Recent entries

notacommitee

Do we know the third person on the Akura team?

Will Wight

The third slot isn’t settled yet, but it’s implied to be Pride

CaptnBadReads

I was sad that [Cassias] Casius (I can never spell his name) wasn't really surprised or shocked at Lindon being Truegold.

Will Wight

Cassias was kind of sad that he was Truegold.

Bo

Why no soulfire on the cover?

Will Wight

Because that would be three different colored flames on three different covers, and because gray fire doesn’t look that cool. So it was the one to cut. Instead of Blackflame or the...upcoming cover.

a_moniker

Why not the Night Wheel or the Archstone on the cover?

Will Wight

The Night Wheel or the Archstone would have worked. But I had the cover commissioned before I was certain those two things would be in the book.

Wodan

What is the official path of Arelius clan? And what are its basic principles?

Will Wight

That's an interesting question. So, the official path of the Arelius clan.

The Arelius family in the Blackflame Empire does not have an official path. They don't have one; the elders are all on different paths. I mean they really do a lot of different stuff. They usually use their different paths to create links and bonds--kind of like arranged marriages between the different sects and schools of the empire. The path that Cassius is on, the Path of Silver Grace, the School of Silver Grace is actually an influential and prestigious school in the Blackflame Empire. Therefore, they send qualified people there from the Arelius Family in order to create bonds. So, really, it's their people in different sects and schools all over the empire.

However, as has been alluded to for the last few books, there is a homeland continent the Arelius family come from and they have a main clan there. That clan does indeed have an official path but I'm not going to share it with you yet because I think it's going to come into play in book seven. Books seven and eight, so it's at least going to be featured in it. I don't know how prominent it's going to be so that's not as much of a spoiler as it sounds like.

Will Wight

Another Underlord blooper from Will posted on discord:

 

Orthos blew smoke into the night air. "Lindon, all this time I have been lying to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I adopted this form merely to gain your trust. Orthos is not even my real name."

The turtle floated up into the air, limbs kicking as though swimming through water. Long

white hair flowed back from his leathery head, and a scythe appeared clutched in the turtle's

mouth.

He spoke with his voice muffled by the shaft of the weapon. "It is I...Ozriel!"

Azqa

I think you'd stopped reading comments by the time I posted this one on a different blog post, so I'll copy it below since it seems relevant to me.

UnsouledCopperIronJadeLowgoldHighgoldTruegoldUnderlord

Lindon finds badges of other materials - "The first row contained a badge each of copper, iron, jade, and gold. That much he expected. But the second row moved from halfsilver to goldsteel to materials he couldn't identify. One of them was a deep, fiery red, and the other a blue so rich it was like a Forged slice of the sky."

Does the description of the power scale change at Underlord, or is that one term an aberration? Will we see people at Halfsilver / Goldsteel level, or is Underlord [now the ___Lord range of levels] simply represented by one of those?

Heck, I was wondering if Underlord was more a political title than truly an advancement-in-the-sacred-arts label.

If Halfsilver is used for the ___Lord stage, then what about "Silverlord"?

Will Wight

The materials motif changes after Gold, reflecting the fact that improving the quality of your madra alone is not how you advance. You could technically get all the way to Truegold just by cycling and refining your madra, it would just take forever.

I actually like Silverlord a lot, because it sounds cool. It seems kind of random in sequence, though: Underlord, Silverlord, Overlord.

Laben, friend of Jeremiah Halstead, esq.

What do you think of making the level of lord they are (at least at that high level) be named after some achievement or change that the person goes through to reach that level? Like a flying lord, or a wandering lord, or an inhuman lord, or shining lord, or dread lord (which may not be named after a change, but I like the sound of it). Other random ideas: ice lord, mist lord, perhaps a fun corruption of time lord (back to the thesaurus we go), scholar lord, ... These are getting worse as I go so I'll stop here.

Will Wight

Makes sense, Friend of Jeremiah. But as I have it now, the mechanic used to advance from Gold to Lord involves claiming and holding external powers, which is somewhat implicit in the word "Lord." So any prefix I used based on the mechanic would be redundant.

I could always change the mechanic to suit the word, if I came up with a word I liked, but that leaves us back at square one.

Rhys

1. You mentioned that the blackflame emporer was the level above under lord. How much higher were the proper black fame family? 2. How big is the ninecloud court, compared to the blackflame empire now and at its height. 3. Were any of the dragons at the peak of the cultivation of cradle I.e like northstrider or Shia miara4. Who would win a war between ninecloud court of today and the blackflame empire of the dragons5. Finally has the loss of the blackflame family resulted in a reduction of territory? Have other states taken land from them now there is no longer a blackflame cultivator to be afraid of?

Will Wight

1.) Can't tell you, spoilers.2.) Can't tell you, spoilers.3.) No.4.) The Ninecloud Court of today. The Ninecloud Court existed back during this dragon empire, and they outlived it for a reason.

5.) Yes! Partially because Blackflame cultivators were scary death-weapons that are now gone, lending boldness to the border-states, and partially because the clans are still (fifty years later) pushing and testing the new Imperial clan, trying to get as much autonomy as possible. It's resulting in weaker borders due to a lack of cooperation.

However, the Naru clan are much better administrators than the Blackflames ever were, and the life of the average citizen in the Empire has improved over the last few decades.

The highest levels of the Ninecloud Court (like Luminous Queen Sha Miara) are on the same tier as the Dreadgods. They are capable of evaporating seas and obliterating nations singlehandedly.The dragons of the Blackflame Empire were scary, but not THAT scary.

Enkidu

Anyone else feel a little Zelazny in that post? It felt a little like "All roads lead to Amber." I loved the Amber books and the Abidan feels like a more universal scale of Amber, with the princes not necessarily being backstabbing power-hungry monsters. If I have to wait for Blackflame, this is how I would prefer to do it. Masterfully done as ever, Will!

Will Wight

*I* definitely felt some Zelazny in this post.

Among other things, the initial draft of this system owes points to Zelazny's Amber, Star Trek's Galactic Federation, and Bleach's Soul Society. It all drifted and evolved over time, requiring some gradual planning and re-planning. I couldn't even tell you how many drafts of this I went through before I even wrote House of Blades, much less now. 

With Amber, I loved the idea of having powers that drew from different worlds, but I hated the idea of infinite universes.

Because if the possibilities are TRULY infinite, you can always pull from a dimension where your loved one never died. Or where you became Supreme Overlord of Earth. Or where there's a weapon that suits your exact needs at this precise moment.

If it's truly infinite, there CAN'T be one true world. Because there's always a version out there that is the exact same, except the deck of cards in your pocket is shuffled slightly differently.

So I knew pretty early on that I wanted a system of finite worlds, even if that number is very large. I'd rather have a Chronicles of Narnia multiverse than a Rick and Morty multiverse.

As for the order versus chaos thing, it's funny, because that didn't come from Amber. I had intentionally ditched that at the beginning, because "order" typically has really boring powers. Also, it's been done so much.

I came at it from a different direction: what powers did I want the Abidan to have?

I wanted them to have powers that were universal, so abilities that wouldn't fail them if they dropped into a world with a weird magic system. I also wanted them to be defensive and rules-oriented, and specifically I wanted them to be able to adjust the rules of the world.

So, you know, after a few years and a bunch of different versions, I finally admitted it: there's nothing more universal, defensive, and rules-oriented than "order." I was only trying to avoid the order/chaos duality because Zelazny and Modesitt did it.

Eventually, I gave in.

Jon

I was just wondering if that was the plan from the very beginning or if this idea of iterations developed as you wrote new books? Also are we going to be seeing new iterations, complete with different magic systems?

Will Wight

Ideas don't ever stop developing, in my experience, even unto the point where I was tweaking details before I released this post.

However, these basic mechanics were in place years before I wrote House of Blades. I didn't call them Iterations--that was a term I invented when I wrote Unsouled in order to give Suriel something to say other than "worlds" or "dimensions."

>Are we going to be seeing new Iterations?

One of my main goals in making this system was to create a framework in which I could write whatever stories I wanted. So if I want to do an interdimensional war that spans hundreds of worlds, I can. If I want to do a classic fantasy novel that never mentions the Abidan or any other worlds, I can.

But the reader, in the back of their mind, already knows some of the shared rules of this multiverse. YOU know what's going to happen when humanity is destroyed, even if the characters don't. YOU know how someone can read the future (Fate) and still end up wrong. That sort of thing.

Diego

1.) Are humans from each iteration biologically diffrent? (I asked this in the previous post)2.)Easy to deduce Amalgam is Simons World but i find it weird no myths of people ascending exist in this world and as well as in Asylum. (The emperor was the closest we got to an immortal there)

Will Wight

1.) They may be biologically different in some ways, but essentially no. Not in the Iterations we've seen, anyway.

2.) That's why Cradle is unique. The magic systems of the others don't naturally lead to someone ascending beyond the world.Especially not in Asylum. The Emperor had even a slight knowledge of the Abidan because he was such an exception to the rule; Asylum was specifically designed to be extraordinarily difficult to leave.

Alex

How does ascending to higher iterations work? Is it like a ladder, where there is one iteration that is higher than the one before, or is it like a pyramid, where there are many "infant" level iterations and as you go higher there are less and less iterations.

Will Wight

"Higher" isn't literal, it just means "more advanced." Cradle prepared people for interdimensional combat better than most Iterations do, and once you learn that lesson, you're ready to participate in the truth of the multiverse.

Tacroy

Are Iterations sequential? Like, does one universe die and then another one spin up, but the members of the Abidan court are able to travel through time to some extent? Or are they all scattered throughout a multiverse, and coalesce at different times?

Will Wight

They're all scattered through a multiverse. There are thousands of simultaneously extant universes managed by the Abidan.

It's just that, at any given time, one might be dying and another being born.

Devin

 In the short story Steel Diplomacy you have descendants of Elysians that have been away from the City for a while. What would happen to them as they spent longer and longer away from the Territory?

Will Wight

Nothing happens to them. They're fine. They're descendants, so technically they're natives of the Unnamed World (the Traveler's Gate world that isn't a Territory).

As for the Territories continuing to grow, they don't grow any closer to the main world. That's what I meant by them finding an equilibrium. They expand horizontally but not vertically, in a sense.

Nocturniquet

When you say universe do you mean literal full scale universe like the one we exist in or do you mean a sorta localized sphere of planets and stars, perhaps the scale of one galaxy, and nothing else exists at all?

Will

Full universe. Some of the Iterations have galactic colonies.

Nocturniquet

That would imply that the most developed and advanced iterations have multiple worlds all united under one government and/or race. Makes sense that the "Court of Seven" would rule from this iteration. I wonder if in the most advanced iterations, they are so knowledgeable that things like the Abidan are not myths, just everyday facts of life. And hell I wonder if the average citizens discuss the policies this Court of Seven implement or think about. I wonder if this iteration is so fucking advanced that even a child in this civilization would seem like a god to the strongest people on Cradle. At some point this becomes an epic fantasy space opera now that I think about it...

Will Wight

Sanctum is like you've described. It's a galactic civilization with faster-than-light travel in the form of skipping through the Way, they're fully aware of the Abidan, and they benefit from the technology of other worlds.However, it's the exception. Most Iterations, even the technologically advanced ones, are unaware (or only vaguely aware) of the Abidan. That's a result of their non-interference policy.There is at least one organization out there that unites worlds and gladly interferes in natural development. They encourage inter-universal trading, develop weapons based on the magic of several different worlds, and even raid other worlds for resources.

Mahfuz

Also, Valinhall is a relatively new fragment that joined with Amalgam and was molded to Valin's will, right? If that's true then were all the other territories molded to someone or something so that they could become stable? Is that what the original founders were?

Will Wight

And yes, that's what Founders are. The person whose will shapes the Territory to the greatest degree. Valinhall is still young and malleable, and most of the other Territories are way more stable, so they don't need a Founder anymore.Valinhall does because it's still, to some degree, in the process of being formed.

Devin

Do the inhabitants of the territories fit the definition of human? The ape from Lirial (whose name escapes me), the Avernus bird-men, the Nye, Marakos/the gnomes from Elysia, the lizard creatures from Naraka Kai kills? Or are those humans who were affected by the time they spent on a fragment drifting through the void?

Follow up. Assuming that the Territories are fragments that haven't fully combined with the Traveler's Gate World, what happens to travelers when the territories do fully combine?

 

Will Wight

They do count, but not fully. They're either humans who were warped by their time in a fragment or the descendants of humans like that. OR they could be non-humans that achieved sentience and became more human.

Either way, they count, just not as much as a full human would. Just like how Valinhall held together for a long time without humans in it regularly--it was populated by the Nye and a bunch of other sentient beings, but humans are a much better anchor (so to speak).

The Traveler's Gate world, Amalgam, is unique in that it has formed a stable relationship with the fragments "orbiting" it. The Way between the main world and the fragmentary worlds is thin, so their realities tend to bleed together (showing up primarily as natural Gates--randomly occurring portals to a Territory that weren't created by a Traveler).

However, normally when one world bleeds into another, the bleeding gets faster and faster until they collide. Like what happened with Limit and Harrow, the two worlds that Suriel is trying to euthanize.

Amalgam is unique because it has formed an equilibrium with its extra fragments. They're free to exist and grow without accelerating into existential destruction.

Adarsh

Which of your books took place on Sanctum?

Will Wight

None of them, Suriel just mentions it a few times. It's the headquarters of the Abidan.

Havoc

Do any iterations have civilizations that exist across multiple planets? Would something like the Star Wars galaxy be more strongly connected to the Way since there is so much sentient life?

 

Will Wight

And yes, absolutely! Sanctum is one such Iteration, where they have many populated planets and enjoy a strong connection to the Way.Barring external factors, worlds like that will live until the natural expiration of that universe, so billions of years.