Questioner
[From a reddit post regarding Little Blue]"Sylvan Riverseeds were natural spirits—beings like Remnants, only born of accumulated vital aura rather than the death of a sacred artist. They only formed in places where the aura was both extremely strong and in perfect balance. If the aura slanted toward one aspect or another, a different natural spirit would form. Typically, you would find that balance of aura in the heart of a forest, next to a spring or a river. In such a place, air and earth, heat and cold, life and death all coexisted at the same point in roughly equal amounts." Location 9460 in cradle foundationInteresting. Except Ghostwater reiterates the life & water line about Sylvan Riverseeds, and explains that Sylvan Dreamseeds are created when a different two elements are in balance:“Sylvan Dreamseeds,” Dross explained. “Just like Riverseeds are pure spirits that are born in areas with a strong balance between water and life aura, these little guys are born under the influence of dream aura. From the dream tablets, you see. The library and the Well are here purely to create the right conditions for their birth.Wight, Will. Ghostwater (Cradle Book 5) (Kindle Locations 2364-2367). Hidden Gnome Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Will Wight
When Dross says what he does about life and water, it’s a simplification. The first answer is more technically correct.
Questioner
Will, if it's not too much to ask, I think it would be cool to get something written from Makiel's point of view at some point.
Will Wight
Never! And by never, I mean this will definitely happen at some point.
Questioner
Why hasn't she (Mercy) already fully advanced?
Will Wight
THAT will definitely be addressed in the book!
Questioner
Mercy then will finally fully advance to Highgold and then Truegold?
Will Wight
Maybe, maybe not.
Questioner
What will be the plot of Underlord?
Will Wight
I don't know how you feel about Underlord spoilers, but this much will probably be revealed in the book description: This upcoming book will be Lindon, Yerin, and Mercy competing with other Truegolds for a spot on the Blackflame Empire's tournament team.
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
Adriel is gone, almost a myth
Will Wight
Nonsense! He’s been a myth for millennia. He’s probably dead, like Ozriel totally is.
Questioner
Dross has nearly infinite knowledge.
Will Wight
He doesn’t! Let me nip that in the bud right now. To borrow the catch phrase from a certain fictional class rep, he doesn’t know everything, he only knows what he knows. That’s what I was illustrating when they leave GW and he doesn’t know what the sun is.He might know how to recreate the wells. That could be within the scope of his knowledge, because it happened within Ghostwater and under the supervision of people and constructs whose knowledge rested in Northstrider’s oracle tree, but Dross only got pieces of that.This will be explained relatively early in Underlord, but I thought I’d jump out in front of it now. Rebuilding the Wells is certainly a possibility, depending on what Dross knows, but infinitely knowledgeable he is not.
Questioner
Can you tell us when Lindon lost his parasite ring please? We're all wondering why he didn't have it with him inside Ghostwater as it was normally in his pocket up until then
Will Wight
He lost it in Ghostwater. It was in his pack. I thought I had referenced it directly, but apparently I didn't. It spilled out and he didn't find it.
MachinaMandala
Will we ever get a Chapter 16.5 a la SAO?
Will Wight
Not exactly, though I have contemplated doing some interlude chapters set between each Cradle book. Exploring what Lindon and Yerin did in their downtime offscreen. Sometimes it could be during the time-skips in each book, while they're training.
Tren
Since your books always get into the explosive anime action without much of an investment, do you feel like they lose some of the emotional weight I'm talking about? You're writing the kind of books you like to write, obviously, and I'm a fan so I don't want that to change. I just like the hard questions.
(If your answer is too personal, I'm totally okay with you skipping this question)
Will Wight
Yes and no. On the one hand, obviously if you invest the reader in the characters and the stakes before you begin the action, the action has a lot more weight and means more. That's certainly true. But on the other hand, if the reader never reaches the action scene because they're bored out of their skull with the emotional setup, then your action scenes do not mean more. The reader never sees them at all, and is not entertained.In what I'm writing, I believe the reader should not be working harder than the writer to extract entertainment from the text. You shouldn't have to push yourself to keep going. I think that is the approach most readers prefer.However, there are certainly stories that are aiming to be slower, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I think there's probably a happy medium. The better of a storyteller I become, the more I'm hoping to invest weight into the action without sacrificing pace. I still have room to improve, although I'm probably never going to be writing Malazan, for instance.
Nope. Not that personal, and I don't mind being asked personal questions. I'm pretty open, and if it's something I feel leery about answering publicly or in print (or if I just can't be bothered to answer), I won't. No pressure felt!
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.
Questioner
Is Dross a Drudge? Like an advanced one? Or is a Drudge something else entirely?
Will Wight
A drudge is something else. He’ll build one.
Questioner
During the fight between Lindon and Jai Long ..it just seemed like normal fire path at times. This was supposed to the Blackflame! A a path whose copper practitioners were feared...and Lindon was a low gold who just a few months ago destroyed Sandviper Gorkens entire arm with just one attack and yet against Jai long it barely singed him?Also Yerin seemed weaker in this book...and I am not talking about the blood shadow thing.. To me it didn't seem real that Yerin would lose against Cassius in 5-7 moves every time they dueled. She stood toe to toe with Jai Long (A True Gold) at the end of Blackflame and almost beat him. Sure Cassius might be strong but he definitely wasn't on par with a true gold..or am I missing something here?
Will Wight
The Blackflame thing is real, and I do wish I'd expounded on it a little more. It needed a whole scene showing how it stacked up against more than a single opponent (Jai Long), and the one scene where it's shown to be powerful is a brief instance of Lindon punching some guy.As for Cassias not being on par with a Truegold, that's actually what Yerin losing to him so quickly is meant to illustrate. Him being the second-ranked Highgold means that he has ways to go against people more powerful than he is, so he'd stack up favorably against the lower--let's say--fifty percent of Truegolds. It becomes a skill thing rather than a power thing.But I clearly didn't explain that well in the books, so it needs further illustration.
Questioner
Eithan mentions to Cassias that the Naru clan ran their own students through the trials. But how did they activite them when each trial requires a Blackflame technique to be used on the crystals?
Will Wight
That's just the traditional way to activate it; there are other ways, like the ward key someone else in this thread mentioned.Besides which, the Naru clan has an extensive collection of Blackflame treasures and artifacts. If they needed to produce Blackflame madra to activate the course, they could.
Questioner
Reddit: Will has actually said that he didn’t consider the “evolution” of sacred arts when creating the system
Will Wight
Hold on there, Skippy. I don’t remember saying that, but I probably did. I trust your memory more than mine, and also it’s true that I didn’t consider the evolution of sacred arts. However, not considering the evolution of the system means I didn’t decide who first practiced sacred arts, or where that term comes from, how the different stages became measured and codified, etc. I do know where the first Remnant comes from for a Path. Sacred beasts leave Remnants, and sacred beasts advance naturally over time. So you might absorb one of these wild Remnants that’s compatible with your own madra. Also, natural spirits (like Little Blue) are sometimes born from convergences of aura, and they can be bonded. They’re basically Remnants that no one died to leave behind. Third, people sometimes capture Remnants and feed them different types of madra or keep them in certain environments of aura until they adapt. This is intended to create a certain kind of Goldsign until your sect or clan or whatever grows large enough that you have a reasonable supply of Remnants from your specific Path.
Questioner
I'm still turning over the line the Beast King had about "two golds he put to a task (mercy and Yerin)." Not sure if I missed something, Will missed something, or it's actually a secret and we didn't notice him influence them. Aside from that, it was the best book in the series for me.
Will Wight
It was meant to imply that the beasts they kept having to run around were in fact meant to steer their path and guide the conflict, but I recognize that was too vague. I cut some of the scenes that would have clarified that.I might just change his line in future editions.
Questioner
Who returned the rest of the Eyes?
Will Wight
This wasn’t the only way that Eyes got back to Ghostwater. Just one way.
Tievel
How much time do you think you bought yourself with Ghostwater's massive success before your team goes back to nagging you about OKAK?
Will Wight
A week.
Decadakon
What's the most delicious meal on cradle
Will Wight
I don't know, I've never been there.
