Duxredux

There are definite advantages to Ranette-made ammunition, and he'll keep using them and Vindication even if it's only so that he can use the rounds developed for other metalborn. This wouldn't necessarily be a replacement, just another tool in Wax's pocket. The point of how much of a Feruchemical charge it would take to make an iron bullet or pellet Allomantically-resistant I think would need to know the Feruchemical Investiture density necessary to resist Allomancy, the rate that Wax can store Weight, and the volume of the metal. I'm not sure if I have what I need for those calculations, because it depends on the strength of the Allomancer, size of metal, and if Feruchemical storage efficiency has decreased after the Catacendre with the dilution of bloodlines. If it only takes a few seconds to charge a bullet-sized piece of metal, then this gives him flexibility and isn't particularly wasteful. If it takes minutes for a single bullet, that's probably too slow in a firefight, and a waste of Feruchemical storing opportunity. Good point.

Overall I think that burning a whole lot of Duralumin in of itself isn't going to work, but that's more of a gut feeling than anything. My guess is that in order for your Cognitive self to become self-sustaining without intervention after death, in the sense of you die but your mind lives on indefinitely, you basically need to have held enough Investiture to become an immortal or a majorly warped savant to have your mind so thoroughly saturated with power that it can persist indefinitely even after ties to the Physical Realm are cut. Maybe if you could burn something that would specifically change your mind or increase the Investiture within your mind, such as the cognitive metals or Feruchemical spiritual stores, that might make the process easier but I'm still not sure if it would be enough to do this practically. Unless Allomancy and burning metals are specifically a component of the mind, I don't think that something as general as just burning a lot of Duralumin would cause enough of a change, unless Duralumin Savantism has really weird effects that I don't know about. For Scadrial, the only confirmed Cognitive Shadows I can think of all gained power at the Well of Ascension, which doesn't give us much to go off of. There's Kelsier of course, and I think Preservation noted that TLR would have been able to persist if he had so chosen, and that probably includes Vin, both of whom decided to go to The Beyond rather than persisting. So three Slivers, one of whom got direct help from Preservation before Ascending.

Because it is a thing of awesomeness, and this kind of thing just kind of happens on the internet, as seen here: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-mcboatface-what-you-get-when-you-let-the-internet-decide.html. Thank you for asking this question and pulling it back from a year and a half ago so I can bask in this majesty. This has been going for apparently five years, and I have been missing out. I haven't even read this before and it brings back good memories of school joking about, you guessed it, beavers. My friends and I looked at a beaver and started coming up with explanation that could be drawn from a picture without really knowing anything about the animal. In the end, we had concluded that beavers were 300 lb monsters that would fling themselves through the sky using their tails, stripping the land of nutrients with their massive teeth. Good times. What is it about beavers that make you look at them and conclude that they will take over the world? I don't get it, but apparently that's a thing.

Wow, I forgot about this, and somehow missed everyone welcoming me. @Robin Sedai Thanks! @Not an Ookla, my least favorite character... I'm not sure. Brandon writes some good characters, and even if I would never want to meet them or interact with them, he brings them to life well enough that I pause and consider if the person I dislike is too much like myself. The characters from Dreamer really rub me wrong though, which was probably deliberate on Brandon's part. @StrikerEZ, My favorite character probably is the one that I relate to the most, or want to be like the most at the time of reading. That's been Dalinar, Kaladin, Sazed, Elend, Vin, Raoden, Kelsier, Leras, Shuden... Probably more. I have read Dawnshard, and that created way more questions then it answered for me. I've played mafia style games before, and for some reason I usually get bumped off really quickly. Maybe when people can't see my face I would do better. Maybe sometime I'll join, but I really enjoy the theorizing and analysis of the books and magic systems, which is why I joined and started posting in the first place.

Thanks! That's exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't know. Are there any firearms without rifling he could use this strategy on, like maybe shotguns? I think Wax has some of those.

Why doesn't Wax use iron bullets that he charges with weight for use against Coinshots and Lurchers? Those seem a lot cheaper and easier to produce than the ceramic ones that Ranette has to handmake, and a bullet should be small enough to be completely filled with Investiture really quickly and easily. Feruchemically it makes sense to me, but I don't know enough about gun design and ballistics, to know if there's a good reason that pure Iron isn't used for bullets. Maybe it would be abrasive to the gun barrel or something and Ranette won't keep replacing them. Maybe they just haven't considered it yet. Maybe magically charged bullets seemed too similar to L. E. Modesitt Jr.'s Corean Chronicles? This isn't so that he makes all of his bullets allomantically resistant, he'll want to be able to Push on some of them himself, but being able to selectively charge them for certain situations could be useful. Thoughts?

@Rune, let me see if I have this right, is the concept that if you can have anti-investiture, could it scale upwards until it became possible to have sentient anti-Investiture and eventually to the level of a Shard or Adonalsium itself? I think this could exist theoretically, but this would be on a level of Cosmere creation lore, if/how/when Adonalsium was created. If I understand Navani's methodology, creating anti-light requires intentionally creating something opposed to the existing Investiture by using the original as a starting point. Raboniel notes that collecting enough anti-Voidlight to destroy Odium is practably impossible. If such anti-Shards/Adonalsium exist, I doubt they would have been manufactured as such and I would guess they would have had to been part of a larger Creation story of the Cosmere. I'm pretty sure Brandon had said that he does not want to open the can of worms that is Doctor Who or Back to the Future style time travel, and I'm guessing parallel dimensions are out for similar reasons. Could Brandon have an Anti-Adonalsium? Possibly, but the question I would start asking would be what storytelling he would be able to do with those components that he couldn't do now? Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better, I say as I read another mammoth of a book from Brandon. Could he pull it off? Yes, but getting to that scale might mean wrapping up the Cosmere, which I don't want for decades. I think there could be a way for Brandon to incorporate Anti-Shards on a mechanical level, but I doubt he would do it from a storytelling perspective. Having something that is de facto opposed to a Shard probably has less interesting conflicts to explore than two conflicting agendas like Ruin and Preservation. I will say that I am very curious to what sentient Anti-Investiture looks like and how it acts. I wouldn't be surprised if we got that, but I don't think we would get something on the scale of a Shard.

So... I have a few things that don't make sense to me. My first question is if this is how it went down, what happened to the Dawnshard? I'm assuming that if/when Rysn dies, she wouldn't take the Dawnshard with her into the Cognitive Realm and/or the Spiritual Realm. Did Kelsier somehow keep hold of it after dying? Second, the Pits of Hathsin was a few years before Kelsier died. Based on your timeline, Kelsier would have been the Dawnshard of Survival at that point, but he certainly didn't have any trouble whatsoever killing a whole lot of noblemen. Didn't even feel guilty about it until Vin shouted at him. If Preservation had issues with harming people, it would have been as a previous holder of the Dawnshard when we see him reluctant to hurt Elend, not the current holder. My guesses for what you describe? I think Vin needed the right Intent to crash her power into Ruin, killing them both. Leras was too weak having sacrificed his conscious to be a match for Ruin, and Kelsier wanted revenge, not anything remotely like preserving something. Vin I think did it to protect humanity, which is why it worked. When Kelsier received the Command to SURVIVE, I think that may have been Preservation actively sealing the cracks in his soul, giving him the necessary fortitude to get out of the Pits. The reason that Preservation can't talk to people is because his very power seals up the cracks in souls, but I think maybe he could instill a message as the power of Preservation itself, namely to Survive. I could see the possibility that he wouldn't be able to communicate anything else, or to someone sane. Edit: I think one of the Shardcasts theorizes that there is an alignment between the 16 Shards and the 4 Dawnshard Commands, despite them being able to be separate. You're on to some interesting things, and this is a really cool theory, I just don't see Kelsier having changed enough to be a Dawnshard. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Brandon left something this big in plain sight and the rest of us missed it. I totally missed everything that was in Secret History the first time I read HoA.

I've never been good with theorizing on Spiritweb stuff, but here's some knowledge that we have that may or may not be relevant. Deadeyes are not just constantly screaming in the Cognitive Realm. Maya, Testament, and Deadeyes bonded to someone not currently in Shadesmar are fairly docile it seems. Maya screams and stretches towards Adolin when he attempts to summon her in Shadesmar. It seems that Pattern and Syl are aware when Shallan and Kaladin attempt to summon them in Shadesmar (I think) but it doesn't seem to cause them discomfort. Deadeyes in Shadesmar will try to move towards wherever their blade is currently located in the physical realm. I think they vanish if they get summoned as a blade. A summoned dead Blade will not be audible to a regular Shardbearer. A summoned dead Blade will scream into the mind of a Radiant when touched (and presumably a Fused). Dead Blades require 10-ish heartbeats to be attuned to the human summoning the blade. Adolin and Maya pare that down to I think 7 heartbeats. A Radiant touching a dead Blade can allow a non-Radiant to hear the screaming. Zahel can use a Blade, and it seems really unlikely that he would handle a magic sword that screamed in his mind. First question, why are the Spren screaming in the first place? My guess is that getting summoned or otherwise forced into the Physical Realm against your will, particularly without the presence of the Nahel Bond is painful, and that may be the cause of the screaming. I think the Stormfather groaned and was pained after Dalinar summoned him to work an Oathgate. Moving to how Radiants hear the screams, I'm pretty sure the Nahel Bond gives Radiants a connection (I don't know a good word that isn't full of Cosmere stipulations) to the Cognitive Realm, considering they can see and communicate with their Spren. My top guess is that ability to hear and see slightly into the Cognitive Realm is what lets Radiants hear the screams of a Blade forced into Physical Realm. If that's not it, maybe it's that the Nahel bond is similar enough to the hacked version (the one that allows Shardbearers to summon and dismiss their Blade) that it sets up an echo or resonance or something? No idea how that other Shardbearer heard it, maybe Kaladin strengthened the "signal" and that allowed the other person to hear it through their bond? I'm stretching at this point. So to answer @Cocoa, my guess is that anyone that can see into the Cognitive realm would be able to hear the screams of a dead Blade.

I think at some point it becomes a question of when Harmony takes away consequences. Southern Scadrial froze, yes, but it became far more technologically advanced than Elendel. Either VenDell or MeLaan noted that Harmony was worried that perhaps he had made it too easy for them, and that they weren't progressing as fast as they needed to be without challenges. Who got the short end of the stick? The people who froze and innovated until they could manufacture metalborn powers and fly, or the barbarians that live in an eternally fertile city? As for the koloss, new generations are specifically given the choice to accept the ritual spikes and become a full koloss or to remain closer to humans. They choose that life style, even though it is certainly going to kill them. From that standpoint, it seems like a similar decision to removing the consequences of drug use or overeating. Just because I think it's nuts to choose to become a koloss with all the baggage doesn't mean other people don't want to.

Fair enough! I thought I would bring it up if it wasn't already known.

I think I understand the classifications and why the Allomantic table is arranged as it is to copy the official illustration, but is there a reason the metals on the Feruchemical table metals can't have the same layout minus the Allomancy-only classifications? I could see deliberately keeping them different so people don't conflate the two, I suppose.

I'd make the argument that TLR would have deliberately made it possible for himself to control the Inquisitors. Why wouldn't he? He just has to put the threshold high enough that only he would be able to pull it off. Putting that kind of safeguard on your whole murder of bloodthirsty Inquisitors seems like a really smart move. Edit: found this and it seems relevant. If Inquisitors are easier to control...? There is a delay between Marsh getting Soothed and him trying to find an Inquisitor linchpin spike in TLR's back I suppose.

First 17th Shard MHAM I've been to, so hi! I'm not sure how Tesh has done this in the past, but I totally believe that we'll get a lot of people who struggle with mental illness here, since many of us see ourselves in Brandon's work and felt something. I got a diagnosis for dysthymia, chronic low level depression, years ago. Not really knowing what life is like without it but comparing myself to other people, I'd say that it's like being a Drab among normal Nalthians, everything's just muted (I probably don't have the compromised immune system though). I'm very stable emotionally in that I usually don't experience emotional extremes, but I am usually tired and have felt tired for what feels like decades. Probably not normal, but again, not sure what it looks like outside of my head. There are times when I look around, see people happy, and am not sure why or how they feel that way, and those are the times that feel like I'm disconnected to people, alone in my head surrounded by people I don't understand. Being an introvert doesn't help with the feeling of disconnect either. I'm now married with a little toddler, and my life has felt brighter for being able to be with my wife. I don't by any means want to imply that "true love is the answer" or "you just gotta get hitched and your mental health goes away" because it totally doesn't, at least not for me or my wife. You see, my wife has depression too, and she describes her emotions as a rollercoaster in contrast to my flat line. Because we both have mental health struggles, we balance each other out. I provide stability that she doesn't have to worry about kicking me into a spiral by telling me what's going on, and because she cares about so many things, I can see the variety in life when I see her get excited or even disappointed about things. For perhaps one of the first times in my life I didn't hate the way I felt (or didn't feel) because the way I was broken made me a better match for my wife. There's also something that feels really healing or validating to be able to finding meaning and connection by helping someone who has suffered like I had. Again, this isn't to encourage this topic to become a dating forum or to seek out a soulmate, but finding someone that you can talk to and can understand what it's like can be a huge support. My wife and I try to pick up each other's depression symptoms and compensate (like I'll send her to take a nap or read a book if watching the toddler is too exhausting and she stops using punctuation in texts, which is one of her tells). I guess my thought is that just because you feel broken, doesn't mean that other people can't find beauty and strength in you because of your flaws. I'll admit, The Dog and the Dragon made me cry, imagining this dog who tries so hard, fails so often, gets ridiculed, and dives into darkness and because of his failures and dreams saves a child. I salute you who feel you walk in darkness and still stop to help those around you.

This is probably unnecessary, but it bugs me every time I look at the Allomantic table and Feruchemical table side by side. Half of the positions don't match up. It irks my soul. It'd be so easy to just adjust the Feruchemical table to match the Allomantic table. If no one decides to do anything about this, I'll get over it. I'm done with the melodrama. Allomancy - The Coppermind - 17th Shard Feruchemy/table - The Coppermind - 17th Shard

Rereading Mistborn, and I'm trying to figure this one out, no idea if it's already been brought up, the most recent post that was only semi-related that I found through a quick search was from 5 years ago: https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/58783-why-cant-kandra-get-near-inquisitors/?do=findComment&comment=553393. There's a few cases of TLR Soothing and I'm trying to figure out how he didn't take over some of the crew, namely OreSeur directly after the death of Kelsier, and Marsh when TLR hit him and Vin with a massive blast of Soothing at the final confrontation. Was something else going on or was this a plot hole? For OreSeur maybe the Soothing wasn't focused enough to nail him (I assume he had to be close enough to make sure to recover Kelsier's body and couldn't feel TLR coming), but unless Marsh was flaring Copper for all that he was worth, I don't see how he could have resisted TLR. Okay, maybe Marsh had extremely high emotions going, but still, it seems odd. Am I missing something, or should this not have gone as it did?

I need to read these WoBs further. I think we're arguing over the mechanism that someone becomes a savant, and at least here he said that there's multiple ways. Which is pretty much exactly what our argument is. Burn, flare, or use Duralumin. Maybe the point is that they all work, and Brandon hasn't nailed down or shown specifics. That WoB that @Returned found where Brandon specifically reaches out to Argent to let him know what he's changing his direction on Savantism, and his reasons for doing so, particularly in the consequences and effects on the body, is worth reading in its entirety for the discussion. This looks pivotal, so it may be worth checking specifically on the dates of WoBs and putting much more emphasis on anything after December 2016, since this is when he made the decision.

@Returned Huh. I had a different impression on how savantism occurs, though my take may have come from Tin or Pewter. Using Tin or Pewter as an Allomancer creates an distinct physiological change within yourself for the duration of the burn, by Pushing or Pulling your body beyond it's normal abilities. It's related to the rate of Allomantic power being drawn but not directly; it's how far the body is being distorted by the power of the metal which I assume is affected by the rate of burn. I think Kelsier specifically warns Vin about frequently flaring when first training her: Push too hard too long or too often and the body doesn't have a chance to revert to its normal state and it begins to break down. If it it was simply about the quantity of metal burned with the accompanying power eventually permeating your soul, then I would expect all older Allomancers to eventually become savants. That doesn't seem supported on Scadrial, unless Straff Venture has burned less Tin in his life than the teenage Spook. Granted, if it is just about the sheer quantity of Investiture pouring through your soul, that explains the Soulcaster Savants who eventually die while inevitably becoming too much like their Soulcasting focus. My assumption with the question about Duralumin influencing Savantism is that the body or soul would be stretched and stressed far beyond the normal limits, and that perhaps the changes in the soul would happen either faster or more extensively than without Duralumin. If that's not how it works, then the thought experiment is of course a dead end. It's quite possible that we're looking at two different states of Savantism and that this is something that he's changed his mind on. Maybe Savantism worked by stretching the soul early on but now it works more in the way he had originally intended for it to be manifested in the Cosmere. If that is the case, then for theorizing reasons, looking at SA cases of Savantism will be more useful moving forward. I often doublecheck my conclusions based on his early stuff, particularly Mistborn.

I agree that each Shard with its intent isn't necessarily good or evil, but there are some intents that are probably far more likely to cause issues for humanity, and because of that humanity may continue to look at them within that context (at least in the "stop the thing that is trying to kill me" basic decision making). From a storytelling perspective, Brandon can totally make Shards antagonists without making them irrevocably evil. Some spoilers for Stormlight, that this conversation made me think of: You can have evil people become Shards and cause havoc, you also can have good people subsumed by the Shardic Intent. You also can have highly aggressive people curbed by the limitations of their power and Shardic Intent. I think as @Treamayne said, Sazed has a better chance of leaning towards one way or another to support life on Scadrial because of the duality of his power. That's all to do with the options and ramifications of the possible choices that Harmony had, but I've been thinking and there's a couple more factors I can think of for Lessie's actions. We learn from Secret History a few things. If Paalm knew that Harmony's attention would be on Wax, then she probably knew that she wouldn't be able to get close to him in any guise without Harmony knowing. My current guess/head cannon is that she accepted the Trellium spike initially as a method of hiding from Harmony so that she could get close to Wax, simply because she loved him. Hiding in plain sight could appeal to a Kandra. However once she accepted it into herself, the spike warped her, making her obsessed with freedom and freeing Wax. One of the current theories for the origin of that spike is: Paalm's story is tragic, but I think she was manipulated into what she became and did. It's hard to say what was her choice and what wasn't, in the same way that it would be tricky to rule on lawbreaking influenced by emotional allomancy.

I was reading Trusk'our's thread on Allomantic Duralumin Savantism (https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/106083-allomantic-duralumin-savantism/) and it got me thinking. Is there a scale of savantism or is there one or more plateaus to the changes caused by the power? Technically, once physiological changes begin to occur, they would be considered a Savant, regardless of how minor or extreme the change was. So, hypothetically you have three people who ate equally sized bits of Lerasium and became Mistborn. All three burn a metric ton of Brass (or other large but reasonably sized amount that could be burned away through normal allomantic usage) over the course of a year, one burning at a normal rate, one constantly flaring, one burning their Brass as fast as they could with Duralumin. What level of savantism would each allomancer obtain? I assume the normal burner would get very proficient at Soothing and overall benefits to the practice, but would get relatively little savantism effects because they aren't stressing the body or Spiritweb (considering Mistborn commonly leave their Copper and Tin running in the night but don't suffer as Spook did, even when they aren't using Pewter). The one flaring would certainly become a savant, their soul warped by the constant stretching. What of the Duralumin user? Would they get end up at the same level of savantism as the one flaring, or would they have more extreme effects of savantism? I would guess the second. Could the one flaring metals continue burning and eventually catch up to the Duralumin user, or would there be specific changes that only could be feasibly accomplished with Duralumin (unless you're TLR and have 1,000 years to burn? Maybe not even then? I'm not sure I see him going the Duralumin route either though)? A reduced rate of Duralumin burning allowing for abnormally high flares might explain TLR's insane Soothing, but we don't see him chugging down Brass constantly either. Breeze's estimate at the Skaa executions was that TLR was Soothing a number two orders of magnitude larger than what he could, probably with a greater Push on their emotions as well. That seems like an insane amount of Brass to be burning during a long, leisurely carriage ride from Kredik Shaw to the fountain square without refilling your metal reserves at some point. Maybe he is stealthily eating Brass, maybe he can choke down a huge amount to fill his stomach, but it seems rather inconvenient for TLR to constantly put up with. Thoughts?

Yes, that's the one. I think the class where I was taught about it gave both a reduction of the population and a division of the population as examples, and I remembered only the first. In this case, both may have happened, though with the separation it probably doesn't matter if they got killed off too.

I can't remember the biology term, but if most of a population gets killed it can drastically reduce the gene pool causing the descendants to exhibit a fraction of the genetic variance of the old populace. The physical characteristics of the different Rosharan cultures seem extremely homogenous within each culture, even taking into count the Parshendi heritage of Horneaters and Herdazians (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/451/#e14463) likely introduced at least 3-4 thousand years previously. With the Desolations causing mass culling of the population and setbacks in technology, closing of the Oathgates, and loss of Surgebinding transportation methods, I'd guess that at some point there were groups of people scattered across the planet with very poor methods of traveling without getting annihilated by Highstorms. Populations and technology developed, but because traveling in a world of Highstorms is a tricky and expensive business, the different cultures largely remained homogenous with genetics from intermarriages quickly getting diluted back to the dominant culture, because generally most people marry someone very near geographically, especially if communication is limited. So... I think that @Wrae and @Returned both make viable arguments. It probably has a writerly reason at the core. Maybe Thaylens just find long flowing luscious eyebrows really attractive, but I could also see the option that the Thaylens who rebuilt Thaylenah the last Desolation just had long eyebrows for some reason and all of their descendants do as well. Maybe there was someone notable that at that point in time they aspired to be like, so they cultivated the eyebrows rather than trimmed them.

Kelek's Oathpact Workshop Tutor/Handbook Keteks of Wit's Humor Kaladin our Wondrous Herald/Hero - a biography Herald of Worlds Torn? Yeah, enough serious guesses have already been said in one form or another that it's getting harder to think originally. It wouldn't surprise me if Brandon just made a new word up or used a proper noun to make it fit. Oathbringer wasn't one that I would have guessed would be an in-world book, certainly not one written by Dalinar.

Well... explaining jokes usually kills them, but here goes. Wax is Wayne's companion and Wayne as we know is specifically known to be bad with guns. Didn't say he was a good shooter, just famous. He had been shot 7 times by AoL. Wayne is immensely wealthy after the Vanisher case, and Wax left him in charge at Weathering when he left for Elendel, Wayne just didn't stay long. Wayne came to Elendel to recruit Wax, and in BoM he impersonated Wax to get a free gondola ride when going to visit Ranette.

@Tamriel Wolfsbaine I reread the Coppermind on Koloss, and I'm not convinced that full Koloss can't still be taken over by emotional Allomancy. After the Ascension, they were changed to be able to breed and their children were given the choice to accept the ritual spikes to become full Koloss. I suspect any Hemalurgic creature with spikes still has that weakness. I don't know enough about Hemalurgy to know if it's possible to have a Kandra still be a Kandra without spikes, and not just a Mistwraith, since Mistwraiths are physiologically more different from humans than cows are. Is there something that I missed that states that spiked Koloss no longer have the holes in the soul that emotional Allomancy can affect? I'm pretty sure the spikes are also what allows Harmony to communicate with the Kandra as readily as he does. They are effective agents because of the spikes, and I'm not sure how they would communicate directly without Hemalurgy. I can't fully judge this because I don't know the options that Sazed had or has, but I'm not sure if the disparity between Koloss and Kandra are as great as it looks. Sazed might have been able to restore the Kandra to their former state as Feruchemists, but that might have destroyed the Kandra race. On the other hand, it might be safe to say that Sazed still has the capacity to move the entire planet to a different orbit, fix the genetic manipulations made to humanity, and restructure the geography of the world, something that was possible just with power at the Well of Ascension. So far, I haven't seen him break out the heavy artillery, but if he wanted to hold the planet hostage, I think he could. If Sazed was really determined to blow someone up and didn't care about collateral damage, I don't know any Scadrian that could stop him. I just think he almost always chooses not to. Kandra just have a more obvious handle than most. I guess... if the question is why didn't Sazed remove his ability to influence the Kandra, can you think of a way for him to actually completely remove his influence from them? I'm not sure if he can and remain a Shard invested into Scadrial. I definitely think that if Sazed maintained an entirely hands-off approach, Trell certainly wouldn't. I don't know. Maybe at his Ascension Sazed didn't think 300 years ahead, and the Kandra at the time didn't feel a need to change anything, whereas the Koloss wanted to be more human. For the most part Sazed seemed to try to revert things back to what they were before The Lord Ruler as recorded in his copperminds. Seeing the ways that Vin and Rashek nearly wrecked the planet, I assume they didn't gain an immediate understanding of the future, the intricate details of hemalurgy, or suddenly be able to override the laws that govern the Cosmere. I don't think Sazed did either. Again, this all speculation. The context that you describe does make sense, and if accurate definitely should be cause for concern. I do think there is more detail that explains Harmony's motives surrounding Lessie in Bands of Morning, and I don't think Wax's decision was under that much duress since Marasi at that point had the Bands of Mourning (though it's not obvious if Wax knew that. Marasi certainly was shouting at him to heal himself with the Bands). Sazed actually made Wax reconfirm the choice to come back to life, and that seems an odd decision if he was trying to force Wax into becoming his sword. Then again, maybe I'm biased too. I'm currently rereading Mistborn era 1 and Sazed is pretty awesome back then.