Savantism and Identity

[Dancer]

Identity in the Cosmere is basically like a fingerprint for your soul. Savantism is when your soul is warped and cracked due to long term exposure to Investiture. So would becoming a Savant change your Identity. 

Lets say you have a twinborn. He fills up his metalmind then leaves if for 5 years. In that time he has been burning his metal non stop and has undergone extreme Savantism. He goes back to his metalmind. Now because his soul is so severely warp, is his Identity changed enough that he is now locked out of his metalminds that he made before becoming a Savant?    

[Quantus he/him]

I dont think so, Spiritual change and/or damage alone doesnt change your Identity enough to make Metalminds inaccessible, even when they are specifically messing with Identity.

 

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Lucadaw

If someone used Hemalurgy to take someones Feruchemical abilities would they be able to use that persons personal metalminds? Most relevantly perhaps to take that person's knowledge from their copperminds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Lucadaw

If someone stored their identity in an aluminium metalmind, then had their powers and metalminds stolen via Hemalurgy, then the person who took the powers used the aluminium metalmind to draw out the first persons identity would it permanently overwrite their personality with the original persons ? ( would kind of be a long winded way of stealing someone else's body and becoming immortal )

Brandon Sanderson

All Identity questions are a RAFO until I deal with it more in the books. (Sorry.)

WeiryWriter (in response to the first answer)

If the spike granting Feruchemy were to be reforged/split into two distinct spikes which are then implanted into two different people, could those two people "share" a metalmind (as in actually be able to tap something the other stored and vice versa?).

Brandon Sanderson

It's complicated, but no.

There would be too much of the other person mixed in. Both could use the metalminds of the person the Feruchemy was stolen from, but when they made their own, their own Identity would "muddy" the creation.

Worldbuilders AMA (Dec. 7, 2015)

 

 

 

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Questioner

So, Miles Hundredlives. If you were to spike his Allomantic gold out of him, would that change his Identity such that he could no longer access his metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

That would not necessarily change his Identity, but it would change his Investiture. So if you took off the piece of his soul that could do Allomancy, and then gave him his metalminds. Well, no... No, this is more complicated than I was assuming. So you're saying if someone took away his ability to do Allomancy, could he still access his Feruchemy metalminds. Yes he could. He could still do that. That should work just fine. 

Questioner

Do the metalminds kind of have a pointer to his Identity, they don't have a copy of his Identity that they're keyed to? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah... he is still him unless you spike him and do something with the Identity specifically. 

Questioner

So you could potentially steal his Identity.

Brandon Sanderson

That strays into RAFO territory, so we'll go ahead and give you a RAFO card. But simply taking it away would not change his Identity to the point that it would prevent-- Good question. Very detailed.

Orem signing (March 10, 2018)

 

 

 

 

14 minutes ago, Aluminum said:

wax is a steel savant I believe and he never mentioned an instance where he could not fill or draw from one of his metalminds. I would liken metalmind encryption like a phone fingerprint scanner. Even if slightly disturbed it will still unlock your phone

Wax is a bad example when it comes to savantism, WOB has it that he's going to recast his abilities as skill-based rather than savantism, which was intended to always have significant downsides and has drifted from it's original intent.

[Honorless he/him]

I think the person should still be able to access their old metalminds. Savantism widens the cracks in one's Spiritweb but it doesn't transform it to the point of unrecognizability.

[Aluminum he/him]

wax is a steel savant I believe and he never mentioned an instance where he could not fill or draw from one of his metalminds. I would liken metalmind encryption like a phone fingerprint scanner. Even if slightly disturbed it will still unlock your phone