Kandra Vs. Shardblade

[Elend Venture he/him]

     A simple question. What happens when a kandra or really any being without a nervous system gets struck with a shardblade?

[Steel Inquisitive he/him]

Quote

greaterbookwyrm

What happens when you cut a kandra with a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

So a kandra is going to react basically the same way, in that the Shardblade's going to be hitting at the soul and severing it and things like that. They are not immune to Shardblades. But because they have mutable shapes, there will be a little bit of weirdness involved in that. You'll get to see that happen eventually.

That last part is exciting!

[+Invocation]

Kandra have a nervous system, it's just different than the one in humans and significantly more malleable, so probably the same thing that happens to anything else.

[Elend Venture he/him]

Thanks, ya'll. As far as the nervous system thing I  just meant that they didn't have a brain and/or natural spinal cord per se. So maybe you would have to sever their spikes for an instant kill?

 

[+Invocation]

7 hours ago, Elend Venture said:

Thanks, ya'll. As far as the nervous system thing I  just meant that they didn't have a brain and/or natural spinal cord per se. So maybe you would have to sever their spikes for an instant kill?

That could be one way to do it, but it's certainly not the only one. Soulsever the section that holds their memories and they won't remember what they were doing and they're at your leisure. Sever the section that has their primary cognitive functions (assuming they can't split that portion into smaller chunks) and they essentially be lobotomized and die eventually. Find the portion of the brain that determines their breathing and heartbeat functions and sever that, then they slowly suffocate or suffer heart failure.

Ironically, this particular "strength" of the kandra leaves them exceptionally vulnerable to things like Shardblades because they're used to being able to heal everything immediately.

[Karger he/him]

21 hours ago, Invocation said:

Ironically, this particular "strength" of the kandra leaves them exceptionally vulnerable to things like Shardblades because they're used to being able to heal everything immediately.

They are still realy hard to kill.  Cut off one arm and they just grow another or two.

[+Invocation]

2 hours ago, Karger said:

They are still realy hard to kill.  Cut off one arm and they just grow another or two.

The trick there is that they probably don't have enough bones for that, so it'll really just be a big meaty tube.

Not very useful, easy to disable with another quick Shardblade swipe.

[Karger he/him]

35 minutes ago, Invocation said:

The trick there is that they probably don't have enough bones for that, so it'll really just be a big meaty tube.

Not very useful, easy to disable with another quick Shardblade swipe.

What if they are using aluminum bodies?  Also its not like bone adds to mussel strength.  You can still strangle or disarm someone with one.

[+Invocation]

7 minutes ago, Karger said:

What if they are using aluminum bodies?  Also its not like bone adds to mussel strength.  You can still strangle or disarm someone with one.

An aluminum body would help slightly, but the flesh is going to still go dead. All that'll happen is the Blade either jars to a halt on contact with aluminum or there's enough velocity behind it to cut through anyway, which is possible depending the strength of the swing and resilience of the aluminum. (At least if I recall which one of the two WOBs is canon correctly.)

Bone doesn't add to muscle strength, no, but with no bones, they're going to have issues moving the arm in the same way as one that has a skeletal backing for reinforcement. Granted, a kandra could mitigate that to some degree, but there's limits to that.

[Pathfinder]

On 7/28/2019 at 1:03 AM, Invocation said:

An aluminum body would help slightly, but the flesh is going to still go dead. All that'll happen is the Blade either jars to a halt on contact with aluminum or there's enough velocity behind it to cut through anyway, which is possible depending the strength of the swing and resilience of the aluminum. (At least if I recall which one of the two WOBs is canon correctly.)

Bone doesn't add to muscle strength, no, but with no bones, they're going to have issues moving the arm in the same way as one that has a skeletal backing for reinforcement. Granted, a kandra could mitigate that to some degree, but there's limits to that.

Honestly I think you are underselling the gains of an aluminum body versus a shardblade. Killing the limb requires you to sever the "trunk" of the link. Same thing with organs. So if you have an aluminum alloy that strengthens the durability of the metal to withstand the blow, then the kandra would receive shardblade wounds, but wouldn't lose as large chunks of flesh as you posit. I could easily see a scenario where a shardblade wielding person, swings on a Kandra, just for the blade to get blocked by the arm, and the person being so stunned that an arm stopped the blade, the kandra would knock it out of the wielder's hand, requiring it to be resummoned, during which the kandra could theoretically have already killed the wielder before then. 

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Pathfinder said:

I could easily see a scenario where a shardblade wielding person, swings on a Kandra, just for the blade to get blocked by the arm, and the person being so stunned that an arm stopped the blade

Or just lastclasping around the blade with the remaining mussels forcing the wielder to dismiss it.