Have you thought about doing hardcover or leatherbound special editions of cradle?
Yes. Absolutely, I have thought about that, that is a very real possibility that might happen at some point. Maybe as part of a Kickstarter, maybe not. I don't really know how that's gonna work. I need more research in that before I give you an answer. Of course, I'm not commiting to anything right now, but I absolutely have considered it.
What would be the best strategy if a foundation sacred artist was suddenly dropped into the world of Subnautica?
If a foundation artist was dropped in the world of Subnautica and they did not have access to the technology that Riley here, my survivor, has access to, they would be in real trouble because while they have some superhuman powers, not nearly enough to keep up with the world of Subnautica. So, therefore, if there's aura here that they can cultivate then fantastic, they are in good shape. The better spend their days hunting for fish and getting water and now I don't know how you would do that without a fabricator but they'd find a way to get some water and food and then trying to make it to Copper ASAP. If it doesn't have aura and they don't have this technology, then they are going to be hunting fish and just hoping that they don't instantly die.
What does a core being deep mean, that is, does it have extra-dimensional depth? Does this have anything to do with why spinning your core make it more dense?
They say deep just kind of as a word to explore that. It's not literally elongated in depth. That's just how the describe capacity; so a deep core can hold more madra. The dense madra is more effective with a little bit, so very concentrated madra is more powerful; not more powerful in terms of you throw an energy blast and it does more damage than somebody else's energy blast but more like your mana costs go down. So, if you've got dense madra you can use less madra to accomplish to the same goal. And if you have deep cores, then you have more maximum mana. So, that's basically the idea.
I've written a book on Amazon and it didn't do well at all but I wanted to know if you would recommend College writing classes or not if I should just push through and do the work?
Mr. Bean, I would highly recommend working on your writing craft. I know that for me, I learned that through college classes and I learned that through grad student classes and that was extremely valuable for me and that is a reason that a lot of my writing stands out is because I've mastered a lot of skills, not mastered, certainly not mastered, I am on the path to mastering skills that a lot of people don't bother to cultivate. There's a lot of advantages to... its kind of like you are putting a car together and you can just follow the instructions or you can go to school and become a mechanic and learn all of the principles and then you really understand how cars work. So, if you run into a problem, if I run into a problem I can figure out, basically, what caused the problem and how to fix it. So, there's a lot of advantages to that. I'm not necessarily telling you you have to go to college if you want to write, but it did help me.
Where did the original Travellers gate pocket dimension based magic system idea come from?
That's a good question Arch! A couple of places. For one thing, I thought it would be cool to have a magic system based around, I thought the word "territories" lent itself well to a magic system, but what I had originally envisioned it as is you claimed your territory. So, your territory was the source of your power. So, kind of like a wizard's tower would be his territory, right? And that's kind of what I thought, is that that's where you draw your power from. I also thought that's how it would work out, but as I developed it, that's kind of not what it did. But another thing I thought of was, there's this fantasy, kind of, that I have that is it would be so cool if I could just step out of time into a comfortable room that existed just in another dimension, you just step into it. You just kind of have this cozy, camping place, this sort of like house that you can have. And that fantasy to me was always really cool, I'd love to be able to introvert out at any time and just kind of take a break in my little cozy space. And so I liked having a separate dimension for that. So those ideas kind of fused together, also, I knew I wanted a magic system with inherent progression.
Instead, he made murder house.
Ya, exactly. It's not fun to make your protagonist comfortable, it's way more fun to make them uncomfortable. So I also wanted a system of progression built in, so I thought exploring a place and becoming more of a master of that place and then drawing power from that location, I thought that was pretty cool. That was a neat concept that tied it well together, so that's how it came into being; those sort of disparate ideas coming together and going in the pot.
Favorite MTG Color?
Not blue. Anything but blue. If I had to pick one, I'd probably pick green because playing big creatures is fun. But it's really not blue.
Cultivation stories are often written as serials. Have you given any thought to writing something in that format?
A lot of thought. I have given that a lot of that. As a matter of fact, I cannot stop that thought. I really want to do that. It's a unique challenge. But, part of the challenge is monetization. If you are not on a site with ads, that's kind of where money comes from for serials. So, I don't know how that would make any money. Its not a good thing to release on Amazon because you can't really do the chapters. I don't know what delivery method to use. So, that's kind of the practical concern. A less practical and more artistic concern, I don't know, like I was talking about earlier, I don't have that idea that I think is really compelling enough to do as a serial. When I sit down on my phone and I've tried to, let me just write a chapter and see what comes out. I don't like it, I don't enjoy it, it doesn't engage my imagination. It ends up just being some guy showing up and doing something and I don't know why, but not in a curious way, more like in a 'I don't know why and its not that important because this guys got no personality and no goal.' And also, writing a really good serial like Against the Gods, or any of these successful cultivation novels. Writing a really good serial is it's own skill because you want each chapter to kind of have an arc of it's own and you want it to begin with the resolution of the last chapter and end on a cliffhanger, basically, it's not really a cliffhanger, but a tease for the next chapter, so you open by answering the last chapter's question and close by asking a new question that's going to be answered in the next chapter. So that's kind of the general structure that most people use for serials and I have not mastered that because I have not practiced it because that's not how I structure my chapters. So, I don't really know how to, that's a skill I'd have to cultivate and in order to that I would need an idea that, a vision, for a thing that I really believed in.
What resources have you used to help organize your thoughts? Do you just use bullet points/notes or do you have something more sophisticated like character sheets/diagrams/maps/etc...?
So I always have to sketch out a map. Those of you who have been around a long time know that I hate maps. There are many reasons why I hate maps, I think each is more compelling than the last. But, I can't stand maps, I don't like them, I really don't. But I do have to know where things are in relation to one another, so I always sketch out some kind of really rough map and so I do that and I keep that and that is something that I definitely do. Also, I have things that are like character sheets, so I definitely keep information. I have a document on my laptop, that's called "Powerful Figures of Cradle," and so I have all the Monarchs listed and all the Heralds and all the Sages and what continent they're on and what their allegiances and so I make sure I have all of that done. And, like I said, when I was working on magic systems, I did go through and put together a form for them. But, I don't really do that. Mostly, I just use bullet points and word documents and I just write my thoughts down. Bullet points, mostly, that's what I do. I list things, I keep things saved in different note files.
Do you ever play incremental/idle games? If you do, what's your favorite?
I have. I have probably put too much time into them. But, I don't play them ongoing, on an ongoing basis, I don't play them frequently, so I don't have a favorite. They're all kind of the same to me. The mobile game I've been playing is Fate/Grand Order, which I can't entirely recommend because it will sap your time and money. But, I love the Fate universe and I always have and Kinoko Nasu is one of my favorite writers of all time, so it was really cool to see that being executed and a lot of the different characters come to life, so that was really cool. So, that's what I've been playing, that's what I've been using to idle my time away, but it's not an idle game.
Who was the hardest Monarch to create?
I don't really know how to answer that to be honest. The eight man empire probably because there are 8 of them. Oh! I went back and forth on Reigan Shen for a long time. That's probably it, that's probably the answer. I went back and forth on Reigan Shen for a long time; he's obviously an antagonist figure. So, who he was and what his powers were, that changed alot. I ended up on the Path of the King's Key, which I like as a Path and we are going to get to explore that a little bit at some point, but I had also had him be like a plague, toxic venom Path as well. There's a lot of things I went back and forth on him about. But also, I kind of had him as a character, he didn't look like this, but a character who's kind of like Gilgamesh from Fate/Stay Night, where he is this arrogant King where he believes everything belongs to him. So I had him do that, and that's again The Path of the King's Key, so that even fit, so it fit his powers, not his physical description. And that would have been cool, but it didn't really work for me, so I ended up coming up with a different personality and there also weren't enough sacred beasts on the Monarchs, so he's now a white lion. That's why he is the emperor of lions. He is an emperor who ascended as a rare white lion.
Can you tell us what some of your favorite books are? So we know what to read when we're done with Uncrowned and wish to fill in the void it left behind.
I have a lot of favorites books, it's difficult to narrow it down. But, like I said earlier, I usually like to know what the person enjoys reading before I recommend things because there's very few things that I recommend without caveats. So, there's always something that I'm like 'if you like this, then you will like this, if you don't you're not going to, pretty much.' That is a common occurrence. So, my favorite books; I love the Wheel of Time series, I love the Dresden Files series, I love a lot of these web novels I've mentioned many times tonight. All of those, I stand by those. Funny enough, a lot of what I read, I read comics. Someone mentioned Solo Leveling earlier, that's absolutely one of my favorite ongoing comics right now. Solo Leveling, really good stuff, its a Korean webtoon, the art is maximum hype. So, Brent Weeks Night Angel trilogy, that used to be one of my favorites, its still probably up there, its close. I really like it. It's got some problems that have become more important to me as I've gotten, I don't know, older, or whatever but it still has place in my heart. That's a very great action magic series which I really enjoy, as you know.
Anything by Brandon Sanderson is a solid bet. My favorite of his, I love Mistborn, the first book is just one of my favorites, the rest of the series is good too, but the first book is like a fantasy heist novel and I just love that. I would love to write one someday, that'd be amazing. Mistborn does it so well, it's hard to try and compete with that. The Stormlight Archives are fantastic and, of course, he wrote the later editions of Wheel of Time, so, Brandon Sanderson, great stuff. And, that's it off the top of my head. There's a lot of other comics I read, but, I don't know, there's way too many of those to list.
Oh! Spy x Family, if anybody is interested in what comics to read, man, Japanese Manga Spy x Family, it is fantastic. The idea is that is a fantasy East Germany/West Germany kind of thing, so they are not real countries, but its basically East Germany, West Germany and one of them, the man, is a spy, and he, as a cover, needs to have a family, so he gets a woman to act as his wife. Secretly, unbeknownst to him, she's an assassin and she also needed a cover, so she was also looking for a fake family, which is why it worked out so well. And together, they adopt a daughter, who unbeknownst to either of them, is psychic and can read both of their minds and they are both keeping a secret from each other. And its a Mr. and Mrs. Smith kind of setup, except the daughter can read both of their minds and knows all their secrets and thinks its awesome because they are basically like characters from a TV Show. So, it is hilarious and heartwarming and it's adorable. I really really like it. Spy x Family, that's the name. It's like Hunter x Hunter; There's an x in the middle, but you don't say it.
What is the biggest jump from a single advancement? Ex: Copper to Iron
Copper to Iron is big because there is not a whole lot of difference because you didn't have a lot of abilities at Copper and then you get a lot more at Iron. I would say the biggest jump is from Truegold to Underlord, if I'm being honest. Truegold to Underlord is a huge jump and Archlord to Sage is a huge jump, Archlord to Herald is a huge jump, Herald to Monarch is a big jump. Either Archlord to Sage or Truegold to Underlord I think would be the bigger jumps. I think, probably Archlord to Sage because that's a whole extra thing.
How many oreos can you fit in your mouth?
As many as it takes.
Harmony (peak true gold) vs Kiro. Who wins?
I mean, if they are both at peak truegold, that's real contention, that's a real fight. But of course Kiro wasn't at peak truegold in Underlord, he was an Underlord. So probably Harmony, I would say, if they are at an equal advancement level, I would say Harmony probably wins. Mainly because he is ruthless and he would do anything to win and Kiro wouldn't necessarily despite how he comes across in the book, he is kind of the most level headed of all the characters introduced in that book.
What was your favourite line of dialogue to write? (My favourite line at the moment is “I don't have any love for the Jai clan, but as for you, if I saw you on fire I'd hold an umbrella for you so the rain didn't put you out.”
That was actually a really fun line to write, and by fun I mean agonizing. That tends to be the case because when I spend a lot of time on something-
I like those. I liked Northstrider saying "No." In Ghostwater, that was a lot of fun because I really set it up so that you really think the villain of the book is going to survive, because of course he's gonna survive! He's a character that's been built up too much, he can't go away, and yeah, he does. So that was a lot of fun to write. I spend a lot of time on that one, where it's the 'I'd hold an umbrella to put you out' because I knew what sentiment I wanted to express but I was thinking 'What's a creative way I can say that?' and that took a while. A lot of times there's lines of dialogue that I didn't really think too much about and then I come back and read and later and I'm like 'that's pretty good dialogue, pretty good.' There's other times when I come back and I go 'Oh, OK, an ape wrote this, an illiterate monkey. I hate this person, past Will, and I want him to go away for ever.' That doesn't always happen, but it sometimes happens.
My question relates to your reading habits. I've read a lot of Japanese light novels, but I haven't really read any Chinese novels or Wuxia, so I was wondering which, if any, Wuxia stories you would recommend?
So its less true Wuxia, that's really more like, if you've seen Hero or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, those are good examples of...so, it more they're cultivation fantasy novels. So, there definitely are some that I recommend, again, with a lot of the caveats I stated earlier. That's the reason I started writing Cradle, because its hard to recommend them some of these to the typical western reader with no caveats. But I do recommend them because I really enjoy them, so Against the Gods, A Will Eternal, Nine Soul Hegemon I guess is one that they say is pretty good, its not my favorite but, so on and so forth. Basically go to wuxiaworld.com and just kind of go nuts. There is gonna be something there to suit your taste because there is something there for everybody, there's a million things there and they do a fantastic job of keeping everything organized and translated.
Are there any cool places/creatures/magic systems you've thought of that you haven't had a chance to share with us in the books, but can talk about here?
Yes there are cool places/creatures/magic systems.
In Cradle, one on the things that I was originally intending, was I wanted ziel to have another sacred beast contract. Just like Lindon does, because we don't see a lot of that, mainly because I don't want to introduce two characters, so it's not something you see anybody but lindon do very much. There are other sacred artists out there that work with sacred beasts. What I really wanted to do was show off somebody else that did that.
Now what his original design called for, instead of a giant hammer and a script based path, he had a void key and he kept creatures in it, and he was kinda like a Pokemon trainer if I'm being honest. So he had a core that allowed him to share and connect with madra from a bunch of different creatures, but he formed a contract in a different way. What he would do, is he would then release these less advanced Sacred Beasts that he had a bond with, and use them according to the situation.
To be honest it was too complex of a power set, it's more suited to a protagonists than a secondary character. Mainly because you have to introduce every single little creature he's fighting with, and you have to describe it, and you have to name it, and because they're sacred beasts they're mostly intelligent, so you have to give them a personality, so instead of creating one character you're creating half a dozen characters.
So I had a mantis that used sword madra, but he didn't grow any bigger, so was literally like the size of a mantis, so he would like go and attack....there was some cool stuff that I did with him, that was neat. Then I could have him really understand Sacred Beasts and talk about the difference between sacred beasts and humans, and how they viewed the world, and there's just a lot of things I wanted to do with that, and that was a cool thing that never made it into the books.
One of the things I developed recently, I spent some time just going through making up some magic systems for fun. One of the ones I worked on was the idea that spells, it's a world I'm envisioning kinda wizards, casting spells, so of course when you think of the traditional fantasy setting, wizards casting spells, it's a very intellectual thing, but there becomes kind of a problem where the spread of information, like so if you have wizards that work like they do in D&D, where its all knowledge and education, and then you have the internet, every wizard is gonna have access to every spell. Not that I was intending to give the internet, but there's a perfectly efficient was to learn these spells.
So therefore I thought, okay what is a way to keep the intellectual nerdy side of it but also it'd be a very personal thing that you really do have to explore in kind of an arcane way. So I thought of, each spell you have to really describe in a personal, interactive way, and by describe I mean write down in a book, or you could do sculptures, you can do songs, you could do poems. What you're doing is you're describing a concept, and this whole whatever, alter or whatever you're building that becomes the structure of the spell, it suggest the nature of what the spell does, so if you're sculpting a really big buff dude, and then you're writing all this poetry about how strength was the most important value, and then you wrote a thesis in your own blood on how only strength matters, maybe you'd get a strength buff, maybe you wouldn't anything because you didn't put enough passion into it. You're subjectively describing the effect you want, rather than objectively describing it like a programmer would to a computer, because its not literally interpreting your commands, its is interpretively and artistically manifesting your ideas.
That feels more magical to me, instead of a scientific mathematical sort of magic system, is more of an artistic, expressive magic system. I thought that would be a cool way of doing it, and it could take years to craft the perfect spell for you, but then once you do, the spells are very flexible and they have a lot of power to them, its not just a spell that sets things on fire, its a spell that is fire, is a living flame or is a spirit of fire or creates a fiery house I don't know, I didn't flesh it out too far. That's something that I really liked, that concept, and that's something I might work on further developing some day.
Will we ever see how a Drudge is normally made? It's clear Dross will serve as Lindon's Drudge, but I'm extremely curious how even an Iron Soulsmith can make such a complex and multifunctional construc?
Potentially. I had intended for you to, it's just that Dross kinda works that way. It wasn't intentional that he would work that way, it was intentional that he would have those powers, but I didn't realize until after doing it, I was like 'Huh. He kinda just negates the need for a drudge.' I didn't realize that until after I already gave him to Lindon. I intended for him to do everything he did, I just did not realize that that would do that. So maybe you'll get to see the way a Druge works? I would like to, it's kinda cool.
Is it possible to eat a remnant before or after Jade? If so, does one get a goldsign?
It is possible to absorb the power of a remnant before or after Jade, but not in the same way. So no, it is not a goldsign. It is a different relationship between you and the remnant so it's less of a part of your advancement going forward. But you can use it for power, there are other ways to bond with remnants, some people do do that. Other people who don't get a goldsign can get a goldsign later, that's a thing that you can sorta do kinda, but it's never quite the same as if you did it as a gold.
Are there aspects of madra aligned with emotions? Like anger or happiness madra, or would those be derivatives of dream madra?
They would be derivatives of dream madra. So one of the things I did not do a great job of conveying at the beginning was how the world works, like what aura is, and I wish I had. So I initially didn't want to limit the types of madra because I didn't want to limit myself, I wanted to be able to use any cool powers I thought of. But what I wished later, because what I've effectively done is I have created an elemental system, so wish I had just names the ten or twelve elements that there are on Cradle, and the ten or twelve common aspects of madra. I didn't because its environmental, so maybe in some places...like again, sword madra is effectively just force madra, but it's so distinct and so concentrated that people can cultivate with it, and make sword paths and so on and so forth.
So I liked the idea of it being mutable like that and being culturally different and different people having different paths based on where they've come from and what they've learned, and they're environment and all that stuff. But what I wish I'd done was have a certain number of static elements, because you can mix and match. I think that's the more compelling part of the magic system, is you go "what would a sword/dream path do? what would a sword/storm path do?", and that's cool to think about, that's cool the picture. Where as when your trying to figure out, is there emotion madra? is there leaf madra? is there metal madra? that becomes confusing, because you're like " so okay, my path is not sword and....eyeballs..." and it's like, "thats...play...well, that's not a thing", but it makes you think it might be, and I didn't give a reason why not. So that's one of the regrets I have about developing the system, was I wish there had just been twelve elements, or whatever.
