Gemling Class? Gemling Keystone(s)?

After a recent talk with Vorici, I was reminded of the gemlings that have been mentioned throughout the PoE lore, and began thinking upon the idea of placing gems directly into the body as a feature of the game. I'm sure there are several ways this idea could be implemented, but one or two in particular came to mind...

1.) Gemling Class
This would require a ton of balancing, to allow the character to actually be competent and otherwise on-par with the other classes, but... No gear. (Bar, perhaps, rings, amulets, and belts.) Just make the character have default "gear" for each body part, unchangeable, and with a set amount of sockets/links. Perhaps adjustable via... leveling up? The possibilities seem endless. To make up for the lack of actual gear, maybe increase all base stats either as they level up or according to what types of gems they use (again, many ways to go about this; color comes to mind first). There are so many ways this could be done, and I'm sure someone out there could come up with a way to make them competent, yet not totally overpowered either. I imagine it could be a great deal of fun and challenge, as well, giving a class that has little to no focus on gear, but rather skill gem choices alone. Any further ideas on this approach?

2.) Gemling Keystone(s)
The most basic form of this idea would be extra sockets on the character or inventory window (I imagine the passive window would be a little tricky to move gems to and from), gained through unlocking one or more Keystone passive(s) on the skill tree. Even if only one extra socket (hopefully white, in that case), with whatever drawbacks anyone could think of to fairly balance that. Alternatively, perhaps each already-existing class could have their own version of this Keystone passive, kind of like how the Endurance/Frenzy/Power charge bonuses are spread out among them. (Maybe even have a second Keystone after a few other passives, kind of like Acrobatics + Phase Acrobatics. If needed for balance, make the passives in between negative passives, forcing players to sacrifice not only the skill points, but some actual stats, in order to gain that second gemling-based upgrade. Whatever seems fitting.) Once again, many ways that GGG could go about doing this.

Either way, I'm sure there would have to be a lot of careful planning and testing done, but I thought the idea of actually playing as a gemling, or even just utilizing the techniques of embedding gems directly into the body, could bring a lot of interesting ideas into the game, and while borrowing from the game's lore to boot. Would love to see any other ideas regarding this concept, as well.