Sazed didn't need the copperminds to fix Roshar

[aenea22980]

Water cooler thought - Was listening to 17th Shard on YT and they were talking about how the Shards have access to the memories of what the shard's power did, but not to the personal memories of the person wielding it, or their life before they picked up the shard.

So. Sazed picks up Ruin and Preservation. He did not actually need his coppermind knowledge store to fix Scadrial, because Ruin and Preservation created the planet and all life on it from scratch. Sanderson's stated those two shards specifically wanted to create something new, not just settle in an existing system. He has both powers, and the powers created everything. All he would have to do is go back to some of the power's oldest memories and... do whatever they did again, or put it back to what they created again.

I'm sure Sanderson wasn't thinking about all this 2 decades ago, but it's an interesting unintended consequence.

Edited September 27, 2022 by aenea22980
Wrong planet mentioned

[Quantus]

That would have taken a lot more Time for Sazed to become familiar with the Power, assuming forces actively preventing him from perceiving the wider Cosmere would have allowed it (or his own warring nature that seems to inhibit so much compared to the other Shards.  It seems like was 300-ish years later when he first learned there were other Shards, and that only happened when Hoid's Letter arrived.  

 

Also: Scadrial, not Roshar.

[aenea22980]

Fixed to say Scadrial, thanks!

At the Catecendre(sp) no one else seems to have been meddling in Scadrial's business, there's be no need, Ruin and Preservation were foiling each other nicely until then.  But I could see Sazed taking a bit of time to "download" it all, even with an expanded consciousness.  He mentions Adonalsium in the chapter headers of Hero of Ages I believe, so he would have known about something back then...

[Returned]

5 hours ago, aenea22980 said:

So. Sazed picks up Ruin and Preservation. He did not actually need his coppermind knowledge store to fix Scadrial, because Ruin and Preservation created the planet and all life on it from scratch. Sanderson's stated those two shards specifically wanted to create something new, not just settle in an existing system. He has both powers, and the powers created everything. All he would have to do is go back to some of the power's oldest memories and... do whatever they did again, or put it back to what they created again.

If this were conveniently possible Rashek would have done it too rather than the cascade of problems he created and dealt with. I think that it could be what @Quantus suggests, that it would take a long time to tease that knowledge out of the Shard.

But I personally think that it's more likely that the necessary details aren't recorded in the Shard that way. The information might be something like "the planet was pushed closer to the sun while this particular event was taking place" rather than "the planet was pushed from coordinate X,Y,Z to coordinate A,B,C on this specific date". We see some support for this in Rashek, who first pushed Scadrial too close to the sun but didn't know its original position and so couldn't just put it back, even though the first push was at most a couple of seconds earlier. So, similarly, I think that even if he stretched his mind back to what Leras was doing he might learn that a planet was created, and how that was done, but not necessarily where the created planet was placed or why that place was chosen.

Certainly if Leras and Ati could figure the right details out through their divininty then Sazed could presumably figure them out as well, but perhaps not quickly enough to halt the destruction of the planet and everyone on it..

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah I think he could figure it out eventually, but the copperminds were needed to do it in time.