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Decadakon

How do you balance lightning and storm based paths?

Will Wight

Honestly, I've never been a fan of lightning as an element because it's difficult to balance. That said, yes we will see at least one.

Discord

Scientific classification of madra

Will Wight

If you ask too many questions about the categorization of madra aspects, you’re just not going to get very many satisfying answers out of me.   I didn’t organize it in, like, an elemental chart with categories and everything. There would have been advantages to that, sure, but I wanted to leave it open-ended to some degree.

Questioner

How strong are your characters in comparison to say Goku or Superman.

Will Wight

How much would Suriel be able to lift...that's kind of a difficult question, because it's like asking how much a Star Destroyer can bench-press. "As much as she needs to," would I think be the most accurate answer. She'll have some fights, but fights among Judge-level individuals are less "I'm going to punch you," and more "I predicted where you were going to be standing and I already willed that space out of existence."

The Last Reader

So are the Monarch not actively trying to become more powerful then without ascending because that has some backward thinking considering the dreadgods can kill them if they aren't careful

Will Wight

Monarchs have basically tapped out the limits of sacred arts. Which is why Northstrider was looking into alternate means of becoming stronger in GW.

Questioner

Which sacred beast produces the best bristle material for the Aurelias Clans brooms?

Will Wight

There's a species of eagle whose tail-feathers have a unique relationship with wind aura. When you sweep such a feathered broom, the wind actually gathers up all the dust and loose debris in a small area and piles it neatly up. Scholars believe that the patterns in the feathers act as a script to produce such a unique effect, but no one really knows for sure. In battle, the Broom Sage used bristles from the tail of the Thorn Mountain Boar, a fifteen-story-tall boar that ate forests. The wood for his broom was taken from a branch of the Underworld Herald, a self-aware ancestral tree that once grew upside-down in an underground kingdom of blood and darkness.

Zhanzy

Suriel mentions Li Markuth as Gold whereas we know he is greater than that and possibly an archlord so is this a mistake ?

Will Wight

That was me looking for an imperfect solution to a problem.I never intended Li Markuth to merely be Gold, which is why he says as much when he shows up, and of course Suriel knows exactly what his power level is. However, I didn’t want to throw new terms at the reader in book one, so I had her refer to him in the same way everyone else was.Of course, now it’s confusing. In hindsight, I should have said something like “The stronger practitioner’s core.”

Questioner

Would it absorb madra launched at it? A forged pane of pure madra would be very cool for Lindon to learn how to do if it could be used as a defense.

Will Wight

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Technically it would intercept any madra thrown at it, but most of the time it would just shatter. Sometimes it would actually make the technique MORE powerful for having passed through and absorbed the pure madra.There could be ways to fashion it into a defense, but they're almost all hugely impractical. It would be much easier to just have a regular wall and carve a script into it.

Terrible

Who would Northstrider go on a date with?

Will Wight

Northstrider is not a fun guy. He no longer relaxes.

Questioner

Are there any places on cradle where information on sacred art techniques are widely available and indigenous practitioners are encouraged to develop their own paths?

Will Wight

The Dawnspring Archive.It's both a location and an organization dedicated to helping young sacred artists develop their own, personal Path. They have dream tablets from all over the world and from all sorts of Paths, which can encourage children to expand their imaginations and experiences with the sacred arts.

Jeremy the Other One

Who's your favorite character to write the persepctive of?

Will Wight

Bliss, from Elder Empire. She's really fun. Pure fun, just enjoyable.

From Cradle, it is Eithan, hands down. It is easy and he gets to do whatever he wants.

Questioner

What color is Suriel's skin?Is it blue like Gadrael. Or can Judges have normal human skin also? I picture it as either fair or light blue.

Will Wight

It's pale, like a white human's. She started off human, actually, though Gadrael didn't.

Lil' Blue

Is madra a series of tubes?

Will Wight

Madra itself is not a series of tubes, but it can exist only in the context of a series of loops and channels that might be described as tubes. Bindings and scripts re-pattern madra in order to control it and produce different effects, so you might say that madra in its natural state is ALWAYS cycling through an interconnected network of tubes. So while madra is not a series of tubes, the system by which the sacred arts can be performed IS a series of tubes.

Questioner

What will be the plot of Underlord?

Will Wight

I don't know how you feel about Underlord spoilers, but this much will probably be revealed in the book description: This upcoming book will be Lindon, Yerin, and Mercy competing with other Truegolds for a spot on the Blackflame Empire's tournament team.

April

All your characters know you are responsible for everything that has happened to them. You hear a knock at the door. Who is it and how much trouble are you in?

Will Wight

It’s Eithan. He knew all along. He invites me into my own home for a cup of tea.

IronToBInd

I believe the books explain all that. Jai Daishou was very old. However lots of the characters are very old and are essentially super young too because of their advancement, Daishou had stalled on his so age was catching up to him. As long as you keep pushing you stay young or get younger

Will Wight

^

Yep, this is the case. He was also an old man already when he advanced to Underlord, so while it extended his lifespan and kept him healthier, it can only go so far. If he had hit Underlord when he was 25, he wouldn’t have been so pressured for time.

Questioner

The wastland artist in the excerpt is described as "horned". What does his horn (horns?) look like?A heavy rhinotype horn, like a stag etc or?

Will Wight

Two upward-curving emerald horns. They’re luminous lime green at the base and they run up the gradient to the points, which are dark green.

Questioner

How does advancing work with Soulfire in the Lord stages? 

Will Wight

You'll find out!

Questioner

Do the desolate wilds surround Sacred Valley on all sides, or only on its eastern border?

Will Wight

Only to the east.

Will

My main problem with romance is that it's added to literally every story as though it's a required component, and it's often just thrown in there. In nine out of ten stories, the characters are just in love because they're in love, and we expect that because it's the weird side item that comes with every single meal.

So I intentionally left it out of Traveler's Gate.

But now that TG has become much bigger than I thought it would, if I want to expand on the character's lives, logically there's going to be SOME romance in there. There's romance in everyone's life to some degree.

It just won't be the focus, because the focus is fighting giant interdimensional monsters with a huge sword.

***As for the anime influences, the parallels to the Shounen Jump Big Three are almost entirely coincidences.

The madra in Cradle parallels chakra from Naruto because they're both based on chi myths and legends that originated in China and Korea. We're drawing on the same source material. But the two magic systems work exactly the same way, so picturing madra flow as chakra flow is dead-on.

The only One Piece connection is that they both involve pirates on a magical sea, but I wasn't intentionally making that parallel. They're pirates because I wanted to do a pirates vs. ninjas thing, and it's a magical sea because awesome things are awesome. I would love to write something that was directly inspired by One Piece, though. That would be amazing.

I love the Devil Fruits system but I wish it had more rules, and I love how haki solves the main Fruit problem (i.e. why aren't the Logia users invincible?) by giving them a catch-all force that can be used against anyone with any powers. But it's also kind of vague, as haki is just sort of "general magical power," so I'd want some more character there.

And if I wrote my own series I'd get to tweak those as I wish, which would be so much fun!

The Traveler's Gate parallels...I get the connection to Bleach, I really really do, but believe it or not it's entirely a series of coincidences. Simon uses a large Japanese-style sword because it's cool, and if I was inspired by anyone it was Sephiroth. With that sweet sweet Masamune.

The black cloak was a last-minute addition. Seriously, it was like the last thing I added to the book. My cover artists had come up with that sweet-looking Nye on the cover, but my beta readers kept assuming it was Simon (because anyone on the cover has to be the main character, I guess). And they were confused when he never wore a black cloak; I had him in peasant clothes all book.

So I gave him a cloak. Now it's Simon on the cover if you want it to be, or it's the Eldest, or it's just a random Nye. However you interpret it.

And the mask was complete improv. I gave Malachi a mask as his Ragnarus artifact, but when he died it was just sitting there on the floor. And I've always had this pet peeve where main characters let their enemies' strongest weapons sit there and rot instead of taking them and use them for good.

So I had Simon take it. Then I had to think...well, he has to find a use for this mask. For Malachi it allowed him to draw more from his Territory, but how would that help Simon? The chains already limit how much he can draw. Maybe they can fix it and make it work for Valinhall...

And that's how that happened.

If I were to take anything from Bleach, it would be shikai/bankai. In fact, I'm trying to figure out how to work something like that into Cradle, because I think it allows for a lot of character individuality.

***

That said, I can tell you where I DID intentionally copy the Big Three as well as a bunch of other anime series, and that's in the fight scenes. I usually picture fights as a choreographed anime sequence in my head, and work from there. If you think of them as reading an anime, awesome!

And finally, to answer your main question: yes, I picture Lindon and Yerin as Chinese, as well as most of the characters. The only exceptions so far are Suriel and Eithan (and, in Blackflame, the rest of Eithan's family).

Thanks for reading, Simon! Glad you're enjoying the stories!

Questioner

What are the mechanics of a soul oath? Does the oath need to be made with equal consideration on each side? What happens if you break an oath? Can an oath be annulled by mutual agreement?

Will Wight

A soul oath is your spirit holding you to an agreement. When two people’s spirits are holding them to the same agreement, they resonate, and it creates a sort of subtle link.

Therefore, both people have to recognize that they have made an oath. Forcing someone to swear an oath under duress works, but is much weaker, because both participants know the oath is unfair. However, making a false oath isn’t really possible, because your spirit and the other person’s would recognize that you had made an oath.

Yes, you can annul an oath under mutual agreement.

If you break one, your spirit suffers the consequences. So you can have your madra channels or core injured, your madra can become more difficult to control, etc.

In the worst case, you can die, though those risks are exaggerated in rumor. Usually, if you do die from breaking an oath, it’s because your powers screwed up.

Some people with more powerful souls even influence the aura around them to hold them to their oath, meaning the natural world would curse them with consequences for oath-breaking.