

1) Is it possible to become a Feruchemical Savant? What exactly does this entail? Would they be more efficient in their tapping/filling? Would they be able to more precisely tap/fill their metalminds?

As of now no.

Source:
 

Quote

Kurk: Is there such a thing as a Feruchemical savant?

A: I did not write Feruchemical savants into the original outline. Whether or not I will do them- it’s _highly_ unlikely because it’s not there and mistborn is getting trickier and trickier in that regard. But I didn’t write them in, so… that’s a “probably not”.

 

[Calderis he/him]

16 minutes ago, Varenus said:

1) Is it possible to become a Feruchemical Savant? What exactly does this entail? Would they be more efficient in their tapping/filling? Would they be able to more precisely tap/fill their metalminds?

My take on it is for standard Feruchemy no, because between storing and tapping your never going to use enough, often enough to have the effect of widening the cracks in the soul you can when flaring an allomantic metal. 

That said, a Compounder... That seems more likely, but it's still shaping the power into one native to the body. So for now I'd say maybe for compounding and no for standard. 

19 minutes ago, Varenus said:

2) Is it possible to become a "Hemalurgic Savant"? Meaning that the person's soul has fused with the stolen pices to the point it no longer considers them stolen? Would the Hemalurgic spikes still be required or could they be removed?

No. Hemalurgy doesn't involve any internal investiture to the person using it. You steal something from some, and then twist the soul of another around the spike to accept the new attribute. The attribute is contained in the spike, so removing the spike removes the benefits. 

21 minutes ago, Varenus said:

3) If a Savant filled a nicrosil investiture metalmind(one that anyone could tap) with their more powerful allomancy(thinking about Spook's tin), would the person tapping said metalmind become a Savant as long as they were tapping it?

I don't believe so. Their ability to use Allomancy has not changed. They'd only be storing that ability. What has changed is the cracks in the soul that the investiture pours in through have been widened and their body has changed due to that fact. 

An allomancer still has the SDNA to burn a metal before they snap, but they lack the cracks needed in their soul for the investiture to pour in through. What the spike is taking is that inherent ability. The cracks themselves don't go with it. 

[Julio]

1) Yes, I believe it is. I don't remember where you'd find it, but I'm pretty sure there's a WoB about it... and yes, that's pretty much exactly what it'd do. I believe Sanderson has said that Wax is a Feruchemical Savant, though I know he's also said that he wants to change how savantism works... so...

2) A Hemalurgic Savant would, presumably, be someone who was able to STEAL investiture from other people more efficiently, not what you're implying. 

2B) Impart the attribute of lacking identity? ....the way I see it, Hemalurgy steals attributes, not lack thereof. I don't believe you could use a spike to steal "weakness" instead of strength, or "not able to use feruchemy" instead of the ability to do so. 

2C)Um. I don't think that's possible. Though, well, Sanderson could totally do it. We never know, really. However, I think that violates the rules that we currently know. And yes, I believe Hemalurgy requires the spike to stay. The inquisitors die when their spikes are removed, Ruin's influence leaves when Vin removes her earring, Harmony can't talk as easily to Wax if Wax doesn't have his earring, etc... Basically, there's lots of precedent saying that a hemalurgic spike CANNOT be removed without undoing it, and no precedent for that being possible.

3)No, that's not how that works. They could certainly be more powerful, by tapping a lot of it at once(Like Wax in BoM), but they wouldn't gain Savantism. That's just not what Savantism is. Also, I believe there's a WoB that says that if there are too many powers present, one cannot become a Savant. Thus, Vin couldn't become one, while Wax can, etc. 

Hope that helped!

[Varenus]

Thanks for all the great answers guys! Up votes for all!

I guess I wrongly assumed that Hemalurgy was like an organ transplant or something. Questions 2B and 2C were an attempt to create an "unkeyed Hemalurgic spike" which would fool a person's soul into thinking that the new parts provided by the spike were actually theirs to begin with by removing the original person's identity/ changing the original person's identity to match the recipient's. 

Julio, I was not implying that we would be stealing someone's " identitylessness", but was speculating what an allomantic/feruchemical/human attribute stolen from someone who had no identity would act like. Does that make any sense? 

I supose a follow up question would be: 

If something is spiked out of someone, and they somehow live, and that spike was plugged back into their body, can their soul reattach itself to the ripped out piece, because it was originally theirs, or would some form of healing be needed to make their spiritweb whole again?

Also:

The heart of what i am getting at is this (pun intended). Does the stolen part of a spiritweb inside a Hemalurgic spike know that it belongs to someone else? And, would it behave differently when in contact with its original spiritweb?

[Calderis he/him]

@Varenus The point of Hemalurgy as Ruin's magic manifestation is to degrade the powers it steals. The power taken is held in the spike itself and will continually degrade until it hits whatever threshold it stops at, or it is placed into a body or blood. 

If someone survived a hemalurgic theft, replacing the spike would probably take them close to normal again, but there would still be both a physical and spiritual wound.

Healing would be better without the spike in place. That would heal both wounds, whereas if the spike is in place, it would be in the way of the healing in both aspects and prevent a full healing. 

At least that's the way I understand it. 

[Varenus]

@Calderis

Oh wow, I didn't even consider the Hemalurgic decay factor.

Makes sense that a spiritual healing would work more smoothly without the spike in place as well. 

Guess that settles the Savant questions. Although, I still wonder how identity and Hemelurgy interact, if they do at all. Probably a question for another thread however. 

[Calderis he/him]

2 minutes ago, Varenus said:

Guess that settles the Savant questions. Although, I still wonder how identity and Hemelurgy interact, if they do at all. Probably a question for another thread however. 

I doubt that they do. I don't have a basis for this, but it seems like at most a lack of identity is going to allow the attribute to better integrate into the spiritual aspect of the body receiving the spike... But the attribute is still anchored to the spike itself, and the spirit is still going to be twisted around the foreign piece. By the spiritual aspect of the spike itself. 

I think the spike itself piercing both aspects is what allows hemalurgy to bypass the identity problem in other systems, but that also makes it unable to be removed from the spike. 

And just to be clear, when it comes to Hemalurgy, I'm speculating a lot here. In general we don't know much about what the extent of its capabilities are. If anyone with a better knowledge than me wants to step in and offer a different explanation, I'd be happy to hear it as well. 

[Weltall]

3 hours ago, Varenus said:

2) Is it possible to become a "Hemalurgic Savant"? Meaning that the person's soul has fused with the stolen pices to the point it no longer considers them stolen? Would the Hemalurgic spikes still be required or could they be removed?

Maybe not in terms of Savantism but something like this might be possible. We have a Word of Brandon that burning a hemalurgic spike would splice your sDNA and that contained within the spike with 'very strange consequences'. So we don't know exactly what it would do but the result could be a permanent transfer of some of the sDNA to you. But he did mention strange consequences so it's probably not as neat and tidy as that and you'd have to be stark raving bonkers to test it out.

3 hours ago, Julio said:

1) Yes, I believe it is. I don't remember where you'd find it, but I'm pretty sure there's a WoB about it... and yes, that's pretty much exactly what it'd do. I believe Sanderson has said that Wax is a Feruchemical Savant, though I know he's also said that he wants to change how savantism works... so...

Wax is/was planned to be an Allomantic savant with his steel, Brandon talks about it here, though like you said the way being a savant works is somewhat up in the air right now. @Calderis has mentioned why an ordinary Feruchemist probably isn't ever going to become a savant; not enough Investiture messing around with your spiritweb in the way that Allomancy or fabrial-based Soulcasting does.