Advanced Search

Questioner

It has been discussed and mentioned in the book and in discord But I wanted to clarify the steps for Underlord that have been mentioned. (i understand the spoilers etc. so if you can't give anything away :ok_hand: ) Step 1 is opening a soul space above the core to place things. step 2 was mentioned being able to weave soulfire but is that just the first part of step 2 or is that all step 2 is?

Will Wight

Soulfire: that's all step two is, but it's more complicated than it sounds. Step 3 is forging your body in soulfire.

Tievel

Who wins: Suriel vs Kirby

Will Wight

Kirby, hands-down. The power he gets from absorbing Suriel is just too busted.

Questioner

How old is yerin, I am under the impression she is about Lindon's age.

Will Wight

She’s roughly Lindon’s age, but she doesn’t know exactly. She didn’t track time during her time with the Sword Sage, so she could be 17-19 as far as she knows. EDIT: I didn’t account for enough time passing. 18-20.

Questioner

Are there any paths that utilize "space" aura like the rabbit, bat and mole in unsouled? (I can envision a path of the Infinite step. Highly focused on movement, mobility and field manipulation.)

Will Wight

Yes there are, and we'll get to see plenty of them...later in the series. Spoilers abound!

Questioner

If Orthos was a Pokémon what type(s)would he be???

Will Wight

Fire / Dragon, hands down.

Bearilicious

Hmm this is probably RAFO (Read and find out) territory , but it's said that insight is required to take truegold to underlord, is the tempering of body in soulfire affected by insight? as in do underlord bodies have changes to better accomodate their path or is it like iron irrespective of their path?

Will Wight

You are correct, RAFO.

Questioner

What are some of the best entertainment professions?

I know light and dream mandra would be great but are there any other specialties such as madra that would create fireworks or balance mandra that would make spectacular jugglers?

Will Wight

There are entertainers with many different aspects of madra. Blood artists can sometimes give you physical impulses or emotions directly. There are actors on stone Paths who create their own scenery as they perform. Dream artists can store fantasies in a tablet, to be experienced by anyone. There are wind artists that can give you the experience of flying freely for a limited time.

Questioner

Time-wise, does Lindon's adventure occur before, after or simultaneously to Simon's?

Will Wight

Traveler's Gate takes place slightly before Cradle, and Elder Empire takes place after Cradle (or at least after where Cradle is now). I don't want to lock myself into anything more specific than that.

Will Wight

The Blackflame Empire

The Blackflame Empire was founded by dragons.

In Cradle, dragons are a race of sacred beasts that can...well, they're dragons. You know what they can do. Like all sacred beasts and Remnants, their intelligence is based largely on their age and advancement levels, so many of them have human-level intelligence or better.

A family of black dragons once conquered and ruled half a continent, which is a truly massive amount of territory in a world the size of Cradle. They held their empire against all rivals for centuries.

Until a mysterious disaster killed most of the dragons, crippling their ability to continue the bloodline. As you know, no one in a fantasy novel ever discovers the truth behind ancient disasters, so I'm sure it will remain a mystery forever.

With their rulers dead or dying, a clan of humans stumbled upon a method of harnessing the dragons' power. They abandoned their old Path, instead choosing to develop the same sacred arts used by the dragons.

The Blackflame Empire shrunk in size, the humans lacking the ability to control quite as much territory as the dragons could, though it was still home to over a billion people.*

This clan started calling their main branch the Blackflame family, for obvious reasons, and they stayed in control for almost five hundred years.

But human bodies were not well-suited to the power of dragons. Slowly, the family declined, until even those who lived in the heart of the empire thought of them more as symbols and legends than actual individuals.

More and more of the day-to-day workings of the Empire were left to the Blackflames' traditional servants, the Naru clan. They became the face of the Blackflame empire, with their loyal reputation and shining emerald wings, and the people grew to know and trust them.

Fifty years ago, they quietly ascended the throne.

The first Naru clan Empress has since moved into private seclusion, and her son now rules the Empire. As for the Blackflame family themselves, they died out decades ago, gradually eaten from the inside out by their own madra.

That's the story, anyway.

*(A truly ridiculous number of people live in Cradle. The main planet of Iteration 110 is quite a bit bigger than Earth.)

Questioner

Ozriel vs Suriel. The destroyer versus the Phoenix! Is that the plot of a future novel? Whups.

Will Wight

Ozriel versus Suriel:

Ozriel would go into hiding and Suriel would be sent to hunt him down. She is reluctant to take on this responsibility, so she would drag her feet searching worlds where she knows Ozriel wouldn't go, with Cradle chief among them. While in Cradle, she would distract herself by intervening in a small problem she can control, and then watch events play out in the same way that some people keep plants on their windowsills just to watch them grow. It soothes her. It's like a desktop zen garden.

Then circumstances would force her to get back to her task, and she would continue searching for Ozriel, encountering a number of obstacles and surprising truths along the way.

Tievel

Will Wight

The dream tablets were bolted down, so unfortunately they could not be removed.

Questioner

What are some popular idioms on cradle. Something like cradles version of "survival of the fittest".

Will Wight

This is a great question, but it's really hard to do. So I'm going to cop out by sharing with you some Yerin-isms that may or may not have made it into the series so far:

"Between a tiger and a rocky cliff" = Between a rock and a hard place.

“There’s always a higher heaven” = always a bigger fish.

“Hitched to the same wagon” = in the same boat.

“Eating from the same pot” = (see above)

“Flower” = sweetie/sugar. Her master used to say that to women. “Thanks, flower.”

Greg

Do Sages ever become Heralds?

Will Wight

Yes, however... [meta answer warning] ...I might change my mind on that.

Coldsteel

Now, I have a theory about Ozriel and it will be interesting to see if I'm right (eventually). We know that he developed his own path. We also know that he died and returned to life in a labyrinth (somewhere). We also know that a massive labyrinth forms the foundation of Sacred Valley. And this labyrinth is full of secrets and treasures. Could they be one and the same? It's hard to believe in coincidence in books like these. I also find it fascinating that Sacred Valley is being protected from the outside by powerful individuals and that the outside world has, for the most part, forgotten it even exists. I think perhaps there's more to Sacred Valley than meets the eye. Am I right?

Will Wight

As for Sacred Valley...You COULD be right. You certainly could be.

Questioner

What's the most advanced piece of technology native to Cradle?

Will Wight

There are cloudships far more advanced than the one the Arelius family use, and they have powerful onboard weaponry as well as long-range communications and detection.However, it's difficult to develop technology that works reliably everywhere in Cradle. Gunpowder might explode with too much force in an area where fire aura is strong, or destruction aura might cause an engine to burn too much fuel. There are patches of aura that block certain detection methods, and beings whose very existence can cloud a sacred artist's spiritual senses.

Terrible

How many Silverfang Carp or Sea Drakes would Lindon have needed to match Yerin in strength?

Will Wight

He would have needed to eat Drakes for another month or two, when he would have reached the limit of that food to strengthen him. After which he would have to find something better.

Questioner

Emperor vs. Emperor

Will Wight

The Aurelian Emperor COULD win this, but only if he had time to prepare. If they're both tossed into an arena without warning, the Blackflame Emperor takes it. His weapon and his sacred arts are always with him.

Questioner

Early in Blackflame, Cassius mentions that his father sent him. Later on we learn that only Cassius and Eithan have the Arelius bloodline sensing ability, I assume that means that Cassius' mother was the Arelius blood member and that she is dead? In which case I would love to hear more about Cassius' story and how the Arelius family survived before they had an underlord.

Will Wight

No no, Cassias and Eithan (and technically Cassias' son, but he's very young) are the only bloodline Arelius in the city at that time.

Questioner

Lindon should have a harem.  By now Mercy, Yerin,lil blue and Geisha would be in harem by now. Orthos would turn out to be female and Lindon's goal would be to show arrogant young lords why he is worthy of Emperor's jade like beauty sister.

Will Wight

Strange...this is exactly the plot of the sixth novel. Using the Emperor’s elixirs, Gesha is regenerated back into her young body, and she finally notices how heroic Lindon’s eyebrows are and falls for him. Little Blue gains a solid form and can now express her long-standing affection for Lindon, it’s revealed that Mercy is actually gone from the Akura family to look for a man strong enough to be her husband, and all this attention causes Yerin to realize her true feelings for Lindon. The Emperor’s sister begins to see him as a little brother until Lindon rescues her, and as she is carried away in his arms she realizes how much she’s missed a man’s strong embrace. Despite the fact that she’s physically stronger than he is, but forget about that.

The only thing you got wrong is Orthos. He’s not a female turtle, but his never-before-mentioned daughter is, and she’s so advanced that she is perfectly human in appearance and, of course, has beauty like a heavenly fairy. She has to continue the Blackflame bloodline, and Lindon’s the only one around...

I’m amazed you picked up on all that, considering how subtle the clues were in the previous books.

Questioner

Why didn't Lindon's arm grow back, or start to grow back when he was chugging from the life pool? Orthos de-aged and healed a big crack in his shell. Shouldn't Lindon have healed a bit?

Will Wight

It worked the way it did because healing the crack in Orthos’ shell was easier than regenerating Lindon’s arm, and it had been too long, and his current arm is now bonded to his life aura just like his physical arm once was. You could regenerate his physical arm, but you’d have to do it intentionally