So in an earlier, comment, you said that a person can only stay dead for so long before their soul departs and they can't be revived. What if they were cryogenically preserved in some sort of high tech world? Could that time the soul sticks around be extended? Or is there some sort of hard limit?
It can be extended, yes.
Hey Will is there ultimately a finite number of souls in your universe that are just constantly reincarnated or do new souls pop out of somewhere over time ? Or maybe old souls kinda split and become new souls somehow?
Oh, this is kind of cool!The ancient Abidan who discovered the connection between human souls* and the Way did a lot of experiments to figure out what qualified someone as human.
A lot of the experiments were horrible. They would do things like burn away sections of the brain to see how small a brain could be before it no longer had a connection to the Way.
They learned a lot this way, but the bottom line is that each soul is new. An infant starts developing a connection to the Way that gets stronger as it grows and becomes more aware, and when you die, the soul vanishes. The connection is severed.
So obviously the Abidan did experiments with resurrection; if you do what Suriel did, reverting them to their previous condition, the connection is reestablished. If you go with a more medical style of resurrection, for instance stopping and re-starting a heart, it also works...up to a point. Your body can only remain dead a certain amount of time before repairs are useless and the soul has departed.
(These parts were fun for me to write because I got to play with the science of a different universe. What tests would we try if we could measure the effect and presence of a soul?)
So...is the soul consciousness itself? Is it a mystical force that ceases to exist when you die? Does it go somewhere else?
There are theories, but even the Abidan don't know.
*(Cradle and the Abidan have two different definitions of what a soul is. The Abidan say it's the undefined property or force that connects a human's will to the Way, while the Cradle "soul" is what they would call a madra network.)
Hey will, those experiments sound disturbingly similar yo how we learned about the physiology and anatomy of the brain in today's world. As a medical student you're always a little uncomfortable with some of the knowledge you have because of the way it was found. Is there a similar feeling among some of the Abidan? Like the information is useful, but they're a little guilty about how it was gained.
You've actually touched on something I'm a little nervous about, Rhys.Because the Abidan are all people who shoulder cosmic levels of responsibility, and who often ascended from positions of great power and influence. They'll be hard people who understand how life works, and accept dark truths without blinking. However, they'll also be people with strong moral convictions and opinions.So here's why I'm nervous: I hope I'm up to the task of conveying all that. Your question SHOULD have a wide variety of different answers, depending on the individual Abidan.Some of them would torture mortals for answers even now, because these are critical questions that affect the structure of existence, so they're far more important than individual lives. Others would never use the information at all, because of how it was obtained, and feel very strongly that it should be redacted.Everything is a complex situation among the Abidan, because they're all strong-willed, accomplished, intelligent individuals. With very different ideas on what is moral, immoral, or justified.I'll need to push myself to convey that effectively.
So each iteration has a natural life cycle, and humans are the ones that fuel it. Does that mean that the present, and ancient, Abidan are based from different iterations? Or their iteration are simply seem to be eternal since they have so advanced that their human presence that have access to the Way have made their iteration unnaturally healthy past their natural cycle
Most of the first generation of Abidan were from Cradle, because its magic system encourages ascension. Nowadays, most Abidan are born in the advanced worlds they control (especially Sanctum, their headquarters). However, most "wild" Abidan still come from Cradle.
If the fate of every iteration is to die this consigning the willverse to eventual destruction if the Abidan fail in their defense then why do they put so much emphasis on obeying fate?
Because the fate of each Iteration isn't to die, it's to die and be reborn. They focus on obeying and maintaining Fate to ensure a safe and healthy eventual rebirth.
Oh ok so instead of trying to subvert fate so that everywhere can live forever, and by doing so actually accelerate their demise, they decided to supervise and streamline the natural process to ensure existence continues smoothly.
That's the idea, yeah.
They're gardeners. They're trying to make sure the environment is optimal for the plants they chose.
Will, what does the Eight-Man-Empire, when they have conquered a country. Do they just take a of food and gold and move on, therefore simply going through the effort simply to show that they CAN conquer a whole country.OR, do they take as much as they can manage to carry?
I hope to show them in action at some point, Tim, so I don't want to give too much away about how they operate.
I will say that they almost always have a specific target. They're going after a person, place, or thing that they want.
Is there an Iteration that, like earth, has no magic system at all? And if so can they ascend past their Iteration with technology alone?
Let me put it this way: if there IS a non-magic world out there, they certainly could ascend using solely technology.
Will said earlier that the most common ilegal way access was commited by tech based scientists so I think we can assume that there are a bunch of high tech worlds or at least a few with really high populations.
I meant "people experimenting and breaking the universe" was the most common way to breach your world. If you're part of an Iteration in which magic is a natural force, there's no distinction between magic and technology. Warlocks are like computer scientists.
Reading back through Soulsmith, Gadrael as Titan explains the buckler-type weapon and why he put the barriers around the Limit-Harrow collision himself.
I thought Gadrael might be the Hound after reading Soulsmith the first time, because Suriel thought of him as "a loyal dog" with Makiel in charge.
I know, I actually tried to change the name of the Hounds because they're not the loyal followers at all, but uh...well, I couldn't think of any totemic animal that suited their role as detectives.
Owls would be pretty weird, and picking Bats would effectively mean that I've created a universe with Batman in charge.
Come to think of it, that would be awesome.
Last question for now. Would a powerful enough remnant be able to operate like a human since it would retain most of its memories? Or asked another way, will we ever just see a remnant wandering around just minding its own business and interacting with other humans like it was still alive?(albite less powerful)
Yes, to both.
Remnants can cultivate, and as they do, they become more intelligent...and also more human.
That's why they crave human madra just as much as they do vital aura.
Sufficiently advanced Remnants are effectively weird-looking people. However, they are DIFFERENT people than the ones who died and left them behind.
We'll get into it.
Is there room in the willverse for an iteration that is populated entirely by nonhuman intelligence? And what about AI? Do they add stability to they way or do they not count cause they are "artificial"?
This is one of the sacrifices I had to make in designing the Willverse, which I still think is a hilarious name: truly artificial intelligence doesn't exist.
In theory, as we understand intelligence in our world right now, we should soon reach a point where artificial intelligence starts increasing exponentially until it changes the world entirely.
Well, in the Willverse, developing civilizations eventually discover a hard limit to artificial intelligence. The same X factor that ties the Way to human consciousness also means that non-human entities can never be truly sentient.
A pure computer in the Willverse is never going to beat a really good Turing Test.
However, you CAN manipulate human consciousness to get around the intelligence barrier.
A Presence is an AI built out of what you might call human souls.
***
I had to make this decision because, if hyper-advanced AI is possible in this multiverse, then *that's* what would be running the Abidan. Not the Judges. Human decisions would be overrated, since an AI could come to the optimized conclusions a billion times faster and without emotional bias.
It also kind of fits the premise of a multiverse where human will is intrinsic to existence. If it's that fundamental and important, then it can't be faked.
Does mean that existential questions about what it means to be human are easier to answer, though.
(You also asked about nonhuman intelligence; bottom line is, non-humans gain intelligence by stealing or copying or otherwise transferring it from humans. So as they become more intelligent, they also become more human.)
Huh. Well I'm glad that you wove a reason as to why AI doesn't work in your universe. Makes you greater than most in that regard.
Years ago, I got to a point in this system's development and I realized I was pretending they didn't have AI. Which they would obviously have, as advanced as they are.
So I got down into it and realized that having AI violates the one core tenet of how this multiverse works: humans are important.
"Humans are important" is a key rule in the Willverse, because I wanted room for as many characters as possible. I wanted it to be people from the ground up, so that when you get up to the very apex of the universe (the Judges), you're not dealing with a bland personification of the will of the universe, or a hyper-advanced AI, or an unknowable alien god. You're dealing with a person, who might be incredibly advanced and powerful but is still human deep down.
So instead of humans being one sentient species on one insignificant planet in one insignificant system in one insignificant galaxy in a vast, uncaring universe, we are (in my world) a crucial part of the machinery of reality.
Many stories PRETEND humans are important, but how many of them hard-code it into the way the universe functions? HUH? HUH!?...anyway, since AI makes humans less special and unique, I built a set of rules that precluded AI. Sad to see them go, but I think it makes room for some interesting stories.
For clarification:--When I say AI, I mean advanced sentient AI. Obviously they do have some level of artificial intelligence.
--Here's the REASON I wanted all those humans: characters are what make a story interesting. An AI isn't relatable, and gods don't have flaws.
I wanted to be able to give every significant force in this multiverse a personality, a backstory, and a relatable motivation.
Not to mention cool powers.
...plus, it's kind of neat to have a universe where everyone, even on a cosmic scale, earned their way there.
So it seems to me that the other multiversal powers are actually doing more to stabalise iterations just by allowing people to cross from one too the other and share tech because that would push population higher and allow them to stabalise iterations by bringing in more people.
Not quite! I hope to get into the mechanics of this in a Suriel storyline at some point, but basically unsupervised inter-world interaction has consequences that spill over into other worlds. THOSE Iterations might be better off, but they're shifting consequences onto other worlds.
Great for you, bad for the neighbors.
However, that's not to say that the Abidan have it all figured out. There is a reason they do what they do, but they can still make mistakes. One of the reasons Ozriel left is that he couldn't stand their policies; there's a lot of gray area between "not interfering with a world at all" and "controlling every aspect of its development."
If you'll recall, when Suriel shows up to Cradle, she considers saving some random people from harm, despite the non-interference rules. She could potentially have done that by descending and then using no more powers than an ordinary resident of the world.
By acting within the rules of the world, she's not interfering with Fate too much and not violating the Pact.
She could NOT have waved her hand and cured cancer over the whole planet.
Ozriel's argument is that they should be saving as many people as they can, as their power allows, even to the point of weakening the restrictions of the Eledari Pact. There are many worlds that he wouldn't have had to reap if the Pact would have allowed him to end a war, or destroy a particular demon, or eradicate a plague.
...boy, I've said too much. Quiet, Will.
Hmmmmm. That's quite intriguing will. Seems like just an exchange of tech could easily exponentially increase the populations of various iterations and stabilize them without to many people going back and forth. Unless that destabilizing effect is based of something more obtuse than that.
A limited version of that is something that Ozriel might argue for. If there's a plague that's about to wipe out an entire planet and someone in another dimension has figured out a cure, why shouldn't we give them the cure? No magic powers necessary--we're giving them something they COULD have figured out on their own, but didn't. The Iteration gets to live at least a few thousand more years instead of getting Reaped.
Hey Will I don't quiet understand a part of this deviating from fate business. (I hope u don't take it the wrong way) I mean u mentioned that new iterations are formed from fragments drifting in the eternal nothingness or whatever.
Okay now these iterations are devoid of human life at first. (So their original fate is to actually devolve into chaos)
Then the Abidan sort of place humans in them sort of like pilgrims to that iteration, isn't that in and of itself a deviation of fate? Not only for the world, but for those people whom were taken there as well? (I imagine they have to terraform the planet first to be suitable as well)
The only way i see it being part of Fate is if the "Way" kinna speaks to the Abidan of whom to take and from where. Again i hope u don't take it the wrong way or if u have another explanation ready. :D
vWell, they don't usually have to do much terraforming. The fragments tend to combine into a single, inhabitable, central planet, and then the Iteration spreads out from there into a full universe. Like a seed growing.
When a world is born in this manner, it's not yet tethered to the Way. And therefore not yet bound by Fate.
Only when the people show up does the world start to develop a connection to Fate at all.
Did Ozriel forge his own Scythe? It was mentioned in first book that he managed to touch the way without even ascending. Atleast his fury did. Was he at same cultivation level as Sha Miara?
Was Sha Miara born with enough madra to qualify as true gold or something considering she is only 12?
Sha Miara inherited power that the most talented Truegolds would have to train their whole lives and exhaust fortunes to achieve. That's the base level of power she'd have if she were never taught anything about the sacred arts and never trained a day in her life.
The story about Ozriel's Scythe is going to have to wait until much later, I think, but he was a legendary Soulsmith of his time.
He did reach the same cultivation level as Sha Miara and the rest during his time on Cradle, yes, but he would have been considered a freak even among people of that tier.
Will, how old is Sha Miara.
It would be a bit too extreme for her to be 12, and yet be amongst the strongest on Cradle.
Suriel, one of the strongest person in existence, said that she didnt even reach that level in 30 years, yet a girl is supposed to have managed to achieve it. Wouldn'T she have the potential, then, to outclass the members of the Abidan, given enough time?
I don't remember how young she is without looking it up in my notes, but no older than 15 or so.
What's wrong with that?
Sure, she's decades ahead of Suriel. But in the grand scheme of things, there were a lot of people among all worlds who were decades ahead of Suriel at some point.
A lot of people have the potential to become Judges, but very, very few ever make it that far. There's a long way from the Ninecloud Court to the Court of Seven.
So I know that what Li Markuth did was a violation of Fate, but would it also be a violation of fate if in some super high-tech world some scientists accidentally create a breach between iterations and wind up on Cradle or Amalgam? OR does it only count if it was your own personal power?
No, that would absolutely count. In fact, something like that is usually what happens.
Huh but then at what point does something become a violation of Fate?
Whenever it becomes a violation of Fate.
Seriously, you have to look and see where Fate is headed in order to know whether something is a violation or not.
There are some clear-cut infractions, like when ANYTHING from one world crosses over into another. That's two worlds that were never supposed to interact, and they're interacting.
But for the most part, it's very situational.
However, within a single world, you can't ACCIDENTALLY violate Fate. You have to be intentionally working against the forces of the rules, like trying to make yourself immortal, or tampering with time, etc.
Wait... if anything moving from one iteration to another is a violation, then how does one ascend from their world? Is that an exception to the rule since Sanctum has knowledge of the Way, the Abidan, and other iterations?
If everything goes to plan, we'll eventually get to see the ascension process firsthand! All those questions will be answered in time.
Will, are the seven Judges and the various members of the Divisions bound by Fate as well.
If that is the case, doesn't that mean that Makiel has power over all of them.
Or, does one, by joining the Abidan, get the keys(figuratively speaking) to free oneself of the Shackles (Fate)?
Fate guides the actions of the Abidan as well!
This was actually something of a revelation to them, as they thought they had moved beyond Fate's reach when they left their Iterations. However, even the Abidan have a Fate.
Makiel doesn't have power over them, exactly. He doesn't control Fate; that would be like trying to manually control gravity.
He and his teams *manage* Fate, making sure people don't screw it up. If humans didn't have free will, there would be no need for the Hounds. But because they do, they can act in ways that might (generations down the road) send Fate spinning out of control.
Hounds look into the past and the future to determine the chain of events that might lead to this sort of thing happening, then they take action to prevent it.
What would a "screw up" be? Wouldn't anything that someone did be part of that world's natural evolution?
No. That's effectively the premise of this whole concept: that Fate can be defied, eluded, slipped.
Now, waking up and ordering a sandwich for lunch is never going to send your world into a downward spiral because you were destined to eat pasta and you have confounded the powers that be.
Resurrecting a certain dead person, trying to invent time travel, drilling a hole in the universe, looking into the future and working very hard to subvert what you see there, THAT is the sort of thing that knocks Fate off-course.
Your basically saying Ozriel joined because he thought it was a way (no pun intended) to help more people and he pretty much did his job much better than anyone else.
Now that he left they are out to either recruit or kill him because he didn't agree with all they were doing?
Pretty much. From Ozriel's perspective, he joined because he felt a personal responsibility to use his massive power for the benefit of as many people as possible, and the Abidan rules are preventing him from saving people. But they won't let him look for another, better way, even though he's shouldering the heaviest burden out of any of them.
From Makiel's perspective, Ozriel is so arrogant that he believes he knows better than everyone else, so he's abandoned his post and left millions if not billions of people to die.
Suriel's kind of caught in the middle. On the one hand, she agrees with Ozriel that there must be a better way to do things. On the other hand, he actually HAS risked the lives of everyone living in an Abidan-protected world.
***I need to cover this in another post, but just to be clear, here's the reason why it's a big deal that Ozriel left, even immediately.
Without Ozriel, the Abidan can handle a few hundred worlds. It takes hundreds of Abidan per Iteration, because they're constantly surrounded by corruption and chaotic fragments.
WITH Ozriel, they've expanded to several thousand worlds. Now it only takes a handful of Abidan per sector, because there are very few chaotic fragments and the corruption is easily handled.
With corrupted worlds destroyed completely, there are many fewer unhealthy fragments, so everyone's jobs become easier and they can spread themselves thinner.
But now that they've expanded so far, Ozriel is the cornerstone of their whole operation. With him missing, they've now got WAY more worlds than they can handle.
...I need to come up with an analogy for this. Maybe weeds in a garden?
Wait wait wait. There are seven [Judges in your blog posts], not nine!Did Will count wrong here? And why did I think there were nine?
Hahaha, I was wondering when someone would notice. I thought it would take longer.
There are eight Judges in the Court of Seven. It's been a real headache for them.
(There used to be nine, but Garbagiel, the Raccoon, was exiled and beaten for crimes against decency.)
I was going to wait until a few posts from now to point this out, but since you've already counted: Ozriel is relatively new. None of the other Judges were around when the Eledari Pact was created; they're the third to bear the mantle of Makiel, or the fourth Razael, or whatever.
This Ozriel is the only one there's ever been, but he didn't show up until the middle of the previous Suriel's generation. Before then, the Judges had to destroy worlds the old-fashioned way (by depopulating humanity), so it was messy. They could only keep a few hundred worlds protected and controlled, because chaotic fragments were so much more common.
But with a clean way to dispose of infected or expired worlds, they could expand their influence and protection more widely.
So by 'powers of the iterations themselves' we can sort of take it that you mean that each universe has slightly different physics which enable that magic system to function as it does.
If you leave your iteration, your powers should cease then, right? You would have to learn the new system's magic...
In some cases, yes.
Anything you learn to do that manipulates the power of the world no longer functions outside of that world. So a Traveler wouldn't be able to open a Gate when they're in another Iteration, nor would a Reader be able to sense anything special (because Intent is no longer a fundamental force of the world).
However, any intrinsic powers stay intact (for the most part). The dolls would still be able to talk and read the wind, Awakened objects would retain their properties, and sacred artists would still be able to use most of their techniques.
Hi Will,I've got to ask. In this sort of multiverse of worlds with different magics, were you influenced by Sanderson at all.
I'm glad you asked that!
I knew everyone would assume I was just doing my own version of what Sanderson's doing, and I'm okay with that. People are going to think that regardless of what I say, and even if I *was* spinning off of his idea, I wouldn't be ashamed of that. It's a good idea.
But honestly, was I influenced by Sanderson's Cosmere? No, not even a little.
I idolize Brandon Sanderson, and I'm not above shamelessly cribbing from better authors.
However, in this case, I had a draft of the Abidan and their structure before Elantris came out. When he first announced his Cosmere, I was initially ecstatic: "Whoa! This is exactly what I wanted to do, and here's a big-time fantasy author doing it!"
...but I was a little let down. His worlds are different planets that are (mostly) in the same solar system, they're not different planes. And it's all predicated on a single omnipotent being shattering into pieces, which...if he's omnipotent, how does THAT happen?
While I'm a huge fan of all the Cosmere books, I'm not really that enamored of the Cosmere itself.
Plus, once I started reading Chinese xianxia novels (on which Cradle is based), I saw that they're practically all set in a vast multiverse. That was the final piece of the puzzle I needed to push me over the edge.
I owe a lot more credit to Zelazny's Amber, Magic: the Gathering, xianxia novels, widespread anime tropes, and the TMNT show I grew up on as a kid.
The posts on the Abdian were a great idea! I really like how you've fleshed out the common denominator among the magic systems a bit more.
I am curious, though, about the specific ways that each magic system relates to the Way. I think you said that the territories were connected to Amalgam and that travelers could enter them through a connection to the Way (more or less). How do intent and aura/madra relate to the Way?
They don't really, at least not in the way you're asking.
You know how each room in Valinhall has some of its own unique rules and powers, kind of like a mini-Territory each? That's because it's stitched together from small fragments, and each fragment has its own different magic.
So every world has a unique magic system. These are the powers of the Iterations themselves, not the powers of the Way.
If there are just 'thousands' of iterations, and each iteration lasts for trillions of years, there should be billions of years between iterations ending.
What do the Abidan do to occupy their time in between?
I don't think I said trillions, did I? I think I said billions.
Either way, that's how long they COULD last. That's their maximum natural lifespan. It very rarely happens that an Iteration dies of old age, because they're tethered to the survival of humanity.
Most of the time, Iterations only last a few thousand years.
Let me put it to you this way: the Abidan have never shepherded a world from its birth to its full possible lifespan. An Iteration dying when humans die is still a natural death.
How many 'Hounds' are under Makiel's supervision, and how many Titans are under Gadrael's?
Thousands, but I couldn't tell you exactly how many.
There are more Titans than Hounds.
