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How many pancakes or Cradle pancake equivalents could Akura Fury eat in one sitting?

Will Wight

The only appropriate answer I can think of to that is "Yes."

Questioner

If humans are born with pure cores, what are sacred beasts born with?

Will Wight

If you're born a sacred beast, you are born with whatever madra your species has. You just have that naturally. So you're always born with aspected madra. So it depends on what you are. If you're not born a sacred beast, if you're just born a regular animal, you absorb ambient aura over time and slowly develop aspected madra. But since of course there is no pure aura, you can never develop pure madra.

Questioner

What can you tell us about Pride's Path? I was disappointed we didn't get to see Lindon fight him.

Will Wight

Pride's book is all Enforcer techniques. They're all solo combat, Enforcer, beat 'em up techniques. That is who Pride is and that is what his Path is about. Some of them are movement techniques, and so we get to see new types of Enforcer techniques that we haven't seen before. So it's not just a full-body Enforcer technique, which is obviously the most vanilla one. He's got a defensive one, a full-body one, one that is an attack technique, and one that is a movement technique. Those are the four that he can use proficiently. And of course, there are seven techniques in his book, as there are in all the books, but he hasn't unlocked those yet.

Questioner

Are there members of the Abidan that are below Sage level or didn't ascend?

Will Wight

Yes there are.  So, the way the Abidan work, which I hope to get into at some point, is there are people who

(Pause for Will to argue with the game.  It's a liar.)

(Also, a moment of silence for the massacre on Obraxis Prime)

So, the Abidan, there are definitely people who are born to Abdidan, who didn't ascend on their own, so they can join, maybe they can develop the powers necessary. That's certainly possible.  There are definitely people among the Abidan, who are in technical terms, not great.

Questioner

Can all madra be converted to hunger madra?

Will Wight

No.

Questioner

Dross cycled Charity's madra scales of shadow and dream. Does he only cycle the dream aspect of the scale?

Will Wight

Yeah, that's kinda how that works. There's a couple of ways to cycle things. It doesn't have to actually be the exact madra type that you cycle. So if you get the scale, you can process just the part of it that you can process.

Questioner

Can an iteration be moved between sectors? And does it affect new iterations in the sector if it can?

Will Wight

An iteration can be moved between sectors. It is kind of a fluid designation as to which sector an iteration is in. It does cause some problems when it is moved so, it is difficult to do and it doesn't happen alot. It's a Judge level operation for that to happen.

Questioner

Hypothetically, if Orthos did not go to Sacred Valley and instead went with Lindon, would he be able to fight along side Lindon in the tournament? Or would he be considered a separate contender?

Will Wight

No. He is over the age requirement. So, there are some people who could take their contracted beasts. Lindon and Orthos would not be one of them. Orthos would be considered a separate competitor and he would be considered too old.

Questioner

Will Lindon get involved more in politics?

Will Wight

Almost certainly not. In the sense that he's going to be his opinion and involvement are going to be politically important in the world, ya. But in the sense that he's going to actively, like there's gonna be a lot of conflict around political discussion and manuevering and such, no. Its an adventure series, not a politics series.

Questioner

So someone has suggested that I talk about something that I've been sort of into recently that kind of cool. I have just a few weeks ago found the choose your own adventure subreddit. r/makeyourchoice, I think is the subreddit. That led me on this whole rabbit whole down to a bunch of choose your own adventure games.

Will Wight

So what they are, they're basically graphics or little games where people offer hypothetical prizes that you can buy with points. So, for instance you have a point budget and certain powers are more expensive than others and then make yourself like a little build and then think about how you would play. So, its fun to do. And what its helped me do, is help me think about what I like in terms of character building. Because one of the things that I appreciate is when characters are making a build. Characters are themed, characters are focused in some way and it helps me feel like one character can't do everything. One character is good at something. So, it really is what traditional classes do. Where its like, you know a rogue is gonna be a sneaky, stabby kind of guy that does traps and the fighter is not gonna be that guy. I've really enjoyed that and its made me think about how I am going to work in my next magic system because I would like there to be some character building, designing element to it. And the choose your own adventure thing has given me sort of a model of what I like about that kind of system, so I've really enjoyed that.

And then I made one particular build that revolved around me making clones and I don't remember which choose your own adventure this was. But, you could make a permanent clone once per day or you could make temporary clones and I shared this with a friend of mine. So, if you make a permanent clone, the cooldown of the clone ability is shared between your clones. I don't remember where I got this. So, I had heard, I had read about this ability on reddit. I don't know that I even ever found the actual choose your own adventure. I think it was just an ability that people described to me and I thought it was cool. It captured my imagination it was like a Naruto clone thing, like I mentioned earlier.  And this clone ability, I was telling my friend about it, about how that would be a neat power to have and a friend of mine was just constantly asking me about the logistics of clones and how would I stop the clones from taking over and how would I deal with all these clones and how would I house the clones and I'm like I don't have to do this, they are independent entities, they can house themselves. And I couldn't stop him talking about the clones. So it ended up just being the clone wars.

Questioner

Do you get the same for an eBook purchase and a Kindle Unlimited purchase?

Will Wight

The Kindle Unlimited purchase varies based on the size of the book, so that's a little bit different. It also changes with time, sometimes. So there is not a solid answer for what I make of a Kindle Unlimited read, but its typically less than what I would make for a sale. But, it costs you nothing so, if you are reading through Kindle Unlimited, Great! That's awesome, I appreciate it.

Questioner

Where did you start with your worldbuilding for Cradle?

Will Wight

I mean, I started from web cultivation novels and worked backwards. So they had a cohesive system based on Daoist mythology and I wasn't using that as a base, so I started from their result that they've developed with a really long, rich history, and I had to kind of be like, "Okay. Well I can't represent that accurately," so I had to do my own. Plus cultivation novels, especially Chinese cultivation novels rely on a lot of cultural understanding that the reader already has, so I knew I wanted to go - I know what effect I want to get, so I worked backwards in terms of going, "Okay, so now I have to set up a cohesive world that creates this magic system."

Questioner

Are the dragons in the tournament not considered too old?

Will Wight

No, they are not. They are in the tournament because they are not considered too old. They are older than humans would be, but they are not considered too old.

Questioner

Can you tell us more about the training or techniques of some of the paths the books don't focus on? Specifically Amberwell or Chainkeeper?

Will Wight

Well, the Chainkeeper Path is mostly focused on one particular technique. 

(Interlude for Will to get blown up and drown) 

So, Path of the Chainkeeper is mostly focused on one technique.  So it is one of those single technique Paths.  It's not literally single technique, there are a few, but it's focused mainly on the Strings of Shadow technique that Mercy uses because it is so versatile.  It's also not a hugely combat focused Path, though of course they are all somewhat combat focused, but it is very versatile and it is focused on survival and just sort of everyday use.  You kind of Spiderman around, and lots of fun things you can do with that Path.

(More discussion of Will's drowning habits-spoiler-it involves inhaling water)

All right.  Amberwell.  The Amberwell path is... I don't know that I can really give a whole lot more detail than was in the books, even though the books were vague, because I don't have the specific techniques or anything on the Path memorized.  But it was an aggressive Path that was focused on using, on weaponizing dreams.  So it's sorta a water/venom/dream Path, so it's really complex to cycle, and the results are usually, they're all at least semi-mental attacks; you can sort of erode people's awareness, give them nightmares, that kind of thing.  But it is a very niche, very aggressive Path; a lot of other dream paths are flexible, and you can do things like make dream tablets and that sort of thing, but this one is like, nope, it's just about burning people's minds away.  That is the Amberwell Path.

Questioner

Is there a reason for the omission of Mercy, Pride, and Fury's father?

Will Wight

Fury's father, no, not really. He's just been dead for many generations. So, he's just not around. In terms of the omission of Pride and Mercy's father, frankly, it's because I've tried to write him into every single book since Skysworn and it has not been feasible because it's just not directly related to the plot or anything related to the plot. So, I keep trying to bring it up and it just hasn't worked. So, at this point it's like 'OK, well now it can't be a real big deal or it would have come up before now,'  so I'm just gonna continue glossing over it, I guess. But I might give more information about who he is. I mean, I know who he is, it's just, you know, it didn't come up.

Questioner

Fury path or techniques

Will Wight

I don't remember the name of his book. I know generally what it is. It's Book of the Dark Sun, Book of the Midnight Sun, Book of the.. something like that.

Questioner

When is Lindon gonna beat Fury in an extremely close fight?

Will Wight

Good question. Maybe if Fury did what he threatened to do in the last book and slapped on wig and started pushing around some underlords.

Questioner

Does your Path become irrelevant after you get to know how to use the Way?

Will Wight

No. It does not. So, the magic you learn in your iteration just evolves and changes as you ascend and you learn how to use the Way. And it gets worked into who you are and what you can do.

Questioner

Akura Honesty

Will Wight

Ya. So I actually never created a character named Akura Honesty even though that fits the pattern because I just didn't think it sounded good as a name. Kind of like how Akura Justice should really be Akura Just, but that doesn't sound good, so he's Justice. And my reasoning for that is that the language that they are speaking in Cradle isn't technically English. So we can say that that made sense and was the same part of speech and there was a translation error and it just happened to sound cooler.

Northstriderbutyoung

If your characters ever came to life, who would you be the most terrified to encounter?

Will Wight

One of the Great Elders. Any of them, that would be terrifying. Some of them I would not be terrified for long. So that would be, there's that. If I ran into Urg'naut, and I encountered him, I would be terrified for a few seconds before I was obliterated into nonexistence.