Which Judge has the most seniority?
OK. That's Makiel. Makiel is the one that has been around the longest. He's the 3rd generation Makiel and therefore, he is an early (relatively early) generation. So, none of them are 1st generation on the court now. The 1st generation Abidan have been gone for a long time. And 3rd generation is the one who's been around the longest. So that's, that's Makiel.
Is there an advancement beyond Judges?
Not currently.
Did the builders of the labyrinth ascend and return to Cradle with power from other Iterations?
No, they did not. Good question. That is not something that the builders did.
Maybe none of them want to, but do any of the Dreadgods have the capacity to ascend from Cradle under their own power?
No, they do not have the ability to ascend. The Dreadgods cannot ascend. It's not a matter of power level; they are too much part of the rules/substance/fabric of the world. That actually will come up a little in Dreadgod. It doesn't get super explained, but that subject is in there. So it's a good question, it's just a little technical.
Does Reigan Shen have a plasma bolt in his vault, or is such a treasure too rare even for him?
You know, maybe at this point I should start regretting having given you guys the phrase "Plasma bolts" and nothing else for my new story I'm working on, but I don't actually regret it. I'm glad I did.
Does he have a plasma bolt in his vault? No. He couldn't sell his entire vault for one single bolt from plasma.
Does ascending grant more power in addition to being able to modify the physical form, as stated by the Abidan?
When you ascend through a normal process that most people do, you are transforming yourself into a higher level of yourself. You would become physically more like your ideal form... usually. That's not always how it works, but that is usually how it works. So, Makiel not only has access to all the magic and technology he could ever need to genetically alter himself, but also, he has obviously ascended so he could have changed himself, but his ideal form was kind of... himself. So, that's kind of what that says about him.
Does it also grant you more power? Yes and no. It grants you access to more things. It doesn't immediately make you more powerful. You don't just level up like you do in Cradle. That's a Cradle thing.
Can you add a secret stretch goal reward of a second round of hot wings and rating the flavors?
No, because I won't do that again. The hot wings that we did... so we did the hot ones challenge at home. My brother, Sam, got what ever the cases they sell a bunch of different hot sauces for wings. And we went and got Publix wings at Publix grocery store, because we're in Florida, so we are privileged enough to have Publix. And we brought the wings home and we rolled them in the hot sauces and what we did, unfortunately, was they have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, not on the scale but which spiciness level. So you're supposed to eat them in order and what we thought was the second one was actually the second to last.
That was shameless shilling for Publix, you're right. I shill for Publix all day long. It's like my name is John Q. Publix.
So we accidentally put the one that is second-to-last one second and we ate it. So we misunderstood the order. So we went from, yeah this hot sauce has a nice smoky flavor, it's like a rich Tabasco, to my tongue tried to kill itself and leave my mouth. That was pretty abrupt.
So because of that, then we went on and did the rest of them in order and we ended with the Last Dab and that one was an experience. Sam dunked his face in the pool. I don't remember what I did. I remember a light. That I remember. Then I remember photos from my childhood. It flashed in front of my eyes. I remember spirits whispering my name. So that was an intense experience that I don't want to repeat. I'm going to leave it as a singular memory. But if you guys want to do it, by all means, you can send me your videos. Please don't do that.
Has the amount of the support from the KickStarter opened any new doors for you as an author?
Unfortunately, I do not have a great dramatic answer for you. It's hard to tell. It's one of those things where it's not like the KickStarter itself has blown open wide. It's not like we immediately got a movie offer but, at the same time, there was a huge showing of support and we keep moving forward and we're hoping with the KickStarter itself the results will get us into bookstores. So those would be some doors that would be opened.
Lindon fighting Malice amp can reasonably be explained with his with Silent King amp. How about Yerrin? The two have always been able to fight above their weight class but she's still "just" a newborn Herald. In previous books they said they'd need to reach peak Archlord to be a true Herald/Sage so she's not really even a real Herald yet.
In my head I just assume that Malice must be really exhausted from her continuous fights. I'm not totally happy with that explanation but it's all I've got at the moment.
My view of Yerin in this fight is that she’s roughly the equivalent of a normal Herald. She has some unique advantages, but so do many Heralds.
Fury, for instance, could have beaten her.
But she’s at the level of being able to participate in this fight while Lindon puts the lion’s share (tiger’s share?) of the pressure on.
That’s my general thought process, anyway.
The gap between these stages of advancement is HUGE! people are trying to scale Lindon and the gang and it seems people think sage/Herald are closer to monarchs than they actually are.
The 8 man empire are the equivalent of one monarch. That's not because any 8 sacred artists at the level of sage/Herald (S/H) are the equivalent of a monarch, they need the help of special magic space armor to combine their significance to reach that level. This fact alone means that without the magic space armor, that I would take over 8 S/H to rival one monarch. The way the story talks about the 8 man empire I would guess it would take many more that 8 S/H to rival a monarch.
Let me take a few minutes to address the 8ME.
A group of 4 Sages and 4 Heralds all fighting a Monarch together could win. And probably would, all other factors being equal.
The disadvantage is that none of them could 1v1 the Monarch, so they’re prone to getting picked off and defeated separately. Are you going to stand there and fight eight guys? No, you run and pick your moment later.
The advantage of the 8ME is that they don’t need to be together to combine powers. And that they can fuse their power to perform Monarch-level feats, which Sages and Heralds can’t normally do.
How does a Monarch beat a Sage? Engage them physically or in a straight-up power fight. How do they beat a Herald? Keep throwing workings at them they can’t match and make them waste willpower and concentration shutting them down.
An 8ME member can draw on the power of the others to remove those weaknesses at will.
How would you defeat the 8ME? Force them to spread out. They have a finite pool of power to draw on, so if three of them (for instance) need to draw on Monarch-level power at once, what does that leave for the rest?
Problem is, no faction has two Monarchs. So let’s say Reigan Shen wanted to take them down. He engages Larian in combat, and he assigns or hires a Sage or Herald for each of the other seven.
How does that actually play out?
They don’t pump Larian up to Monarch-level. She flees and runs and hides and does anything she can to survive with only her own power, and they pump whoever has the weakest opponent.
Suddenly, the person facing down a single Sage has Monarch-level power. The enemy is crushed. Then they move on to the next-weakest enemy, and so on.
Larian might die. Maybe she couldn’t hang on either.
But it’s still WAY faster and easier for the 8ME to pass power between each other than it is for Shen to travel through the Way to face the other members. So, in all likelihood, they become the Six-Man Army but all their non-Monarch opponents are dead.
Then they replace the lost two members and now they’re gunning for Shen.
And that’s the story of why the 8ME still exists.
Relationship between Eithan and Naru Saeya?
I mean, at the moment (Reaper, Cradle book 10), he thinks of her as a much much much much well removed protegee? Kind of? There's nothing on his end. On her end? Who knows? Maybe something.
When they ascend beyond Cradle do the ruler-focused paths when they don't have access to aura still work?
They do still work! They start interacting with...whatever they previously interacted with but not using aura. Now it transcends that mechanism so if you used fire aura to control flame on cradle then you would be controlling flame directly after you ascend cradle not using any medium you would just be doing it. You would have authority over flames. So that was the original idea it was one of the original ideas behind ruler techniques, in general, was that they were the control option and that they led into this connection with whatever you were working with but I ended up not exploring that very thoroughly just because that would have been a lot of theoretical exploration for what is ultimately an action-adventure series
Does anyone else have the void icon now?
Uh.. Yes, there are other people who have the void icon, who have manifested the void icon. I think Reigan Shen has it, I'm pretty confident on that, I would have to check my Icon sheet. Ya Reigan Shen has it, he might be the only one of the current monarchs that have it. But there have been others, it's rare in the sense that most icons are rare, no one icon is generally common.
What does the manifestation of the death icon look like?
You know...I think probably it would be some kind of reaper scythe or a skull, the sort of thing you would associate with death. But at the same time, I've always seen it kind of as the... you know the giant black bird remnant from skysworn that doesn't take a contract against Eithan? That's sort of how I picture it. But icon manifestations change based on how they are manifested and who summons them. So that would be something that would depend on what context the icon was in
Are there types of madra that cannot be combined into a single path?
Yes, there are. There are definitely incompatible types of madra, it depends a lot on how the madra is expressed and what its source is. So in a lot of ways water and fire would be incompatible elements obviously as you would expect. But of course we have a character in the series who does follow a path that unifies water and fire so there are no absolutes I guess. But like for instance you couldn't blend life/death madra because it would be death madra. That would be it, that's all it would be. However, you could and this is a path - I was going to show off in the uncrowned king tournament but didn't end up having the time - where you could have a life madra AND death madra so what I was going to do is run into this guy who could use life madra and death madra because he had split his cores. Everybody's mentioned that as a possibility that everyone's aware of but rarely people use so I was going to have another person who had split their cores and they were doing this life/death yin-yang thing and I thought that would be fun but alas we didn't get to... Lindon's going to be the only yin-yang duality cultivator I guess.
Is there a sylvan seed for every aspect of madra? If not, what aspects can become seeds?
Here's how I see sylvan whatever seeds. I see them as natural spirits that form from centers of especially pure aura. So anything where it's not capable, where that wouldn't happen naturally, I suspect there would be no sylvan blade seed for instance like why would there be that many swords occurring naturally, that sort of thing. In general, I think most aspects do indeed have their own little blue equivalents, little green, little purple. Little green is the healer.
Who is your favorite dreadgod?
Uh, let's see. Believe it or not it's probably the weeping dragon. Sounds weird. It's gotten the least page space. I just think he looks cool. I think it's a neat visual. I think it's a cool visual image of like a sapphire blue dragon, miles long just sorta undulating over clouds like waves. Seems neat. I also like the idea of raining lightning, living lightning, that kinda slithers around. I think that's cool.
You should write the story about the puppy who gets sad.
No.
Do you ever read the online wikis for your books?
I have before, I don't as a rule. I don't generally.
Any chance of an Orthos hat?
I'm gonna pass that along, take a note of that. We'll see if we might be able to make that happen one day here soon. So, I've got my eye on you Orthos hat.
