Sazed did not "lie"

[StormingTexan he/him]

I have seen a lot of mentions of how Sazed lied to Kelsier (as well as Wax). I will admit at first I had the same feeling especially with the conversation with Kelsier. Looking back on it though I do not think they were outright lies. 

First a conversation with Wax. 

Quote

 

You’ve done something to me, Wax thought at Harmony, nudging them to the side and landing on the roof. Odd things have been happening to me all day. Is it an aftereffect of holding the Bands? No, Harmony said. It is something else. But it didn’t work as I’d hoped.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Lost Metal (The Mistborn Saga) (p. 426). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

 

I think we can assume that Sazed is talking about Wax inhaling the Lerasium. He was hoping Wax became a Mistborn by inhaling the Lerasium and gave him vials with all metals as well as a back up with the remaining Lerasium traces the Kandra collected. 

 

Sazed explains what the special vial is to Wayne. 

Quote

 

Yes, but this one was different. I have no idea what happened, but Wax did something different from everyone else trying this. Because he didn’t merely blow up the room. He created something. Something amazing.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Lost Metal (The Mistborn Saga) (p. 450). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

“

 

Quote

 

Why didn’t you have Wax drink it earlier?” I don’t want to reveal this happened, as I don’t know why or how. I don’t know what he did. Besides … he might have already had a dose, inhaled during the explosion.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Lost Metal (The Mistborn Saga) (p. 450). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

 

Clearly Wax did something different in the experiment and even though splitting Harmonium has been done in the past this was the first time it has yielded Lerasium. 

 

Lastly the conversation with Kelsier 

Quote

 

“The kandra found atium dust in Waxillium’s destroyed laboratory,” Sazed said. “It appears that if you detonate harmonium against trellium—or, I suppose bavadinium would be its true name—it creates some small amount of atium as a by-product.” “Lerasium?” Kelsier asked. “I’m sorry. That is all annihilated in the explosion. We’ve tested it several times now.” Damn. Another dead end.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Lost Metal (The Mistborn Saga) (p. 485). Tor Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

 

At first this appears to be a bold face lie on Sazed's part. However he is not referring to Wax's experiment or that explosion. He is referring to the subsequent attempts (presumable by Kandra) to repeat what Wax did. Now granted you do have to take this for face value that the subsequent experiments did not yield Lerasium but the fact that it apparently did not happen when the Set did it either one can assume this is the truth. Whatever Wax did as mentioned was unique and at the moment not repeatable. Now he does withhold the information from Kelsier that Wax was able to extract a trace amount of Lerasium and you could consider this a "lie of omission" but he explains why he is not revealing this when he discussed it with Wayne. 

TL;DR- Sazed may not be divulging everything but he did not outright lie to Kelsier. 

 

[notsawerd]

We can assume he is lying or if not lying not wanting Kel to get Lerasium.  It would have been easy for Saz to say hey Kel there is a way because Wax did it and that is how Wayne could save the day, but did not really even want Wax/Wayne to burn Lerasium because he wanted to keep it a secret.  He wants it secret from Kel because he wants Kel impotent for some reason.  I also don't believe that Lerasium would not work on Kel b/c per WoB Lerasium adds to your spirit web(more lies) So if it's full then it would get an expanded spirit web.  That could explain how Hoid is able to have all the abilities he has since he found a way out of maxing out the spirit web.

I find in crazy that so many are defending Sazed.  The point of that section as I saw it was to show how unreliabile Sazed has become and how good he has gotten at deception.  Which should make us all second guess all the things he says to the kandra and the main cast.  We all are expecting Kel to be the villian but this setup made it seem like Sazed is the real villian and maybe Autonomy was on to something.

[StormingTexan he/him]

4 minutes ago, notsawerd said:

We can assume he is lying or if not lying not wanting Kel to get Lerasium. 

Then why did he keep the same information from Wax who he wants to be his Sword and save Scadrial? Wayne specifically asked why he didn't tell Wax to drink the special vial and he explains why so it is not really a mystery. 

I'll conceded that peoples perception of this comes down to rather they consider an omission a lie or not. He didn't really outright lie he withheld information that he did not reveal to even the person he wanted to be his Sword.

[GudThymes he/him]

I agree that Harmony didn't lie. I want to pick out Hamrony's choice of words. He says "detonate" as the intent of the kandra experiments. But correct my if I'm wrong but Wax didn't intend to detonate the Harmonium, he was trying to split it back into it's "components". I believe this is why you don't end up with any Lerasium.

Additional backing from ROW spoilers: 

Spoiler

When Navani and Raboniel are experimenting with investiture to make warlight and the anti-voidlight their Intent matters as well as changes what the results are. 

I think that it is possible to use Bavadinium to split Harmonium into Lerasium and Atium but I don't think either the kandra or Harmony actually know the missing piece needed. 

[Jamahu]

On 11/18/2022 at 10:41 AM, StormingTexan said:

Lastly the conversation with Kelsier 

At first this appears to be a bold face lie on Sazed's part. However he is not referring to Wax's experiment or that explosion. He is referring to the subsequent attempts (presumable by Kandra) to repeat what Wax did. Now granted you do have to take this for face value that the subsequent experiments did not yield Lerasium but the fact that it apparently did not happen when the Set did it either one can assume this is the truth. Whatever Wax did as mentioned was unique and at the moment not repeatable. Now he does withhold the information from Kelsier that Wax was able to extract a trace amount of Lerasium and you could consider this a "lie of omission" but he explains why he is not revealing this when he discussed it with Wayne. 

I'd like to point out that there is another explosion as well:  Technically the Atium was destroyed along with Wayne in an explosion, so "That is all annihilated in the explosion" is a deceptive truth, assuming Wax's experiment was the only time they were able to create both godmetals.

 

 

[SteelBagel]

2 hours ago, Jamahu said:

I'd like to point out that there is another explosion as well:  Technically the Atium was destroyed along with Wayne in an explosion, so "That is all annihilated in the explosion" is a deceptive truth, assuming Wax's experiment was the only time they were able to create both godmetals.

 

 

It doesn't make much sense to me that you can split harmonium into only Atium. It seems to me like the only options are you split it into atium and lerasium, or not at all. If he's making Atium, he's probably making lerasium. Though if he wants Marsh to live, I don't get why he can't just make Atium (an act of ruin) to preserve Marsh (an act of preservation) keeping in line with his intent.

[Frustration he/him]

1 minute ago, SteelBagel said:

It doesn't make much sense to me that you can split harmonium into only Atium. It seems to me like the only options are you split it into atium and lerasium, or not at all. If he's making Atium, he's probably making lerasium. Though if he wants Marsh to live, I don't get why he can't just make Atium (an act of ruin) to preserve Marsh (an act of preservation) keeping in line with his intent.

There is more Ruin than Preservation so that's probably why only Atium is made. And just making Atium isn't of Ruin, and even if it was he finds any action difficult.

[Shacharma]

Why do you assume there is still more ruin then preservation?

Also, one could just assume that Atium is more durable to explosions and that Lerasium is created equally but then burns up in them (which is an interesting flip on ruin/preservation)

[Ati16 he/him]

5 hours ago, Shacharma said:

Why do you assume there is still more ruin then preservation?

Originally Preservation and Ruin were equally powerful, but when they created the humans Preservation put more of his power into the humans than Ruin did so Ruin became more powerful, so when Sazed took up Preservation and Ruin, he actually took up more Ruin than Preservation.

[Returned]

I'd be curious to know if the issue is amount of metals created from the process, not just the type. It strikes me that lerasium is more potent than atium (awkwardly phrased, but I couldn't think of anything better). There were always more beads of atium than of lerasium, as far as we know, by a huge margin. And while atium (or its retconned alloy) is pretty amazing in what it can do, lerasium can make anyone into a Mistborn (among other potential uses).

Physically we would expect matter split into its components to have physically proportionate amounts of those components. But can we assume that with a godmetal? If lerasium is so potent (more Investiture dense, or something similar), maybe the operative mechanism is just that the most you can produce via the method used in the book and with the amount of harmonium involved is an incredibly tiny amount, generally too little to recover or use in any meaningful way. That wouldn't explain why Wax wound up with a useable amount, but maybe it's a factor.

I also wonder if the process of splitting harmonium is just fundamentally a Ruinous activity. You destroy the harmonium by splitting it and cause a large, destructive explosion. Maybe such a destructive and transformative act is just conceptually not something that can generate a physical manifestation of Preservation on its own. Whatever Wax's last attempt did changed the equation (or some changes in Harmony had progressed far enough that new outcomes became possible) to make a tiny bit of lerasium, perhaps.

[lacrossedeamon]

On 11/18/2022 at 1:40 PM, GudThymes said:

I think that it is possible to use Bavadinium to split Harmonium into Lerasium and Atium but I don't think either the kandra or Harmony actually know the missing piece needed. 

I do find it weird to think Sazed would not know about Intent being important to the experiment.

On 11/29/2022 at 4:28 AM, Shacharma said:

Why do you assume there is still more ruin then preservation?

Sazed also thinks how Ruin has always been stronger in one of the epilogues.

[Frustration he/him]

On 11/29/2022 at 1:28 AM, Shacharma said:

Why do you assume there is still more ruin then preservation?

Brandon hints towards it's posibility.

Spoiler

Questioner

Preservation gave up some of his power to create people. So Ruin had more power.

Brandon Sanderson

An edge, you might say.

Questioner

Sazed took both. And I’m curious if Ruin still has power over Preservation?

Brandon Sanderson

It is currently theorized on-planet that Ruin does.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

[Longshot97 he/him]

On 11/29/2022 at 10:52 AM, Returned said:

I also wonder if the process of splitting harmonium is just fundamentally a Ruinous activity. You destroy the harmonium by splitting it and cause a large, destructive explosion. Maybe such a destructive and transformative act is just conceptually not something that can generate a physical manifestation of Preservation on its own. Whatever Wax's last attempt did changed the equation (or some changes in Harmony had progressed far enough that new outcomes became possible) to make a tiny bit of lerasium, perhaps.

I like this idea, but I initially had this thought. Wax was attempting to separate harmonium via trellium. Trellium, or bavadinium, is the physical manifestation of the Investiture of Autonomy. Could it be that Wax's Intent aligned with Autonomy, in that moment, to isolate the independent elements of harmonium? Thus, the Investitures of Ruin and Preservation were separated, given autonomy, thanks to the Intent of the wielder of bavadinium.