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Questioner
How do people on Cradle get information quickly for the average person? Does somebody come around on horseback delivering mail? Does somebody on a speed path run around delivering and picking up letters? Is there a portal system in place?
Will Wight
Most countries have some kind of a postal system run by sacred artists who can travel long distances quickly. Some of them use sacred beasts as mounts, but others do run it by foot. There are also communication constructs that can relay information over distances. Most of them are more like telegraphs than telephones.
Questioner
Jai Long's white spear vs. Leah's Ragnarus spear
Will Wight
Jai Long's white spear breaks immediately and shatters to dust. The Lightning Spear continues on, its momentum barely halted, and runs into Jai Long, who has to expend a great deal of his power to stop it. He lives, but he's wounded, exhausted, and on the back foot.
Terrible
If Yerin picked up a hobby, what would it be?
Will Wight
Yerin would be into competitive games.
tammy
Do you have any provisional names for the Williverse that aren't... that? The current name is... unique.
Will Wight
Well, it's the Willverse, which sounds better than the Williverse. That little i ruins the whole thing. I didn't come up with that name, I just thought it was funny. I'll come up with a name for it eventually, but it's hard to figure out something that doesn't sound like someone else's multiverse.
Questioner
If Simon and Lindon both decided to give up fighting and become male escorts, who do you think would make more money per night?
Will Wight
Simon, unless Lindon tapped into a niche client base.
Lindon is taller and broader of shoulder, but he also looks like he wants to punch you as a matter of course. Simon's smaller, more slender, and has more delicate features.
Simon, however, would literally starve to death before he took such a course. He'd rather die on his own terms than sell his dignity.
Lindon would do what he had to.
TransEmo
Cradle map as some point? I love having visual maps to help localise where everything is in relation to each other.
Will Wight
I might be persuaded to do it someday, but I don’t like maps and I don’t like making maps. I have a map for my own reference.
I would give everyone in this channel $100 and a crystallized drop of my blood if I released a map and didn’t get a slew of complaints like “But this region seems like it should be farther away,” and “There’s no way the weather would be like this there,” “Those don’t look like natural rivers,” “Why don’t the roads have a more logical layout,” and so on and so forth. Drives me crazy, and I don’t want to deal with it, so no maps.
Sancus
You could publish the map as drawn by some character who is explicitly mentioned as really bad at maps and without any sense of direction.
Will Wight
I tried something like that with Traveler’s Gate, and still got a ton of the very nitpicking I was trying to avoid.
So NO MAPS! I’m hearing that in the voice of Edna from the Incredibles. “No capes!”
hunch
Hey Will, is there going to be emotional engagement/resolution for the starting scene in ghostwater? (A yes/no answer would be fine). It was a pretty big, character building event for Lindon—the first time he had a large group of innocents/regular strangers depending on him and he failed them, resulting in many of their deaths. Burning horribly before his very eyes as he tried to subdue their killer in time. We don't get an internal monologue on his impressions and thoughts, whether it be self recrimination, anger at the skysworn for mishandling the situation, sheer horror, anger at the phoenix, whatever it may be. All it says afterwards when it switches back to his perspective is that he's 'numb'. Which is unsatisfying, and really leaves a big mystery hole in his characterization. But it's understandable if he's repressing what happened (as has been implied by the numbness and him single mindedly throwing himself into advancement), only to have to confront it later.
Will Wight
At a previous point in the book's development, most of Lindon's actions stemmed from his emotional reaction to that scene. Which is why it's the prologue.That's still happening, but I pushed it to the background a bit. Basically, the reason why he confronts Ekeri directly instead of looking for a way out is because of his emotional response to the town at the beginning. He realizes that he could have won if he had just stood up and fought from the very beginning, but because he thought of himself as weak, other people died. In an earlier draft, that all boiled out in the scene at the end with Orthos, where he erupts in grief and trauma and frustration, but I ended up feeling like it worked better if these were emotional forces that Lindon himself wasn't entirely aware of. Orthos' statement that Lindon is still haunted by the Remnant of his weak self is his response to Lindon's problem illustrated in the prologue. Lindon wasn't too weak to deal with the problem, but he thought he was.So thematically, it resonates in all of Lindon's journey throughout Ghostwater, though Lindon doesn't (and probably won't) confront those emotions directly in a scene.
George
Will, how many people of Northstriders level would it roughly take to defeat weakest member of The Wolves? I know that suitability is a huge factor in a fight, which is why i don'T expect a definite answer.
Will Wight
Assuming the weakest of the Wolves, i.e. someone who has no other powers besides those of the Abidan and little combat experience but they're trying to work in the Wolf Division anyway...AND assuming we mean "beat in a fight" rather than "kill"...Northstrider might be able to do it in a 1v1. There's a wide gap between the least of the Abidan and the Judges, plus people who are weaker than Northstrider could still technically ascend.
George
Do you ascend simply after reaching a certain level, or is it only possible after gaining an enlightenment of a certain laws of the universe, kinda like Linley did in Coiling Dragon later in the books?(For example, Profound Laws of Earth)If it is the latter, could technically a copper ascend by understanding a certain amount of laws, or is that, already, not possible, because mastering such laws allows you, immediately, to reach a higher cultivation rank even if it is an unconventional way.
Diego
I imagine it's a lot like the transition to iron for Lindon though. If someone weak ascends too early it probably limits their future growth. Or maybe the iteration the weakest Wolf came from allows early ascension so he's not all that strong yet.Hey Will another question: What stops immortals from mastering different magic systems from different iterations? (Like in disguise so they don't disturb fate too much)
Will Wight
@George: It's more like mastering Laws than pure cultivation, but no a Copper couldn't do it.@Diego: Yep, you nailed it. The weakest Wolf is from an Iteration other than Cradle (so he might have to leave a lot of his power behind) and has just started learning to tap into the Way.What stops immortals from going to another Iteration and learning the magic system?The Abidan. There's nothing in the rules of the universe to prevent that, and indeed one of the rival organizations of the Abidan is made up of people who do this.
Jenny
Was Jai Chen the wife Lindon saw in Suriel's vision?
Will Wight
Yes.
Questioner
If the most pleasant iron body is asked, then what's with the most painful, except for Lindon's(if his IS even the most painful one)
Will Wight
It's hard to quantify the MOST painful Iron Body; is burning alive more painful than being torn apart piece by piece?Because those are both actual ways of developing an Iron body.There are some Iron bodies similar to Lindon's that involve being stabbed and cut over and over while you're being healed. There are others that involve adapting your body to fire, which basically means burning yourself one part at a time.
Lil' Blue
Also, how as an author do you deal with claims that your characters are too OP? Is that intended or a consequence?
Will Wight
I'm never concerned about it at all. First off, it's normally baseless. People are concerned that a character will be too overpowered because they just got a power-up, and that's not a reasonable concern. A character is only too overpowered if they can easily solve the challenges they face using that power, and usually I don't have my characters in situations where they can easily win with their current abilities. Sometimes, I haven't created a situation with enough tension, but it's not because the character is too powerful. It's because I failed to outline some part of the conflict well enough in telling the story: either the obstacle isn't clear enough, the stakes aren't high enough, the character isn't motivated enough, or something like that. The character is never too powerful, because you can always give them a goal they really want to obtain, but can't using their strength.
The Last Reader
What would a monarch level poison do?
Will Wight
It would be sentient, more like a plague than a poison, and it would not only devour the spirit and the mind, but would corrupt the madra and aura of the land around it as well. Inside a Monarch, being contained by their spirit, it might just act like a normal poison would in a normal person.
Questioner
It seems like Dreadgods and Dreadbeasts have their spirits fused with their flesh comparative to heralds.
Will Wight
That's a question that gets asked a lot, Dreadgods and Dreadbeasts have their spirits fused with their flesh, Heralds do too, what's the difference? Difference is, Heralds do it correctly, they do it when their bodies and spirits can handle it, and Dreadbeasts do it when their bodies and spirits can't handle it. The Dreadgods are what happens when that is taken to absurd ridiculous extremes, then they mutated into something else entirely and became an exception to the rule.
Questioner
Dragon's breath streams crossing during a fight. I wonder what would happen if two Blackflame dragon breaths crossed during a fight? Maybe that's a question for Egon, I mean Dross.
Will Wight
Never cross the streams.
Questioner
Will's forte is not with numbers or statistics, and I highly recommend to anyone trying to reconcile the mathematics of population distributions or the like in Cradle to not dwell on the subject, and rather focus on the spirit of the explanations instead of the letter. That way lies madness.
Will Wight
This is absolutely the correct advice, and I encourage everyone to adopt this attitude because I am not a numbermatician, but I’m going to hijack your comment to address these specific numbers.In the Wei clan, they celebrate every Iron like we celebrate everyone graduating from high school. The one example we see (Wei Shi Kelsa’s advancement) is a bigger deal because she’s younger than average, talented, and there’s a competition coming up in which she might actually stand out.As for Lindon’s rank among Lowgolds, he’s ranked so high in the combat rankings because (despite the impression you get from reading the series) most Lowgolds are not really fighters. They CAN fight in the same way that any big guy COULD throw a heavy punch, but they won’t rank high in terms of combat anymore than that random big dude would perform well in a professional boxing tournament.Also, those rankings reflect the perception of what he’s accomplished more than anything. They rank him so high both because on paper he’s doing things that Lowgolds shouldn’t do (in this case, acquitting himself well and surviving the fight with Jai Long) and because he’s a Blackflame. In the Blackflame Empire, which has long records about what that Path is capable of at low levels, that gets you extra points in calculating your ability to fight compared to your peers.
Questioner
When are you functionally immortal?
Will Wight
I may change this, as with anything that hasn't happened in the books yet, so take it with a grain of salt.But Sages almost don't age, and Heralds and Monarchs do not.Most Heralds and Monarchs, I should say.
Questioner
so does that apply to normal Archlords as well, or just Sages?
Will Wight
No.
Questioner
I'm going to assume that means it only applies to Sages
Will Wight
Yes.
officer340
Is Eithan in the next book? Or too spoilery?
Will Wight
Eithan is in the next book. That’s all I can say.
Marco and Grayson
Is it possible that you can just write about Lindon forever?
Will Wight
You know, I'd love to, I really like writing about Lindon, but the thing is, I just really love writing new stories. I just really like it. Any time I'm writing a story and I'm thinking about "Hmm. But what else could I be writing?" So I might come back to Lindon in the future, I certainly could see myself continuing to write stories from Lindon's perspective, but I think it's important that Cradle has an ending to the story and I really want to be able to tell other stories.
Arch
What would a monarch level piece of equipment/weapon be like, seeing as a monarch level binding would be virtually unheard of, would it be dozens of interlocking herald bindings, or maybe something touched by the way?
Will Wight
A Monarch level piece of equipment would indeed touch on powers beyond Cradle.
