I doubt I can go 2 for 2...and this one required a Googling beforehand. I thought I recognized a name...
"Naru" + dragons seems like there might be a reference here to Warcraft and the Naaru in Outland (and subsequent lore). Awfully wise and powerful beings, them...
Although I do sometimes take names from Warcraft and just change a letter, this isn't one of them.
So, did Valin ever visit the Blackface Empire during his wanderings?
He steered clear of the Blackface Empire. It gets SUPER racist.
The Blackflame Empire
The Blackflame Empire was founded by dragons.
In Cradle, dragons are a race of sacred beasts that can...well, they're dragons. You know what they can do. Like all sacred beasts and Remnants, their intelligence is based largely on their age and advancement levels, so many of them have human-level intelligence or better.
A family of black dragons once conquered and ruled half a continent, which is a truly massive amount of territory in a world the size of Cradle. They held their empire against all rivals for centuries.
Until a mysterious disaster killed most of the dragons, crippling their ability to continue the bloodline. As you know, no one in a fantasy novel ever discovers the truth behind ancient disasters, so I'm sure it will remain a mystery forever.
With their rulers dead or dying, a clan of humans stumbled upon a method of harnessing the dragons' power. They abandoned their old Path, instead choosing to develop the same sacred arts used by the dragons.
The Blackflame Empire shrunk in size, the humans lacking the ability to control quite as much territory as the dragons could, though it was still home to over a billion people.*
This clan started calling their main branch the Blackflame family, for obvious reasons, and they stayed in control for almost five hundred years.
But human bodies were not well-suited to the power of dragons. Slowly, the family declined, until even those who lived in the heart of the empire thought of them more as symbols and legends than actual individuals.
More and more of the day-to-day workings of the Empire were left to the Blackflames' traditional servants, the Naru clan. They became the face of the Blackflame empire, with their loyal reputation and shining emerald wings, and the people grew to know and trust them.
Fifty years ago, they quietly ascended the throne.
The first Naru clan Empress has since moved into private seclusion, and her son now rules the Empire. As for the Blackflame family themselves, they died out decades ago, gradually eaten from the inside out by their own madra.
That's the story, anyway.
*(A truly ridiculous number of people live in Cradle. The main planet of Iteration 110 is quite a bit bigger than Earth.)
We talking fu manchu dragons or those pesky ones with wings and legs? It's important... for science
Chinese dragons, not Western dragons.All the excess energy that would go to their wings instead goes to their awesome beards.
The dragon advances.The dragon destroys.The dragon consumes.
Okay...
So empire is run by bunch of cooks? No wonder Eithan is so happy about being a janitor.
Dragons don't make great cooks. Everything is pretty much either seared or blackened.
We talking fu manchu dragons or those pesky ones with wings and legs? It's important... for science
Chinese dragons, not Western dragons.
All the excess energy that would go to their wings instead goes to their awesome beards.
Will, you said in the previous thread that if Lindon were to fight against an elder of his clan he MIGHT win.His biggest problem would be their illusions.Does it mean, though, that physically they are more or less on the same level.I remember the scene in the 1st book, when he was attacked by an iron of the, I think, Mon family, because he shamed that iron by winning against him. Before he could hit Lindon,though, his attack was blocked by an elder, which seemed to lindon, as though the elder teleported in front of him. Would lindon accomplish similar feats..
The elder didn't seem to teleport because he was moving so fast (although he WAS fast, just not that fast). It was because of his mastery over illusion.
That's exactly what Lindon would have to deal with.
Physically, he'd be on a similar level to the Jades of Sacred Valley. His Iron body is of a higher quality, but it's specialized for recovery, not pure strength.
Will, the Sword Sage praised the chief of the Heaven Glory school(not sure the name is correct). Does this mean that he has a perfect jade body, or whatever it is called.Or did he simply mean that his foundation is better than the ones of the other elders?
Curses. If I'd known you were going to ask this on two different threads, I've responded here instead of on the other one.
Bottom line: the Sword Sage didn't mean anything by it. He was being minimally polite to a bunch of primitive savages. "That's a very nice sharpened stick you have there; it's almost as good as my attack helicopter."
Also been wondering how a two person path like the sword of the endless path having only the sage and Yerin as followers of it is supposed to promote the disciple to gold other than the teachers death since you want a remnant in your core that is from your exact same path typically, right? I imagine this is a fairly common thing or at least not unheard of so I wonder how they resolve it, I can't imagine every master is willing to die for their apprentice.
It is pretty common, so usually you just look for a compatible Remnant. Which means the Remnant of a different sword Path.It makes Highgold and Truegold a lot harder, because you have to work the remaining instincts of the Remnant inside you into your fighting style. Even when those instincts belong to a different Path.
I'm pretty certain Will stated somewhere in some comments thread that sage was several stages above Underlord. And Ethian, I would suspect, can drink poison because of his iron body. Will will likely confirm this somewhere.
Did he drink poison? I don't remember that, but I've been elbow-deep in Blackflame for so long that I can't remember any other books. Either way, Eithan has his own ways of dealing with poison. His own Iron body isn't especially good at that, but he knows how to do it.
Honestly my biggest shock came when i figured out that if Eithan is so powerful, as is shown when he easily stomps all the other elders, and the Sword Sage was more powerful than Eithan, then HOW THE F*** DID JADES KILL THE SWORD SAGE???
I mean poison, but still...
There is a reason.
A lot of times I have to go back and add explanations later for mistakes I made, but this one actually wasn't a mistake! WOOHOO!
You're right that under normal circumstances the Sword Sage could not have been killed by Jades using any means, including poison (you know, unless they got their hands on some really good stuff, but that's far beyond the scope of Sacred Valley).
There were extenuating circumstances, I promise!
