Xutullus

Your earlier quote described them as To me, that kind of level should obviously be sufficient for intuitive use of their innate abilities. Kandra do it intuitively, don't they? They don't take a moment every once in a while to think about how exactly to alter the processes by which their cells age, involving complex calculations and estimations and stuff that requires sapience. If they're smart enough to be trainable, they should be able to train themselves in the art of shapeshifting. The mentioned 50 year lifespan is plenty of time to intuitively learn a lot. Claims to the contrary sound to me like claiming birds shouldn't be able to fly without Blessings.

If that were the case, surely they would've created mistwraiths instead of humans to begin with. Didn't Preservation specifically insist on creating humans with extra bit of Preservation in them? Surely, if Rashek intuitively understands mistwraiths in mere moments with the power, Preservation had aeons to think about them and decide against creating them. The "blockade between the Physical Realm and the Cognitive Realm" clearly was something Preservation didn't prefer, despite their peaceful nature. I'd argue if agelessness comes from abilities that mistwraiths possess, then they should learn to use them intuitively over time, and that time wouldn't probably be that long even. There are real animals that are more or less biologically immortal and they have no mental capacity to speak of. Well, he took away their humanity and their sentience, and reduced them to mere animals. The first part makes least sense in all of this. How would a Blessing prevent normal reproduction, but potentially allow reproducing with another species? Surely, if they can transform their bodies to have functional human reproductive systems, then they also can transform their bodies to have functional mistwraith reproductive systems. I'd argue if it's the same shapeshifting abilities, then mistwraiths should be able to use them as well, at least over time (like I replied to JustQuestin2004 earlier in this post). But your last quote kind of suggests it's the Blessings sustaining them magically. Blessings providing such magic I can get, but I didn't see anything about the spikes having such effect on anything else, which confuses me.

Ah, that sort of thing. Yeah, but he couldn't destroy Kwaan using Preservation's power. I'd argue this was a fate far worse than death. Didn't he ask everyone at the same time, speaking directly to their minds? If he was about to do magic to every single one of them, surely he could've spoken directly to each of their minds as well. Well, that what my, eh, intuition as well, but the coppermind seems to say this about that:

Thanks. I don't mind general information about the universe. I see. I mean, yeah, he preserved their lives in a vastly twisted form, but got rid of their souls, so to speak? They lost their identities, their sentience, everything important. Wasn't Preservation's greatest ambition not to create life per se, but people with souls and whatnot? Preserving life but losing that key aspect seems quite weird. And the majority of the feruchemists weren't consulted regarding the bargain, so they did not have a choice to accept or reject it? Dunno how a handful of people should be eligible to decide something like that. Especially considering how everyone else remained a mistwraith after the first generation was created. It would make more sense that Rashek asked everyone individually and later tracked down everyone who declined. Another thing that doesn't make sense to me is that mistwraiths have short lifespans, but kandra are immortal. Mistwraiths can breed, but kandra can not? Why would a hemalurgic blessing cause these changes, when the general function of the spikes is something quite different?

So, I just finished the first Mistborn trilogy and there's one thing I don't understand and can't make any sense of. How could Rashek use the powers of Preservation to turn humans into mistwraiths? Especially considering they apparently lost their spark of humanity, their little piece of Preservation, during the process. That's not exactly an act of preservation, is it? It seems odd and ironic that they regained consciousness after the hemalurgic blessing. And why did they lose their feruchemical powers? Was it somehow transformed into the abilities mistwraiths had, or what? Why did they lose their souls then, so to speak?